Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, you welcome do Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today we're going to
Speaker 3: begin a series of episodes on the theme of licking
Speaker 3: with the tongue, as this behavior appears in nature, in
Speaker 3: human culture, in science, and even in the mass manufacture
Speaker 3: and consumption of candy, as we'll get into later today.
Speaker 3: But Rob, I've got a kind of strange place I
Speaker 3: want to begin with this subject because I actually got
Speaker 3: the idea to talk about licking on the show, not
Speaker 3: by like watching a you know, a deer go for
Speaker 3: assault lick, or by observing a snake's tongue, though I
Speaker 3: think we will end up talking about all those things
Speaker 3: in this series, but by reading about ancient Egyptian curses
Speaker 3: last month.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, all right. It's always an interesting way to go, right,
Speaker 2: especially in considering something that is kind of seemingly mundane,
Speaker 2: And every day we go we start with the esoteric
Speaker 2: in the ritualistic.
Speaker 3: I think that's the way to do it, because now
Speaker 3: every time we look at licking in the real world,
Speaker 3: we can think back to the ways that it's also
Speaker 3: infused with evil or protective magic. So yeah, I came
Speaker 3: across the idea to do this when we did an
Speaker 3: episode earlier in October about ancient Egyptian curses, and in
Speaker 3: preparing for that episode, I was reading parts of some
Speaker 3: books about magical beliefs and practices in ancient Egypt. There's
Speaker 3: one that I mentioned in that episode already. That was
Speaker 3: the book by Geraldine Pinch called Magic in Ancient Egypt,
Speaker 3: University of Texas Press, nineteen ninety four. But there's another
Speaker 3: book that I have in digital form here that is
Speaker 3: by Robert K. Rittner, called The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian
Speaker 3: Magical Practices, University of Chicago Press, nineteen ninety three. Writtener
Speaker 3: I've also referenced in an episode last month, I think
Speaker 3: because he did some translations and a paper on a
Speaker 3: curse we talked about that cursed the reader for reading it.
Speaker 3: But Writtner was an American Egyptologist who lived nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: three to twenty twenty one. He was affiliated with the
Speaker 3: University of Chicago, and this book draws on archaeological and
Speaker 3: literary evidence to try to create a full picture of
Speaker 3: how Egyptian magic was performed, so not just the written
Speaker 3: words of spells and magical texts, but also the physically
Speaker 3: enacted and embodied elements of magic, all the stuff around
Speaker 3: the text of the spells. One of the chapters in
Speaker 3: this book, chapter three, is called Spitting, licking, and Swallowing,
Speaker 3: and it explores what Writtner calls the oral dimension of
Speaker 3: Egyptian magic. And I ended up finding this really interesting.
Speaker 3: So I just want to talk about some things from
Speaker 3: this chapter, especially focused on licking, but we'll have to
Speaker 3: discuss spitting a bit too, because spitting is important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think spitting is maybe a little more
Speaker 2: familiar for folks out there who are used to seeing
Speaker 2: it in various fictional depictions of magic. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: a witch or wizard spitting on something, spitting into some
Speaker 2: sort of a potion. And then if you're into the
Speaker 2: weirder stuff, there's of course the film Boxer's Omen that
Speaker 2: we recently watched on Weird House Cinema that also involves
Speaker 2: a lot of oral.
Speaker 3: Magic, amazing oral magic, a lot of spitting, a lot
Speaker 3: of chewing up and spitting back out, some chicken butts,
Speaker 3: all kinds of things. But before we go on to
Speaker 3: discuss this licking, spitting, and swallowing chapter. I also just
Speaker 3: wanted to briefly go over a couple of principles that
Speaker 3: we talked about recently in that Egyptian magic episode, but
Speaker 3: that will apply very much here. So one of the
Speaker 3: things that's important to remember is the sort of consensus
Speaker 3: of scholars that in an Egyptian context, the classical anthropological
Speaker 3: distinctions between magic and religion are not very useful. Those
Speaker 3: might apply in some cultures sometimes in history, but in
Speaker 3: ancient Egypt, state affiliated temple activity, religion was fully enmeshed
Speaker 3: with everyday magic. Magic spells were a core part of religion,
Speaker 3: and temple priests were also experts in private everyday magic
Speaker 3: and may have sold their services as magic spell consultants.
Speaker 3: So the magic religion distinction just doesn't really apply to
Speaker 3: ancient Egypt. Religion is full of magic, and magic is
Speaker 3: enmeshed with religion. Another interesting principle of Egyptian magic is
Speaker 3: about language. This is something that on one hand, it
Speaker 3: might sound very simple to conceptualize, maybe you even think
Speaker 3: about the world this way already. In another sense, if
Speaker 3: you really embrace the strangeness of it, it becomes more
Speaker 3: and more powerful in the ancient Egyptian worldview. I think
Speaker 3: it's fair to say that words were not merely symbols
Speaker 3: referring to objects or concepts. Words in themselves, both spoken
Speaker 3: and written, had active power to change and create reality.
Speaker 3: So it's obviously in our reality words are very powerful
Speaker 3: because words convey meaning, and that meaning can be acted
Speaker 3: on by people. But that was not the only way
Speaker 3: words were powerful in ancient Egypt. In ancient Egypt, the
Speaker 3: belief is words themselves do things, and so I think
Speaker 3: perhaps in part this is not the only reason, but
Speaker 3: perhaps in part because spoken words flow from the mouth.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of ritual action in Egyptian magic
Speaker 3: centered on the actions of the mouth, like spitting, licking,
Speaker 3: and swallowing, and ritual attention given to the fluids of
Speaker 3: the mouth cavity. I say that the association with language
Speaker 3: is not the only reason, because just generally, the body
Speaker 3: fluids in ancient Egypt are thought to convey a power
Speaker 3: and vitality of the person they come from, and so
Speaker 3: there's a transference power that works on the principle of
Speaker 3: contact with body fluids of all kinds. But I think
Speaker 3: with the mouth cavity you have this added dimension of
Speaker 3: not only is saliva a powerful body fluid, but it
Speaker 3: comes from the mouth, which is the part that speaks.
Speaker 2: Interesting, so we can I think again, this is probably
Speaker 2: a case where we're more familiar with the power of
Speaker 2: blood being utilized in various fantasy and magical and semi
Speaker 2: magical scenarios and symbolic scenarios as well. So this is
Speaker 2: almost kind of an extension of that level of power,
Speaker 2: but to the spit in saliva.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to downplay the importance of other
Speaker 3: body fluids in ancient Egyptian magic as well. Tears, the
Speaker 3: tears of ray are very important. Tears, spit, blood, minstrel blood,
Speaker 3: semen is all considered magically potent in different ways.
Speaker 2: And of course medically today, Like we know that this
Speaker 2: is this is true, Like there's a lot of data
Speaker 2: in all of these fluids. Yeah, so you know it
Speaker 2: ultimately stacks up.
Speaker 3: So, according to Rittner, here spitting is the most significant
Speaker 3: of these three actions. Spitting plays a huge role in
Speaker 3: Egyptian mythology, not just in what you're supposed to do
Speaker 3: in the text of these spells, but but in like
Speaker 3: the creation narratives. So in some versions of the Egyptian
Speaker 3: creation myth, you know, had various forms, but in some
Speaker 3: of them, the creator deity, whichever one it is, in
Speaker 3: this form, emerges out of the waters of chaos onto
Speaker 3: the mound of earth, the initial mound of earth that
Speaker 3: comes out of the water, and then creates the other
Speaker 3: gods by spitting, sometimes by ejaculating, but sometimes by spitting.
Speaker 3: And he gives the example of the Heliopolitan creation myth,
Speaker 3: where you've got the sun god coming up out of
Speaker 3: water and then is on the mound, and the Sun
Speaker 3: God's spittle creates the primordial pair of God's shoe, the
Speaker 3: god of the air and Tefnut of moisture. And so
Speaker 3: there is this link between spitting and the kind of
Speaker 3: creative magic, the creating force that gives rise or generation
Speaker 3: to all things. Writtner gives translations of several different text passages.
Speaker 3: One of them is referring to this creation narrative where
Speaker 3: the sun god Atom is the creator here Atum and
Speaker 3: this says Atom spat me out as the spittle of
Speaker 3: his mouth, together with my sister Tefnut. But then you
Speaker 3: get other expressions such as raise yourself ray. This is
Speaker 3: the solar deity, ray, raise yourself, ray, spit out the day,
Speaker 3: and as something cast off from a god's body. Body
Speaker 3: fluids like spit convey the God's divine power, and so
Speaker 3: spitting is used in spells of healing and blessing, often
Speaker 3: symbolizing a transfer of the invigorating power of the God
Speaker 3: to the recipient of the spittle, whether literal or symbolic.
Speaker 3: So spitting is very big in Egyptian magic.
