Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for an older episode of the show from the Vault.
Speaker 1: This one originally aired February second. This was Brain and
Speaker 1: Head Theft, Part one. We did a couple about people
Speaker 1: stealing other people's heads and brains. That's right. Some episodes
Speaker 1: of our show will blow your mind. Others will cut
Speaker 1: your brain in half and store half of it in
Speaker 1: one building and the other half in another building. Okay,
Speaker 1: dock detective, what do you make of it? Here? We
Speaker 1: have got another body, another skull opened up with clinical precision.
Speaker 1: What manner of monster are we dealing with here? I
Speaker 1: don't believe we're dealing with the monster at all. Certainly
Speaker 1: none of the brain gobbling ghoule sorts sensationalized in the press.
Speaker 1: I've studied the ways of ghouls, inspector, and they consume
Speaker 1: all hard and soft tissues. But they prefer the brain. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: as does the common zombie or Mexican vitellius. But look
Speaker 1: at what we see here. Not only was the brain
Speaker 1: and only the brain targeted, but different regions of the
Speaker 1: brain have been removed from victim to victim. Not a
Speaker 1: monster or even a cannibal, then, but a brain thief indeed.
Speaker 1: And look at the profiles of the victims and the
Speaker 1: portions of the brain pilfered from each one of them.
Speaker 1: The vernicas area and the angular gyrus of the noted linguist,
Speaker 1: the Broca's area of the soliloquist, the best parts of
Speaker 1: the best brains. Our murderer is building himself the perfect
Speaker 1: brain out of stolen parts. But to what end? Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: this is my second take at pronouncing my own name.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I got it right this time. Today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about our stolen brains, our stolen heads. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a topic that yet again, like another one
Speaker 1: we did recently. This started as uh an artifact episode
Speaker 1: that I was trying to develop, but then it quickly
Speaker 1: became clear to me that this was not a short topic.
Speaker 1: This was a huge topic with all kinds of bizarre
Speaker 1: tangents and and and dark alleys down which to tread. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I'm so excited to embark on this two parter
Speaker 1: about removing and stealing people's heads and people's brains. That's right.
Speaker 1: This one just keeps growing and expanding, dragging in more heads,
Speaker 1: more brains. It has an insatiable appetite this topic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the so one of the original stories that
Speaker 1: I was looking at that got me interested in this
Speaker 1: was the uh theft of the Austrian composer Franz Joseph
Speaker 1: Haydn's head in the early nineteenth century. And that's a
Speaker 1: story that we're going to come back to at the
Speaker 1: end of this first episode part one here, but before that,
Speaker 1: I think it makes sense to to back up and
Speaker 1: look at the removal of heads in the context where
Speaker 1: it's probably more familiar to everyone, which is not in
Speaker 1: reality but in you know, fiction. Yeah, and we promise
Speaker 1: not to spend too long here because I know some
Speaker 1: of you might be saying, look, you guys have Friday's
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episodes. Now you can pour all of
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm for horror movies into their uh and maybe
Speaker 1: a little less gets used in the core episodes, but
Speaker 1: but there's still some important stuff to touch on here,
Speaker 1: and I think that the fiction sums up a lot
Speaker 1: of what's going on when we think about these topics. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, brain and head theft are frequent trokes and
Speaker 1: horror and science fiction, particularly of the twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: a lot of this seems to be centered in notions
Speaker 1: and fears concerning identity and the scientific understand ending of
Speaker 1: the brain is the seat of consciousness, explored in such
Speaker 1: thoughtful science fiction films as Tammy and the t Rex,
Speaker 1: one of one of the all time great brain theft movies. Yeah, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: there there are various versions of this, right, you know,
Speaker 1: because sometimes the brain is just stolen. Uh. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: kept alive. Sometimes the head is kept alive free of
Speaker 1: the body of a you know jan in the pan situation. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a human transplant, putting the head of one
Speaker 1: person under the body of another, sometimes next to the
Speaker 1: original head of the other. Um, you know, the other
Speaker 1: in in a way, in their own way, sometimes a
Speaker 1: kind of a thoughtful attempt to get at something, you know, culturally,
Speaker 1: but other times just kind of this another rumination on
Speaker 1: the bizarre idea of what if my head but different
Speaker 1: body what if two heads same body? You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's just so much about this idea that continues to amaze.
Speaker 1: What if my brain in a dinosaur exactly? Not? What
Speaker 1: if my brain a robot um, you know, etcetera. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll find so many different versions of this, living
Speaker 1: heads and jars, living brains and jars, head transplants between humans,
Speaker 1: brain transplants into other human beings, and of course brain
Speaker 1: transplants into machines. And there's plenty to talk about here
Speaker 1: even if we're just dealing with consensual brain and or
Speaker 1: head transplant. But then what if your head or brain
Speaker 1: were stolen? Right? That becomes the extra level of potential horror.
Speaker 1: What do you have some mad science maniac were to
Speaker 1: plug your brain into the body of a hideous monster
Speaker 1: body or a killer robot. Or what if you were
Speaker 1: just reduced to nothing but a head bobbing around in
Speaker 1: a jar, or even even more limiting, a brain just
Speaker 1: shut off in alive inside of some sort of contraption.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is explored to some degree in things
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show before. For example, the
Speaker 1: The Thought Experiments Leash short story where am I by
Speaker 1: Daniel Dennett, which is all about brains being removed, and
Speaker 1: that's ultimately trying to get at the question of what
Speaker 1: is the seat of consciousness and is it located in
Speaker 1: a place? Uh you know, given various you know, constraints
Speaker 1: and and and thought experiments about like how brains could
Speaker 1: be replicated with machinery. But but also there are I guess,
Speaker 1: much less technical explorations of the subject where it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, you know, the Futurama model, where
Speaker 1: you're just preserving ahead or preserving a brain to supposedly
Speaker 1: keep the keep the consciousness alive after the body dies
Speaker 1: or after the body is superseded by some superior technology.
Speaker 1: I think both of us really enjoy Um the character
Speaker 1: Kane from RoboCop two Noon and Brain in a jar
Speaker 1: U powering a mechanized death machine. Yeah tom noonan uh
Speaker 1: and he's just like pain embodied controlling a killer robot,
Speaker 1: which is a brilliant idea. There's even like a drug
Speaker 1: insertion because he he was he's addicted to some sort
Speaker 1: of super drug. Right, Oh yeah, the drug called nuke.
Speaker 1: Yeah over of a cup two is amazing. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a there's actually a really excellent star Wars tie in
Speaker 1: here as well. I mean, you have a lot of
Speaker 1: cybernetic stuff going on in Star Wars, but you have
Speaker 1: this one creature. I don't know if you remember it, Joe,
Speaker 1: because it kind of just walks around in the background
Speaker 1: briefly in Return of the Jedi, but it looks like
Speaker 1: a mechanical spider. And then it has this glass looking
Speaker 1: container or sphere hanging underneath it, and inside there's fluid
Speaker 1: and what appears to be a brain of some sort.
Speaker 1: I don't think I made the brain connection when I
Speaker 1: watched Return of the Jedi as a kid, but just
Speaker 1: looked like a big mechanical spider. I think the brain
Speaker 1: things explored more in I don't know what you call it,
Speaker 1: the the supplementary Star Wars universe material, the encyclopedias and
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, I remember reading. I think there's a
Speaker 1: whole story about them in Tales from Joba's Palace, or
Speaker 1: at least it's a story that concerns them to some degree.
