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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: You're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back

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Speaker 1: with part two of our series on childhood amnesia, which

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Speaker 1: is the name for the fact that most adults and

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Speaker 1: even most older children don't really seem to have any

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Speaker 1: memories from before about the age of three or four.

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Speaker 1: And that number is slightly different depending on the culture

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Speaker 1: you grow up in and some other factors that we

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Speaker 1: may continue to explore in this series, but generally, on average,

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Speaker 1: around three or four is when the memories start kicking in,

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Speaker 1: and even then people don't seem to have as many

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Speaker 1: memories as they will for later years in life. That

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Speaker 1: the number of memories people seem to be able to

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Speaker 1: recall sort of goes up each year after that. More

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Speaker 1: from You or five, more from six, More from seven. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you haven't heard part one yet, you should probably

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Speaker 1: go back and check that one out first. It is

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Speaker 1: where it is where we learned that that Rob here

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Speaker 1: was indeed once a very naughty boy and smashed a

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Speaker 1: jar of cherries on the floor or something. What is

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Speaker 1: it you do. Well. I mean, I guess the naughty

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Speaker 1: part was going into the refridgerator to get them anyway,

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Speaker 1: because I don't think I was supposed to have them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: were you explicitly forbidden cherries or I guess it's just

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Speaker 1: a general understanding. If you're a child, you should not

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Speaker 1: climb into the fridge to serve yourself anything. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess looking back on it. As

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Speaker 1: a child, you're often sort of testing the boundaries of

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Speaker 1: your world, and part of a memory like that is

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Speaker 1: when you realize you're not supposed to Apparently I was

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Speaker 1: not supposed to go back and get cherries for a

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Speaker 1: number of reasons, some practical, uh, some maybe you know,

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Speaker 1: arguable from from my standpoint. But yeah, that's that's kind

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Speaker 1: of a There's a lot of stuff going on in

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Speaker 1: those early years, which I think is something we tried

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Speaker 1: to get across and all is that, Um, the brain

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Speaker 1: of an infant or a small child is not inert.

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Speaker 1: It is it is extremely busy, but the brain remembers

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Speaker 1: what it needs to remember. And uh, and so we're

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Speaker 1: going to continue with that in mind in this episode.

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Speaker 1: That is a scary and kind of thrilling headspace to

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Speaker 1: get back into the moment when you're like a child

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Speaker 1: and you're doing something where you you really don't know

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Speaker 1: if you are allowed to do this or not, and

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Speaker 1: you suspect that you might not be, but you it's

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Speaker 1: never been said outright, you know, or you just suspect

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Speaker 1: that you are, you know. I mean, there's there's so

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Speaker 1: much that that comes up in raising a child on

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Speaker 1: this end where you're like, oh, yeah, I can't really

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Speaker 1: be mad at him for thinking this or acting in

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Speaker 1: this way because we've never said don't approach whatever the

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Speaker 1: topic is this way. It's this is the learning experience. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So to start us off today, I just wanted to

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Speaker 1: share something that I got to thinking about after the

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Speaker 1: last episode. So this particular tangent is not something I

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Speaker 1: have like direct scientific evidence for us, just something I

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Speaker 1: started wondering about after the last part in the series.

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Speaker 1: So I was thinking about childhood amnesia in the context

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Speaker 1: of another subject we covered, I guess sometime last year

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Speaker 1: it was the Hot Cold empathy Gap. Do you remember

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Speaker 1: this episode, Rob, I do, Yes. This is an observed

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Speaker 1: psychological phenomenon where we not only sometimes fail to understand

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Speaker 1: accurately model and predict the thoughts and behaviors of other people.

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Speaker 1: We not only have interpersonal failures of empathy, we also

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Speaker 1: sometimes fail to accurately model ourselves in different affective states,

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Speaker 1: so we have intra personal failures of empathy. So a

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Speaker 1: simple way to put this is that people who are

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Speaker 1: not currently in an affective state, so not currently angry

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Speaker 1: or not currently hungry or not currently sad, are actually

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Speaker 1: somewhat bad at at predicting how they themselves would react

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Speaker 1: in a situation if they were actually in one of

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Speaker 1: those states, and vice versa. If you are currently hungry,

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Speaker 1: you're not very good at predicting how you would behave

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Speaker 1: and react if you were not hungry. Yeah, like the

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Speaker 1: fear area, for example. I mean it's it's easy to

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Speaker 1: sort of rehearse what you're going to do in a

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Speaker 1: certain situation, but then when the frightening thing occurs, you're

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Speaker 1: in a different frame of mind and you may behave

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Speaker 1: entirely differently. I reminded of there's a great scene in

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Speaker 1: Congo with Ernie Hudson. Do you remember this scene where

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Speaker 1: he's he's a very cool cucumber. His character the whole movie,

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Speaker 1: there's a part where he's he's putting up a brave front,

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Speaker 1: but then when the scary thing happens involving a gorilla

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Speaker 1: like you, you turn back to him and he's he's

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Speaker 1: a he's moved away, and or he's run away just

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Speaker 1: a little bit, and asking what happened, he's like, I

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Speaker 1: ran away. Yeah. He had just given a speech about

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Speaker 1: how you can't run away because that will show Yeah,

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Speaker 1: then the gorilla will chase you, so you can't stand

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Speaker 1: your ground. But then I run away. Yes. So when

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Speaker 1: we're not in these affective states, we actually can't relate

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Speaker 1: very well to the person we are when we're in them,

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Speaker 1: and vice versa. When we're in them, we can't really

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Speaker 1: relate very well to the person we are when we're

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Speaker 1: not in them. And so the hot cold empathy gap

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Speaker 1: can be demonstrated over a span of only a few minutes.