Speaker 2: You know, I can't help but be reminded of I
Speaker 2: don't even know if this is This is probably not
Speaker 2: even current slang, but in some of the older hip
Speaker 2: hop that I have listened to, spit is often used
Speaker 2: as a way of talking about I guess you would say,
Speaker 2: the delivery of lyrics with a certain amount of skill
Speaker 2: and rhythm. Yeah. And it creative force, yeah yeah, creative
Speaker 2: force through language, through spoken word. And it seems very
Speaker 2: much in line with what we're talking about here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great parallel actually, because my understanding
Speaker 3: of the connotation of spit there is that it is
Speaker 3: not just saying like, okay, talk now. It means, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you use your power of creation. There's like
Speaker 3: an emphasis on the creative generative element there So anyway,
Speaker 3: the next thing, of course I want to come to
Speaker 3: is licking, the subject of today. Licking is mentioned less
Speaker 3: frequently than spitting in Egyptian magical texts, but it is
Speaker 3: nevertheless a really interesting and significant action in Egyptian magic
Speaker 3: and religion. Licking, I would say, has some of the
Speaker 3: same physiomagical properties as spitting, in that it involves the
Speaker 3: transfer of saliva, which is again imbued with the divine
Speaker 3: power of the mouth from which it comes. But it
Speaker 3: also has uses of its own for spells of healing
Speaker 3: or blessing and for curses or attacks. So I want
Speaker 3: to talk about some of the examples that Rittner brings
Speaker 3: up offering rituals of the Pyramid texts. This would include
Speaker 3: spells one sixty six and one eighty one, and the
Speaker 3: Coffin texts spell nine thirty six, all described the following scenario.
Speaker 3: After death, the spirit of the deceased king is presented,
Speaker 3: is presented with or put before two bowls of fruit
Speaker 3: from the ziziphus plant. This is a fruit known as
Speaker 3: the jujub or sometimes as the red date or Chinese date.
Speaker 3: The use of the word date there can be confusing
Speaker 3: because this is different from the dates that are the
Speaker 3: fruit of the date palm.
Speaker 2: Okay, so confusing in the same way that a pine
Speaker 2: apple is not an apple.
Speaker 3: And exactly yeah, yeah, So this is the fruit of
Speaker 3: the zizyphus plant, and the text says these fruits or
Speaker 3: fruit bowls, they're referred to in the spells as the
Speaker 3: eye of Horus, which they have licked. Were that they
Speaker 3: that lick to the eye of Horace a couple of possibilities.
Speaker 3: Writtener cites a scholar who argues that they are the
Speaker 3: followers of Seth or set the destructive god of storms, chaos,
Speaker 3: and the desert wilderness. If that's correct, this licking of
Speaker 3: the fruit would represent a magical attack against the eye
Speaker 3: of Horace. The licking somehowers heck of violence onto the eye.
Speaker 3: But Writtner argues that while there is offensive licking sorcery
Speaker 3: of this kind in Egyptian spells, that's probably not what's
Speaker 3: going on here. He thinks it is more likely this
Speaker 3: passage refers to a motif of the sacred healing of
Speaker 3: Horace's eye by way of licks from the gods. After all,
Speaker 3: the eye of Horace presented to the king here should
Speaker 3: be sound and well, not envenomed with the curse of
Speaker 3: the Sethian tongue, and Rittner points out that there are
Speaker 3: other spells where an injured or troubled eye is restored
Speaker 3: by the power of Holy saliva through healing spells that
Speaker 3: involve spitting, and this licking could be envisioned as a
Speaker 3: parallel mechanism. And Rittner points out that this mirror's phenomena
Speaker 3: observed in nature the licking of wounds by animals as
Speaker 3: magical licking here would seem to tap into both what
Speaker 3: we see in other animals and perhaps even in instincts
Speaker 3: that we ourselves still possess to some extent, even if
Speaker 3: we don't always express them. Another important piece of licking
Speaker 3: imagery along these lines the healing the healing licks of
Speaker 3: the gods. The cow goddess Hathor bestows blessings on her
Speaker 3: offspring Horace by licking him in the same manner that
Speaker 3: an earthly cow can be seen licking her newborn calf,
Speaker 3: and we get texts saying that Hathor blessed the pharaoh
Speaker 3: Queen Hatchepsitt of the eighteenth dynasty in the same way.
Speaker 3: Quote kissing your hand, licking your limbs, endowing your majesty
Speaker 3: with life and dominion. Yeah. Interesting. I think it's interesting
Speaker 3: there the way that seems to be casting the Pharaoh,
Speaker 3: who we want their image to be one of power
Speaker 3: and dominion, life, power, vigor, dominion, Like it's saying they're
Speaker 3: being given, you know, the majesty of the throne in
Speaker 3: this saying here, But the imagery is actually of a
Speaker 3: little baby being taken care of by its mother in nature,
Speaker 3: a calf being licked by the mother cow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you've ever seen, I mean certainly we have.
Speaker 2: We have farmers and folks that live more closely to
Speaker 2: cattle out there who can attest to this as well.
Speaker 2: But if you've seen at least seen footage of this occurring,
Speaker 2: there is almost this sense that like the cow is
Speaker 2: the cat, the calf is born, and then the cow
Speaker 2: licks this calf, and that is what truly brings it
Speaker 2: to life. Yeah. So you can you can see where
Speaker 2: this powerful connection could be forged, you know, just via
Speaker 2: observation of the natural world.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I want to come back to some of these
Speaker 3: licking behaviors and animals in the next part in this series,
Speaker 3: where we're definitely going to talk about wound licking and
Speaker 3: about licking of offspring as well. But coming back to
Speaker 3: the magical looking here, that which is true of gods
Speaker 3: and pharaoh is also true of spirits in the afterlife.
Speaker 3: In the Book of the Dead, we are told that
Speaker 3: Hathor licks the dead man's hand to give him the
Speaker 3: power of rebirth. And then there's a really interesting aside
Speaker 3: by Writtener here where he compares this to a story
Speaker 3: that's not from Egyptian texts but from Greek legends. So
Speaker 3: Writtner writes, quote, a contrasting concept associated with the APIs
Speaker 3: bull survives in the Greek legends of the astronomer Eudoxus
Speaker 3: of Nidos, a pupil of Plato who subsequently traveled to
Speaker 3: Egypt to study with the native clergy in the fourth
Speaker 3: century BC. When his cloak was licked by the APIs,
Speaker 3: Eudoxus was informed by the priests that his fame would
Speaker 3: be great, but that his life would be short. He had,
Speaker 3: in effect acquired certain qualities of Osiris transmitted by the
Speaker 3: god's earthly representative, the APIs. We know we actually did
Speaker 3: some episodes a while back on the Osiris legend, and
Speaker 3: of course Osiris is a god who is killed and dismembered,
Speaker 3: so that, yeah, there's a duality there. Of course Osiris
Speaker 3: is great and powerful and is famed, but does suffer
Speaker 3: this fate before being sort of reassembled in the afterlife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he death is part of his existence.
Speaker 2: I mean, as as it is for all of us.
Speaker 3: To be clear, But that combination of greatness and early
Speaker 3: doom is transferred to this human being when it is
Speaker 3: licked by the bull that represents the power of Osiris.
Speaker 3: Now I want to turn to therapeutic licking, So spells
Speaker 3: that are actually designed to heal heal wounds. There were
Speaker 3: healing rituals performed by human priests that probably would involve
Speaker 3: literal licking. An example he is the Coffin Texts spell
Speaker 3: eighty one, where the performer of the spell identifies himself
Speaker 3: with Shoe, the god of air, light and wind, whose
Speaker 3: name means emptiness. In this spell, the hand of the
Speaker 3: deceased is painted with representations of eight Egyptian deities in
Speaker 3: yellow pigment and Nubian ochre, and then the spell is
Speaker 3: spoken aloud over these images, and then finally it says
Speaker 3: that the painted images of the gods are to be
Speaker 3: quote licked off every day very early. Rittner says that
Speaker 3: like many of the Coffin text spells, it sounds like
Speaker 3: it is meant exclusively for the benefit of the dead,
Speaker 3: but it was probably actually used by the living. It
Speaker 3: sounds kind of weird as phrased, But I wonder if
Speaker 3: the idea of licking off the images of the gods
Speaker 3: very early, meaning in the morning, corresponds to the time
Speaker 3: of dawn, because Writtner points out that there is a
Speaker 3: mythological passage sighted in the spell, and this passage states
Speaker 3: that the gods shoe is blessed with kisses from the
Speaker 3: sun god Autumn every day, and the Coffin texts sometimes
Speaker 3: use the imagery of a favored deity getting licked with
Speaker 3: sunshine by the sun god at dawn.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 3: And again this is especially significant because the sun god Autumn,
Speaker 3: as one of the creator deities, has especially powerful saliva,
Speaker 3: creative saliva. He can spit gods into existence, and now
Speaker 3: at dawn he licks the world with his rays. Some
Speaker 3: curative looking had nothing to do with funerary use or imagery.
Speaker 3: It was just good old fashioned healing. Of body ailments.
Speaker 3: So Writtner cites a twelfth dynasty manuscript known as Papyrus
Speaker 3: Turin fifty four zero zero three, which includes the following
Speaker 3: spell for the treatment of the eyes. And by the way,
Speaker 3: I looked up this papyrus to see what else it said.
Speaker 3: In addition to the spells for healing the eyes, which
Speaker 3: I'm going to read from here, it's got spells designed
Speaker 3: to protect from serpents and to extract fish bones. I
Speaker 3: didn't figure out extract them from wear, Maybe from.