Speaker 1: But we are told in other forms that this these
Speaker 1: are the remains of the Bomar monks. Um And I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read this quick passage from Wikipedia. Um. It
Speaker 1: says this follows quote. The Biomar Order, which consisted of
Speaker 1: Bomar monks, was a religious order that believed in isolating
Speaker 1: themselves from all physical sensation to enhance the power of
Speaker 1: their minds. To that aim, enlightened monks had their brains
Speaker 1: transplanted into nutrient filled jars. Whenever they wanted to move.
Speaker 1: Those bottled brains used spider like droid walkers. I can
Speaker 1: just imagine the purity hierarchy. It's like, oh, you're you're
Speaker 1: gonna walk around in your spider today instead of just
Speaker 1: sitting there in a jar doing nothing. Okay, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean sometimes you have to have your nutrient fluid switched out, right,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing there's like with me, one machine in job
Speaker 1: As Palace that does that, and you gotta get there early.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess if you're addicted to the pleasures
Speaker 1: of the flesh. So that's just that's just a brief
Speaker 1: glance at some of the many, many, very creations on
Speaker 1: this you'll find in sci fi and horror because we
Speaker 1: can't get enough of it, because at the heart of it,
Speaker 1: there are so there are several different um you know,
Speaker 1: enigmas and conundrums. Uh and paradoxes that that emerge, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's dealing with what we are and who we are,
Speaker 1: and just sort of that some of the mysteries that
Speaker 1: that seem to revolve around are are fleshly self and
Speaker 1: some of the more supernatural ideas about what we are,
Speaker 1: and of course some of the you know, the mysteries
Speaker 1: of consciousness itself. Yeah, and that's interesting when when you
Speaker 1: get into mysteries. One of the great things to wonder
Speaker 1: is um as far as consciousness and its relationship to
Speaker 1: different types of tissue in the body, nervous system, tissue
Speaker 1: in the brain versus other parts of the body. You
Speaker 1: always kind of wonder, um, what did ancient people know,
Speaker 1: you know, or what did they suspect before we had
Speaker 1: modern neuroscience and anatomy and uh, and there is something
Speaker 1: interesting you can observe. Is not necessarily going to be theft,
Speaker 1: like we're talking about it in a lot of our examples,
Speaker 1: though in some cases it probably is. But there are
Speaker 1: interesting cases you can observe from the ancient world and
Speaker 1: from ancient religion where sometimes the head or the brain
Speaker 1: were treated differently than some other parts of the body were,
Speaker 1: which indicated at least something some interesting belief. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this gets really fascinating. Now, First of all,
Speaker 1: we should stress that we modern humans are probably just
Speaker 1: mostly focused on the idea of the brain being the
Speaker 1: seat of the mind and the self, because we also
Speaker 1: paradoxically carry along other ideas with us. You know, there's
Speaker 1: so many just parts of our language and just the
Speaker 1: way we think about ourselves that we may talk about
Speaker 1: feeling something with our heart, and when we do that,
Speaker 1: we may on some level position are our center of being,
Speaker 1: in position our mind in the middle of our torso
Speaker 1: my gut feeling. Yeah, yeah, your gut feeling, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: you can take this even further, of course, get into
Speaker 1: various um uh you know, supernatural and religious ideas about
Speaker 1: say various chakras and energy points in the body, um
Speaker 1: you know, and the And we can carry this around
Speaker 1: with us and also carry around a science more or
Speaker 1: less scientific understanding of the brain, um you know. And
Speaker 1: we can we can believe in both. We can we
Speaker 1: can you know, dip out of both steamer trays as
Speaker 1: it suits us. Yeah, obviously people do. I mean like
Speaker 1: that A lot of people probably believe in some type
Speaker 1: of supernatural mind in one way or another. But then also,
Speaker 1: like you would consult a neurologist if you needed to write,
Speaker 1: and and you know, I'm I'm always a kind of
Speaker 1: of two minds on all of this because on one hand,
Speaker 1: you know, we we the brain is is the the
Speaker 1: the author of of of all these ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is the center of our being. And
Speaker 1: we see that, um, you know, and that that bears
Speaker 1: out anytime there's a brain injury, etcetera. But then also
Speaker 1: we're not just the brain. We're also the body. And
Speaker 1: while you know you might be stretching it to say
Speaker 1: that you're you know, you're thinking something or feeling something
Speaker 1: with your heart in the same way that you would
Speaker 1: with your mind. You know, there is this um we
Speaker 1: are more than just the brain. We are this entire organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: That's something that I think is often overlooked in these
Speaker 1: like so the Beaumar monks or whatever. The brain in
Speaker 1: a jar with a spider body, and you think, like, well,
Speaker 1: that's just pure mental existence, you know, as if you
Speaker 1: you'll just live forever in this mechanical setup and you
Speaker 1: can have your your pure mind continuing to do whatever
Speaker 1: it does. Meditation or whatever. But I think that might
Speaker 1: be really underappreciating how much your mental life would be
Speaker 1: changed if you were only your brain and did not
Speaker 1: have the rest of your body for the brain to
Speaker 1: interact with. Yeah, that's why General Grievous got to bring
Speaker 1: his guts with him, you know. Yeah, he's not just
Speaker 1: a brain, he's also eyeballs and guts in there, so well.
Speaker 1: I mean, and there's even literal feedback. I mean, in
Speaker 1: some way the brain is influenced, for example, by hormones
Speaker 1: that are secreted by organs in other parts of the body.
Speaker 1: Absolutely uh. In thinking about what ancient people's thought, though,
Speaker 1: it's it's impossible to get into this discussion without, of
Speaker 1: course touching on the ancient Egyptians, because, as a many
Speaker 1: of you are probably already thinking about, they famously removed
Speaker 1: and discarded the brain, dering and balming, while taking great
Speaker 1: care to store various other organs in economic jars. Yet
Speaker 1: at the same time, the ancient Egyptians are responsible for
Speaker 1: the oldest written record using the word brain. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't brain, you know, obviously, but it was the
Speaker 1: Higheroglyphics for brain aren't known. We see it in a
Speaker 1: sevent BC text that was in turn apparently based on
Speaker 1: texts that go back to about three thousand BC. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is the so called Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, named
Speaker 1: for the American Egyptologists who discovered it. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: looking at it now. The the hieroglyphic word form that
Speaker 1: men the brain, the organ, it's like a bird, and
Speaker 1: then something that looks maybe like a feather or a knife,
Speaker 1: and then like a hook shaped thing, and then what
Speaker 1: looks like maybe a bee or a fly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the hook. I have no idea, but the
Speaker 1: hook thing is very suggestive, of course, uh, not being
Speaker 1: entirely sure what this this these hieroglyphics um individually, these
Speaker 1: parts of it mean because of what we think about
Speaker 1: the hook that is used to carefully remove the brain
Speaker 1: uh tsoot during embalming um, which was a delicate procedure
Speaker 1: because you had to do it apparently as well without
Speaker 1: you had to take care not to damage the facial
Speaker 1: features during the removal. And and one thing that's important
Speaker 1: to realize here is that the Egyptians didn't necessarily think
Speaker 1: the brain was garbage or anything, but it was one
Speaker 1: of the first organs to go foul. Part of their
Speaker 1: practice was to first remove the organs that decayed rapidly,
Speaker 1: and this certainly included the brain. This is going to
Speaker 1: tie directly into an account from the early nineteenth century
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about later in the episode,
Speaker 1: about a very prominent and fascinating case of head theft.