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Speaker 1: But it got me thinking about a similar self reflective

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Speaker 1: empathy gap that applies not across different affective states, but

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Speaker 1: different stages of life. So what I'm talking about here

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Speaker 1: is when I think back on a memory of doing

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Speaker 1: something or saying something, or dressing a certain way or

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Speaker 1: liking a certain thing, When I was young, and especially

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Speaker 1: if I pick something embarrassing, but not just with embarrassing things,

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Speaker 1: with all kinds of things, I can often find myself

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Speaker 1: totally unable to relate to that person. I say that

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Speaker 1: thing that you've probably heard people say of similar similar

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Speaker 1: reactions to their own past. What was I thinking? And

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Speaker 1: at least when I say this, I truly often do

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Speaker 1: not know. It's like I cannot internally simulate the mindset

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Speaker 1: that led me to wear that T shirt, even though

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Speaker 1: it was me. I can't relate to that person, and

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Speaker 1: I can't even really remember or imagine what it was

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Speaker 1: like to be them, even though again it was me.

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Speaker 1: From what I gathered, this is a common experience. It's

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Speaker 1: it's I'm not alone here, right Oh yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's like basically comes down to the reality that

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Speaker 1: we are not consistently the same across a small lengths

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Speaker 1: of time, much less across the course of a lifetime.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it's it's a you know, a

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Speaker 1: turn of phrase, what was I thinking? Sometimes we can

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Speaker 1: piece together some of what our thought press us as

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Speaker 1: were you know, you'd be like, well, I was a

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Speaker 1: teenager and I thought this band was cool, so of

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Speaker 1: course I wore that T shirt even if I would

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Speaker 1: not be into that band. And now as as as

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Speaker 1: a grown person or what have you, or with you know,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's a certain amount of of clarity based

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Speaker 1: on where you are now in life. But other times, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you may genuinely look back and you're like, I just

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Speaker 1: don't know what was going through my mind. I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure what the thought process was. I seem to have

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Speaker 1: a different thought process going on now. Yeah, And so

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Speaker 1: obviously it's not this way with all memories from different

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Speaker 1: stages of life. Like I have a feeling that I

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Speaker 1: can re experience or relate to lots of memories from

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Speaker 1: childhood but not other ones, And so I don't always

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Speaker 1: know what makes the difference. But I wonder if the

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Speaker 1: proportion of memories for behaviors and experiences we can no

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Speaker 1: longer empathize with tends to increase the farther back you

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Speaker 1: go into childhood. I don't know this is the case.

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Speaker 1: I'm wondering if it does, or if say it actually

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Speaker 1: doesn't go up in a linear fashion. You could imagine

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Speaker 1: it also like pequing in teenage years or something like that.

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Speaker 1: But so that's one question I was wondering about, and

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Speaker 1: then I was also wondering if there's any kind of

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Speaker 1: relationship between our current ability to empathize with our feelings

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Speaker 1: and behavior in a past event and our tendency to

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Speaker 1: actually remember that event in the first place. So, in

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Speaker 1: other words, are we more likely to remember doing or

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Speaker 1: feeling or saying something when we can empathize with it,

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Speaker 1: like when we can get back in that mind space,

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Speaker 1: and less likely to remember it when we can no

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Speaker 1: longer empathize with it. And I asked this specifically because Rob,

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Speaker 1: I wonder if you have the same experience. I feel

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Speaker 1: like a lot of these what was I thinking memories

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Speaker 1: are prompted by external intrusions, like seeing a photo of

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Speaker 1: yourself that you didn't expect to see, or having somebody say, hey,

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Speaker 1: do you remember when we did this or when you

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Speaker 1: said that yeah, yeah, And it does make me I

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Speaker 1: was thinking about this in terms of like childhood versus say,

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Speaker 1: like junior high teen years sort of reflections, or even

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Speaker 1: like early or really all of one's twenties. I guess,

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Speaker 1: depending on where you are in life, how from fire

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Speaker 1: removed you are from particular time period. But like for

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Speaker 1: very young children, it seems like so much of what

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Speaker 1: you end up doing and wearing, etc. Is almost entirely

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Speaker 1: shaped by your parents anyway. Yeah, yeah, so like what

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Speaker 1: was I thinking is not really a question because it's

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Speaker 1: like you weren't thinking, you were just doing or you

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Speaker 1: were just you wore this because it was provided to

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Speaker 1: you and everyone else in your family liked it, so

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Speaker 1: it seemed like you liked it. That sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: Not all the time, but like I feel like maybe

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Speaker 1: like eighty percent of the time that is something that

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Speaker 1: may be the case. But then it's when you're getting

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Speaker 1: into that area where you are willfully setting out on

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Speaker 1: your own, choosing things for yourself, that might be the

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Speaker 1: area where I mean, you're you're legitimately asking what was thinking?

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Speaker 1: What was my intention in all of that? That is

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Speaker 1: a good point, like what role agency or self control

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Speaker 1: has in the event that you're remembering? So yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't know if our empathy gap with our past self

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Speaker 1: actually does just increase the farther back you go. I

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Speaker 1: wonder if that could be measured. But if it does,

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Speaker 1: I wonder how does that also relate to the relative

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Speaker 1: paucity of memories from early childhood and the foremost people

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Speaker 1: complete lack of memories from four ages three or four. Yeah, Now,

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Speaker 1: I this is interesting to think about. And one possible

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Speaker 1: answer to this might be, well, the reason that you

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Speaker 1: have trouble knowing or understand what you were thinking about

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Speaker 1: in a particular time might be because you have completely

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Speaker 1: blocked it out because their thought process was so traumatic

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Speaker 1: that you just had to erase it from like easy