Speaker 2: The throat or from the fish.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I want to learn more about that,
Speaker 3: but I didn't get there. So this is the part
Speaker 3: about healing the eyes. I thought this text is great.
Speaker 3: So this is the Writtner's translation here quote, my eyes
Speaker 3: are opened by the Great One. My eyes are opened
Speaker 3: by the Opener. The eyes of Hathor are opened in
Speaker 3: the house of the statue. The eyes of Hathor are
Speaker 3: opened in the house of Gold, that she might look
Speaker 3: at that red animal when he opens his mouth, when
Speaker 3: he opens his jaws, when he looks at that pupil
Speaker 3: of gold. Feance. And by the way, we just had
Speaker 3: to look that up because neither of us knew what
Speaker 3: it was. That's like a type of tin glazed pottery,
Speaker 3: pupil of gold, feance, quartz and Carnelian which flourishes on
Speaker 3: the eye of the Majesty of Ta when isis bent over,
Speaker 3: she licked it. When I bent over my eye, I
Speaker 3: licked it from this my face, from this my eye,
Speaker 3: I dispelled. The blow of a god, goddess, dead man
Speaker 3: or dead woman dispelled. Is the obscurity being thoroughly stripped
Speaker 3: away as she has licked what was done to him.
Speaker 3: So Mott has licked what was done to her. And
Speaker 3: then the last sentence to be said by a man
Speaker 3: as he puts water into his eyes. Though these spells
Speaker 3: are often best interpreted literally when it comes to physical action,
Speaker 3: in this case, Writtner says that the licking might not
Speaker 3: be literal because there's that last sentence that seems to
Speaker 3: specify the spell is spoken as a man symbolically licks
Speaker 3: his eyes by placing eye drops into them.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, yeah, yeah, okay, Yeah, you could think of putting
Speaker 2: eye drops in as licking. Yeah, the licking of the eye. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's accomplished the same thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's like the gods are licking my eyes as
Speaker 3: I put eye drops in isis is down licking my eye.
Speaker 3: But there is literal licking and healing magic as well.
Speaker 3: Many of these spells prescribe actually the licking off of
Speaker 3: images or words of the spell, sometimes inscribed on the hand,
Speaker 3: like I mentioned earlier, with those you know the eight
Speaker 3: gods are written on the hand, and then you must
Speaker 3: lick it off very early, very early every day. There
Speaker 3: is an anti scorpion sting magical spell from Papyrus Turin
Speaker 3: one nine ninety three the legend of Isis and the
Speaker 3: secret name of Ray, and it goes like this. This
Speaker 3: is written theer's translation again quote words to be recited
Speaker 3: over an image of Autumn and horrus of praise, a
Speaker 3: figure of Isis and an image of Horus drawn on
Speaker 3: the hand of the sufferer, and licked off by the
Speaker 3: man do likewise on a strip of fine linen placed
Speaker 3: on the sufferer at his throat. Its plant is scorpion plant,
Speaker 3: and that is a type of plant. I think it's
Speaker 3: supposed to resemble a scorpion's tail or. Ground up with
Speaker 3: beer or wine. It is drunk by the man who
Speaker 3: has a scorpion sting. It is what kills the poison
Speaker 3: truly effective, proved a million times. So you draw the
Speaker 3: gods on the scorpion victim's hand and then someone licks
Speaker 3: the image off. Actually couldn't tell from the text when
Speaker 3: it says licked off by the man. I don't know
Speaker 3: if that means licked off by the same part by
Speaker 3: the victim they're licking their own hand, or licked off
Speaker 3: by someone else like the person performing the spell. I
Speaker 3: couldn't quite tell from the text. But then yeah, it
Speaker 3: says proof of scorpion cure confirmed, and Writtener cites another
Speaker 3: spell curing scorpion sting that includes a recitation of a
Speaker 3: myth of a wound received by a Nubis which was
Speaker 3: cured by Isis, in which Isis tells a Nubis quote,
Speaker 3: lick from your tongue to your heart, and vice versa,
Speaker 3: up to the edges of the wound. Lick to the
Speaker 3: edges of the wound, up to the limits of your strength.
Speaker 3: What you shall lick, you shall swallow. Do not spit
Speaker 3: it out on the ground. For your tongue is the
Speaker 3: tongue of Shay, and your tongue is that of autumn.
Speaker 3: And the patient benefiting from the spell, so is told
Speaker 3: to quote, lick your wound with your tongue immediately while
Speaker 3: it is still bleeding. And the patient here has become
Speaker 3: identified with Anubis, who is at once a god, but
Speaker 3: also in these reflections of natural observations observations of animals
Speaker 3: in nature, is also a dog licking its wounds. Fascinating,
Speaker 3: But it's also interesting how many of these spells advised
Speaker 3: licking of a written spell to absorb or consume its power,
Speaker 3: and that seems to come back to the belief that
Speaker 3: words in themselves have power. It's not just like that
Speaker 3: the word causes you to do something that gives the
Speaker 3: spell power, but actually writing the spell or having some
Speaker 3: kind of inscription on something on a linen or on
Speaker 3: the body and then licking it can transfer the power
Speaker 3: of the spell because you licked the words into you.
Speaker 2: This is so fascinating because this really feels foreign from
Speaker 2: at least the modern Western conception of various magics. You know,
Speaker 2: this seems like something that, assuming I'm understanding it correctly,
Speaker 2: is largely lost. It's possible I'm not thinking of some
Speaker 2: more direct connection, so if anyone out there can think
Speaker 2: of one, but yeah, I'm just trying to think of
Speaker 2: any other system of magic, real or imagined, that has
Speaker 2: involved something like this.
Speaker 3: You eat the words by licking them, and the words
Speaker 3: have the power, and the power goes into you when
Speaker 3: you lick them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess that. You know, there are
Speaker 2: things involving, say the eating of pages, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I can maybe think to some examples that get into
Speaker 2: that area. But like the idea of something is is
Speaker 2: printed on the skin and then that is licked off
Speaker 2: of the skin and they're and lies the magic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, in addition to all of this protective licking, healing, licking,
Speaker 3: blessings from licking, there is also offensive licking in Egyptian magic.
Speaker 3: Because the hecka magic, as we talked about last month,
Speaker 3: it was morally neutral in a way it could be
Speaker 3: used to help or to harm than those were equally
Speaker 3: legitimate uses for it. There are a bunch of texts
Speaker 3: that describe licking in various sometimes obscure ways, as a
Speaker 3: violent or offensive act. For example, the threat of being
Speaker 3: licked by a venomous serpent. And you know, so there
Speaker 3: are texts that talk about the serpent shall lick you,
Speaker 3: and that's like a thing you don't want, in which
Speaker 3: case I was kind of wondering if some uses of
Speaker 3: licking by a serpent could be a case of observing
Speaker 3: observing nature and watching the way that a snake will
Speaker 3: flick its tongue in the air like and thinking that
Speaker 3: a snake maybe deposits its venom with a lick of
Speaker 3: the tongue rather than injection through a bite. This might
Speaker 3: be a natural conclusion if you've seen a snake flicking
Speaker 3: its tongue. And also I don't know of examples from
Speaker 3: Age and Egypt that make this connection explicit, but at
Speaker 3: lots of other times and places in history people have
Speaker 3: thought this. This is a common belief throughout different cultures
Speaker 3: and times that people think that the snake delivers venom
Speaker 3: with its tongue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well, they are very tongue forward in
Speaker 2: their presentation. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And actually this led into I wanted to do a
Speaker 3: brief scientific aside on why do snakes actually flick their tongues?
Speaker 3: So I was reading a few things. There's one very
Speaker 3: good overview explainer on the research here, hosted on the
Speaker 3: Conversation by a herpetologist named Andrew Durso from twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: called why do snakes flick their tongues? People have wondered
Speaker 3: about this for ages. Again, there are many people who
Speaker 3: thought that the tongue is the thing that delivers venom. Also,
Speaker 3: some writers from the seventeenth century even positive that snakes
Speaker 3: would use their the forked tips of their tongues like
Speaker 3: pincers to catch prey, you know, like tweezers that come
Speaker 3: out of the mouth and snatch them. That, as far
Speaker 3: as we know, that's not true. In reality, the snake's
Speaker 3: tongue is part of a highly developed chemosensory system for
Speaker 3: detecting molecules in the air and along the substrate of
Speaker 3: the ground, revealing the presence of important things to the snake,
Speaker 3: like prey or a potential mate. The closest analogy in
Speaker 3: human senses would be taste and smell, though those might
Speaker 3: give you the incorrect idea that the flicking tongue itself
Speaker 3: is the organ that tastes or smells the chemical signatures,
Speaker 3: and it is not. The chemical sensing organ is actually
Speaker 3: located on the roof of the snake's mouth, and it
Speaker 3: is called the vomeronasal system or Jacobsen's organ. Research has
Speaker 3: shown that what generally happens when the snake flick its
Speaker 3: tongue out to lick the air or the ground. Is
Speaker 3: that the tongue acts like a flypaper trap for chemical signature.