Speaker 1: All right, um, just briefly some other tidbits about our
Speaker 1: history of understanding the brain. In the fourth century BC,
Speaker 1: Aristotle considered the brain to be a secondary organ that
Speaker 1: cooled the heart, a place where the spirit could circulate.
Speaker 1: The heart was the center of thought. Though now in
Speaker 1: the second century, ce Galen concluded that the brain was
Speaker 1: the seat of the animal soul, uh, one of three
Speaker 1: souls in the body. But this was based in part
Speaker 1: on his observations of the effects of brain injuries on
Speaker 1: mental activity. So again, even if you even if you
Speaker 1: you you were really clinging to some idea that uh,
Speaker 1: that thought and being is tied up in the Torso
Speaker 1: you know, after a while, it becomes clear that when
Speaker 1: things happen to the head, um, it can it can
Speaker 1: drastically affect how we think and how we uh we process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems like that would have probably been one of
Speaker 1: the earliest ways that people could do the important role
Speaker 1: of the brain, not just because you could make the
Speaker 1: argument that sometimes it's somehow kind of feels like thought
Speaker 1: is taking place in the head. Obviously it didn't always
Speaker 1: feel like that to everybody. Some people must have thought
Speaker 1: it felt like it was happening somewhere else. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: you noticed that you hit somebody in the head. It
Speaker 1: is much more likely to have a complex and profound
Speaker 1: effects on how they think and how they feel than
Speaker 1: hitting them in any other part of the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. How again, it's an unavoidable in our language. Right,
Speaker 1: So we talked about like putting our thinking cap on.
Speaker 1: You know, we're just so many times like we're thinking
Speaker 1: really hard. We might do something involving our head, We
Speaker 1: might touch our head. But if you were living in
Speaker 1: a culture that was more based in an idea that
Speaker 1: would that thinking was based in the chest, would you
Speaker 1: put your I don't know, you're you're thinking brazier on?
Speaker 1: Would you would you sort of like hold your chest
Speaker 1: a little bit as you as you think. I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I also wonder what are the limits to that,
Speaker 1: Like is is that. Is it possible that if you
Speaker 1: just had the right cultural ideas fed into you as
Speaker 1: you were growing up, that it would literally feel to
Speaker 1: you like you were thinking with your feet or thinking
Speaker 1: with your knees or something, or is there a sort
Speaker 1: of limited range of where it can feel like thinking
Speaker 1: is happening. I don't know. This is fascinating. I hadn't
Speaker 1: really thought about all this before. But maybe there's some
Speaker 1: papers out there to get into it that would it
Speaker 1: would be interesting to read about. Yeah, but any rate,
Speaker 1: from here, we gradually built up an improved understanding of
Speaker 1: how the brain function, though much remained unknown for a
Speaker 1: considerable amount of time, leading to what I've seen referred
Speaker 1: to as a quote cultural anatomy of the brain that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily match up within neurological reality. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Than Now, there's one example from ancient history I guess
Speaker 1: actually this would be prehistory of how heads were treated
Speaker 1: in a way that was somewhat different than how the
Speaker 1: rest of the body was treated. And this kind from
Speaker 1: the ancient Neolithic or Chalcolithic Neolithic settlement known as chattelho
Speaker 1: Yuk from Turkey. It's a place in southern Turkey. That
Speaker 1: was thousands of years BC. Did did you have the
Speaker 1: date on that? Um? I I read it had thrived
Speaker 1: back in seven thousand. Yeah, I mean it was around
Speaker 1: for a while, but I think that was like the
Speaker 1: period of its the height of its population and power,
Speaker 1: and so it's one of the earliest large human settlements
Speaker 1: that we have evidence of sustained habitation at. There were
Speaker 1: all of these houses that were sort of built right
Speaker 1: next to each other. They were built up and you
Speaker 1: would enter them through the roof. It was like a
Speaker 1: grid of sort of cubicle houses. You'd go in through
Speaker 1: the roof, and there are these living spaces that archaeologists
Speaker 1: can still explore today. And it's fascinating to try to
Speaker 1: put together the culture of the people who lived at
Speaker 1: Chattelhoyuk because one of the things observed there is sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes there would be mortu ary practices that would involve
Speaker 1: apparently incorporating the dead bodies of friends and family members
Speaker 1: into like the furniture, just into stuff inside the house
Speaker 1: where the people were living, so the body of a
Speaker 1: dead relative might be buried underneath the bed where you sleep.
Speaker 1: But one of the other really interesting things sometimes observed
Speaker 1: there is the removal of heads from dead bodies I
Speaker 1: presumably family members, where the head would be taken off
Speaker 1: and uh and then covered in some kind of plaster
Speaker 1: and just like kept in the house. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: really fascinating because in this we we get into, you know,
Speaker 1: you sort of have to strip away sort of your
Speaker 1: modern funerary customs and ideas about what is what is
Speaker 1: proper to do with the with the body of the deceased, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And you if you try and sort of put yourself
Speaker 1: in this this different mindset and imagine, like how do
Speaker 1: we relate to the bodies that no longer have life
Speaker 1: and him you know what what is the what is
Speaker 1: the skull of the dead? Uh? Now that they have
Speaker 1: you know that now that the individual has passed on,
Speaker 1: you know, you you get into this sort of like
Speaker 1: base area. Then you you can build up from there
Speaker 1: and imagine how some of these these customs could have
Speaker 1: taken root. Yeah, and it it definitely signals like how
Speaker 1: variable and culturally determined our feelings about the treatment of
Speaker 1: dead bodies are. Because I think now and it's probably
Speaker 1: very somewhat to culture even today, but in most of
Speaker 1: the cultures were familiar with. Like if you were to
Speaker 1: take Grandma's dead body and like cut her head off
Speaker 1: and cover it with plaster and put it on a desk,
Speaker 1: that would widely be seen as like disrespectful in some way,
Speaker 1: But here it's the exact opposite. It seems to suggest
Speaker 1: that this is a way of revering the dead, and
Speaker 1: in some way it has some kind of religious significance
Speaker 1: or ritual use. Yeah. Like nowadays, you said down and
Speaker 1: you watch the Texas chainsaw mask you and you say,
Speaker 1: this is not right. This family of Texan cannibals are
Speaker 1: are are not being respectful to the dead. But you
Speaker 1: can make a case for most of the things they're
Speaker 1: doing and say, no, they're being very respectful. Um to
Speaker 1: to a to a point, I'm only going to defend
Speaker 1: the Sawyers so much. But um but but now there's
Speaker 1: a lot to consider, like you know, what happens to
Speaker 1: the body when it dies? Wand or what do we
Speaker 1: do to the body when it dies? And how we
Speaker 1: approach these different views of death, like they have a
Speaker 1: huge impact on not only how we we treat the
Speaker 1: bodies of the dead, but then also like how we
Speaker 1: think about death itself. Yeah, and so we're gonna be
Speaker 1: focusing in these episodes on some cases of brains and
Speaker 1: heads being taken off of bodies um or or being
Speaker 1: stolen in one way or another without the consent of
Speaker 1: the person involved. But there we should at least know
Speaker 1: that there are plenty of cases where heads are removed,
Speaker 1: brains are removed, and this was according to the wishes
Speaker 1: of the person from whose body they're being taken, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a few I think, mostly if not completely consensually
Speaker 1: preserved brains worth mentioning. Uh. One of one of the
Speaker 1: big ones that that probably a lot of people were
Speaker 1: thinking of is is Broca's brain. Um And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons, of course, is that Carl Sagan has a
Speaker 1: whole book titled Broker's Brain, because one of the essays
Speaker 1: in it deals with it specifically. And I'll get back
Speaker 1: to that in just a second. But Paul Broco lived
Speaker 1: through eighteen eighty. He was a French surgeon and neurologist
Speaker 1: who played a major role in the mid nineteen in
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century medicine, and was the founder of modern
Speaker 1: brain surgery. He also supported some extremely prejudiced ideas, but
Speaker 1: his work with the brain itself was expressed. It was
Speaker 1: it was extremely important. As such, he worked a lot
Speaker 1: with human brains, and many of the preserved brains that
Speaker 1: he worked with can still be found at the Pierre
Speaker 1: and Marie Curry University in Paris, and that potentially includes
Speaker 1: Brocco's own brain. The museum has apparently denied that it
Speaker 1: can be found there, but there are accounts that say
Speaker 1: that his brain ended up on a shelf alongside the others.