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Speaker 1: access of the conscious mind. Ah, speaking of what we're rethinking,

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Speaker 1: I guess, as with many topics in psychology, unfortunately, if

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Speaker 1: you want to trace the history of how we understood

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Speaker 1: this over the past one hundred years, you really you

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Speaker 1: have to go back to Freud. Not because the Freudian

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Speaker 1: explanations carry any scientific currency today they almost never do. Instead,

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Speaker 1: it's just because you got to understand how influential Freudian

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Speaker 1: theories were in the history of how people thought about

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Speaker 1: this exactly. Yeah, yeah, and of course, yeah, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about Sigmund Freud here, Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis,

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Speaker 1: and he too explored the topic of quote unquote infantile amnesia,

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Speaker 1: postulating that these lost memories constitute repressed memories repressed due

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Speaker 1: to their psycho sexual nature. Here's a quote from Freud

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Speaker 1: Obviously in translation quote, I believe that the infantile amnesia,

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Speaker 1: which causes the individual to look upon his childhood as

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Speaker 1: if it were a prehistoric time and conceals from him

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Speaker 1: the beginning of his own sexual life. That this amnesia

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Speaker 1: is responsible for the fact that one does not usually

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Speaker 1: attribute any value to the infantile period in the development

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Speaker 1: of the sexual life. Right. So, I think the common

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Speaker 1: understanding of the Freudian view is that early childhood is

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Speaker 1: a time of strange sexual fixations and realizations that we

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Speaker 1: can't bear to think back about as adults, so we

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Speaker 1: repress those memories as a type of trauma. I don't

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Speaker 1: think there's any good empirical evidence for the Freudian psychosexual

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Speaker 1: view of development today. Yeah. Yeah, It frankly doesn't gel

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Speaker 1: with any of the science we've we've looked at in

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Speaker 1: our research for these episodes, and it's mainly worth mentioning

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Speaker 1: because of its place in the history of the topic

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Speaker 1: and so forth. But it's also it's interesting to think about,

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Speaker 1: like what's going on with this approach to infantile amnesia,

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Speaker 1: to the seeming lack of real, congrete memories of early life,

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Speaker 1: because you can think of them as sort of like

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Speaker 1: blank spots upon which you can you can focus ideas

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Speaker 1: like this, There's there's no possible memory there to contradict

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Speaker 1: the backward looking explanation. You know. Well, Yet not only

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Speaker 1: because it's a blank spot you can fill in with

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Speaker 1: your explanations, but because of the particular characteristics of memory

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Speaker 1: as a function of human brains, it's also actually not

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Speaker 1: only possible, but quite trivial to place memories. There are

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Speaker 1: things that feel like memories that do not reflect events

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Speaker 1: that actually happened. Yeah, it brings to mind that the

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Speaker 1: use of so called repressed memories not only in psychotherapy,

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Speaker 1: but in the pursuit of paranormal experiences as well, such

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Speaker 1: as alien abductions and ritual satanic abuse. Right, And this

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Speaker 1: is a really dangerous area because, for one thing, I

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Speaker 1: think it's important to acknowledge that it's impossible to rule

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Speaker 1: out the idea that repressed memories exist. Right. It is

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Speaker 1: possible that the brain somehow does retain memories that are

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Speaker 1: not easily retrieved with you know, just regular conscious effort,

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Speaker 1: but that could be retrieved by some other method. But

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Speaker 1: while it's possible, one thing that research makes very clear

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Speaker 1: is that it is incredibly easy to mistake false recovered

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Speaker 1: memories for real ones, and the false memories feel completely convincing,

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Speaker 1: just as real as actual memories. In fact, they are

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Speaker 1: often even stronger and more vivid than real memories. And

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Speaker 1: you can show this with experiments where you know, people

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Speaker 1: will say, like, we consulted with your family and they

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Speaker 1: they told us a story about a time, you know,

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Speaker 1: that you got lost at the playground, but then you

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Speaker 1: met this person and whatever, and this will be completely

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Speaker 1: made up for the purpose of the experiment, but many

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Speaker 1: people will start to believe that is a real memory

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Speaker 1: they have in their head. Just vividly imagine a scenario

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Speaker 1: proposed by someone else is often enough to make someone

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Speaker 1: totally convinced of it as a memory. Yeah, then these

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Speaker 1: alien abductions and ritual satanic abuses are both the topics

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Speaker 1: we've discussed on the show before. But like very briefly,

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Speaker 1: like just the the the idea is so heartbreaking that

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Speaker 1: you could be manipulated into creating a memory of trauma

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Speaker 1: and the memory would be traumatic like like once it

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Speaker 1: has been sort of created and or augmented in your memory,

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Speaker 1: like it's um you know, it's it's a thing that

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Speaker 1: is that is real to you. So yeah, but heartbreaking

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Speaker 1: is it as it is? It also just drives home

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Speaker 1: something that is possible in all of our memories and

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Speaker 1: really is going on at a less traumatic level with

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Speaker 1: so many everyday memories in our lives. Yes, and while

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Speaker 1: I would also point out that it seems especially easy

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Speaker 1: to do this with the idea of early childhood memories,

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Speaker 1: this also works for adults, like you can you can

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Speaker 1: get adults to remember events that did not take place

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Speaker 1: by by causing them to vividly imagine the event or

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Speaker 1: something like that. All right, well, we'll getting away from

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Speaker 1: from even the idea of alien abductions. Let's get back

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Speaker 1: into what the actual research seems to illuminate about this topic. Well,

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Speaker 1: one thing I think we should say at the beginning

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Speaker 1: is that it's still somewhat an open question why childhood

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Speaker 1: amnesia occurs, and there are competing theories that might that

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Speaker 1: are to some degree competing, but they might also be complementary.