Speaker 3: Is it goes out and it touches the ground or
Speaker 3: whips around in the air, and then molecules along the
Speaker 3: ground are suspended in the air stick to the tongue.
Speaker 3: The tongue brings the molecules back into the mouth when
Speaker 3: it retracts, and it somehow delivers them to the Jacobson's organ.
Speaker 3: And this article it was talking about at least in
Speaker 3: some snakes, the way it works is the tongue comes
Speaker 3: in and it deposits those molecules on pads on the
Speaker 3: floor of the mouth cavity, and then these pads then
Speaker 3: deliver the molecules to the sensitive cells in the Jacobson's
Speaker 3: organ on the roof of the mouth when the snake
Speaker 3: closes its jaw.
Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about the Jacobson organ in
Speaker 2: our episodes on Urine last year. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 2: was last year, in the last year or so, and yeah,
Speaker 2: we talked about it's like the stinky kitty face and
Speaker 2: so forth, and so the seeming lack of a system
Speaker 2: like this in human beings, or at least contemporary human beings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the Jacobsen's organ is of vastly different levels
Speaker 3: of importance to different animals. For snakes, it's highly important
Speaker 3: because a lot of snakes have these really sensitive, well
Speaker 3: developed chemical sensing powers, and they need them in order
Speaker 3: to hunt and to mate. One interesting thing about the
Speaker 3: way the snake uses its tongue to sense chemical signatures
Speaker 3: is that it can even detect differences in the relative
Speaker 3: density of smells across three dimensions. This is at least
Speaker 3: in part what the fork of the tongue is for.
Speaker 3: So when the snake sticks its tongue out, the tips
Speaker 3: of the forked tongue spread apart, and that creates a
Speaker 3: stereo signal. So if they detect that the smell trail
Speaker 3: they're following, maybe a male copperhead is trying to follow
Speaker 3: the trail of a female so it can mate. If
Speaker 3: it detects that the smell trail is stronger on the
Speaker 3: left tip, the snake will turn its head to the
Speaker 3: left and adjust course to follow the scent more directly,
Speaker 3: kind of like how we can use the stereo signal
Speaker 3: from our two ears to locate the directional origin of sounds.
Speaker 3: Another interesting thing is that some snakes have venom that
Speaker 3: is specially evolved to work together with their vomor nasal system.
Speaker 3: For example, ambush predators these snakes that bite prey and
Speaker 3: then wait for that prey to run away and die
Speaker 3: before eating. Presumably this helps them avoid struggling with prey
Speaker 3: that might fight back in some way. So you've got,
Speaker 3: of course, the directly harmful paralyzing compounds in the venom,
Speaker 3: But this venom also has stuff in it that is
Speaker 3: easy for the snake to smell. It's like putting a
Speaker 3: little stinky tracer into your bite, so that later the
Speaker 3: predator can follow the scent of the envenomed prey to
Speaker 3: the place where it collapses, and then the snake can
Speaker 3: feast at its.
Speaker 2: Life like a tracker.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but what about so that's you know why
Speaker 3: you got the fork, and how what the snake is
Speaker 3: using its tongue for. But what about that rapid flicking
Speaker 3: of the tongue motion we've all seen. So snake sticks
Speaker 3: its tongue out, and it doesn't just go out and
Speaker 3: then back in. Sometimes it goes out and then just
Speaker 3: like vibrates all over the place, flicks up and down rapidly.
Speaker 3: What is that for? It seems this is a trick
Speaker 3: to help increase the collection of volatile molecules. It by
Speaker 3: flicking back and forth rapidly, the snake's tongue creates vortices
Speaker 3: in the air, basically stirring the air up to expose
Speaker 3: the surface area of the tongue to more air volume
Speaker 3: and thus more volatile molecules. Kind Of like I was
Speaker 3: trying to think of an analogy. Imagine you've got a
Speaker 3: bunch of styrofoam packing peanuts floating in a bath tub
Speaker 3: and you're trying to collect them with a sticky rod.
Speaker 3: You would collect a lot more of them by sticking
Speaker 3: the rod into the bath and vigorously stirring it up
Speaker 3: instead of just doing a simple like dip in and out.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So anyway, side quest over on the snake tongue science.
Speaker 3: Coming back to magical licking for just a moment. There's
Speaker 3: also the idea of offensive spell. So that came from
Speaker 3: the idea that you know, a snake could, maybe a
Speaker 3: serpent could harm you by licking. But I also wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about the horrifying idea of magical licks from
Speaker 3: a deadly crocodile or of other malevolent actors in the afterlife,
Speaker 3: especially which can be attacks in themselves or could remove
Speaker 3: your most important spells for the afterlife. So Writtener lists
Speaker 3: a number of passages from the Coffin texts and from
Speaker 3: the Book of the Dead which invoke the terrible threat
Speaker 3: of licking as a way to attack and remove the
Speaker 3: protection of the deceased. Just a few of these different passages.
Speaker 3: One of them is, as for any God, goddess, spirit,
Speaker 3: dead man, or dead woman who shall lick off his
Speaker 3: spell against me today, he shall fall to the execution blocks,
Speaker 3: to the magic that is in my body, the terrible
Speaker 3: flames that are in my mouth. Okay, so that's a
Speaker 3: kind of curse. That's saying you're gonna try to lick
Speaker 3: my spells off, you're gonna get it. And then it's
Speaker 3: funny that one of the threats is almost sounds like
Speaker 3: it doesn't say the word licking, but the counter threat
Speaker 3: is the terrible flames that are in my mouth. Sounds
Speaker 3: like a threat to lick, lick with fire. Another one
Speaker 3: of these quotes, as for any god or dead man
Speaker 3: who shall lick off his spell in my presence. On
Speaker 3: this day he shall fall to the depths. And then
Speaker 3: another one back, Oh crocodile who is in the west,
Speaker 3: For there is a serpent in this my belly. I
Speaker 3: shall not be given to you. You shall not lick
Speaker 3: off my spell.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So I thought this was just.
Speaker 3: Such interesting imagery, the terror at the idea of licking
Speaker 3: off of spells by the crocodile or by some other
Speaker 3: evil actor as a grave threat to the deceased. Sometimes
Speaker 3: the phrasing is kind of ambiguous in that I'm not
Speaker 3: sure whose spell it is saying that the offender is
Speaker 3: licking off. Sometimes it's clearly saying like, you're not going
Speaker 3: to lick off my spells, But then other times it's
Speaker 3: saying like, if you try to lick off your spell
Speaker 3: or lick off somebody else's spell, that's really danger. I
Speaker 3: wonder then if it's like a threat against you trying
Speaker 3: to power up by licking your own spell to give
Speaker 3: you power against me. I couldn't quite tell exactly what that.
Speaker 2: Means, Like I will lick your spell before you can
Speaker 2: lick it and cast it at me. Yeah, So clearly
Speaker 2: this needs to be developed into a magical system for
Speaker 2: modern role playing games.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so I admit that I don't fully understand
Speaker 3: exactly what's being talked about in some of these texts,
Speaker 3: but in some of them it's, oh, it's so interesting.
Speaker 3: Just like the lick of the crocodile could itself, I think,
Speaker 3: be envisioned as an attack on its own. That's just like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like the crocodile kind of moving to
Speaker 3: devour you. The lick is some part of that action,
Speaker 3: but also the specific threat of licking off of spells
Speaker 3: is a hostile act by which the crocodile removes the
Speaker 3: dead person's magical armor. So in the end of this section,
Speaker 3: Writtener writes, quote where licking serves primarily to transfer saliva,
Speaker 3: it is but a variant of ritual spitting, and maybe
Speaker 3: construed as a blessing cure or curse. So that's one mechanism,
Speaker 3: the transfer of saliva. But the other is quote where
Speaker 3: licking serves primarily as a means of consumption. However, it
Speaker 3: is but a variant of ritual swallowing, employed either to
Speaker 3: ingest divine force or to devour hostile figures. And this
Speaker 3: kind of just by association got me thinking about another
Speaker 3: kind of offensive licking, not at all related to ancient
Speaker 3: Egyptian magic, though I don't know, maybe some of the
Speaker 3: same intuitions are at work, who knows. I was thinking
Speaker 3: about when kids lick something to form an attack, to
Speaker 3: intentionally contaminate that object, to claim ownership or deny access
Speaker 3: to another child. Sometimes I think this is done to say, like,
Speaker 3: this object is mine, I'm gonna lick it, like I'm
Speaker 3: gonna lick this food so you don't eat the food.
Speaker 2: Classic example being like a roll, or like a dinner
Speaker 2: roll at a table.
Speaker 3: Yes, or sometimes so. Sometimes it's like claiming like this
Speaker 3: is for me, don't you mess with it because I'm
Speaker 3: gonna lick it. But a lot of times it's done,
Speaker 3: apparently just to annoy or provoke another child on purpose,
Speaker 3: like licking your siblings dinner role or licking your siblings
Speaker 3: ice cream cone, or even not non foods, licking their
Speaker 3: toy as a provocation. Do you remember this?