Speaker 1: And Carl Sagan in the book broke his brain. In
Speaker 1: the the the chapter or essay dealing with this, he
Speaker 1: discusses holding the jar and that allegedly contained it, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: it was Broca himself whose brain I was cradling, who
Speaker 1: had established the maccab collection I had been contemplating. And
Speaker 1: from their second goes on to question just how much
Speaker 1: of who Broca was is still in there? You know?
Speaker 1: Is the physical brain in the jar? Is that him?
Speaker 1: Is this some remnant of him? It's it's a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful section of the book that you should you should read,
Speaker 1: but it's um uh, probably one of the more famous
Speaker 1: preserved or allegedly preserved brains. Yeah and yeah, that raises
Speaker 1: really interesting questions, like in a way, is it possible
Speaker 1: even to think about the person as an object or
Speaker 1: as a person something more like a process. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then also like the whole seeming mystery about whether there's
Speaker 1: there's an actual uh specimen that is broke his brain,
Speaker 1: it does also bring up the question, you know, once
Speaker 1: the brain is removed, how do you tell whose it was?
Speaker 1: Especially when you're dealing with an old brain like this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like you can just hook it up,
Speaker 1: fire it up and see what memories are in there, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But of course, so there's a question about this one.
Speaker 1: But there are examples of people who were just like, yep,
Speaker 1: you know, you use my brain, do something with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Charles Babbage is a great example of this. Who have
Speaker 1: see through eighteen seventy one, the father of the computer,
Speaker 1: as he's sometimes known, He donated his brain to science
Speaker 1: and today you can see it, uh in two halfs,
Speaker 1: one side of it at London Science Museum and the
Speaker 1: other at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, did Ada Lovelace also have her brain
Speaker 1: preserved or just Babbage? It would be great if you
Speaker 1: could see him about I did not run across their brain,
Speaker 1: but I guess it would be great to see him
Speaker 1: side by side I hooked up to the same computer.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting how um it is presented into how
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much, so many directions you could
Speaker 1: go there with that, right, um. But yeah, you go
Speaker 1: to one place to see one hemisphere and the other
Speaker 1: to see the other hemisphere. UM. I wonder if I mean,
Speaker 1: when you look at those hemispheres, do you is there
Speaker 1: a feeling like this is wrong? They should be reunited.
Speaker 1: The brain should be It's okay to preserve a brain
Speaker 1: and display it, but it should be displayed as a
Speaker 1: whole complete peace. But I don't know, maybe not now
Speaker 1: as far as famous people go, quote, quite a few
Speaker 1: athletes have pledged their brain to science and an effort
Speaker 1: to better understand concussions, you know, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people just in general donate their bodies and or their
Speaker 1: organs to to science. Um, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: brain study continues in this in this manner, by the way,
Speaker 1: by most all accounts, and certainly all accounts that matter,
Speaker 1: we should point out that Walt Disney did not have
Speaker 1: his body, brain, or head frozen following his death. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a popular myth, and it is, yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think I was reading about Apparently it's largely based on
Speaker 1: the fact that he was interested in the topic at
Speaker 1: some point and and in general was known to be
Speaker 1: interested in in in scientific topics, and therefore I just
Speaker 1: kind of carried away, like what you know about Disney.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, well, it seems like something he would do.
Speaker 1: He did it. It's just like, oh, he's weird enough.
Speaker 1: So I guess if we're in in the modern era
Speaker 1: for for now and talking about brains that were actually
Speaker 1: just straight up stolen, Probably the most famous brain theft
Speaker 1: uh in the modern world, happened to the body of
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein. And I guess we'll maybe come back and
Speaker 1: talk about that more later as we go on. But
Speaker 1: he is by no means the only one. I want
Speaker 1: to back up and tell a story from the early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds about the famous composer Joseph haydn Uh And
Speaker 1: so a couple of sources I was looking at. Year
Speaker 1: one is a book by Francis Larson published in fourteen
Speaker 1: called Severed, A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found,
Speaker 1: And the part of this that I was reading is
Speaker 1: just wonderful. So I might have to go back and
Speaker 1: read this entire book at some point um. But the
Speaker 1: other is just a biography of Hayden called Hayden A
Speaker 1: Creative Life in Music by Carl gey Ringer and Irene
Speaker 1: gey Ringer from University of California Press in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: And so just a brief background on on Franz Joseph Hayden,
Speaker 1: also just known as Joseph Hayden. He was a renowned
Speaker 1: classical composer from Austria who lived from seventeen thirty two
Speaker 1: until eighteen o nine. It was very influential. I think
Speaker 1: he was sort of a mentor figure to some other
Speaker 1: later composers like Mozart. And probably the fact that most
Speaker 1: people know about him today, or at least the one
Speaker 1: that I remember from school, is that he was the
Speaker 1: composer of what's known as the Surprise Symphony. It's a
Speaker 1: composition that is very kind of dreamy and sleepy and
Speaker 1: then has the sudden extremely loud chords that will almost
Speaker 1: like make you pee yourself, like they will wake you
Speaker 1: up if you are falling asleep at the at the
Speaker 1: on Orchestra night I wonder if we can play some
Speaker 1: some public domain selections of of hayden music while I'm
Speaker 1: telling the story of how his head was hacked off
Speaker 1: and stolen. Okay, So the story of Hayden around the
Speaker 1: time of his death, especially as told in the Geyringer book,
Speaker 1: here is what I'm starting with. So, for a long time,
Speaker 1: Hayden was the court musician of a Hungarian noble family
Speaker 1: called the esther Hazy family. So I guess you can
Speaker 1: imagine something kind of like if you've seen the movie Amadeus,
Speaker 1: you know the roles Salieri plays in the Austrian Emperor's
Speaker 1: chord in that movie. He's the the court composer, the
Speaker 1: court musician, kind of there to to do musical work
Speaker 1: for and flatter this rich family. Except, of course, this
Speaker 1: would not have been the emperor. This was just one
Speaker 1: particular noble house, the ester Hazy line. And Hayden died
Speaker 1: in eighteen o nine. He died in Vienna, I think
Speaker 1: actually while Vienna was being occupied by Napoleon's troops, so
Speaker 1: there was a war zone situation happening, uh, And his
Speaker 1: body was not taken back to this, uh, this remote
Speaker 1: castle where the ester Hazy family lived because I think
Speaker 1: I think it had something to do with the war situations.