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Speaker 1: There might be multiple factors contributing to this overall pattern

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Speaker 1: where most adults can not really remember much of anything

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Speaker 1: from before age about three or four, and then have

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Speaker 1: this gradual accumulation of more memories to about seven or eight.

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Speaker 1: We'll probably explore some hypotheses in this part and then

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Speaker 1: more or in the next part in this series, But

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Speaker 1: there was one I wanted to talk about because it

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Speaker 1: seems like a pretty straightforward explanation based on neural development,

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Speaker 1: the development of regions of the brain, especially a region

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Speaker 1: known as the hippocampus. And so this was in a

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Speaker 1: paper I was reading by Christina m. Alberini and Alessio

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Speaker 1: Travaglia published in the Journal of Neuroscience in twenty seventeen

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Speaker 1: called infantile amnesia a critical period of learning to learn

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Speaker 1: and remember. And this paper highlights a seeming paradox. So

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Speaker 1: on one hand, there's this phenomenon we've talked about at

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Speaker 1: length now, early experiences seem to be forgotten very rapidly,

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Speaker 1: and yet simultaneously, early experiences seem to be incredibly influential

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Speaker 1: on adult behavior and adult brain development, to the extent

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Speaker 1: that early childhood experience is a very well documented risk

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Speaker 1: factor for various adult psychopathologies and disorders. Just to cite

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Speaker 1: one example, there is extensive evidence that neglect during early

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Speaker 1: childhood development can lead to disorders, including depression and anxiety,

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Speaker 1: as well as learning and cognitive disabilities in later life.

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Speaker 1: And there are similar findings about childhood poverty leading to

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Speaker 1: cognitive and learning deficits that persist into later life. A

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Speaker 1: lot of these effects are thought to be at least

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Speaker 1: in part related to chronic stress in early childhood, though

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Speaker 1: the authors of this paper proposed that it might not

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Speaker 1: just be the effects of stress leading to these outcomes,

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Speaker 1: but also the absence of what they call quote enrichment

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Speaker 1: in episodic or declarative experiences in early development. So we

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Speaker 1: know that early childhood experiences have this profound impact on

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Speaker 1: how your brain works later in life, and yet much

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Speaker 1: of what we learn in this period cannot be recalled

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Speaker 1: later in narrative or episodic form. So the authors say, quote,

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Speaker 1: how then can memories that are rapidly forgotten and of

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Speaker 1: which there is virtually no recollection in adulthood exert a

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Speaker 1: lifelong effect on the brain and cognitive function. And the

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Speaker 1: answer that the authors of this paper propose lies in

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Speaker 1: the hippocampus. So the hippocampus is crucial for the formation

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Speaker 1: and maintenance of episodic memories. It's thought to be necessary

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Speaker 1: for certain kinds of learning for the encoding of long

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Speaker 1: term memory and related brain functions like spatial memory and

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Speaker 1: navigation of spaces. And an interesting fact is that this

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Speaker 1: is not true just of humans, but it's true of

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Speaker 1: humans and non human mammals. The hippocampus is part of

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Speaker 1: the limbic system, so it is part of the brain

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Speaker 1: that we share with other mammals, and the author is

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Speaker 1: right that in both humans and non human mammals. But

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Speaker 1: they call wwww memories, which I guess is more of

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Speaker 1: a shorthand when you type it than you say it

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Speaker 1: out loud. But that stands for who, what, when, and

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Speaker 1: where memories. So these are explicit memories that require conscious recollections.

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Speaker 1: That this would have some overlap with the idea of

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Speaker 1: like episodic memories, memories of like events that happened that

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Speaker 1: you can recall in detail. The authors say that these

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Speaker 1: memories are processed by the hippocampus dependent learning and memory system,

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Speaker 1: also known as the medial temporal lobe dependent learning and

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Speaker 1: memory system. So based on comparing what we know about

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Speaker 1: hippocampal development in humans with the results of studies based

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Speaker 1: on learning in early development in rats, the authors actually

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Speaker 1: argue that quote, the hippocampal memory system, like sensory functions

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Speaker 1: and language matures through experience and undergoes what they call

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Speaker 1: a developmental critical period. Now, they deal with a couple

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Speaker 1: of pre existing hypotheses about what's going on here. They

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Speaker 1: identify as the developmental hypothesis, which basically says that these

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Speaker 1: wwww memories, they are not stored in the long term

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Speaker 1: quote because the hippocampus is immature and therefore unable to process, consolidate,

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Speaker 1: and store contextual and episodic representation. So it's just functionally

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Speaker 1: not competent to do this yet. And then on the

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Speaker 1: other hand, there's this hypothesis known as the retrieval hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: which quote posits that infantile memories are not gone, but

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Speaker 1: are instead stored in some form that cannot be expressed

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Speaker 1: due to retrieval failure, and they essentially thread the needle.

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Speaker 1: They argue that both of these kind of get something right,

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Speaker 1: but neither one is exactly right, and instead they end

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Speaker 1: up arguing that the hippocampus and the hipocampal learning system

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Speaker 1: are very active in early childhood and they are very

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Speaker 1: much processing experiences during this early developmental period. But instead

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Speaker 1: of storing memories exactly the same way it will once

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Speaker 1: it is a mature organ it is learning how to learn.