Speaker 2: No, I remember the dinner roll sort of situation, But yeah,
Speaker 2: not so. I mean, you know kids do this sort
Speaker 2: of thing, but I don't have a lot of direct
Speaker 2: experience with it.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, anyway, I was wondering if there was any
Speaker 3: research in psychology or child development on this. I went looking.
Speaker 3: I couldn't find anything directly investigating the practice of intentionally
Speaker 3: licking things, either to inflict harm or annoyance or to
Speaker 3: claim them. But I did find a peripherally related study.
Speaker 3: This was by Jasmine DeJesus, Kristin Schutz, and Catherine Kinsler,
Speaker 3: published in the journal Appetite in twenty fifteen called ew
Speaker 3: She Sneezed. Contamination context affects children's food preferences and consumption.
Speaker 3: This is kind of funny. So the study looked into
Speaker 3: the question how does a child's understanding of contamination in
Speaker 3: food develop and how does contextual information about the life
Speaker 3: history of a piece of food affect a child's disgust reaction,
Speaker 3: like apart from qualities of appearance or taste in the
Speaker 3: food itself. So to study this, the researchers looked at
Speaker 3: children between the ages of three and eight, and they
Speaker 3: presented them with identical food items. The only difference was
Speaker 3: that one was the control where nothing had happened to it,
Speaker 3: and the other, while the food item was exactly the same,
Speaker 3: was given a story with a visual aid which is
Speaker 3: somebody licked the spoon you have to use to eat this.
Speaker 3: And then they also tested somebody sneezed on the bowl
Speaker 3: in which this is served. They didn't really do this,
Speaker 3: there was some trickery involved, but they made the children
Speaker 3: think the spoon had been licked or the bull had
Speaker 3: been sneezed on and the author's rite quote. When given
Speaker 3: the opportunity to eat the foods, five to eight year
Speaker 3: old children consumed more clean food and rated the clean
Speaker 3: food's taste more positively. Younger children did not distinguish between
Speaker 3: the foods. The relation between contamination and subjective taste held
Speaker 3: even among children who ate both foods and had direct
Speaker 3: evidence that they were identical. So, yeah, I thought it
Speaker 3: was kind of interesting. Like, three year olds, on average,
Speaker 3: at least in this sample, don't seem to much care
Speaker 3: if food is contaminated with a spoon somebody else's licked,
Speaker 3: as long as it still appears yummy. But by ages
Speaker 3: five to eight, we've got a psychological contamination reflex. Food
Speaker 3: that has been contaminated by a licked spoon or is
Speaker 3: served in a sneezed on bowl acquires this ick factor.
Speaker 3: The kids desire to eat the food less, and when
Speaker 3: they do eat it, they think it tastes worse, even
Speaker 3: though they can sample both foods directly and there's actually
Speaker 3: no difference. And so, of course, in my many, like
Speaker 3: you know, wondering about parenting things, I have been thinking
Speaker 3: about the different like trade offs in the development of
Speaker 3: the disgust reaction, because it's clearly not that young children
Speaker 3: fully lack a disgust reaction, Like young children will often
Speaker 3: show disgust reactions to perfectly healthy, nutritious foods, but it's
Speaker 3: just like I don't like, I don't want to eat
Speaker 3: that vegetable. I don't know, no, no disgusting, you know,
Speaker 3: instant disgust reaction to just the appearance or smell of
Speaker 3: a food they haven't even tried.
Speaker 2: I've heard it put before that some of this gets
Speaker 2: down to the fact that if a child were to
Speaker 2: eat something that we're toxic, their smaller bodies would make
Speaker 2: them more susceptible to damage from said thing, and therefore
Speaker 2: they're more susceptible to the ick factor. On top of that, though,
Speaker 2: of course, there's a lot of room for just sort
Speaker 2: of like additional social contamination, you know, like this is
Speaker 2: like a personal pet peeve. But anytime I've encountered small
Speaker 2: children who describe food they are presented with as disgusting,
Speaker 2: and I mean a lot of that is just has learned,
Speaker 2: like how do you how do you describe food that
Speaker 2: you do not wish to eat? And so like, that's
Speaker 2: something we always really hammered home. It's like, okay, it's
Speaker 2: okay to not want to eat something, but you don't
Speaker 2: describe it as disgusting or gross. You would say something like,
Speaker 2: well that is not for me, or maybe you get
Speaker 2: down to it, like why do I not like it?
Speaker 2: Is it too spicy? Is there something in the texture
Speaker 2: of it? And so forth? Is it too sour? Like?
Speaker 2: There's so much more room to explore what's going on.
Speaker 2: But when you know, they throw out the oh this
Speaker 2: is gross or this is disgusting. Yeah, that's not going
Speaker 2: to win win friends and influence people either.
Speaker 3: But disgusting is an interesting descriptive word about food because
Speaker 3: it doesn't actually refer to any objective qualities or inherent
Speaker 3: qualities of the food itself. Disgusted is an emotion, so
Speaker 3: it's just merely describing the child's own emotional reactions. I
Speaker 3: totally am with you. And it's yeah, it's frustrating.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, the adults in our household
Speaker 3: are very non picky eaters and discovering that even if
Speaker 3: you try to create the ultimate like you know, non
Speaker 3: picky eating environment for a child, sometimes a child's just
Speaker 3: going to be a picky eater.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's often out of your control. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but we work at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but yeah, I totally understand what you're saying
Speaker 3: about the it's frustrating to hear a child describe some
Speaker 3: is disgusting, but yeah, that is a word that refers
Speaker 3: to their own emotions. But anyway, yeah, I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: the ways that these emotions trade off. So as a
Speaker 3: child grows up, I think they a common pattern, it seems,
Speaker 3: is that they lose a lot of the the pickiness
Speaker 3: declines over time, and they will become more open to
Speaker 3: trying different kinds of foods inherently, but that they acquire
Speaker 3: new dimensions of the disgust reaction. And some of that
Speaker 3: is based around knowledge of contamination of food by like
Speaker 3: body fluids. So it's like if somebody licked this spoon,
Speaker 3: now that's a disgust reaction and it makes the food yucky,
Speaker 3: but I might still eat it.
Speaker 2: I should also throw in that I've also heard it
Speaker 2: put that. Another aspect in play here is that young
Speaker 2: children often you know, do not have a lot of
Speaker 2: choices that they can make in life, and a lot
Speaker 2: of choices are made for them. But this becomes a
Speaker 2: dimension where they have They often feel like they have
Speaker 2: a great deal more power. Yeah, and that you know,
Speaker 2: it may not be on an actual, like conscious level,
Speaker 2: it's you know, maybe more subconscious, but it may be
Speaker 2: in play in some of these scenarios. I guess adults
Speaker 2: do sometimes lick food items to claim it, though I
Speaker 2: think generally it's a way of intentionally acting childish, perhaps
Speaker 2: for laughs, but there may be situations where someone is
Speaker 2: actually employing this as a protected strategy for their food,
Speaker 2: or in a very childish fashion offensively against people they
Speaker 2: don't like.
Speaker 3: It might be more subtle in the way the adult
Speaker 3: does it. It's not like the eh and they like
Speaker 3: the control, but they just kind of, you know, I'll
Speaker 3: take one bite of this plate before walking away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Generally, as an adult, you're going to find yourself
Speaker 2: in a situation where I would imagine once food is
Speaker 2: on your plate. It is safe, it is off limits
Speaker 2: from other people taking it, but I don't know. It's
Speaker 2: like some if there's only one of a particular bait
Speaker 2: good and it's particularly nice that it might be different.
Speaker 2: All Right. To close out this episode, I want to
Speaker 2: turn to something that came to mind the second that
Speaker 2: you proposed an episode on licking, and it concerns something
Speaker 2: that in general, children have never had any problem licking,
Speaker 2: and that is the Tutsi pop. Joe, I'm sure you
Speaker 2: grew up with this candy as well. It's been around
Speaker 2: for quite a while. This is, of course a Tutsi
Speaker 2: roll that's a kind of chocolate chew candy. It's not
Speaker 2: really chocolate per se, but it is. It's a chocolate
Speaker 2: chew that has been entombed in the middle of a
Speaker 2: hard candy sucker. This comes in different flavors. I think
Speaker 2: the one I most remember is kind of an orange flavor.
Speaker 2: And so they're kind of like the scorpion lollipops that
Speaker 2: you see in Arizona, but instead of there being an
Speaker 2: iraq knet at the center, there is a chunk of
Speaker 2: like a glob of chocolate chewic wait.
Speaker 3: I don't know about the scorpion LOLLI.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean you see these outside Arizona, but
Speaker 2: I mean it's like anytime I'm at the Sky Harbor
Speaker 2: Airport in Phoenix, like you know, I have a few
Speaker 2: minutes signed up, wandering into a gift shop and they
Speaker 2: have all those these little brightly colored suckers and in
Speaker 2: the middle there is an actual scorpion.
Speaker 3: So you like, lick your tongue makes contact with the scorpion.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I've never purchased one. I don't know
Speaker 2: how much of it is. Just it's just the idea
Speaker 2: of it is irresistible, so people get it. I don't
Speaker 2: know what happens if you actually lick to the to
Speaker 2: the center and get the scorpion, or or in some
Speaker 2: other way get to the center. I have no idea,
Speaker 2: but their eye catching.