Speaker 1: Why he was kept in Vienna near where his house
Speaker 1: or apartment was, and he was buried in a local
Speaker 1: cemetery known as the hun Storm Cemetery. And that same
Speaker 1: year the Prince of the ester Hassy line, I think
Speaker 1: it was Nicolaus ester Hasy he put in an application
Speaker 1: to have Hayden's body dug up from the cemetery and
Speaker 1: transferred to Eisenstadt, which was the seat of the ester
Speaker 1: Hausy house, and permission for the disinterment was granted, but
Speaker 1: ster Hazie never actually did it. He got permissioned, then
Speaker 1: he just kind of forgot about it, and Hayden stayed there.
Speaker 1: Hayden's tomb stayed as it was. But finally in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty Esther Hazy to quote from the Guy Wringer book quote,
Speaker 1: was reminded of his obligations by Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge.
Speaker 1: This distinguished visitor observed after attending a Galla performance of
Speaker 1: the Creation, which was an oratorio of Hayden's given in
Speaker 1: his honor at Eisenstot quote, how fortunate was the man
Speaker 1: who employed this Hayden in his lifetime and now possesses
Speaker 1: his mortal remains, which that moment, I'm just imagining that,
Speaker 1: like Prince ester Hazie must have been like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that. But apparently he did not correct his guest though.
Speaker 1: Immediately after this, he gave orders to have the body
Speaker 1: exhumed from the cemetery in Vienna and brought over to
Speaker 1: Eisenstatt and re entombed at a church there near the castle.
Speaker 1: The church was called bag Kircha, which was where Hyden
Speaker 1: had often performed some of the masses that he wrote
Speaker 1: for the ester Hausy family. Uh So the order goes through,
Speaker 1: and but then the guy ringers right quote. When the
Speaker 1: coffin was opened for identification, the horrified officials found no
Speaker 1: head on the body, but only the wig. And this
Speaker 1: seems especially bad because, like it would be harder for
Speaker 1: Esther Hassey at this point to pretend that he just
Speaker 1: had Hyden's body where it was supposed to be all along.
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of that situation where like
Speaker 1: somebody gives you a gift, like an appliance that you
Speaker 1: don't really want and you never opened, and they keep
Speaker 1: asking you if you like it, You're like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: use it all the time, it's great. And then they're
Speaker 1: going to come over to your house and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's use that blender whatever it was, and then you
Speaker 1: finally open it and discover that it's missing a piece
Speaker 1: or it's broken or something. But so obviously Prince ester
Speaker 1: Hassy was not amused that Hyden's head had been stolen.
Speaker 1: He was really mad, and he made inquiries about the
Speaker 1: missing head, and soon the mystery was solved. It turned
Speaker 1: out it was sort of an inside job. The culprits
Speaker 1: who stole the head were Hayden's friend, apparently not a
Speaker 1: super close friend, but they knew each other, a friend
Speaker 1: of Hayden's named Joseph Carl Rosenbaum, who had been employed
Speaker 1: by the ester Hazy family, and then another guy named
Speaker 1: Johann Napomuk Peter, who was the administrator of a penitentiary
Speaker 1: somewhere in Austria. So why would these guys, including a
Speaker 1: former friend of Hayden's, dig up his grave, steal his head,
Speaker 1: and then cover everything back up. Well, the answer is
Speaker 1: that they were amateur phrenologists. And I'll come back to
Speaker 1: the subject in more detail in in a few minutes,
Speaker 1: and I guess throughout a couple of both of these episodes.
Speaker 1: But the short explanation of what's going on here is
Speaker 1: that they were devotees of the then popular pseudo science
Speaker 1: of phrenology, and they were fans of its leading proponent
Speaker 1: at this time and place, the German anatomist Friends Joseph Gall,
Speaker 1: who lived seventeen fifty eight to eight. And yes, I
Speaker 1: did also notice that Friends Joseph Gall has the same
Speaker 1: first and middle name is Hayden. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's any reason for that. Maybe a bunch of boys
Speaker 1: were named after a king or something at this time.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have any insights on the
Speaker 1: on the friends Joseph's. Maybe it's just a total coincidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Off the top of my head, I
Speaker 1: don't know any I don't know any friends Joseph's. But
Speaker 1: so they these two guys, Rosenbaum and Peter wanted Hayden's
Speaker 1: head because they wanted to conduct a pseudo scientific dissection
Speaker 1: of the skull to determine its characteristics according to phrenological theory,
Speaker 1: to see if you could read his musical genius in
Speaker 1: the shape of his skull. So I'll come back to
Speaker 1: that aspect in a bit. But together these guys bribed
Speaker 1: a grave digger in the Vienna cemetery to dig up
Speaker 1: Hyden a few days after his funeral, hack off his
Speaker 1: head and deliver it to them, quote to protect it
Speaker 1: from desecration. Um. So, according to to Larsen, the grave
Speaker 1: digger did this. It was a few nights after the burial.
Speaker 1: He chopped off the head, wrapped it up in some rags,
Speaker 1: and then handed it off to Rosenbaum. And Rosenbaum had
Speaker 1: a carriage waiting nearby. He was on the way taking
Speaker 1: the head to the carriage, but he was so curious
Speaker 1: to see it that he peeled back the rags uh
Speaker 1: to take a peek. But this was June, and Hayden
Speaker 1: had been dead for a while at this point, and
Speaker 1: the body was already beginning to rot. And apparently Rosenbaum
Speaker 1: was so overwhelmed by the sight and the smell that
Speaker 1: he just vomited in the cemetery, but then got right
Speaker 1: back to business. So he got into the carriage, went
Speaker 1: straight to Vienna Hospital, where the skull was de fleshed
Speaker 1: and the brain was removed from its casing and Rosenbaum
Speaker 1: described the scene later in his own writing. This is
Speaker 1: quoted and Larsen quote. The site made a lifelong impression
Speaker 1: on me. The dissection lasted for one hour. The brain,
Speaker 1: which was of large proportions, stank the most terribly of all.