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Speaker 1: I also have to mention here, though, that it is

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Speaker 1: interesting that the developmental hypothesis and the retrieval hypothesis, both

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Speaker 1: of these in their own way reflect different former ideas

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Speaker 1: about the minds of young children. Developmental being well, like,

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Speaker 1: that's not a full blown human yet, of course, it's

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Speaker 1: not gonna think the way we think or remember the

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Speaker 1: way we think. And in the retrieval hypothesis, it's kind

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Speaker 1: of in some you know, it's not exactly like Freud,

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Speaker 1: but you know, it gets into that similar area, like, oh,

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Speaker 1: those memories are there, They're just not in a way

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Speaker 1: in there in a place that we can easily get

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Speaker 1: to them, right. And I think these authors think that

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Speaker 1: there is an element of truth to both of these views,

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Speaker 1: but that neither one is exactly correct. That instead, it's

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Speaker 1: that the hippocampus is working really hard to process experiences

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Speaker 1: during this time, but the main thing it's doing with

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Speaker 1: those experiences is learning how to learn. So the hippocampus

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Speaker 1: does store memories, which can be maintained, they say, through

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Speaker 1: frequent recalls, but they say without some form of ongoing

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Speaker 1: recall or subsequent activation or modulation, those memories can tend

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Speaker 1: to decay rather quickly. And so they say, quote the

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Speaker 1: types of experience to which an individual is exposed during

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Speaker 1: development shape learning abilities an important implication that highlights the

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Speaker 1: fundamental roles of developmental environments. So this period is very important,

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Speaker 1: and it does change the brain in a way that

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Speaker 1: will affect the person throughout the rest of their life.

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Speaker 1: But a lot of that, they argue, is through affecting

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Speaker 1: how the hippocampus develops and thus how the brain learns

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Speaker 1: to learn. And I'm not going to go into great

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Speaker 1: granular detail on what the mechanisms are within this, but

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Speaker 1: basically they propose a process by which there's sort of

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Speaker 1: a sequence of different stages of development within critical periods

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Speaker 1: for development in the brain. And this is true of

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Speaker 1: not just learning and memory. It's true of like sensory functions,

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Speaker 1: like certain sensory things come online and the development of

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Speaker 1: one seems to affect the development of the subsequent one,

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Speaker 1: and then the next one and so forth. And they

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Speaker 1: argue that the same thing may well be happening with

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Speaker 1: the maturation of hippocampus dependent learning. So they say, quote,

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Speaker 1: our hypothesis is supported by the observation that complex hippocampal

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Speaker 1: learning takes place only after simple learning has matured. For example,

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Speaker 1: the ability to learn about a single queue or object

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Speaker 1: seems to mature earlier than episodic learning and memory, which

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Speaker 1: require the more complex function of binding together several objects,

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Speaker 1: sequences and time. Again, this is the four W learning.

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Speaker 1: And then finally they say, thus we speculate the different

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Speaker 1: types of hippocampal learning mature sequence in order of increasing complexity.

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Speaker 1: So they have like a diagram where they they speculate

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Speaker 1: that it might go sort of learning about objects and

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Speaker 1: then learning about places, and then learning about space more generally,

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Speaker 1: and then finally the four W learning. And but once

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Speaker 1: again kind of gotting back to what we were talking

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Speaker 1: about in the first episode, it's like childhood and chata

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Speaker 1: development as a series of gates that you pass through

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Speaker 1: as a series of phases that you progress through towards

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Speaker 1: full integration into society as an adult. Yeah, and under

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Speaker 1: this model, at least how and when you pass through

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Speaker 1: the previous gate affects how and when you pass through

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Speaker 1: the next gate and the next gate and the next gate.

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Speaker 1: But also too as I said earlier that this is

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Speaker 1: one take within this sort of broader genre of explanations

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Speaker 1: of the of childhood amnesia. This is the sort of

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Speaker 1: the structural brain development type argument. Now, there are some

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Speaker 1: other types of explanations, maybe some involving language interestingly and

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Speaker 1: other things, but maybe we will save that for the

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Speaker 1: next episode, because I know Rob you today in your

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Speaker 1: heart there's there's a burning icon on the surface of

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00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:26,159
Speaker 1: your heart and it is in the shape of a

434
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:31,560
Speaker 1: super baby. Yeah, we mentioned the possibility of discussing mythic babies,

435
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: babies of religious significance, and actually we actually heard at

436
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: least from a couple of people that were like, yes,

437
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 1: bring on the myth babies. So yeah, to whatever extent

438
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 1: it helps us understand this topic, we will give you

439
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: mythic babies that to some degree each exhibits superior abilities

440
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: and or cognition or something else that's worth touching on.

441
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: So in general, though, I think in most, if not all,

442
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: these examples, we're going to be touching on a very

443
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: widespread religious archetype of the divine boy. And you know,

444
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: once you you see it, you you can recognize it

445
00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:11,200
Speaker 1: in all its various forms and incarnations. And I suppose,

446
00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 1: especially in modern media, you also have to consider it's

447
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: opposite in the form of various like Damiens and various

448
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:23,359
Speaker 1: hell children, right, yeah, the Cursed Boy. Yeah. Well, I

449
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:25,879
Speaker 1: mean I almost think that in the modern era we

450
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 1: I'm about to say something I don't really know it

451
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: is true. Okay, well, we'd go with it anyway. What

452
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 1: I was going to say is it seems like today

453
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 1: we're more likely to interpret a child with like superabilities

454
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 1: or super intellect as creepy rather than as something really cool.