Speaker 3: Wow, well I've never heard of that does seem like
Speaker 3: an inversion of the Tutsi role principle, because let me
Speaker 3: run this by you. See what you think is the
Speaker 3: idea of the Tutsi pop that the best part of
Speaker 3: it is in the middle, and you got to work
Speaker 3: through the outside to get down to the best part
Speaker 3: in the middle.
Speaker 2: This is a very hard question to answer, because I
Speaker 2: vaguely remember as a child being far more into the
Speaker 2: candy coating as opposed to the sinner. But I think
Speaker 2: I ate the center as well. But then I know,
Speaker 2: like children's taste of candy is is weird, Like like
Speaker 2: there was a point where my kiddo's favorite candy, like
Speaker 2: they got to choose which candy they got to keep
Speaker 2: before the rest went to the switch witch. And there
Speaker 2: was one year where they're like, I choose the Tutsie rolls.
Speaker 2: And so it's like, you know, I don't know fair enough,
Speaker 2: Like you're in different taste sensations that they've since it evolved,
Speaker 2: So now they're more they're more of a dark chocolate
Speaker 2: enjoyer as opposed to a Tutsi roll enjoyer. So you
Speaker 2: know it changes over time.
Speaker 3: Sophisticated now, yeah, but that would be It's funny. I
Speaker 3: just had a very similar experience of my child this year.
Speaker 3: We did switchwich for the first time. This is our
Speaker 3: first real trick or treating year, and yeah, we did
Speaker 3: switch witch and she kept only the most disgusting candies.
Speaker 3: I think they were based on the colorfulness of the rapper,
Speaker 3: which tends to correspond with the actually least good candy.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff
Speaker 2: out there. I don't even know if Tutsi rolls were
Speaker 2: necessarily made. I mean surely Tutsi rolls were out there
Speaker 2: in circulation, and I assume Tutsi pops as well, because
Speaker 2: they were definitely in circulation when I was triggered treating
Speaker 2: back when I was a kid. So just to refresh,
Speaker 2: the tutsi roll itself is an eighteen ninety six invention,
Speaker 2: and I think that probably matches up with sort of
Speaker 2: like the chocolate chew aspect of the thing. If you
Speaker 2: were to have a tutsi role today, and maybe you're
Speaker 2: having one right now, I think it does feel like
Speaker 2: a classic candy in this regard. The Tutsi pop, however,
Speaker 2: was a nineteen thirty one innovation. To put that in
Speaker 2: cinematic terms, that is the year that the original Boris
Speaker 2: Carlos Frankenstein movie came out coincidence, and then it's much
Speaker 2: later though, in nineteen sixty nine, the year Frankenstein Must
Speaker 2: Be Destroyed comes out the hammer picture that we get
Speaker 2: what is probably one of, if not the most famous
Speaker 2: TV ad campaigns of all time, and I would also
Speaker 2: argue one of the best commercials of all time. I
Speaker 2: think everyone can. I think everyone out there has probably
Speaker 2: seen this. If you haven't, just go to YouTube or
Speaker 2: anywhere you will find video of this classic commercial. This
Speaker 2: is the how many licks does it take to get
Speaker 2: to the tutsi role center of a Tutsi pop commercial.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I would be wrong about this
Speaker 3: that I'm wondering if I am wrong. I have memories
Speaker 3: of being a kid in the not the late sixties
Speaker 3: or seventies. I have memories of being a child in
Speaker 3: the eighties and nineties and still seeing this original commercial airing.
Speaker 3: Do they just run the same commercial for decades?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It is often presented that this is the longest
Speaker 2: running televisionmercial of all time, and that's of course difficult
Speaker 2: to impossible to actually quantify, but it might be true,
Speaker 2: Like it is across multiple generations. People have seen this ad,
Speaker 2: and I think legitimately is a testament to just how
Speaker 2: good it is. Like it is just almost a perfect
Speaker 2: ad campaign.
Speaker 3: Okay, so wait for people who have never actually seen it,
Speaker 3: how does this ad go?
Speaker 2: All? Right? So it's brilliant. It's presented in the form
Speaker 2: of a fable in which a young boy brings this
Speaker 2: particular conundrum to a series of talking animals, first a cow,
Speaker 2: then a fox and turtle, and finally a wise owl.
Speaker 2: The child is wondering how many licks does it take
Speaker 2: to get to the center of this TUTSI pop And
Speaker 2: before I get into describing what happens, and I do
Speaker 2: want to just mention a little bit about the behind
Speaker 2: the scenes here because it's pretty interesting. It was directed
Speaker 2: by Jimmy T. Murakami, American Irish animator of Japanese American heritage,
Speaker 2: who directed a segment of nineteen eighty one's Heavy Metal
Speaker 2: and nineteen eighties Battle Beyond the Stars, which we've discussed
Speaker 2: on in depth on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Oh, Okay, Battle Beyond was that the Roger Corman Star
Speaker 3: Wars ripoff. Yes, yeah, okay, the good one Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then among the vocal talents involved, it featured the
Speaker 2: prolific Paul Freese mister Fox. He does a voice of
Speaker 2: mister Fox here. Paul Freese has his voice and sometimes
Speaker 2: his physical performance have shown up in multiple films that
Speaker 2: we've talked about on a Weird House, like When You
Speaker 2: Go to Letterbox dot Com and look at the stats
Speaker 2: for the movies we've covered, Paul Freeze is up there
Speaker 2: in appearing in the most titles that we've covered, just
Speaker 2: sort of incidentally because you just did a lot of
Speaker 2: bit parts and voices. But then you also have in
Speaker 2: this voicing the wise owl, legendary ventriloquist Paul Winschell. He
Speaker 2: was the original tigger voice, for example, So he's doing
Speaker 2: the owl voice. And the short itself was written by
Speaker 2: ad wizard Jerry Bernstein and looked into him a little bit,
Speaker 2: and he's He's was a big name, and part of
Speaker 2: his legendary status was this campaign. Like this is almost
Speaker 2: like this is like a Madman like level successful ad
Speaker 2: campaign like it again, survived for decades and still has
Speaker 2: cultural reach and importance today.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, I guess I never thought about it like that,
Speaker 3: but it is like one of the ads I really
Speaker 3: remember most from childhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it is legitimately thought provoking. Like let's start
Speaker 2: with the question, you know, how much how many licks
Speaker 2: does it take to get to the center of this
Speaker 2: this tutsi roll pop that implies how much candy does
Speaker 2: a single lick remove from a tutsi pop? How do
Speaker 2: we quantify it, and indeed, when have we actually reached
Speaker 2: the center of the thing, as we'll discuss, This is
Speaker 2: a question that truly ensnares the listener and forces them
Speaker 2: to contemplate the infantiesimal. So, but then there's also the
Speaker 2: way that is it is presented. So the cow, fox,
Speaker 2: and turtle all reply that, hey, we don't know. We
Speaker 2: can't know because we just end up biting through the
Speaker 2: candy too soon. We just bite through it, so we
Speaker 2: can't answer this question. We've never really attempted to have
Speaker 2: the experience you're seeking to quantify. And they say you
Speaker 2: should go ask the wise owl, and so the child does,
Speaker 2: and the wise owl's answer to the question it smacks
Speaker 2: of both the Gordian knot, you know, in which the
Speaker 2: Gordian knot is untied by cutting it into half. And
Speaker 2: then it also it feels vaguely almost like a like
Speaker 2: a Buddhist coon, you know, a phraser riddle that serves
Speaker 2: as a meditation tool, sometimes in the form of a paradox,
Speaker 2: like what is the sound of one hand clapping? And
Speaker 2: so the way the owl says, well, I will answer
Speaker 2: this question for you. Give me the tootsi pop, and
Speaker 2: he do an experiment. He says, let's do an experiment.
Speaker 2: He says, let's find out, and he goes. He licks
Speaker 2: it and says A one, looks at another time, says
Speaker 2: a two, looks at a third time and says A three,
Speaker 2: And then Crunch bites through it and then answers three
Speaker 2: three is the answer, And the child is not amused
Speaker 2: and says, if there's anything I can't stand, it's a
Speaker 2: smart owl. And then the narrator of the commercial asks
Speaker 2: the question once more and says, we may never know.
Speaker 3: So, in addition to being funny, it's actually, at the
Speaker 3: risk of sounding silly, it's actually kind of philosophically interesting
Speaker 3: because I think so it points out that there are
Speaker 3: questions that we can ask that sound like perfectly sensible
Speaker 3: questions that in fact do not contain enough specificity in
Speaker 3: the question to actually be answered.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good read of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I wonder too if they're Like what else we could
Speaker 2: take away from it? Like should we feel ashamed that
Speaker 2: we can't truly savor something like this that long, that
Speaker 2: will eventually grow tired or impatient and simply rush to
Speaker 2: the big finish of a thing. Yeah, that too, or
Speaker 2: are we meant or are we simply you know, refuting
Speaker 2: the logic of the question. You know, maybe TOUTSI pops
Speaker 2: are simply not meant to be licked to the center.