Speaker 1: I endured it to the end. And that's what I
Speaker 1: was thinking of when you mentioned earlier that the brain,
Speaker 1: according to the Egyptians at least you know, was one
Speaker 1: of the earliest parts of the body to spoil and
Speaker 1: smell bad, which might have had something to do with
Speaker 1: the process for its early removal. Yeah, well, I've I've
Speaker 1: read this other places as well. In fact, tomorrow's episode
Speaker 1: of The Artifact will touch on how quickly a brain
Speaker 1: will rot. Well, apparently Rosenbaum noticed like he could, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that they had a whole head there. He
Speaker 1: was like, the brain was the worst. But anyway, at
Speaker 1: the Vienna hospital here the skin muscle in the brain
Speaker 1: were burned in the furnace, and then the skull was
Speaker 1: soaked in lime to clean the bones so it could
Speaker 1: be measured for the phrenology purposes. And this soaking would
Speaker 1: take a while. So while that was going on, Rosenbaum
Speaker 1: went back home and he and Peter at some point
Speaker 1: designed a case with which to hold the skull. The
Speaker 1: guy ringers right quote. Peter had a black wooden box
Speaker 1: made with a golden lyre at the top and glass
Speaker 1: windows in it. The skull was placed on a white
Speaker 1: silk cushion trimmed with black, which reminds me very much
Speaker 1: of some of the displays I've seen of supposedly incorruptible
Speaker 1: saints bodies and the relics of saints an old Catholic
Speaker 1: and Orthodox museums or not museums cathedrals. Yeah, they didn't
Speaker 1: just stick it on the table and put a candle
Speaker 1: on top of it or let a raven perch on it.
Speaker 1: You know, they did it up right. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: a nice glass box. But this one here has a
Speaker 1: golden lyre. And Larson actually has a very wonderful passage
Speaker 1: about this that I wanted to quote. She calls attention
Speaker 1: to the fact that this box was ornamented with a
Speaker 1: golden liar, and she asks if this might have been
Speaker 1: intended as a reference to the Greek god Orpheus. So
Speaker 1: here I'm quoting from Larsen, whose music carried him safely
Speaker 1: into the underworld to say of his wife Eurydicy. Rosenbaum's
Speaker 1: own dark and earthy mission had been driven by his
Speaker 1: passion for music and his admiration of Hayden as a composer.
Speaker 1: He too had retrieved his love from the rod of
Speaker 1: the nether world. If the liar did refer to Orpheus,
Speaker 1: there may have been other symbolic residences at work as well.
Speaker 1: In one version of the myth, Orpheus lost his own
Speaker 1: head when his body was ripped apart and thrown into
Speaker 1: the sea by the women of Thrace and Macedonia. Later,
Speaker 1: Orpheus's head was found floating in the river Mela's, fresh
Speaker 1: and vigorous and still singing mournfully. The place where it
Speaker 1: was buried became a shrine and an oracle for pilgrims.
Speaker 1: And that is interesting to me because within this special box,
Speaker 1: Haydn's severed head would become kind of like a shrine
Speaker 1: within Rosenbaum's house. It's so weird to think about this
Speaker 1: in terms of patrons and artists, you know, um, like
Speaker 1: like what if what I have today on Patreon or
Speaker 1: uh or some sort of a kickstarter like that was
Speaker 1: a tier level, Like if you support me, then you
Speaker 1: can cut off my head when I'm dead and run
Speaker 1: off with my skull, or you will be you will
Speaker 1: be tasked with keeping my body and protecting it. That
Speaker 1: sort of thing. The Platinum Club membership. Yeah yeah, but
Speaker 1: to a certain extense, like at least a metaphorical level. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of this does kind of weirdly
Speaker 1: match up with some of our attitudes about celebrity, you know,
Speaker 1: and celebrities and creators you know, and how we how
Speaker 1: we treat them and uh regard them after their death,
Speaker 1: you know, like literally turning turning their their their deaths
Speaker 1: into in sometimes their places with burial into into holy shrines,
Speaker 1: and like you're invoking this whole pseudo scientific field to
Speaker 1: come up with a physical explanation for their supposedly superhuman genius. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So to come back to the story, years go by,
Speaker 1: we already narrated the intervening events. Remember princesster Hazy. At
Speaker 1: some point he's reminded like, oh, yeah, Hyden's body, Oh
Speaker 1: I need yeah, that should be here. Uh So, so
Speaker 1: back to the investigation, because they discovered no head, only
Speaker 1: a wig in the in the coffin, and um so
Speaker 1: they had Hyden's body moved to the castle at Eisenstat
Speaker 1: where the Prince wanted it. But the Prince was furious
Speaker 1: because there was no head, and he had them investigate,
Speaker 1: and eventually, somehow it was figured out that Peter and
Speaker 1: Rosenbaum had been, you know, the ones implicated here, that
Speaker 1: they would have been the people who took the head.
Speaker 1: And so the police went to interrogate Peter, who said
Speaker 1: that he had given the head to Rosenbaum. And then
Speaker 1: the investigators went to Rosenbaum's house and they searched for
Speaker 1: the skull, but they didn't find it. Quote since Rosenbaum's wife,
Speaker 1: the opera singer Teresa Gossman, hid the skull in her
Speaker 1: straw mattress and lay down on the bed. And then
Speaker 1: to to finish up the story the guy Ringer's right quote,
Speaker 1: the Prince now tried bribery and his emissary promised Rosenbaum
Speaker 1: a large sum if he would deliver the skull, whereupon
Speaker 1: the skull of an old man was handed to the
Speaker 1: Prince and buried with Hyden's body. Uh not unnaturally, Prince Princess. Okay,
Speaker 1: so fake skull handed off for a bribe. Not unnaturally,
Speaker 1: Prince Esther Hazy did not keep his promise of a reward,
Speaker 1: but neither had the wary ex secretary acted honestly since
Speaker 1: he had not delivered the right skull. So it's a
Speaker 1: double double cross. But I wonder if they both leave
Speaker 1: happy with that. You know, it's like, all right, I've
Speaker 1: got a skull. I can literally somebody's skull. It might
Speaker 1: not have the right kind of musical genius bump, but uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody's skull is in there. And but the guy did
Speaker 1: not get his money. Uh. And then finally they say,
Speaker 1: on his deathbed, Rosenbaum gave Hyden skull to his collaborator,
Speaker 1: to Peter and quote made him promise to leave it
Speaker 1: in his will to the Museum of guessel Shoft dear
Speaker 1: music Freund in Vienna, the owner of a great number
Speaker 1: of valuable Hyden relics. So the hyde and skulls stayed
Speaker 1: there from eight until nineteen fifty four. And then eventually
Speaker 1: there was a there was a mausoleum built in berg
Speaker 1: Church that that church in uh in Nisenstock, where the
Speaker 1: body was supposed to be. Eventually, it was in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four that the skull was finally reunited with the
Speaker 1: rest of the body. But I think at least for
Speaker 1: a while, maybe maybe permanently after that, but at least
Speaker 1: for a while there were two skulls in the grave
Speaker 1: because they also had the original fake decoy skull that
Speaker 1: had been interred with the body in the wig. So
Speaker 1: we had a friend, really a roommate, right exactly. But
Speaker 1: this brings me back to to the pseudo science underlying
Speaker 1: uh this this head theft mission here. Why did Rosenbaum
Speaker 1: and Peter steel the head Again, they were enthusiastic amateur phrenologists.