455
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:47,640
Speaker 1: You know. Like's more, we're more predisposed to the Damian

456
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:51,119
Speaker 1: direction than the than the child you know, the child

457
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: sage direction. Yeah, and I think it's very well illustrated

458
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: in a couple of fictional examples I'll bring up here

459
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: in a bit too. Yeah. That it's even if you're

460
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,440
Speaker 1: going for the divine, you end up touching on the uncanny,

461
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,359
Speaker 1: because it is there is an uncanny aspect to it,

462
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: for sure, if you're imagining like a baby that has

463
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 1: or a small child that has like the rational demeanor

464
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: of a full blown adult. All right, well, let's let's

465
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: start with baby Jesus, who we've talked about on the

466
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:20,640
Speaker 1: show before. I think we did a whole episode one

467
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:25,440
Speaker 1: Christmas about images of the Christ Child from Renaissance art

468
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 1: that look like tiny ugly men and why they look

469
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:30,159
Speaker 1: like tiny ugly men. Go back and listen to that

470
00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:34,640
Speaker 1: if you need more weird baby action. But yeah, depictions

471
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: of the Christ Child in the history of Western art,

472
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 1: it varies greatly from believable human infant to tiny mandlings

473
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,920
Speaker 1: that sometimes exude of philosophic air other times look like

474
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 1: vaguely grumpy getting into that, you know what we've talked

475
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 1: about in the last episode about babies or like are

476
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: like old people, and we can't quite get that out

477
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 1: of our heads. And we have accounts of the adventures

478
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 1: that range from basically nothing from just like Christ's early

479
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 1: life being just a just unrecorded, to other traditions such

480
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 1: as the like Christ's role lowering the not just Christ,

481
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: but the Christ infant lowering Christmas gifts from Heaven on

482
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: a golden string. You know that is a that is

483
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: a tradition in uh in parts of Europe, to other

484
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:27,400
Speaker 1: even wilder adventures. Oh well, Rob, I think you're trying

485
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: to set me up to talk about the The infancy

486
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: Gospel of Thomas is that right. Yes, okay, this is

487
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: an ancient text that we have discussed off Mike here.

488
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:40,240
Speaker 1: So uh. You know, if you read the four gospels

489
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:43,920
Speaker 1: that are canonical to most Christians, the ones that are

490
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: in the New Testament, there's very little about the baby Jesus.

491
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: We don't get really many stories of what Jesus did

492
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 1: before he was a full grown man. Two of the

493
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: gospels have a story of his birth, Matthew and Luke do,

494
00:29:57,560 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: but he doesn't do anything, or he just gets born.

495
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: There's really only one story in the canonical gospels of

496
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 1: the of the baby Jesus or the boy Jesus, and

497
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: that is the so called finding at the Temple story

498
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: in the Gospel of Luke, which is essentially kind of

499
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: a boy wonder story. It is that Mary and Joseph

500
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: take take Jesus to the temple and then they leave

501
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,479
Speaker 1: and then realize that he's not with them anymore, so

502
00:30:23,560 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: they go back to the temple and he is there

503
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,840
Speaker 1: teaching the wise men about the about the law and

504
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 1: about the scripture. So he's showing off just his his

505
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: great learning and intellect even as a child. Yes, yes,

506
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 1: I definitely remember this one from Sunday School Days of Old.

507
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:45,880
Speaker 1: But if you go outside of the New Testament canon,

508
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 1: there are gospels from the ancient world that do talk

509
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: about They tell other stories of Jesus as a child,

510
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 1: including the I frankly hilarious Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This

511
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: is a text from I think is generally believed to

512
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: be from the second century that you can find and

513
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 1: read online in an English translation. Translation I found was

514
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: by Mr James from Clarendon Press, Oxford, nineteen twenty four,

515
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: published in a collection called the Apocryphal New Testament. I

516
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 1: think the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is sometimes considered a

517
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: Gnostic text, but I know there are some texts that

518
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: were previously considered gnostic that now scholars don't so much

519
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 1: think of his gnostics, So I'm not sure where this

520
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: lands on the gnosticism scale of today. But the stories

521
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: in it are wild and consist of child Jesus running around,

522
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: well actually Jesus basically in this is Damien from the Omen.

523
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: He's just running around cursing and killing other children. So

524
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: there's like a scene where he is playing by a

525
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: brook and he at one point he takes these He

526
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: takes clay and fashions that into twelve little birds made

527
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: out of clay. And then baby Jesus is accused of

528
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: having violated the Sabbath because he did this on the

529
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: Sabbath day. And then he gets mad and rebukes that,

530
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 1: and he turns the clay sparrows into living sparrows and

531
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 1: they fly away. I have to say to this, this

532
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: version of it that you shared with me, it's really

533
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 1: hard not to read it in your head in the

534
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: voice of like an ecclesiastical eric Idol from Monty Python

535
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 1: than in the Holy Grail, you know, reading about the

536
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: Holy hand grenade. Okay, I'm not gonna do eric Idle voice,

537
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 1: but you can imagine eric Idol as I read from

538
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: the following. This is the Mr. James translation. It says,

539
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: but the son of Annas the scribe, was standing there

540
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: with Joseph, and he took a branch of a willow

541
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together. Oh yeah, Jesus,

542
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 1: like he gathered together waters from the from the brook.

543
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,840
Speaker 1: I guess. So he does this. And when Jesus saw

544
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: what was done, he was wroth and said, unto him, oh, evil,

545
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: ungodly and foolish one, what hurt the pools and the waters.

546
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:05,479
Speaker 1: Do thee behold now? Also, thou shalt be withered like

547
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root nor fruit.

548
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: And straightway, that lad withered up wholly. But Jesus departed

549
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 1: and went onto Joseph's house. But the parents of him

550
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 1: that was withered took him up, bewailing his youth, and

551
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: brought him to Joseph and accused him for that, Thou

552
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 1: hast such a child, which doth such deeds. And then

553
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 1: I'm not going to keep reading, but it goes. Jesus

554
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: gets like mad at the people who were accusing them,

555
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 1: and further curses and kills people. It's intense. So the

556
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: kid Jesus straight space vampire. This kid essentially yes, withered

557
00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:43,800
Speaker 1: him right there on the spot. It's like, yeah, it's

558
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 1: like the movie Life Force. So it's interesting. I don't know.