Speaker 2: You know, perhaps you're supposed to crunch through it. Maybe
Speaker 2: some things in life are like that. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it is also interesting to think about it. This
Speaker 2: is a case where an attempt to measure the perhaps immeasurable,
Speaker 2: is always interrupted by desire. So there's perhaps something telling
Speaker 2: there like desire prevents you from answering the question, and
Speaker 2: maybe what does that say about human nature?
Speaker 3: The idea of getting to the center of a tissy
Speaker 3: pop sounds uncomplicated, but actually it's a very complicated proposition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, despite how amusing it is and infectious,
Speaker 2: the idea again legendary commercial. I can scarcely think of
Speaker 2: one that it just sticks in the mind more. But
Speaker 2: still it does ask a question that is subject to experimentation.
Speaker 2: And since this commercial has aired so long and so often,
Speaker 2: you know, it has this huge pop culture footprint across
Speaker 2: multiple generations, so plenty of folks over time have taken
Speaker 2: this question, experimented it with it, and produced varying results
Speaker 2: and this, you know, it varies. I've seen cases where
Speaker 2: it's scientists doing it, you know, probably at least partially
Speaker 2: as a lark. Other cases, this is the sort of
Speaker 2: question that makes for a great student experiment at various levels.
Speaker 2: I've seen like you know, college and graduate students writing
Speaker 2: about this, and I'm sure it has also been explored
Speaker 2: in like science fairs and the like. Definitely, So I'm
Speaker 2: not sure it would be the best use of our
Speaker 2: time to go through all of the results or even
Speaker 2: some of the big ones. I'm going to refer to
Speaker 2: a few here, but I thought maybe we could highlight
Speaker 2: some of the basic issues. So, first of all, this
Speaker 2: is a quandary of tribal corrosion, meaning the synergistic degradation
Speaker 2: of the material surface from the combined action of mechanical
Speaker 2: wear and chemical or electrochemical corrosion.
Speaker 3: All right, so there are at least two different things
Speaker 3: removing the material from the tutsi pop. One is mechanical,
Speaker 3: the scraping with the tongue, and one is chemical, the
Speaker 3: dissolving of the sugar content of the candy by the saliva.
Speaker 2: Right right. In general, tribocorrosion questions impact designs and everything
Speaker 2: from biomedical implants to aerospace. You know, this is this
Speaker 2: is an important area of study when you get into
Speaker 2: the designing things and figuring out what sort of materials
Speaker 2: are going to use and how are you going to
Speaker 2: deal with steady corrosion, be it like brutal, like ongoing corrosion,
Speaker 2: or something that is taking place at almost like a
Speaker 2: licking a tutsi roll level of of things. And more specifically,
Speaker 2: this is a question of bio tribocorrosion, as pointed out
Speaker 2: by row at All in twenty fourteen's Lessons from the
Speaker 2: Lollipop published in Tribology Letters.
Speaker 3: Now, as we alluded to earlier, answering the question how
Speaker 3: many licks does it take to get to the center
Speaker 3: is actually not a straightforward question to answer. You kind
Speaker 3: of have to break this, you'd like, have to add
Speaker 3: some detail or break it down into smaller questions.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. Yeah, It ultimately involves the quantification of
Speaker 2: a number of factors. So, first of all, we're generally
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how many licks does it take
Speaker 2: to remove a single millimeter of hard candy thickness? Okay,
Speaker 2: how many millimeters of hard candy thickness exist between the
Speaker 2: surface and the tutsi roll center of the pop. Generally,
Speaker 2: I think you're looking to reach just the threshold or
Speaker 2: surface of that chocolate center, and then supposedly we would
Speaker 2: have the answer, right if we knew these two factors.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like, Okay, if I know how fast
Speaker 2: my car is traveling and I know how far I
Speaker 2: need to drive, then I can compare. I can use
Speaker 2: these two facts to figure out how long it takes
Speaker 2: to get there, right.
Speaker 3: You would think so, but what if getting there in
Speaker 3: your car is like a poorly defined area or range.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that this seems to be perhaps the
Speaker 2: biggest factor in the papers I was looking at. So
Speaker 2: despite being a mass produced candy product, you know, in
Speaker 2: which you know, pretty much every Tutsi pop to the
Speaker 2: casual eye looks exactly like the next Toutsi pop, you know,
Speaker 2: unless there's a difference in flavor of the hard candy shell.
Speaker 2: You know, it is almost almost an icon of the
Speaker 2: industrial candy age. And yet not every Tutsi roll pop
Speaker 2: is the same. Specifically, the size and shape of the
Speaker 2: Tutsi rolls center has been found in studies to vary
Speaker 2: from sucker to sucker, and not in not in a
Speaker 2: way that necessarily influences the experiencing of eating the thing.
Speaker 2: So it's not like, you know, this would pass some
Speaker 2: sort of like a QA test for Tutsi rolls pop
Speaker 2: Tutsi roll pops. But when you're getting into this very
Speaker 2: specific quest question, it's going to complicate attempts to generate
Speaker 2: a catch all answer.
Speaker 3: I have no evidence of this, but I just had
Speaker 3: the thought, what if the creation of Tutsi roll pops
Speaker 3: was a way to make use of poorly formed tutsi
Speaker 3: rolls that came off the assembly line with not the
Speaker 3: right shape.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean such You see such things occurring
Speaker 2: in food products for sure, A tater tot. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I suspect it has something to do with
Speaker 2: like the way that the Tutsi pop is produced. Here.
Speaker 2: Another issue that will become important later on is the
Speaker 2: Tutsi pop also features a thick, longitudinal band of hard candy,
Speaker 2: so it's almost like like it's a planet with a
Speaker 2: ring on it, and then it is turned up so
Speaker 2: that the ring is vertical instead of horizontal. If you
Speaker 2: have a Tutsi roll pop in your mouth right now,
Speaker 2: remove it. Take a look at it, you'll see what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, unless you have sucked the pop down
Speaker 2: enough to wear that particular band and is no longer present.
Speaker 3: It's also like a really pronounced version of the ring
Speaker 3: ridge running around Saturn's moon yapotus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. Okay. Another factor is
Speaker 2: the positioning of the candy center tends to be a
Speaker 2: bit off, so it very much depends. So in other words,
Speaker 2: it's not like we might think of this as like
Speaker 2: a cross section of a planet where you're going to
Speaker 2: have like the various layers and then you're going to
Speaker 2: get down to the core, and the core is going
Speaker 2: to essentially be, you know, a spherical object in the
Speaker 2: center of the pop. But this doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: the case. It can be rather lopsided, if you see.
Speaker 2: You can see in some of these papers where they've
Speaker 2: sawed through the candy to show like where the tutsi
Speaker 2: roll center lies. It's not always at the center. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's pushed up more towards the top, and it definitely
Speaker 2: can be pushed more to one side or the other,
Speaker 2: so the candy center can be closer to the surface
Speaker 2: on one side of the side or versus another, meaning
Speaker 2: that one side will often offer at least a slightly
Speaker 2: shorter licking pathway to the center to the surface of
Speaker 2: the tutsi roll center devilish. So again, lots of recorded
Speaker 2: experiments on this quandary, both as a kind of fun
Speaker 2: lark by professionals as well as by students, and in fact,
Speaker 2: some of the student papers are really good. There's actually
Speaker 2: a really good twenty fifteen student paper from the University
Speaker 2: of Wisconsin is titled World May Never Know, Unwrapping the
Speaker 2: Mystery of the Tutsi Pop by Tyler T. Schmidt. It's
Speaker 2: published in the University of Wisconsin's Minds Journal, and the
Speaker 2: individual who wrote this also conducted his own research. That's
Speaker 2: the great thing about this is that generally the research
Speaker 2: is very easily obtainable. All you need are tutsi pops
Speaker 2: and some tongues. You could just do it with the
Speaker 2: one tongue you have in your mouth, or like some
Speaker 2: of these studies, they talk about acquiring human liquors some
Speaker 2: test subjects in on the action. So Schmidt in that
Speaker 2: paper did refer back to some other studies. I'm just
Speaker 2: going to throw out some numbers here because it will
Speaker 2: give you an idea of some of the range we're
Speaker 2: dealing with, because we get again some wildly different estimates
Speaker 2: on how many licks it takes. He cites a paper
Speaker 2: by Zerra from nineteen ninety six involved twenty two trials.
Speaker 2: Average number of licks to get to that center. One
Speaker 2: hundred and forty two sounds low to me. Then there's
Speaker 2: a Wakespan paper from twentousand and nine, twenty two trials
Speaker 2: as well, two hundred and fifty four licks to reveal
Speaker 2: one side of that TUTSI roll center.
Speaker 3: Huh, that's a big range.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that study also looked like, okay,
Speaker 2: how many licks total, like they wanted to expose both sides.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Again, you have to really nail these
Speaker 2: things down before you attempt to answer. And then there's
Speaker 2: a there's a really good overview that was provided by
Speaker 2: Corey Hyde in twenty thirteen for the Royal Statistical Society's
Speaker 2: Journals Sgnificance. The title of this was Tutsi pops colon
Speaker 2: how many licks to the chocolate.
Speaker 3: To the chocolate? Something sounds kind of terse about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you're being generous calling it chocolate,
Speaker 2: but anyway get the So this author points out that
Speaker 2: three different US universities at least have not only used
Speaker 2: human licking trials to try and answer the question, but
Speaker 2: they have also constructed licking machines.
Speaker 3: God bless them wonderful licking machines.
Speaker 2: Now a note on licking machines. We're talking about custom
Speaker 2: made machines in these situations that would utilize some manner
Speaker 2: of soft artificial tongue or some sort of tongue like
Speaker 2: you know, implement that would be mechanically used to apply
Speaker 2: lick after lick to the sucker. Not to be confused
Speaker 2: with the various licking machines that will pop up if you,
Speaker 2: like me, do a search on your work computer for
Speaker 2: that turn. So there are other devices. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe in the future someone will take some of these
Speaker 2: devices and use them to try and solve the TUTSI
Speaker 2: roll pop enigma.
Speaker 3: But licking machines designed for personal use are not what
Speaker 3: we're used in these studies.
Speaker 2: These are I believe created for the experiments. But even
Speaker 2: then there seems to be just some wild variety in
Speaker 2: the results we get. So according to hyde, licking machine
Speaker 2: results for each of these three universities. Purdue University took
Speaker 2: three hundred and sixty four mechanical licks, University of Michigan
Speaker 2: four hundred and eleven mechanical licks, Harvard University's licking machine
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty five licks.
Speaker 3: That sounds like that's got to be a difference in
Speaker 3: method or malfunction or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's that's pretty far away from like the
Speaker 2: various human licking trials, which, by the way, it also
Speaker 2: points to three different university studies that used human licking trials. Again,
Speaker 2: Purdue University was involved two hundred and fifty two licks,
Speaker 2: Swarthmore College one hundred and forty four licks, and then
Speaker 2: the University of Cambridge four hundred and eighty one licks.
Speaker 2: What I don't know. Again, I didn't get into all
Speaker 2: the details of how they conducted their experiment versus others,
Speaker 2: But I mean, it just goes to show that depending
Speaker 2: on how you roll out the question and how you
Speaker 2: attempt to answer it, you could get some crazy different numbers. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this sounds like this's got to be a different
Speaker 3: threshold they're going for or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this probably goes without saying, but I want
Speaker 2: to drive home that none of these experiments human or
Speaker 2: a machine involved the chomp of desire, because you could
Speaker 2: easily question that. You could say, well, after one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty four licks, they just gave up and bit it.
Speaker 2: They're just like the owl. The commercial was absolutely correct.
Speaker 2: Three four hundred and eighty one is what you get
Speaker 2: if desire is somehow absolutely prohibited. But no, no, these
Speaker 2: are all just pure licks, no chumps.
Speaker 3: Now, I want to ask a question that challenges the
Speaker 3: very premise of this investigation and goes back to what
Speaker 3: the wise philosopher Owl may have been implying. What if
Speaker 3: you don't actually get to the center by licking, You
Speaker 3: can only get to the center by chomping, because the
Speaker 3: achievement of the center is the satisfying chomp through the
Speaker 3: last bits of hard candy.
Speaker 2: You know, I would, I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 2: strong argument for that. I read this may be apocryphal,
Speaker 2: because you know, you encounter this sort of thing certainly
Speaker 2: in the creation of candies and an invention in general.
Speaker 2: But I think the idea was that the I may
Speaker 2: have this backwards, but I think the inventor of the
Speaker 2: tutsi role pop the guy who proposed this idea. He
Speaker 2: was eating a tutsi roll and at the same time
Speaker 2: he took a lick of his kids sucker, and he
Speaker 2: was like, these two go great together. So if that
Speaker 2: is indeed true, and that is the genesis of the idea,
Speaker 2: then you perhaps have to ask yourself which experience gives
Speaker 2: you that taste combination the best, because if it were
Speaker 2: a piece of sushi, right, you don't lick to get
Speaker 2: the center of a sushi role the ideas you want
Speaker 2: to encount. You want to have it all at once.
Speaker 2: I mean, not that there's I guess the wrong way
Speaker 2: to eat it. I guess it's valid as well, But yeah,
Speaker 2: you could you could easily ask, well, which which version
Speaker 2: gets you the combination of, say, the orange hard candy
Speaker 2: and the tutsi roll at the same time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Now.
Speaker 2: Hide also pointed out that via their own slicing of
Speaker 2: tutsi pops in half, they became concerned that the center
Speaker 2: is more coin shaped than it is spherical, and thought
Speaker 2: that having human liquors go at the thicker banded part
Speaker 2: of the sucker was actually the way to go. You know,
Speaker 2: this would mean you it would inevitably mean more licks
Speaker 2: to get to the center because you're going at the
Speaker 2: thick is part. But they thought that this would enable
Speaker 2: the liquors to quote find the center with much smaller variability.
Speaker 2: And their answer via experimentation like this was four hundred
Speaker 2: and seventeen licks, give or take thirty nine licks. So
Speaker 2: I don't know's I guess the idea is again, it
Speaker 2: would just be more uniform and you would have a
Speaker 2: definite place to start. Hyde also looked at variables in
Speaker 2: human saliva and in individual tongue details, and these included
Speaker 2: lick force, mouth temperature, pH, level of saliva, and solubility level.
Speaker 2: Only the latter seemed to have an observable impact, and
Speaker 2: even it had little to no effect on average licks.
Speaker 2: So everything the author here contends really has to do
Speaker 2: with the positioning of the candy center inside the sucker.
Speaker 2: The other factors did not apparently have that much of
Speaker 2: an impact, like person to person, liquor to.
Speaker 3: Liquor, or they might kind of even out on a.
Speaker 2: Yah are certainly even out when you're dealing with enough
Speaker 2: tongues licking enough lollipops, which is of course you know
Speaker 2: with any scientific experiment, like that's what you're looking for,
Speaker 2: like not what is not what the exceptional liquor does,
Speaker 2: but what does the average liquor accomplish, you know, over
Speaker 2: multiple test subjects. So I think there's a strong case
Speaker 2: to be made here that that you really have to
Speaker 2: have a standardized lick location for these experiments, and you
Speaker 2: have to take into account the variability in the candy
Speaker 2: core and like that that's key. If you dismiss the
Speaker 2: idea that each TOTSI pop is a little bit different
Speaker 2: compared to the next, than you're kind of doomed from
Speaker 2: the start.
Speaker 3: Can I bring up one possible way this research is interesting.
Speaker 3: I guess we've sort of already touched on this, but
Speaker 3: to make it more explicit, this research might be interesting
Speaker 3: in the way it illuminates the gaps between a mechanistic
Speaker 3: or quantitative understanding of a behavioral phenomenon and the enjoyment
Speaker 3: or experience we get out of that phenomenon. This comes
Speaker 3: back to, you know, the wisdom of the owl. Is
Speaker 3: it really getting to the center if you lick your
Speaker 3: way all the way to the center and you deny
Speaker 3: yourself the bite, which at least the owl obviously likes.
Speaker 3: The owl likes biting through part of the candy to
Speaker 3: get to the center that is defining the experience for
Speaker 3: the owl. And thus, by even if you come up
Speaker 3: with a really good method to investigate this and you
Speaker 3: find out, you know, okay, this is a reliable way
Speaker 3: of knowing how many licks it takes to get to
Speaker 3: the center, just by licking, you have misunderstood the question
Speaker 3: of the Tutsi pop's existence and you have not really
Speaker 3: found what makes the Tutsi pop valuable to people. And
Speaker 3: this is a common thing actually, and not just in
Speaker 3: you know, funny little experiments like this, but in very
Speaker 3: real experiments, especially in the social sciences, like we can find.
Speaker 3: And this is not at all to criticize quantitytive ways
Speaker 3: of exploring the world, but it's to remember there's a
Speaker 3: difference between quantitatively studying a phenomenon that affects human life
Speaker 3: and understanding the value of that phenomenon to human life.
Speaker 3: If that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because you know, once you get to the
Speaker 2: center of the Tutsi pop, it's also over. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, the experience is done with and then I guess,
Speaker 2: especially if you're a kid on Halloween in like the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties, you just move on to
Speaker 2: the next Tutsi pop. You've probably got six of them
Speaker 2: in there, and yes, you are going to eat all
Speaker 2: of them in one Halloween night. But I'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from folks out there. What was your approach to
Speaker 2: eating a Tutsi roll pop? What is it like today?
Speaker 2: Did you chomp through it? Did you actually lick through
Speaker 2: the whole thing? Yeah? Feel free to share your thoughts
Speaker 2: on the philosophy and the experimental science of this whole scenario. Likewise,
Speaker 2: magical licking and spitting too, for that matter, examples from
Speaker 2: Magic Systems, real and imagined. If you've got something you
Speaker 2: would like to share with us on these, definitely ride
Speaker 2: in and chat with us. Absolutely again. We'll be back
Speaker 2: in our next core episode of Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind to continue our exploration of licking. We'll definitely get
Speaker 2: into more animal world licking. We will probably talk about
Speaker 2: cats and dogs and who knows what else. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays
Speaker 2: and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcast My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M