Speaker 1: They were students of the German anatomist Franz Joseph Gall,
Speaker 1: who again he's credited with pioneering the now discredited field
Speaker 1: of phrenology. Now, Gall apparently made some legitimate contributions to
Speaker 1: the development of neuroscience and nero anatomy, but I think
Speaker 1: whatever these legitimate contributions where they are now overshadowed in
Speaker 1: his legacy by the association with phrenology, which is just
Speaker 1: one of the most awful and rightfully infamous pseudosciences in
Speaker 1: human history. And we can explain more about phrenology across
Speaker 1: this couple of episodes, but the short version is that
Speaker 1: Phrenologists incorrectly believed that you could make accurate inferences about
Speaker 1: human mental traits like uh like, personality traits, moral characteristics,
Speaker 1: and intellectual aptitudes by measuring the shape and the contours
Speaker 1: of people's skulls, particularly bumps on the skull. So if
Speaker 1: there's a bump in a certain place right near the
Speaker 1: top of your head, that might show that you have
Speaker 1: a special propensity for veneration. Maybe you'd be a good
Speaker 1: candidate for the clergy. But if there's a pronounced ridge
Speaker 1: over the top of your ear, that is a swelling
Speaker 1: of the organ of destructiveness, and you will surely become
Speaker 1: a violent criminal, etcetera. And I think you can pair
Speaker 1: phrenology along with what's known as physiognomy. More broadly, physiognomy
Speaker 1: is the belief that you can accurately assess a person's
Speaker 1: mental characteristics by looking at their outward appearance. Often, physiognomy
Speaker 1: would focus on the face. You'd see these charts of like, oh,
Speaker 1: somebody has a face like this, it means that they're
Speaker 1: they're very sanguine and uh and and they're you know,
Speaker 1: prone to laughter and to gluttony. And somebody has a
Speaker 1: face like this and there, you know, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: a murderer. Uh. And so phrenology and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: they lead to all kinds of horribly misguided applications and
Speaker 1: pseudo scientific criminology, supposed science of justifications for racism and
Speaker 1: ethnic prejudice, for gender prejudice, and so forth. And it's
Speaker 1: weird because phrenology, like if you explain it today, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that sounds so stupid on its face.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see how people ever believed it. But
Speaker 1: phrenology was hugely influential, especially in the first half of
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. Uh, though it was, it should be said,
Speaker 1: it was not like everybody believed it at the time.
Speaker 1: It was subjected to fierce scientific criticism even during its heyday.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it did not find very popular
Speaker 1: applauding audiences. Yeah, like you said, so much of the
Speaker 1: time it ends up being this way of saying those
Speaker 1: horrible things you think when you look at certain people's
Speaker 1: skulls and faces, those feelings are backed up by scientific principles,
Speaker 1: and here they are, and and and that you know,
Speaker 1: you can see why that would be enough to hook
Speaker 1: people who wanted to believe these things. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: great to tell people like that. You know, you can
Speaker 1: have a scientific justification for whatever you gut feeling you
Speaker 1: get when you look at somebody like, oh, this guy
Speaker 1: he has the you know, the pointy top of the
Speaker 1: head of a genius or you know this late. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my wife won't do what I tell her because there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with the shape of her skull, and science
Speaker 1: proves it. Now, the tragedy of phrenology is started with
Speaker 1: some premises that are basically true. Like it started with
Speaker 1: the idea that the personality and mental traits are in
Speaker 1: large part determined by processes in the brain. Of course
Speaker 1: that's true, we know that today and uh. And with
Speaker 1: the premise that some brain functions are especially dependent on
Speaker 1: localized regions in the brain, so we also know that's
Speaker 1: basically true. Like you know, visual processing depends especially on
Speaker 1: the visual cortex in the back of the head. Speech
Speaker 1: is especially dependent on the area now known as Broca's area,
Speaker 1: which is on the left side of the brain, near
Speaker 1: the front of the head. Uh. And these were real
Speaker 1: discoveries of early neuroscience that there were regions of the
Speaker 1: brain that correlated with certain types of mental activity, not
Speaker 1: always as strictly as some people think um. But from
Speaker 1: these real discoveries was extrapolated this flawed chain of reasoning
Speaker 1: that lead to chronology, and according to people like Franz
Speaker 1: Joseph Gall, it would go something like this. So you'd
Speaker 1: say the mind is a product of the brain. You know,
Speaker 1: apparently true or at least mostly true. The brain is
Speaker 1: not a homogeneous mass, but they're you know, there are
Speaker 1: different parts of it that do different things. That's generally true.
Speaker 1: But then the next leap is to the size of
Speaker 1: a localized part of the brain will be correlated to
Speaker 1: how powerful it's associated mental faculty is, which is not
Speaker 1: necessarily true. And then from there you get to well,
Speaker 1: you get bumps on the outside of the skull that
Speaker 1: will indicate the size and therefore the strength of the
Speaker 1: underlying regions of the brain, which that's pretty much not true.
Speaker 1: And then therefore you can make a generalized map of
Speaker 1: the skull to find which shapes and bumps and protuberances
Speaker 1: create which sonality characteristics and aptitudes, which at this point
Speaker 1: is just completely wrong. You can just imagine the branch
Speaker 1: on the tree here just going growing gradually more crooked,
Speaker 1: for the further you go, right, yeah, um, But for
Speaker 1: a few decades at least, phrenology again proved extremely popular,
Speaker 1: and as it was especially during like the first half
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century. Uh. And there's an interesting section
Speaker 1: in Lawson's book where she attributes at least some of
Speaker 1: the appeal of phrenology to Franz Joseph Skull's skills at
Speaker 1: public speaking and the allure of his lectures. She writes
Speaker 1: that he always gave his public addresses with props surrounded
Speaker 1: by his personal collections of heads, which he would pick
Speaker 1: up and use for demonstration to enraptured audiences. You know,
Speaker 1: here's the skull of a man who was consumed in
Speaker 1: life by vanity. You can see the bulge corresponding to
Speaker 1: his organ of conceit. Or here's the skull of a
Speaker 1: genius composer observed the swelling above his organ of music, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And Larsen rights quote. When fresh specimens were available, his
Speaker 1: assistant would dissect an animal brain or occasionally a human
Speaker 1: brain in front of the audience. Galls talks became famous
Speaker 1: in Vienna and later throughout northern Europe, and they were
Speaker 1: attended by a wide cross section of the public, from
Speaker 1: tourists and tradesmen to ambassadors and academics. The combination of
Speaker 1: medical terminology visual aids few members of the public can
Speaker 1: have seen a dissection before, and talented oratory was intoxicating.
Speaker 1: After a lecture, people queued up to have their own
Speaker 1: heads read by gall This was science endowed with psychic powers,
Speaker 1: the scientists who knew you better than you knew yourself,
Speaker 1: and all thanks to the secrets inscribed in the shape
Speaker 1: of your head. But but I mean the horrible part being,
Speaker 1: of course, that it was all just completely wrong. Phrenology
Speaker 1: had no empirically verifiable basis, its founding premises were incorrect,
Speaker 1: and it could not make accurate predictions about future findings.
Speaker 1: But it was popular nonetheless, And it seems like, at
Speaker 1: least to some extent, it's popularity had more to do
Speaker 1: with the personal flare and charisma of its founding popularizer
Speaker 1: than with its empirical merits. And this is something I
Speaker 1: think about a lot. I think this is always something
Speaker 1: to be really conscious of. It is so so easy
Speaker 1: to mistake good public speaking for truth. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the allure of a weekly supported claim delivered by
Speaker 1: a charismatic voice is always present and something to you know,
Speaker 1: be conscious of, to like ask yourself if that's happening
Speaker 1: in your brain, if you are thinking something is true
Speaker 1: because somebody is good at talking and they're saying it.
Speaker 1: And I think about digital versions of this today, the
Speaker 1: digital versions of the Viennese lecture halls like YouTube, where
Speaker 1: you know, I get a feeling that there is a
Speaker 1: huge undercurrent of ideological shaping that often takes place on
Speaker 1: a similar basis here viewers of things like YouTube and
Speaker 1: even podcasts. So we could say, listen to somebody mainly
Speaker 1: because they are compelling speaker. They're captivating to listen to.
Speaker 1: They you know, they they're good with words, there's something
Speaker 1: nice about their voice, whatever that is, and over time
Speaker 1: can end up adopting their beliefs or claims, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether there's a good reason for the claims themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It makes me think back
Speaker 1: to uh, you know Carl Sagan I mentioned earlier. I mean,
Speaker 1: Sagan was an individual who every everything tended to line
Speaker 1: up for him, you know, a great scientific mind, an
Speaker 1: excellent speaker and science communicator. But you don't have to
Speaker 1: have everything line up with a person, and many times
Speaker 1: it does not. You have plenty of great scientists who
Speaker 1: are not natural public speakers, and you have plenty of
Speaker 1: natural public speakers who do not have a mind for
Speaker 1: science or an appreciation for science, and maybe not interested
Speaker 1: in in in pressing the science like that. They may
Speaker 1: use the science in some cases when it suits them,
Speaker 1: but that is not their their primary go Well, I
Speaker 1: would say one thing that really works against us here
Speaker 1: is the tragic disjunction of the fact that one of
Speaker 1: the most compelling qualities in a speaker, one of the
Speaker 1: things that makes people most fun to listen to as
Speaker 1: a speaker is confidence, and yet being a good communicator
Speaker 1: of science often requires you to be extremely circumspect and
Speaker 1: to repeatedly in tone, you know, communicate doubt, and to
Speaker 1: repeatedly communicate you know, we're not sure about this, that
Speaker 1: you know that, these are reasons for thinking so, but
Speaker 1: there are reasons against it, and all that which goes
Speaker 1: exactly against some of the things that make somebody the
Speaker 1: most fun to just like watch lectures from right right,
Speaker 1: And this is true it at various levels in different ways.
Speaker 1: It's certainly true at our level because we are we
Speaker 1: are not experts in the topics that we discuss, and
Speaker 1: therefore we always have to admit this could this could
Speaker 1: be wrong, and or this is changing, this could change,
Speaker 1: because then we get into the level of just that's
Speaker 1: what science is. So you'll encounter, you know, experts in
Speaker 1: their field who are also voicing the same level of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: And there are times where that is not as convincing
Speaker 1: as someone who, uh, you know, who's very sure of themselves,
Speaker 1: like the the the yeah. And you know, you can
Speaker 1: easily think of various examples of this, um, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see why they You can be drawn into the
Speaker 1: siren song of someone who's absolutely seems absolutely certain about
Speaker 1: what they're talking about, versus someone who says, well, we're
Speaker 1: still figuring it out, all right, Well, you know, we're
Speaker 1: almost out of time here, But I want to share
Speaker 1: another story of brain theft, and this one comes to
Speaker 1: us from two thousand sixteen. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ran across this one, Joe, but the basic premise here
Speaker 1: is summed up well in the headline this headline from
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail My nemesis, are you're gonna make me
Speaker 1: click on a Daily Mail article? Well? I also I
Speaker 1: also provided you with or maybe I didn't. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: did provide you with another U record as well from
Speaker 1: CBS Pittsburgh. So you're choice. Okay, thirty thousand caveats to
Speaker 1: whatever this story is, but I do want to hear it. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the Daily Mail headline was burglar stole human brain,
Speaker 1: nicknamed it Freddie, and used the embombing fluid to get high. Um.
Speaker 1: And there were various versions of this this headline that
Speaker 1: were were traded about in So what happened here is? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is Pennsylvania where allegedly a twenty six year old
Speaker 1: UH individual was in jail on burglary charges when his
Speaker 1: grandma discovered a human brain underneath the porch in a
Speaker 1: Walmart pack. Okay. Allegedly the stolen brain, named Freddie by
Speaker 1: the year old individual, Okay, he named it, He named
Speaker 1: it Freddie, was being used for its embalming fluid, which
Speaker 1: the accused and and a friend used to soak their
Speaker 1: marijuana in prior to smoking said marijuana. Oh no, if
Speaker 1: that's true, that no, no, no, so um. According to
Speaker 1: first of all, according to CBS Pittsburgh reporting on the incident,
Speaker 1: the brain was most likely a stolen teaching specimen. So basically,
Speaker 1: go back to the original Frankenstein. That's scene where was
Speaker 1: his name. Fritz goes in to steal a brain, and
Speaker 1: there are the two brains, there's the normal brain and
Speaker 1: the criminal brains, and he accidentally smashes one of the
Speaker 1: jars and steals the other one. Basically that scenario um,
Speaker 1: except in this case. Uh. I guess Fritz had other
Speaker 1: ideas in mind. So to two tips I want to
Speaker 1: share for everybody here. First of all, and obviously, do
Speaker 1: not steal a human brain. I mean it's it's illegal
Speaker 1: in the United States to possess a human brain like this.
Speaker 1: It's illegal to own or possess the remains of a
Speaker 1: human being other than ashes. Uh. You know, with certain
Speaker 1: caveats obviously if you're like a teaching institution, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But for the ran just a random individual. No, you
Speaker 1: can't have a brain. You can't have a skull. Um.
Speaker 1: So that means no head, no brain, no skull. Uh,
Speaker 1: none of that. Second, smoking from alde hide laced anything
Speaker 1: is just a terrible idea. Do not do it, um.
Speaker 1: It can result in a host of issues, including brain
Speaker 1: damage to your brain not Freddie, your brain, lung damage,
Speaker 1: and body tissue destruction. So just a some bad choices
Speaker 1: were made here regarding Freddie never smoked Freddy. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: uh with that, I think we're gonna close out part
Speaker 1: one here, but I'm excited to come back in part
Speaker 1: two because we're gonna we're gonna get into other cases
Speaker 1: of head and brain theft. We're gonna get into some
Speaker 1: ancient traditions. We're gonna talk a little bit about mythology
Speaker 1: and folklore. Uh, it should be a really fun time.
Speaker 1: I can't wait. And then at the end of the week,
Speaker 1: are are weird how cinema selection is also going to
Speaker 1: concern brains? We have a really brainloaded week here. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited. As chop Top would say, my brain is burning. Alright. Well,
Speaker 1: if your brain is burning and you would like to
Speaker 1: listen to more stuff to blow your mind, check out
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, you'll get your core episodes of science
Speaker 1: and Culture on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that short form artifact
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, you get listener mail on Monday's and Yep,
Speaker 1: Friday is Weird House Cinema and we run a vault
Speaker 1: episode a rerun on Saturday's UM If you can, rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe, because that helps out the show huge. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows. The four Foot f