559
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: One thing I don't fully understand is how this type

560
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: of story would have been received by its intended audience.

561
00:33:56,760 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: So if you are one of the people reading this

562
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: story in the second century and you think this is

563
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: an authentic story about the child Jesus, like what are

564
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:08,759
Speaker 1: you supposed to think about it? Like? Wow, he did

565
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,279
Speaker 1: you know he really did show that kid or I'm

566
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: not sure. Yeah, yeah, Like they're a different way. You

567
00:34:14,680 --> 00:34:16,920
Speaker 1: can sort of read this and instantly go in the

568
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: Damien direction, like that's dangerous for a child to have

569
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 1: those kind of powers, or I can easily imagine someone

570
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 1: going in a more sort of theological direction, like what

571
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: does this say about like the power and authority of

572
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: Christ and so forth? But yeah, it's it's certainly a

573
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: head scratcher for us. Anyway. I think later in the

574
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 1: text he does sort of take back or magically undo

575
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: at least some, maybe all, of his curses and killings.

576
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: So okay, well that that would that would that would

577
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: sound appropriate? Yeah all right, well let's move through some

578
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:54,880
Speaker 1: other examples from major world religions. First stop, the infant Muhammad,

579
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:59,360
Speaker 1: so according to the Prophet Muhammad and Ritual by Marion

580
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: Holmes cat It's published and in twenty tens the Cambridge

581
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:06,320
Speaker 1: Companion to Muhammad. There are also miraculous accounts of Muhammad

582
00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: as a child. Quote as depicted in the most widely

583
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:13,520
Speaker 1: circulated molded texts, the infant prophet was a luminous figure

584
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 1: whose radiance ignited his mother's room, and whose Holiness blessed

585
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 1: all who approached him. So there are accounts of him

586
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:23,919
Speaker 1: as an infant causing the breast of his foster mother,

587
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:26,839
Speaker 1: who was also caring for another child, to overflow with

588
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 1: sustaining milk. This was in a time of drought and famine,

589
00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. And also it said that her

590
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: emaciated donkey was invigorated simply by being in the presence

591
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: of the child. Okay, so one could see this as

592
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:44,240
Speaker 1: a legend of the prophet sort of prefiguring the future

593
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 1: blessings he would help facilitate bringing even in his childhood

594
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: or even as a baby. Yeah, his whole presence is

595
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 1: just kind of brilliant and empowering, all right. Up next,

596
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: baby Krishna or Bala Krishna, which I think just means

597
00:35:57,120 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 1: like the child Krishna or kid Krishna or something to

598
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: that effect. This is, of course, Krishna is the blueskinned

599
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:06,799
Speaker 1: avatar of Vishnu who plays a major role in Hinduism.

600
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: But he was also once a baby, a little blueskinned baby,

601
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of tales of him and

602
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: his exploits, and generally speaking, these tales tend to exhibit

603
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:18,439
Speaker 1: a very young child with abilities beyond his years, which

604
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 1: is very much, you know, a part of the whole

605
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 1: divine boy archetype. But there's still also a trickster element

606
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: to him as well, with the main thing that he

607
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:28,840
Speaker 1: does being the stealing of butter, like it's such a

608
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 1: big deal. You'll find numerous images and illustrations of this

609
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 1: of of blueskinned Krishna stealing a little butter. And so

610
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:40,880
Speaker 1: you have infant Krishna also doing things that are not

611
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 1: necessarily are certainly not attributes of the adult Christna, like

612
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: adult Krishna is not going around stealing butter. Wait a minute,

613
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:50,399
Speaker 1: so you attached a picture of Bala Krishna here, and

614
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: does he have his hand in a butter jar? I

615
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: believe so. I believe that is what this image represents.

616
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: And there are numerous images that have this basic this

617
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: this basic theme going on. This is his trying to

618
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: get the Marischino cherries experience exactly. There's also another tale

619
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,239
Speaker 1: that I ran across um and this is one of

620
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: another child accusing child Krishna of eating mud. So basically saying, mom,

621
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,959
Speaker 1: Krishna is eating mud, make him stop right, and so

622
00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:25,839
Speaker 1: his foster mother says, okay, Krishna, open your mouth, let's see.

623
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:29,320
Speaker 1: And then he opens his mouth, but within his mouth

624
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: she sees herself and then has a cosmic vision of

625
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: all universal matter within um. So so that that I

626
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:40,919
Speaker 1: love because it starts out like seeming like a very

627
00:37:41,040 --> 00:37:43,920
Speaker 1: childhood story and then takes a sharp turn into more

628
00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:47,280
Speaker 1: the sort of anale and become death, the destroy of worlds.

629
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 1: You know, that's sort of um aspect of the of

630
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:54,880
Speaker 1: the grown Krishna. Because all of my references are lowbrow trash.

631
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:59,720
Speaker 1: What I'm imagining with this inspiring myth is Tim Curry

632
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:03,839
Speaker 1: is Pennywise opening his mouth to show the deadlights. Oh yeah, yeah,

633
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 1: I mean kind of a similar vibe, except on the

634
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,720
Speaker 1: sacred end of the spectrum, as opposed to to the horrific.

635
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: All right, next up, baby Buddha. Yes, And I have

636
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: to admit I hadn't really thought about this as much

637
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: of a possibility, because first of all, I wasn't familiar

638
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:21,640
Speaker 1: with any stories of the historical Buddha as an infant,

639
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: and I sort of go to understanding of Sidharta Gattama,

640
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:28,960
Speaker 1: the man who would become the Buddha, is that of

641
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 1: the of a prince who undergoes an existential crisis and

642
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: turns his back on riches to instead pursue equanimity, right,

643
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's kind of the standard. But there

644
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:40,839
Speaker 1: are all, of course, a lot of different interpretations of

645
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: and writings about the Buddha, and some of them do

646
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: discuss the idea of the Buddha as a baby, and

647
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: in fact, there are traditions depicting the newborn Buddha or

648
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:56,719
Speaker 1: Buddha as a divine child in both Chinese and Japanese traditions.

649
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this image of Hercules. Sorry, yes, please

650
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:02,759
Speaker 1: do the trip. Oh yeah, let's move things back in

651
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: the mythic direction, because of course we have to mention Hercules.

652
00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:10,280
Speaker 1: Baby Hercules, famous for strangling the snake that was placed

653
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 1: by an assassin in his cradle, and if memory serves

654
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 1: the luferign No Hercules movie that we watched the Weird

655
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: House Cinema also has a scene with baby Hercules strangling snakes. Bam,

656
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: and the hold, I'm sorry you attached an image. It's

657
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: like a I don't know, a mosaic of baby Heracles

658
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 1: that does look like it's from the ancient world in

659
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 1: which the artist has tried to simultaneously capture like muscles

660
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,280
Speaker 1: because it's heracles, you know, so he's muscley, but also

661
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,240
Speaker 1: give him the little like chub stick legs of a baby. Yeah,

662
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:46,760
Speaker 1: it's a strange image. It's some sort of like mosaic image.

663
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:50,279
Speaker 1: I don't know the exact origins of it. But yeah,

664
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: he has a serpent in each hand crushing their necks,

665
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 1: strangling him. A very fierce looking baby here. So he's

666
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,919
Speaker 1: just got a little like balloon legs like a baby has.

667
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: But then also some ripples indicating he's ripped underneath that. Yeah,

668
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's uncanny. Now, briefly skipping into more

669
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 1: modern ideas of the divine child, I mean, I'd be

670
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:16,080
Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't point out that in our modern

671
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 1: myth making, Anakin Skywalker is a child with abilities that

672
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 1: surpassed that of other children and even humans human adults.

673
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:25,240
Speaker 1: In his midst at a very young age, he's already

674
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 1: a phenomenal pilot, and his ability as a pilot factor

675
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: into his earliest adventures. Is he not also a product

676
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: of parthenogenesis? Yes, yes, yes, so so yeah, Anakin, that's

677
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:41,840
Speaker 1: a choice. Good job, Lucas he was born out of

678
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: the force. There they are various theological treatments of this

679
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: as well. Then, of course, there are three main examples

680
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: of exceptional children in Frank Herbert's Dune Saga. You have

681
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 1: Aliah A Treedes, who pops up in the second half

682
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 1: of the book, so she hasn't appeared in the new

683
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 1: movies yet, and due to the exposure to her exposure

684
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: to the water of life while still in the womb,

685
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: she's born with the full powers of an adult Benny

686
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 1: Jester at Reverend Mother. I think people who've seen the

687
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 1: David Lynch adaptation are well familiar with this figure, and

688
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:18,400
Speaker 1: it certainly comes off now. It would say that the

689
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:23,360
Speaker 1: Dune Saga in general embraces the creepiness of the divine

690
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: child as well as the you know, the sacred aspects.

691
00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 1: I was about to say, can we admit that this

692
00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 1: character is creepy, and maybe it is supposed to be creepy,

693
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: certainly Lynch plays. It'll be interesting to see what the

694
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: new film adaptation how it approaches it. But yeah, I mean,

695
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 1: how can she not be because she's a small child

696
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:45,320
Speaker 1: talking about like like ruthless murder and so forth, and

697
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 1: revenge and it's very unchildlike in the way that she

698
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 1: talks to people. You don't want a child telling you

699
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: who is and is not the quizat's head. Rack. Yeah. Now,

700
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: by the third book, in Children of Dune, we have

701
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: two more super Dune babies. We have Leto the second

702
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 1: and Ghanema Treedes, who both possess adult consciousness before birth

703
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 1: due to their mother's spice consumption. And so a lot

704
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:17,320
Speaker 1: of a lot of space in Children of Doune and

705
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: Children of Done is a long book, or at least

706
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 1: in my experience, it was a long read. There. There

707
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:27,680
Speaker 1: are a lot of scenes of these two like talking

708
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: to and out talking adults and like burning adults with

709
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 1: various insults and reminders that they are in fact of

710
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:38,799
Speaker 1: brilliant minds just sort of encased in the bodies of

711
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: small children. Oh yeah, yeah, plenty of plenty of creepy

712
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:44,839
Speaker 1: content going on in this book as well, well, Rob,

713
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:47,799
Speaker 1: I think we need to wrap up today's episode there,

714
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: but I'm loving your super baby sidebars, and I think

715
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:52,839
Speaker 1: we will have to continue this in the next part

716
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:55,160
Speaker 1: of the series as well, So we'll be back next

717
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 1: time to talk more about childhood amnesia. This this gap

718
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 1: in the memory of children, what might cause it, and

719
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 1: other interesting facts about it. And yeah, we are certainly

720
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:08,960
Speaker 1: not done with super babies and babies with super brains

721
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you want to check

722
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll

723
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: find our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the

724
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:17,719
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed which you can

725
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: get wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll remind you

726
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 1: that Mondays that's our listener mail episode. Wednesdays we do

727
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and on

728
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:29,439
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk

729
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:32,399
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks

730
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:35,560
Speaker 1: to our audio producer jj Pauseway. If you would like

731
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

732
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

733
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:42,920
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at

734
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:53,880
Speaker 1: contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

735
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:57,280
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind's production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

736
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pie Podcasts,

737
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows