Speaker 1: Welcome to scust to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: I'm so excited because today we're diving into the snake pit.
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, not slashes snake pit, which we were
Speaker 1: discussing before we started recording the show, but this idea
Speaker 1: of a pit of snakes, the sort of place you
Speaker 1: might want to drop a doomed hero or a damsel
Speaker 1: in distress, that sort of thing, right, And what I
Speaker 1: think the great place to start here is by discussing
Speaker 1: a sort of snake pit. I think it's very much
Speaker 1: a snake pit that we encounter in Raiders of the
Speaker 1: Lost Dark, a film that we've we've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about on the show we did. We
Speaker 1: did a couple of episodes on the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant that I encourage everyone everyone to go back and
Speaker 1: listen to. Where we we spin off. We frequently refer
Speaker 1: back to Raiders for examples of things that Raiders does
Speaker 1: that refers to various uh qualities of the arc in
Speaker 1: ancient traditions. I was just thinking back on those Ark
Speaker 1: of the Covenant episodes, because I remember we talked about
Speaker 1: this one professor from the the nineteen twenties or thirties
Speaker 1: who had this crank theory that the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant was a real historical artifact and it was a
Speaker 1: giant electrical capacitor. Yes, yeah, that was pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But what I was laughing at when you were talking,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I sort of interrupted, but I was
Speaker 1: laughing the fact that you called the pit in Raiders
Speaker 1: a sort of snake pit. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely
Speaker 1: a snake pit. I don't I don't want to beat
Speaker 1: around the bush here. It's very much a snake pit. Um.
Speaker 1: It is an amazing and really game changing one of
Speaker 1: the many amazing and game changing sequences in the film. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is the Well of Soul sequence. Now to refresh everybody. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, the Well of Souls is an actual place.
Speaker 1: It's a partially man made cave located inside the foundation
Speaker 1: stone under the Dome of the Rock Shrine in Jerusalem. Uh.
Speaker 1: The name itself Pit of Souls. Well of Souls stems
Speaker 1: from medieval Islamic legend and this is where the spirits
Speaker 1: of the dead or supposedly awaiting judgment day, but that
Speaker 1: that it has nothing or very little to do with
Speaker 1: the Well of Souls that we encounter in Raiders of
Speaker 1: the Lost Ark in Raiders the Well of Souls, and
Speaker 1: this is straight from the Indiana Jones wiki is quote
Speaker 1: part of a temple built within the ancient city of
Speaker 1: Tennis where the Ark of the Covenant was placed after
Speaker 1: Pharaoh Shishak stole it from Jerusalem. Again, that is entirely
Speaker 1: within the context of the Indiana Jones world. Don't confuse
Speaker 1: that with actual history right now, there is no indication
Speaker 1: that there's an actual pit of snakes in any archaeological
Speaker 1: site in ancient Egypt, right but it makes for a
Speaker 1: great scene because, of course, as we remember, what happens
Speaker 1: is that uh Indiana Jones and his cohorts discovered that, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the actual resting place of the arc. The
Speaker 1: Nazis are off, they're digging in the wrong spot. So
Speaker 1: they open it up, and of course they immediately see
Speaker 1: it's full of snakes. He hates snakes. They lower him
Speaker 1: down anyway, they go his his friend, who is it,
Speaker 1: Sala Sala, Yes, Sala goes down with him. They crank
Speaker 1: the the arc up, and then that's when Belloc and
Speaker 1: the Nazis show up. They steal the arc and just
Speaker 1: for sheer meanness, they throw Marian down there into the
Speaker 1: pit with him, and then they seal him inside with
Speaker 1: a bazilion snakes. Uh, there there are some bad dudes.
Speaker 1: And so now, yes, now are our hero and heroine
Speaker 1: are stuck down in the dark with a bunch of snakes.
Speaker 1: Actually they're not in the dark. I just remember that.
Speaker 1: I guess there are torches throughout the room. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: dropped a lot of torches. So it's actually remarkably and
Speaker 1: unrealistically well lit. Right, So this the scene, of course,
Speaker 1: is ultimately above reproach. Like like, there's so much in
Speaker 1: the film that if you think about it too hard,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make a lot of sense. But if you're
Speaker 1: just writing the roller coaster that is the film, it's
Speaker 1: pretty great. It famously required some I think seven thousand snakes,
Speaker 1: including cobras, which were the only venomous snakes used. Reticulated pythons,
Speaker 1: which are native to Asia, not Egypt, but they're there. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a Kenyan sand boa that you can find in Egypt,
Speaker 1: but not a reticulated python. Uh. In the In the sequence,
Speaker 1: they also used legless lizards known as glass lizards, and
Speaker 1: if you look around online you'll frequently see that the
Speaker 1: herpetologist seems to have seemed to have a lot of
Speaker 1: fun watching the sequence and picking out as many snakes
Speaker 1: species as possible, because they apparently just were like, bring
Speaker 1: us all the snakes. If you have snakes that can
Speaker 1: be a part of our film, we need them. Dude.
Speaker 1: I breat that brought out some weird guys. It's like, why, yes,
Speaker 1: I have quite a few snakes. Yeah. So herpetologists have
Speaker 1: spotted other python species in that sequence, garter snakes and
Speaker 1: um and while actual cobras are used to wonderful effect
Speaker 1: in there, Jonathan Crow on Snakes on Film, a website
Speaker 1: which you can look up, points out that we see
Speaker 1: a monocled cobra rather than an Egyptian cobra, probably due
Speaker 1: to the Egyptian cobra's infamous temperament. So it's just ultimately
Speaker 1: easier to shoot with a monocled cobra. Nobody's going to
Speaker 1: notice the difference except herpetologists anyway. I think this is
Speaker 1: the cobra that you can actually see slightly reflected in glass.
Speaker 1: When there's glass between Harrison Ford and and the snake
Speaker 1: that's not supposed to be there. It's a it's an effect,
Speaker 1: I guess, to create safety. Uh. And I remember that
Speaker 1: being one of the first movie goofs I ever spotted
Speaker 1: that you could actually see the reflection in the glass
Speaker 1: when you when there was not supposed to be glass there. Huh.
Speaker 1: You know, I watched that film um constantly at one
Speaker 1: point as a kid, and I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: noticed that. But part of that might have been that
Speaker 1: our copy was like a VHS copy that my aunt
Speaker 1: had made when it aired on HBO or something like that,
Speaker 1: So maybe the details of that were lost in the transfer.
Speaker 1: That's what they were counting on. Also just on snake Magic,
Speaker 1: because hey, you can get carried away in snake Magic.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes you lose focus to the finer points. So,
Speaker 1: as we said, herpetologists have a great time sort of
Speaker 1: spotting the the different species ultimately kind of spotting the
Speaker 1: flaws in the sequence. But of course one of the
Speaker 1: big questions, one of the guess the big flaws that
Speaker 1: comes up that and if you've watched this as an
Speaker 1: adult or watched it too many times, you've probably wondered this, Hey,
Speaker 1: what are all those snakes doing down there? To begin with? Right,
Speaker 1: I always had this exact same thought. Why are they there?
Speaker 1: Do they live there all the time or do they
Speaker 1: come and go? If they come and go, why do
Speaker 1: they come to the Well of Souls? What's for them there?
Speaker 1: If they live there all the time, how do they survive?
Speaker 1: Don't they need to eat something? Is somebody coming in
Speaker 1: and feeding them? Like? Do they just eat each other?
Speaker 1: That wouldn't make any and so we've talked on the
Speaker 1: show before about how like a closed, exclusively cannibalistic population
Speaker 1: can't survive for any significant period of time because you
Speaker 1: need inputs of energy from the outside. It just it
Speaker 1: just doesn't make sense. Well, there's your there's some room
Speaker 1: for expanded universe fiction. There the secret cult of of
Speaker 1: priests who take care of the Well of Souls and
Speaker 1: feed seven thousand snakes weekend and week out throughout you
Speaker 1: know the history of the place. That's a lot of gerbils.
Speaker 1: Now I decided to think about I thought about this
Speaker 1: long and hard the other day, probably harder than I've
Speaker 1: I've ever thought about. The snake sequence in Ark of
Speaker 1: the Covenant and I did. I decided to try and
Speaker 1: give it a grain of salt here, you know, and
Speaker 1: try and you know, think about a reason for all
Speaker 1: this to happen. And you could, I guess you could argue, Okay,
Speaker 1: the Arc of the Covenant is down there, and as
Speaker 1: we know from the film, as you know from other
Speaker 1: accounts in those past episodes of stuff to boil your mind,
Speaker 1: that the Arc is supposed to do weird thing. It
Speaker 1: has weird properties. It does magical and sort of doomy
Speaker 1: things to its immediate surroundings. Right, it strikes the sons
Speaker 1: of Aaron dead after they bring strange fire in front
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, so I started thinking, well, what if
Speaker 1: it actually generated the snakes. I don't know that this
Speaker 1: option has ever been explored, and maybe it has, because
Speaker 1: one thing to think about is the Arc, after all,
Speaker 1: was said to contain, among other relics, Aaron's rod, which
Speaker 1: Moses was said to have cast down so that it
Speaker 1: might transform into a snake and eat the snakes transfigured
Speaker 1: out of the rods that were cast down by some
Speaker 1: Egyptian magicians. That myth sounds a lot funnier when you
Speaker 1: paraphrase it. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's presented better in you know,
Speaker 1: the original text, but at any rate, it's rods turning
Speaker 1: into snakes duking it out for magicians. But you're saying
Speaker 1: it might be magic. I think that makes sense in
Speaker 1: the context of the movie. Maybe those snakes are magic
Speaker 1: snakes generated somehow by the arc and they don't need
Speaker 1: to eat. Right. But if you're gonna be a you know,
Speaker 1: a total major todd about the whole deal and shout
Speaker 1: the ARC's power, then the question remains, why would a
Speaker 1: bunch of snakes species details aside, you know, ignoring the
Speaker 1: fact that it seems to have drawn in snakes from
Speaker 1: around the world, why would they be holding up in
Speaker 1: a desert tomb like this, because, like you said, surely
Speaker 1: there's nothing down there for them to eat, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: why would there be rats down there? And what would
Speaker 1: the rats be feasting on? Um. The The other big idea,
Speaker 1: and one that will discuss a lot in this episode,
Speaker 1: are would be with the question are the snakes, you know,
Speaker 1: seeking shelter there? And if so, what are they seeking
Speaker 1: shelter from? Are they seeking shelter from the desert heat? Uh?
Speaker 1: That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Because, uh,
Speaker 1: if you remember from the film, Indiana's descending into the
Speaker 1: tomb at the coolest part of the night, like it's
Speaker 1: the it's like the the very late portion of the evening,
Speaker 1: very early morning that they're descending. They go in when
Speaker 1: it's dark and they come out when it's daylight. Yes,
Speaker 1: it seems like that'd be the time the snakes should
Speaker 1: be out and about on the hunt. So we're going
Speaker 1: to continue to chew on this question as we continue
Speaker 1: on through this episode, because we're gonna be looking at
Speaker 1: the very idea of a pit of serpents as it
Speaker 1: appears throughout fiction, human mythology as well as the natural world,
Speaker 1: and the the science of snake pits turned out to
Speaker 1: be far more interesting than I would have imagined going in.
Speaker 1: So uh so that's gonna be the last thing we
Speaker 1: get to and I promise you it's a pretty darn
Speaker 1: good payoff. Yes. Now, the next place obviously goes to
Speaker 1: look at other cinema cinematic snake pits that have occurred before,
Speaker 1: some of them before Raiders of the Lost Arts, some
Speaker 1: of them afterwards. But I think they serve to sort
Speaker 1: of further illustrate the trope and we we have to
Speaker 1: point out that we used a website that was actually
Speaker 1: recommended to us by our compatriot, Lauren vogelbaumb. It's um.
Speaker 1: It's maintained by Gary Nafis, who runs a website titled
Speaker 1: Guide A Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of California.
Speaker 1: And he has this list snakes in movies. So if
Speaker 1: you go to California herbs dot com slash films slash
Speaker 1: Snakes in Movies list at html, that's the website. And
Speaker 1: it's really just a great database of films that have
Speaker 1: featured snakes in general pits in some cases, but many
Speaker 1: times mostly without pits. Uh. And then uh, Gary adds
Speaker 1: his thoughts about the snakes. We see how realistic it is.
Speaker 1: And there are pictures as well. Yeah, and you might
Speaker 1: be thinking, well, I don't need to be told there's
Speaker 1: a snake in the movie Anaconda, for say, it's it's
Speaker 1: got more obscure ones as well. Yeah, it's it's you
Speaker 1: think you know snakes in films, but but you don't
Speaker 1: know them as well as Gary does. I actually I
Speaker 1: exchanged a couple of emails with him to make sure
Speaker 1: he was crediting him correctly on this website, and he
Speaker 1: did point out that he rarely sees an actual snake
Speaker 1: pit in a film. And uh, but but we're gonna
Speaker 1: list a few examples here that that do, according to Gary,
Speaker 1: have snake pits. Okay, what's first? All right, Well, the
Speaker 1: first one here, and these are not in any picular order.
Speaker 1: There's one from nineteen seventy four titled The Snake Girl,
Speaker 1: in which an evil woman throws her adopted sister into
Speaker 1: a snake pit to die, but she mates with a
Speaker 1: snake and a snake girl is born. Apparently it's a
Speaker 1: it's a Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia production. Uh And and
Speaker 1: this is all we need to know from Gary's right
Speaker 1: up quote. Big Madame's henchman throws her into a snake
Speaker 1: pit to die. Instead, she lies down and caresses a
Speaker 1: big snake, and the next thing we see is baby
Speaker 1: snake girl surrounded by snakes. Okay, now, the next one,
Speaker 1: this is actually one from his list that I accidentally included. Um,
Speaker 1: there are several different plays on like evil snake Girl
Speaker 1: or devil woman, Like there's this devilish femininity that is
Speaker 1: assigned to snakes at times and this particular one is
Speaker 1: Devil Woman, Evil Snake Girl from nineteen seventy and you
Speaker 1: should definitely look up the trailer for this one, because
Speaker 1: the English language trailer from you know, kind of has
Speaker 1: this this weird grindhouse vibe to it, and it's it's
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing. The picture itself is from the Philippines and
Speaker 1: it has loads of snakes and Medusa hair and uh
Speaker 1: a bunch of like extended martial arts action sequences. The
Speaker 1: narration promises the movie will strip your nerves screamingly raw,
Speaker 1: screamingly raw. Yeah. Now, another one that Gary includes on
Speaker 1: the list is one that that we're both very familiar with,
Speaker 1: The Blade Master, better known especially to fans of Mystery
Speaker 1: Science Theater three thousand as Cave Dwellers from N four.
Speaker 1: Absolute classic. Yeah, this is this is a Joe Dermato film.
Speaker 1: Um and I've I've seen it multiple times, yet I
Speaker 1: completely forgot about the snake pit, probably because it's a
Speaker 1: pretty skimpy snake pit, not many snakes. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a very small concrete pool that has
Speaker 1: been drained of water and filled with just a puddle
Speaker 1: of snakes. Um, and that's about it. Yeah, so Cave
Speaker 1: Dwellers is one of the great leather type or Barbarian movies.
Speaker 1: I think it's not quite as exquisite as your Hunter
Speaker 1: from the Future, but it's up there. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think the snake pit scene in this is a kind
Speaker 1: of straightforward attempt to rip off the snake tower pit
Speaker 1: in Cone in the Barbarian but in a very cheap
Speaker 1: and shaggy way. I remember one of the supposedly hilarious
Speaker 1: things about this scene in the movie is that the
Speaker 1: snakes growl instead of hissing, which, of course you know,
Speaker 1: that's the source of much amusement, kind of like if
Speaker 1: you had a pack of dogs in a movie that
Speaker 1: started to move. But here is where science intrudes, because
Speaker 1: we who laughed at that are now we are officially
Speaker 1: clowned by reality. I decided to look at the scientific
Speaker 1: literature just real quick to check and make sure there
Speaker 1: were no records of actual snakes that growl, and there
Speaker 1: absolutely are, so just to look at one paper. This
Speaker 1: was published in the Journal of Experimental Zoology in nineteen
Speaker 1: by Bruce A. Young, called Morphological Basis of Rowling in
Speaker 1: the King Cobra Opheophagus Hannah So Bruce Young notes anecdotal
Speaker 1: reports that while many snakes, of course produce a hissing sound,
Speaker 1: we all know that they'll they'll hiss in response to
Speaker 1: a thread as a kind of defensive signal. A couple
Speaker 1: of species of snake have been noted to emit a
Speaker 1: hiss that is so low in frequency really people say
Speaker 1: it sounds more like a growl, almost like the growl
Speaker 1: of a dog. And most notably this includes the king
Speaker 1: cobra Opheophagus Hannah, which seems to attain a deeper growl
Speaker 1: as it gets larger with age. And the snake grows
Speaker 1: longer as it gets older, and I think that this
Speaker 1: deepens the frequency of its vocalization. Right. Actually, I think technically,
Speaker 1: in scientific terms, it would not be called a vocalization
Speaker 1: because it's more based in the hissing emission of air.
Speaker 1: But so Young did a bioacoustic analysis of the defensive
Speaker 1: sounds produced by twenty one different species of snakes, and
Speaker 1: he writes quote, the typical a kiss is described as
Speaker 1: having a broad frequency span from roughly three thousand to
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand hurts and a dominant frequency near hurts. The
Speaker 1: growl of the king cobra differs from the typical snake
Speaker 1: kiss in consisting solely of frequencies below undred hurts with
Speaker 1: a dominant frequency near six hundred herds. So that's pretty
Speaker 1: low for a snake. And this growl appears to be
Speaker 1: an adaptation created by changes in the shape of the
Speaker 1: upper respiratory tract what Young calls quote tracheal diverticula, functioning
Speaker 1: as a low frequency resonating chamber. And they tested this
Speaker 1: idea a couple of ways. First of all, they constructed
Speaker 1: a fake mechanical model of the cobra's trachea, and then finally,
Speaker 1: their second test is just out of the park. You
Speaker 1: know that trick where you suck a helium balloon and
Speaker 1: then your voice gets really good. Well, they tried that
Speaker 1: on another type of growling snake known as the mangrove
Speaker 1: rat snake or ganio Soma oxy cephalum quote. Flushing the
Speaker 1: respiratory tract of G. Oxy cephalum with helium produces a
Speaker 1: shift of over a thousand hurts in the growl, a
Speaker 1: shift that is indicative of a resonance effect. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: king Cobra's growl, these mangrove rat snakes growl, and that
Speaker 1: that's so good. So perhaps this is a Do you
Speaker 1: think this is a situation where the film accidentally gets
Speaker 1: something right about the natural world, or do you think
Speaker 1: the filmmakers we're just familiar with the sort of sounds
Speaker 1: that some snakes actually make. I mean, I like to
Speaker 1: have a generous estimation of other people, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think in this case, they might have just bumbled
Speaker 1: into it. I don't know if we had herpetological geniuses
Speaker 1: on set here. Yeah, yeah, I guess it. I've seen
Speaker 1: some other Joe Diamatto films, and I would say that
Speaker 1: that that level of detail doesn't really match up with
Speaker 1: what I know of his work. I think this is
Speaker 1: just a dog mooing and then maybe later people found
Speaker 1: out that there are some breeds of dogs that move.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. All right, let's let's roll through
Speaker 1: a few other films here. Worth mentioning. Gunga Din from
Speaker 1: nine is certainly a film I've heard of before, I've
Speaker 1: never actually seen it. Uh, Indian cultists who I think
Speaker 1: are supposed to be um buggies, uh torturing British soldier
Speaker 1: by threatening to throw him into a snake pit. And
Speaker 1: this is again a famous film, probably an influence on Raiders,
Speaker 1: and almost certainly an influence on its follow up slash
Speaker 1: prequel Temple of doom Um. Again, haven't seen it, but
Speaker 1: I looked at a picture on on Gary's website, and
Speaker 1: I have to say, snake pit looks pretty shabby. I
Speaker 1: guess it's just yeah, there are a few. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there are two ways looking at it. Either
Speaker 1: you build that set and then you just you your
Speaker 1: eyes are bigger than your stomach when it comes to
Speaker 1: how many snakes you can actually fill it with, you know,
Speaker 1: or it's just hard to fill a space with snakes.
Speaker 1: Or it's a situation if you're if you're really afraid
Speaker 1: of snakes, if you're building designing that pit with a
Speaker 1: rich fear of snakes in mind, you don't have to
Speaker 1: add that mini they're right because you think, oh, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be after me. One snake is terrifying enough. I
Speaker 1: guess that's true. But snakes are not like lions. I mean,
Speaker 1: the snake would not want to be anywhere near you.
Speaker 1: I think the idea of a snake pit sort of
Speaker 1: works is something that's really scary. If it's just full
Speaker 1: of snakes, where the snakes couldn't even get away from you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. A few other ones that are worth mentioning
Speaker 1: Off of Gary's list, there's Entered the Devil from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, which which sounds pretty fun, he says, it's
Speaker 1: it involves quote a cult of monks with torches and
Speaker 1: brown hooded robes chanting in high church Latin. Uh, perform
Speaker 1: human sacrifices in an old mine in the desert. When
Speaker 1: they're not stabbing people through the heart, they like to
Speaker 1: throw their enemies into pits of rattlesnakes for a slower death. Okay,
Speaker 1: sounds fun. Uh. Seven's Angel of Vengeance or war Cat
Speaker 1: has a woman who is abducted and gets revenged by
Speaker 1: throwing one of her captors into a pit full of rattlesnakes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this seems to be like a California grindhouse style
Speaker 1: film with a with a with a sort of California
Speaker 1: style rattler pit. It sounds like there's a whole subgenre
Speaker 1: of rattlesnake pit movies. Yeah. Because, of course, the big
Speaker 1: examples of this would be uh, the nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: film adaptation of True Grit and the Cohen Brothers two
Speaker 1: thousand ten adaptation of True Grit. In both of them,
Speaker 1: a girl falls into an abandoned mine that is full
Speaker 1: of rattlesnakes, and uh, yeah, I've I've actually only seen
Speaker 1: the Cohen Brothers version of this, and I've never read
Speaker 1: the book, but but I like that what I saw
Speaker 1: quite a bit. The rattler den scene is quite memorable,
Speaker 1: and Gary offers this critique of the original version on
Speaker 1: his website. Quote, snakes do hibernating groups underground during the winter, uh,
Speaker 1: to keep them from freezing, and during summer to keep
Speaker 1: them from overheating. And if threatened by a girl with
Speaker 1: a stick, a rattlesnake would surely strike to protect itself.
Speaker 1: And it's only the one snake she gets too close
Speaker 1: to that bites her. The others just dispersed to get
Speaker 1: away from her. So uh. In other words, as far
Speaker 1: as snake pits and films go, this seems to be
Speaker 1: like one of the best examples, as in like the
Speaker 1: most realistic, most scientifics Yeah, the most realistic example. So
Speaker 1: there there are a few rattlers down there, presumably maybe
Speaker 1: maybe taking shelter from the heat of the sun or
Speaker 1: or sheltering for the winter. I guess that I think
Speaker 1: that takes place in a cold part of the year
Speaker 1: in true great The book by Charles Portis is a
Speaker 1: great read, by the way. Oh cool. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of those that I've had recommended to me before. Maybe
Speaker 1: the next time I'm in the mood for a good Western,
Speaker 1: I'll finally pick it up. So, but that's one of
Speaker 1: the more believable ones in the movies. Maybe maybe we
Speaker 1: should look back to the sources that that go back
Speaker 1: beyond these movies. Uh, I guess looking at the idea
Speaker 1: of snake pits in mythology and snake pits in reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll do it, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: Thank thank alright, we're back. So I spent a little
Speaker 1: time the other day looking around at various snakes in
Speaker 1: mythology and uh, and for a little bit I was
Speaker 1: having a hard time finding good examples of snake pits,
Speaker 1: because you see a lot of examples of solitary snakes
Speaker 1: and even giant snakes cosmic snakes um, rather than dens
Speaker 1: or pits of snakes. And I think there's probably a
Speaker 1: good reason for that. I mean, generally, when we encounter
Speaker 1: snakes in the world, we're encountering them engaging in solitary behavior.
Speaker 1: They're generally solitary predators. And on top of that, like
Speaker 1: we're very impressed by snakes, like snakes, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: make an impact on us. They are potentially dangerous to
Speaker 1: us depending on the species, And we have a lot
Speaker 1: of symbolic baggage that we uh, that we put on
Speaker 1: the snakes. So whenever we encounter a snake or see
Speaker 1: a snake, we have all of these other associations that
Speaker 1: are bound up in its identity. Yeah, and there's also
Speaker 1: still the interesting unresolved question of whether we have certain
Speaker 1: types of animal morphology is namely often snakes or spiders
Speaker 1: somehow instinctually recognizable. That that's not a fully settled question
Speaker 1: in science. I think there's still arguments on both sides.
Speaker 1: But we've talked about some of the research on that before,
Speaker 1: such as the idea that uh, even in babies who
Speaker 1: haven't been acclimatized to a culture that that puts emphasis
Speaker 1: on snakes, that say, their pupils might dilate in a
Speaker 1: special way when faced with images of snakes. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's look at a few different myth and mythic and
Speaker 1: legendary examples of snake pits, and ultimately, like the weird
Speaker 1: and wonderful thing about it is that these are all
Speaker 1: three that we're going to discuss related European myths, and
Speaker 1: not just like you know, um uh, necessarily continental Europe,
Speaker 1: but we're talking like far north. We're talking about Scandinavian tales,
Speaker 1: all of pits with venomous serpents in them. Northern Europe
Speaker 1: the place for snakes. Ye, so, and will definitely begin
Speaker 1: to unravel that question here in just a second. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the first example comes to us from Norse legend, the
Speaker 1: legend of Ragnar Lodbrock or loath Brock, king of Danes
Speaker 1: and Swedes. Uh. He was a staple of old Norse
Speaker 1: poetry and Icelandic sagas. He may have actually existed. He
Speaker 1: said to have been the father of three sons who
Speaker 1: led a vi king invasion of East Anglia in the
Speaker 1: year eight sixty five and uh and and this is
Speaker 1: according to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and other medieval sources. Now, um,
Speaker 1: these three sons that go out campaigning are said to
Speaker 1: have done so in order to perhaps avenge his death
Speaker 1: or and this is key to make a claim based
Speaker 1: on one of um of Ragnar's previous invasion attempts, or
Speaker 1: it could simply all be just a matter of legend,
Speaker 1: but or some combination of these elements. But the basically
Speaker 1: most of what we know about him comes from European
Speaker 1: literature that emerged after his death that maybe some mixture
Speaker 1: of legend and history intertwined. Yeah, and ultimately may have
Speaker 1: been used to either support an invasion, to support military action,
Speaker 1: or to um, you know, make sense of it afterwards,
Speaker 1: like why did we do that? Oh? Well, you know
Speaker 1: what they did to Ragnar. They threw him and fed
Speaker 1: him to a bunch of snakes. Uh. But but it
Speaker 1: also touches on something that seems pretty key in the
Speaker 1: power and spread of this trope, especially in the West,
Speaker 1: and that is snake pits. Throwing someone into snakes. It's
Speaker 1: an evil perpetrated by the enemy, especially a foreign enemy. Now.
Speaker 1: Danish historian Sexo Grammaticus wrote about this in the in
Speaker 1: the twelfth century um and Uh, and his his view
Speaker 1: was at Ragnar had been a ninth century king who
Speaker 1: battled against Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, and according to Saxo Uh,
Speaker 1: the Anglo Saxon King a Ella of Northumbria finally captured
Speaker 1: him and murdered him by casting him into a pit
Speaker 1: of venomous snakes, and then later Icelandic saga's popularized this tail.
Speaker 1: And you have to admit it's both gnarly and the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that could be used to prop up
Speaker 1: a revenge invasion. Well, yeah, I mean I think probably
Speaker 1: the mythic idea of a pit of snakes was cool
Speaker 1: and appealing for the same reasons back then that it's
Speaker 1: cool and appealing in movies today. Yeah. Absolutely, It's just
Speaker 1: it's it's weird and frightening, and then that we seemingly
Speaker 1: can't quite get enough of it. By the way, one
Speaker 1: of Ragnar's sons was I've are the boneless? Did he
Speaker 1: do an invasion to um? Well, he was one of
Speaker 1: the suns, Yeah, so he would have, um he I
Speaker 1: was reading about this. First of all, I think he
Speaker 1: does show up in some of these TV Viking shows,
Speaker 1: uh so that anyone out there has has experience with those.
Speaker 1: But apparently interpretations range from him just being a man
Speaker 1: without bones, or a man without legs, or just a
Speaker 1: man suffering from impotence, or it could be that like
Speaker 1: the boneless means that he was hated, and it is
Speaker 1: not anything necessarily about his body, but just his reputation,
Speaker 1: like there's nothing to him. Yeah. Uh, and there's also
Speaker 1: sometimes a curse involved in the telling. But I have
Speaker 1: to say that the idea of a literal boneless Viking
Speaker 1: is most intriguing. Uh, that he's just like a big
Speaker 1: like jelly man that has to be rolled out to
Speaker 1: the battlefield. I've are the puddle. Yeah uh. But apparently
Speaker 1: in some of these these uh, these tellings, though, there
Speaker 1: is this idea that he is boneless, he is no
Speaker 1: good in an actual fight, perhaps because he is um
Speaker 1: to some degree disabled, but he was still considered to
Speaker 1: be a great tactician. Okay, But the core of the
Speaker 1: legend here is that Ragnar was executed by being thrown
Speaker 1: into a snake pit. Yes, and um, I want to
Speaker 1: read just an example of this from from its from
Speaker 1: the Guesta Denorum, which of course is a translation here.
Speaker 1: But he he dies in the ninth book of this
Speaker 1: particular work. Uh. There are a lot of other snake
Speaker 1: references elsewhere, because ultimately the snake is just a potent
Speaker 1: um symbol for us to use in our language. But
Speaker 1: but here's the bit about his death. This is after
Speaker 1: he's been thrown into the pit, For when he had
Speaker 1: been taken and cast into prison, his guilty limbs were
Speaker 1: given to serpents to devour, and adders found ghastly substance
Speaker 1: in the fibers of his entrails. His liver was eaten away,
Speaker 1: and a snake, like a deadly executioner, beasts at his
Speaker 1: very heart. Then, in a courageous voice, he recounted all
Speaker 1: his deeds in order, and at the end of his
Speaker 1: recital added the following sentence. If the porkers knew the
Speaker 1: punishment of the board pig, surely they would break into
Speaker 1: the sty and hasten to loose him from his affliction.
Speaker 1: At this saying, ella conjecture that some of his and
Speaker 1: by his we mean Ragnar's sons were yet alive, and
Speaker 1: bade that the executioner should stop and the vipers be removed.
Speaker 1: The servants ran up to accomplish his bidding, but Ragnar
Speaker 1: was dead and forestalled the orders of the king. That
Speaker 1: is good, So he turns into a vegetarian because snakes
Speaker 1: are eating his liver in his heart. Yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: part about the snakes going after individual organs is really
Speaker 1: interesting here, and you see shades of that in other
Speaker 1: tales as well, which makes me wonder about the idea,
Speaker 1: like like, ultimately, a snake pit is a place where
Speaker 1: there are many enemies that can kill you, right, and
Speaker 1: here we see them going after individual organs. I wonder
Speaker 1: if on some level it's this recognition that there are
Speaker 1: so many ways for a human to die. There's so
Speaker 1: many ways in which we are mortal, many of them
Speaker 1: tied up with our individual organs and parts of our
Speaker 1: bodies and uh, and and and so perhaps that's sort
Speaker 1: of the the symbolic power of or one part of
Speaker 1: the symbolic power of the snake pit. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It also though, because of the special attention given to
Speaker 1: the heart, seems pretty clear. But this is just making
Speaker 1: me think about the number of mythical monsters that are
Speaker 1: said to attack the liver, in particular that that seems
Speaker 1: odd like that you would single out the liver in
Speaker 1: that way. Uh. It makes me think about the eagle,
Speaker 1: of course, that pecks out Prometheus's liver. It makes me
Speaker 1: think about I believe it was the Japanese story of
Speaker 1: the Kappa that dwells in the water and would pull
Speaker 1: you into the water and then reach up through your
Speaker 1: anus to pull your liver out. That's right, Yeah, Why
Speaker 1: do all these monsters want livers? What? What? What? What's
Speaker 1: what's the liver got for them? It's almost like it's
Speaker 1: a loophole, right, It's like, oh, man, death came for
Speaker 1: me and it got me in the liver. I guess
Speaker 1: that's probably the story of a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: stereotypical Viking warriors, right, um, you know, due to the
Speaker 1: mead um. I should note that in some tellings of
Speaker 1: this death, Ragnar is actually laughing before he dies. So
Speaker 1: I think I think that the whole porker's line is
Speaker 1: maybe supposed to be funny, like he's kind of cracking
Speaker 1: a joke about his about the method of his demise there,
Speaker 1: But I could be wrong on that. Now I read
Speaker 1: a bit more about this from Tim van Gervanum, who
Speaker 1: I believe is currently a PhD candidate in Scandinavian History
Speaker 1: and Nationalism studies at the University of Amsterdam. Uh He
Speaker 1: he writes about a lot of stuff about Scandinavian history
Speaker 1: and culture at scandinavism dot com and uh Tim writes
Speaker 1: the following quote. There is no archaeological evidence to suggest
Speaker 1: that snake pits were really constructed on the British Isles
Speaker 1: in this period, and no other historical sources make mention
Speaker 1: of such pits being used to execute capital punishment. We
Speaker 1: have in all likelihood a literary motif on our hands
Speaker 1: here which reoccurs in other sagas. And indeed that brings
Speaker 1: us to our next example, and that is the example
Speaker 1: of Gunnar or gun Darius or gundahar Um, who is
Speaker 1: uh the historic king of Burgundy during the early fifth century,
Speaker 1: but also a minor character in the legends of dragon
Speaker 1: slayer Siegfried and then ultimately in you know, a part
Speaker 1: of Wagner's Ring cycle as well, which is based on
Speaker 1: these legends. So he fought against Roman forces and Roman allies,
Speaker 1: but he was defeated in four thirty six by Roman
Speaker 1: general Flavius Dius Um, whose famed for having stopped a
Speaker 1: hunting invasion Um previously sometimes referred to as the last
Speaker 1: victory of the Western Roman Empire. And then in four
Speaker 1: thirty seven, the year after defeating Um, Gunar uh Idius
Speaker 1: and Huntish mercenaries, they destroyed Burgundy. They hunt down King
Speaker 1: Gunnar and they kill him. But how did they kill him? Right?
Speaker 1: I think, I think you can guess. There are various
Speaker 1: poems and sagas that elaborate on all of this, and
Speaker 1: they often portray Gunnar's murder as a snake power atrocity
Speaker 1: with the Huns, especially either throwing him into a snake
Speaker 1: pit or putting him in a snake tower, a snake tower,
Speaker 1: and in some versions, some versions, I think they just
Speaker 1: straight up kill him. Okay, he's killed by the snakes.
Speaker 1: In other versions he has a harp and he puts
Speaker 1: the snakes to sleep, so he almost saves himself, but
Speaker 1: then one of the snakes bites him in the liver
Speaker 1: and he dies. The liver again, Yeah, once more, the liver.
Speaker 1: They go right for liver, the snakes once again. Though
Speaker 1: the question of whether there is any actual historical basis
Speaker 1: for this seems to be mostly dismissed. I was reading
Speaker 1: a work by Suzanne Cries titled Westward I Came across
Speaker 1: the Sea Anglo Scandinavian History through Scandinavian Eyes, and she
Speaker 1: writes the question as to whether the snake pit episode
Speaker 1: has any historical basis, need not detain us here, nor
Speaker 1: it's similarity to Gunnar's death in a snake pit in
Speaker 1: Volsunga Saka. Oh so she's just like, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: whether the snake pit was real or not, right or
Speaker 1: it's just like, we're not going through this again with
Speaker 1: the whole idea was the actual snake pit. There's obviously
Speaker 1: not a snake pit. Okay, that makes sense now. I
Speaker 1: was looking a little bit around about the snake tower
Speaker 1: itself or the the Schlangan term, and um, apparently there
Speaker 1: was there was something referred to as the as an
Speaker 1: historic snake tower in so As, Germany up until the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. Um, and I gather this exactly if this,
Speaker 1: if this actually existed, the idea would be it's a
Speaker 1: dungeon tower reputed to have a snake pit in it.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any actual argument that this was
Speaker 1: a real place in Germany, but perhaps the stories get
Speaker 1: wrapped up around it, and therefore you had an actual
Speaker 1: location that was referred to as the snake tower. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: another interesting example of this we have, of um this
Speaker 1: character of Dietrich van Byrne uh So. This is a
Speaker 1: German legend apparently based in part on the historic uh
Speaker 1: Theodoric the Great, and in legend and Songs, Dietrich von
Speaker 1: Byrne encounters various dwarves and dragons and giants and heroes,
Speaker 1: including Siegfried, and in one adventure he frees a dwarf
Speaker 1: from a wild man, and the dwarf rewards him with
Speaker 1: a jewel. And his jewel turns out to be magical,
Speaker 1: so when an evil giant throws burn into a snake pit,
Speaker 1: the jewel protects him. Okay, so the jewel does better
Speaker 1: than the harp. Yes, yeah, if if you're given the
Speaker 1: choice between a jewel and a harp, go with the
Speaker 1: magic dwarf jewel. Now. One of the more interesting papers
Speaker 1: I came across about snake cowers and snake pits is
Speaker 1: a work by Alexander H. Craepy from nineteen forty that
Speaker 1: was published in Scandinavian Studies and Notes titled The Snake Tower. Now.
Speaker 1: Creepy notes that the European origins of this tale are
Speaker 1: almost certainly dramatic. The European origins anyway, um and this
Speaker 1: is accounts of the snake towers persisted, and he points
Speaker 1: out that that the problem about the Viking versions of
Speaker 1: the tale is that uh, no snakes are found in
Speaker 1: Iceland and Greenland, and that the common viper is the
Speaker 1: only venomous snake in continental Scandinavia and its bite is
Speaker 1: rarely fatal. Furthermore, as one sofas Buggy theorized previously, the
Speaker 1: origins of this imagined execution method are probably not Germanic
Speaker 1: in origin at all, and they probably originated in Africa,
Speaker 1: Asia or India, somewhere where you had just more venomous
Speaker 1: snakes to inform the legend, to inform this idea of
Speaker 1: throwing people to snakes and and for their death. You know,
Speaker 1: so so creepy spends a lot of time. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to go over all the things he
Speaker 1: discusses here. Um, but he ultimately points out you have
Speaker 1: two types of snake pit stories. Stories in which snakes
Speaker 1: are mere details to illustrate the danger, wildness, or uncleanliness
Speaker 1: of a pit or a place, and then stories in
Speaker 1: which they are stroll to the torment and or death
Speaker 1: that the pit or tower offers. Now on the former,
Speaker 1: he mentions, um uh, some French Authorian legends that that
Speaker 1: utilized this, as well as variations on the Jewish legend
Speaker 1: of Joseph being lowered into the pit in which there
Speaker 1: are said to be snakes there. Not that the snakes
Speaker 1: are trying to eat Joseph, but just hey, what a
Speaker 1: loathsome awful place. There were also snakes there. Oh, I
Speaker 1: see when Joseph Joseph of Joseph and the amazing technicolor
Speaker 1: dreamcode fire from the Book of Genesis, when he falls
Speaker 1: into a pit or I think maybe it's thrown into
Speaker 1: a pit by his brothers. Yeah, if there's snakes down there,
Speaker 1: it's just all the word like, let's like, let's let's
Speaker 1: ham it up a little bit, you know, let's get
Speaker 1: some snakes in there. It's like this was a bad pit, folks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As far as the other type of story go, where
Speaker 1: there was a snake is central um creepy recounts tales
Speaker 1: from Macedonia and Romania in which you have like a
Speaker 1: single giant lizard or snake that dwells in a tower
Speaker 1: and then. But there are plenty of examples of stories
Speaker 1: in which it's multiple snakes that are and often venomous
Speaker 1: snakes that are the foil. There are tales of Romans
Speaker 1: using a cage and vipers to execute a prisoner, and
Speaker 1: there are some tellings of the of st Irene and
Speaker 1: which she is thrown into a pit of vipers, but
Speaker 1: then is protected not by a dwarf jewel, but by
Speaker 1: an angel of the Lord. And then there are also
Speaker 1: accounts in the Hindu traditions of such torments and trials
Speaker 1: as well. By the way, coming back to Conan the Barbarian,
Speaker 1: which of course is filled with snakes, we have a
Speaker 1: Tower of the Serpent in that film that Conan the
Speaker 1: Barbarian and his fellow thieves break into. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: Conan gets in trouble because it doesn't he cut the
Speaker 1: snake's head off. He does, Yeah, falso dooms pet snake.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about that is like I
Speaker 1: instantly thought of that, and I'm like, oh, man, that
Speaker 1: that story that that that was really on the money, right,
Speaker 1: But when you look closer, uh, that sequence was apparently
Speaker 1: based on the Roberty Howard's story The Tower of the Lent,
Speaker 1: in which Conan meets an imprisoned elephant human hybrid, a
Speaker 1: quote trans cosmic being, which itself seems like a weird
Speaker 1: fiction era twist on the Hindu god Ganesha. So Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know it's it's ultimately different, but also not unrelated,
Speaker 1: perhaps to this idea of um of of ideas and
Speaker 1: symbols from outside of a culture than taking on a
Speaker 1: new twist within a new culture. So Creepy ultimately argues
Speaker 1: for African, Indian or Asian origins of the trope and
Speaker 1: uh as, these would be first of all, places where
Speaker 1: you would have just more venomous snakes and just well
Speaker 1: known venomous snakes that could be found. And that also
Speaker 1: he argues that all things being equal, this is not
Speaker 1: an entirely unbelievable, thankful thing for a tire end or
Speaker 1: a despot to do. After all, cruel kings have been
Speaker 1: known or at least been reputed to do much worse. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and we know, for example, like the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: did in fact throw people to animals of various kinds
Speaker 1: to kill them. Yeah, So I have to say, um,
Speaker 1: Creepy did at times there were there was kind of
Speaker 1: this air of like, well, you know, rulers and other
Speaker 1: parts of the world are awful. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing they get up to. So we also have
Speaker 1: to consider like the the age of this paper, I think,
Speaker 1: And he also points out that you know, at the
Speaker 1: same time, none of these tales exist in isolation. The
Speaker 1: snake takes on other connotations and plays other roles in
Speaker 1: myth cycles, such as particularly the venom dripping, dripping snake
Speaker 1: that's used to torment the Norse god Loki at one point.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, Yeah, yeah, there's some This is a
Speaker 1: frequent subject of paintings. You'll find some really remarkable paintings
Speaker 1: of this torment and h. He also adds that there's
Speaker 1: a whole tradition in medieval Europe of Hell being populated
Speaker 1: with snakes, So a real life snake pit uh is,
Speaker 1: to a certain extents, just a variation on that or,
Speaker 1: he argues, could have helped inform that idea. So at
Speaker 1: any rate, his his his final argument is that this
Speaker 1: is a central part of stories from outside of your
Speaker 1: Europe that then are transplanted into Europe. They're just too uh,
Speaker 1: you know, irresistible, and then they get wound up in
Speaker 1: German legends, and then that travels to Scandinavia as well,
Speaker 1: and that's how we end up with Vikings being consumed
Speaker 1: by venomous serpents. Interesting, but so, even even after his survey,
Speaker 1: that is still just an inference on his part. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: we don't know where these ideas came from, why they
Speaker 1: show up in these stories. Yeah, and I didn't. I
Speaker 1: was looking around. I was hoping to find some more
Speaker 1: recent scholarship on this, um, but I did not come
Speaker 1: across it. Not to say it does not exist. But
Speaker 1: if I did miss it, I hope to find it
Speaker 1: because we can. We can always discuss it later. But um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, this is ultimately just his argument. We don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. All right. On that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take another break. But when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave mostly leave the fiction and the mythology behind us,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get back into the science of actual
Speaker 1: snake pits. Thank all right, we're back. So, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess one might ultimately think of two different varieties
Speaker 1: of snake pits. Here snake pits that are built in
Speaker 1: stocked by human beings for probably you know, not so
Speaker 1: kind purposes. And then there are snake dens, where snakes
Speaker 1: gather for reasons that have nothing to do with eating
Speaker 1: Germans or vikings. And we're gonna start by diving into
Speaker 1: one of, if not the most impressive natural world snake
Speaker 1: dens that you'll encounter. But but I do want to
Speaker 1: point out that this sort of behavior that we're discussing here,
Speaker 1: the use of wintering or hibernation dens, this also does
Speaker 1: occur in some European species as well, the European adder,
Speaker 1: for example. So I think that's something to keep in
Speaker 1: mind perhaps when thinking about some of those the legend
Speaker 1: cycles that we mentioned earlier, is that the idea of
Speaker 1: snakes gathering together underground would not have been the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that would be entirely from from the world afar.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the kind of thing that they could
Speaker 1: conceivably have tails about, like oh, well, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Igmar once stepped in a hole and there
Speaker 1: was a there are a bunch of snakes in there
Speaker 1: was scary and in fact, the the northerly climate might
Speaker 1: give one particular reason that someone could find a bunch
Speaker 1: of snakes in a natural gathering in a pit, maybe
Speaker 1: a reason that you would not expect to find driving
Speaker 1: snakes into a den in more tropical regions, where you
Speaker 1: might expect to find more species of snakes and more
Speaker 1: venomous snakes, for example. So I want to start with
Speaker 1: one of my sources here, which is an article from
Speaker 1: The New York Times published June sixteenth, nineteen by Ian Austin,
Speaker 1: which is about the Narciss snake dens. So we're starting
Speaker 1: here in the Canadian province of Manitoba, in what's known
Speaker 1: as the Interlake Regions. So this is going to be
Speaker 1: between the large inland lakes in Manitoba, between Lake Winnipeg
Speaker 1: and Lake Manitoba. And there is a tiny settlement along
Speaker 1: the highway I think it's Highway seventeen that runs north
Speaker 1: south through Manitoba called Narciss. The some sources called a town.
Speaker 1: I think town might be kind of a misleading word
Speaker 1: because I looked it up on Google street View and
Speaker 1: there's not much there. It seems like there are a
Speaker 1: handful of houses, but that's about it. Austin notes that
Speaker 1: one of the most prominent features of the town that
Speaker 1: you can see from the highway is a long abandoned
Speaker 1: gas station. But just a few kilometers north of Narciss
Speaker 1: along the highway, there is this unique place with an
Speaker 1: astonishing distinction to its name, and that is that it's
Speaker 1: probably the world's most concentrated and most mind rending natural
Speaker 1: snake pits. Technically, I know what we've been saying pits
Speaker 1: through this whole episode, but I think as best we
Speaker 1: can we should maybe from here on out try to
Speaker 1: relegate pits to uh two pits created by humans, because
Speaker 1: apparently the the the naturalists and zoologists who deal with
Speaker 1: this place prefer the term snake dens. A pit kind
Speaker 1: of has negative connotations. Yeah, pit, A pit is something
Speaker 1: you throw something or someone into, and these are these
Speaker 1: are homes. You don't call it like a bare pit.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, I mean that's side the point. Well,
Speaker 1: you would if you threw somebody into it, Yeah, true, true, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the pit implies that someone or something is going in
Speaker 1: there with the snakes. Yeah, so these are snake dens.
Speaker 1: According to Professor Robert T. Mason, who is a professor
Speaker 1: of integrative biology at Oregon State University, quote, it is
Speaker 1: likely the biggest concentration of snakes in the world. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that, like, why here, why here
Speaker 1: so far north in Canada, that does not seem like
Speaker 1: the kind of place you would expect to find the
Speaker 1: biggest concentration of snakes in the world. And there is
Speaker 1: an answer to that question. But we'll have to come
Speaker 1: back to that in just a minute. First, I want
Speaker 1: to discuss exactly what you would see if you were
Speaker 1: to decide to visit these snake dens north of narciss
Speaker 1: So there are four major dens in the area, which
Speaker 1: I believe you can look at from viewing platforms, at
Speaker 1: least some of them, I think maybe all four and
Speaker 1: all war dens are found in sinkholes down in the ground.
Speaker 1: Austin describes one of them like this quote. About the
Speaker 1: size of a large dining room and ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: feet deep. The den initially appears to be covered with
Speaker 1: some kind of green vegetation, but as it moves, it
Speaker 1: immediately becomes apparent it is filled with slithering snakes, most
Speaker 1: about the diameter of a marker, and with the largest
Speaker 1: perhaps up to eighteen inches long, which would be about
Speaker 1: forty six centimeters. So here's your that's no moon moment,
Speaker 1: instead of that's no moon, it's those aren't plants. This
Speaker 1: is the sort of scene that I think most cinematic
Speaker 1: snake pit sequences have have tried and failed to achieve,
Speaker 1: and that Raiders mostly achieves this idea that the floor
Speaker 1: is snakes, Yes, but it gets even cooler. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're picturing that, you're picturing the pit. Maybe you're looking
Speaker 1: down from the observation deck. There's this pit in the
Speaker 1: ground size of a room. It's covered in snakes, just
Speaker 1: filled with snakes. And now there's there's also a sound
Speaker 1: you should imagine going along with it. The snakes and
Speaker 1: the den's here do not produce sounds you would normally
Speaker 1: think of as going with snakes. They don't hiss, they
Speaker 1: don't rattle. Uh, they don't even growl like a king
Speaker 1: cobra actually does. But there is a sound that is
Speaker 1: apparently produced just from friction. Uh Ian writes, quote from
Speaker 1: the sheer number of them rubbing against each other and
Speaker 1: the bottom of the den creates a sound, and Austin
Speaker 1: quotes a visitor named Brian's Sistric who tries to describe
Speaker 1: the sound by saying that it was like quote the
Speaker 1: wind rustling through the trees, but louder. Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1: This again gets back to this idea that we discussed earlier,
Speaker 1: that snake sounds, or a lot of with a lot
Speaker 1: of animals, like the sounds that we associate with them,
Speaker 1: particularly through um A pictures are not always all that accurate. Um. Like,
Speaker 1: just on the subject that you mentioned, rattling is not
Speaker 1: as sound that they're not making. But if you've ever
Speaker 1: gotten to hear a rattlesnake in real life, there's kind
Speaker 1: of a range of sound that occur and create. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not just that cinematic rattlesnake sound. If you hear
Speaker 1: one in real life, you may be very surprised that
Speaker 1: it does not produce a guitar or ban joe string
Speaker 1: twang right after the rattle finishes, you know, like, have
Speaker 1: you ever heard a rattle in a movie without a
Speaker 1: bam bram anyway? Okay, so these snakes that are filling
Speaker 1: the din and forming a kind of floor of writhing spaghetti,
Speaker 1: and they are making this sound like wind rustling through
Speaker 1: the trees. Uh. These are garter snakes, specifically the subspecies
Speaker 1: them no Fue sertalis parieh talis, which is a subspecies
Speaker 1: also known as red sided garter snakes. Now, garter snakes
Speaker 1: are very common in North America. If you live in
Speaker 1: North America, I would not be surprised at all if
Speaker 1: you have encountered the multiple times in your lives. There
Speaker 1: are different coloration patterns that you'll find among the different subspecies,
Speaker 1: but most of them tend to have black or dark
Speaker 1: green background color, and then three brighter stripes running down
Speaker 1: the length of the body, usually either yellow or bright green.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, different subspecies also have different spots or splotches
Speaker 1: of color. Some have red, some have blue, some more
Speaker 1: kind of checked. So unless you're an expert, you're probably
Speaker 1: not gonna always be able to tell whether you're looking
Speaker 1: at a garter snake or not. They are usually considered
Speaker 1: non venomous, meaning that you know they don't have a
Speaker 1: venom that is thought of as significant to humans, though
Speaker 1: apparently some subspecies do have mild neurotoxins in their saliva,
Speaker 1: which can help immobilize a tiny prey animal while the
Speaker 1: snake tries to get the animal down its gullet. But
Speaker 1: but the most I've read about in terms of garter
Speaker 1: snake venum affecting humans is is mostly just like itching
Speaker 1: or irritation at the side of a bite. Red sided
Speaker 1: garter snakes in particular are found throughout much of central
Speaker 1: and the western United States and Canada, and according to
Speaker 1: the conservation group Ontario Nature, they travel farther north than
Speaker 1: any other land dwelling reptile in Canada, and so they're
Speaker 1: they're sort of out on the climatic edge, right, which
Speaker 1: has some pluses and minuses. Of course, it probably means
Speaker 1: that in the far north, I would guess they face
Speaker 1: less competition for resources from other animals like them, but
Speaker 1: of course they're also going to be extremely vulnerable to
Speaker 1: the cold further south in in warmer climates, Apparently, garter
Speaker 1: snakes have to seek one another for mating with the
Speaker 1: help of sexual pheromones. So this would be like a
Speaker 1: female produces a pheromone that is uh, and the males
Speaker 1: are chemo sensitive to it. They smell that pheromone and
Speaker 1: then they seek out the female to mate with. But
Speaker 1: seeking a maid in this way is energetically tagg xing
Speaker 1: at a time when you could just be hunting for food, right,
Speaker 1: you could be stalking up, but instead you're running around
Speaker 1: through the marshes or the woods trying to find a mate.
Speaker 1: So up north, where garter snakes have together in dens
Speaker 1: to survive the winter, there's actually kind of a double
Speaker 1: advantage to this conclave at the den. With all the
Speaker 1: snakes gathered in one place, it's much easier to find
Speaker 1: a mate now even exactly, it's like they've all gathered
Speaker 1: at one big snake convention anyway, right, it's already they're
Speaker 1: already at a burning snake right right now. There are
Speaker 1: two parts of the year when you can see the
Speaker 1: snakes on mass at the den's north of narciss In
Speaker 1: the fall, usually around early September. That's when they tend
Speaker 1: to gather at the dens. So they've been coming in
Speaker 1: from kilometers all around, from from the marshes and the woods. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then they come into the dens. I believe the
Speaker 1: technical term for the dens are actually hypernacular. That's a
Speaker 1: good one to have in your tool belt there. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: really hitting so many great metal band names in this
Speaker 1: from Snake Tower and it's a German translation to hybernacular,
Speaker 1: like these are some great great names for your bands, right,
Speaker 1: count hybernacular. Uh. And another word actually that that is
Speaker 1: worth knowing is that the cold blooded animal equivalent of hibernation,
Speaker 1: because I believe technically reptiles don't hibernate. The term is
Speaker 1: known as broomation. And this means, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: they descend at the onset of cold weather and then
Speaker 1: in the spring, there's a period of like one to
Speaker 1: three weeks or so when they emerge from the hybernacular
Speaker 1: to form these massive writhing pits containing hundreds or sometimes
Speaker 1: even thousands of snakes at a time. All in all,
Speaker 1: about seventy thousand snakes can be found gathered at this
Speaker 1: one collection of dens for the winter. Now what are
Speaker 1: they doing when they're gone for the summer? Well, during
Speaker 1: warm weather time, they're mostly foraging. The garter snakes are
Speaker 1: going to be eating small amphibians like frogs, as well
Speaker 1: as leeches, earthworms, fishes, and other small animals. But in
Speaker 1: the times when they gather, I believe, especially in the springtime,
Speaker 1: these huge slithering pits in the dens, I guess I
Speaker 1: said pits, But yeah, what do you call them? These
Speaker 1: huge slithering masses of snakes in the dens are all
Speaker 1: about mating because in the springtime, when the weather warms up,
Speaker 1: the males emerge first. They come out of the hybernacular first,
Speaker 1: and they warm up in the sun and become more
Speaker 1: active as they slowly come out of broomation, and they're
Speaker 1: waiting for the larger females to emerge so the mating
Speaker 1: can begin. And when it does. One of the strange
Speaker 1: things that that goes on here is that it is
Speaker 1: an extremely asymmetrical affair. Each female snake can be surrounded
Speaker 1: by dozens of males, all vying to be the one
Speaker 1: that mates with her, and these masses of snakes gathered
Speaker 1: around a single adult female can form into what's known
Speaker 1: as a mating ball, where they all get tangled up
Speaker 1: and can sometimes even sort of roll downhill. See already,
Speaker 1: it's weirder than any North myth. Yeah. Now, regarding these
Speaker 1: giant masses of mating snakes in springtime, in the New
Speaker 1: York Times article, Austin notes that since this emergence is
Speaker 1: usually in April or May many years, a trip to
Speaker 1: the snake Den's is a popular local Mother's Day celebration.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, sounds great. Um. Now, these garter snakes,
Speaker 1: I think I've sort of mentioned this already, but they're
Speaker 1: considered pretty much entirely harmless to humans. I've seen videos
Speaker 1: of kids holding them in their hands and playing with
Speaker 1: them that I'm not personally saying this is advised. I would,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say follow whatever the local posted
Speaker 1: rules say. Apparently they can sometimes bite and sometimes garter
Speaker 1: snakes will also secrete a kind of nasty, stinky pheromone
Speaker 1: juice out of a gland near their cloaca out of defense,
Speaker 1: and apparently, according to Robert Mason, that biologist quoted earlier
Speaker 1: in the article I mentioned earlier, this defensive emission of
Speaker 1: malodorous repellent is actually part of the mating behavior as well,
Speaker 1: because it looks like what's going on is that when
Speaker 1: the males surround the female and the mating ball, this
Speaker 1: kind of irritates her, and the female opens up this
Speaker 1: repellent gland in order to to spray the stink pheromone
Speaker 1: that would normally repel something that's harassing the snake. But
Speaker 1: then the opening of the gland also gives the males
Speaker 1: access for at least for at least one of them
Speaker 1: to mate with her. And another interesting thing about garter
Speaker 1: snakes is that, like some species we've discussed before, after mating,
Speaker 1: females can engage in long term storage of sperm from
Speaker 1: multiple males, allowing competition between sex cells within the female's
Speaker 1: body and potentially leading to her producing broods with multiple paternity.
Speaker 1: So multiple males can have can have offspring within the
Speaker 1: same brood. Interesting In that Times article, Austin reports that
Speaker 1: the park does permit people to handle the smaller male snakes,
Speaker 1: but discourages people from trying to handle the larger females.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering, what does it feel like to
Speaker 1: hold one of these snakes. Well, that's actually covered. Austin
Speaker 1: says that a couple of and their children here at
Speaker 1: the at the Den's reported that snakes don't feel slimy,
Speaker 1: they don't feel scaly, and that the sensation is quote
Speaker 1: more like holding a piece of soft mo hair that
Speaker 1: wiggles around. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean I always encourage
Speaker 1: the touching of snakes when the touching of snakes is
Speaker 1: permitted and encouraged by responsible parties, because yeah, I find that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they certainly they don't feel slimy, but they really they
Speaker 1: feel nice. They feel there's something reassuring about them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That visitor Brian so Strict is quoted in the article
Speaker 1: is saying that they just quote kind of melt into
Speaker 1: your hand. So it seems like if you threw somebody
Speaker 1: into this snake pit, it wouldn't be that bad. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is, snakes don't they don't want you in
Speaker 1: there with them, it might be bad for the snakes.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um but but but back to the question
Speaker 1: I brought up here earlier, Why here, Why in Narciss. Well,
Speaker 1: so the answer is in Manitoba. Of course, it gets
Speaker 1: extremely cold in the winter, and snakes are cold blooded.
Speaker 1: They can't tolerate the extreme cold of the Canadian winter,
Speaker 1: and that's why they have to go into broomation in
Speaker 1: these dens. And the reason the interlake region around Narciss
Speaker 1: is so attractive is the quality of its sink holes.
Speaker 1: This area is mostly a very thin layer of top
Speaker 1: soil above a limestone bedrock, which is easily eroded by
Speaker 1: water flowing over and underground, and this creates sink holes
Speaker 1: which grant access to small caves and underground recesses that
Speaker 1: fall below the frost line, providing a relatively warm refuge
Speaker 1: in winter. So it's geology. The snakes swarm in from
Speaker 1: the surrounding area because of the quality of the natural
Speaker 1: snake holes that form here. Come for the sinkholes, stay
Speaker 1: for the snake sex. I couldn't have put it better
Speaker 1: myself that that's exactly how it is. Um and Austin
Speaker 1: points out that it's the same geologic qualities that make
Speaker 1: narciss and idea old spot for snake dens that also
Speaker 1: make it a bad spot for agriculture, which is why
Speaker 1: most attempted farmers eventually left the region. And according to Austin,
Speaker 1: early European settlers in the area tried to exterminate the snakes,
Speaker 1: but fortunately, it seems local attitudes are are a bit
Speaker 1: more appreciative these days. And I was reading how there
Speaker 1: are now even special sort of accommodations in the area,
Speaker 1: like snake tunnels that pass underneath local roads to prevent
Speaker 1: you know, auto related flattenings during the migration season. And
Speaker 1: I've got to say, I guess it's because I grew
Speaker 1: up in Tennessee around a lot of Eastern garter snakes.
Speaker 1: You know, if you saw a snake in my hometown,
Speaker 1: it was very likely a garter snake, a different subspecies,
Speaker 1: but still a garter snake. I think I've always thought
Speaker 1: of them as fairly mundane animals, but I am seeing
Speaker 1: garter snakes in a whole new way. And there are
Speaker 1: other things about them that make things even weirder. Like
Speaker 1: um we mentioned earlier how snakes in general are mostly
Speaker 1: solitary predators, and these large gatherings for hibernation, of course,
Speaker 1: or one exception to that. But there is another interesting anomaly.
Speaker 1: I was reading a news article in Science by Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Panissi called garter snakes are surprisingly social, forming quote friendships
Speaker 1: with fellow serpents. Now friendships is in sort of scare
Speaker 1: quotes there, and I think that that word choice might
Speaker 1: be a little over the line if you take it
Speaker 1: too literally, But either way, these findings are actually kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So this article was from May, it's pretty recent,
Speaker 1: and it covers how there was research into eastern garter snakes.
Speaker 1: Again that's different from the red sided garter snakes that
Speaker 1: you'd find in Manitoba. But the short version is that
Speaker 1: a couple of researchers from Wilfrid Lauria University named Noah
Speaker 1: Miller and Morgan Skinner. Uh. They found that if you
Speaker 1: put a bunch of snakes in an enclosure and then
Speaker 1: you chart their movements, and then you take them out,
Speaker 1: and then you clean the enclosure to get rid of
Speaker 1: any smells, and then you put them back in and
Speaker 1: different positions, the snakes will kind of tend to reform
Speaker 1: groups in little artificial shelters with the same snakes that
Speaker 1: they had grouped with previously, and they also found interesting
Speaker 1: little indications of semisocial behaviors among snakes. For example, quote,
Speaker 1: when the snakes were in a group, they tended to
Speaker 1: do what the group did, regardless of their own personality. Overall,
Speaker 1: snakes spent about nine percent of the time in a shelter.
Speaker 1: Animals with more snakes in their shelter were less likely
Speaker 1: to leave. Now. They noted, of course, that these results
Speaker 1: might not hold true in the wild. This could be
Speaker 1: some kind of product that we're not understanding, some some
Speaker 1: element of the design and the experiment causing them to
Speaker 1: behave differently. So field research would need to be done
Speaker 1: to confirm this effect. But wouldn't that be interesting? You know,
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, hey, I was in a mating ball
Speaker 1: with you last spring. How are you doing? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: this is all fascinating because again, we think of snakes
Speaker 1: as dainly solitary predators. We don't tend to think that
Speaker 1: they have much in the way of really aationships with
Speaker 1: each other beyond you know, birth and then of course,
Speaker 1: in some cases preying on other snakes. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: this is we see this with these garter snakes. But
Speaker 1: we also see some similar stuff going on with rattlers.
Speaker 1: Oh this brings us back to true grit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because of course, in true grit, like we said, UH,
Speaker 1: we have this scene in which there is this uh,
Speaker 1: this den. It's a man made den, you know, in
Speaker 1: the sense there wasn't made for snakes, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: an abandoned mine, and snakes have turned it into their den.
Speaker 1: And we do certainly see this in for instance, the
Speaker 1: northwestern United States. We see this with UH, with with
Speaker 1: the rattlers. They're taking into two communal dens to survive
Speaker 1: the winter and then emerging in the spring basking for
Speaker 1: a while and the heat in the sun to have
Speaker 1: a recharge, and then they go they go their own
Speaker 1: ways to forage and the mate. UH. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: female timber rattlesnakes do seem to maintain some sort of
Speaker 1: bond with relatives beyond birth. So pregnant females have been
Speaker 1: found living with either UH sisters or mother daughter daughter pairs.
Speaker 1: And part of this seems to come down to UH,
Speaker 1: like we said earlier, you know, the chemical traits that
Speaker 1: are left by other snakes, in this case by the rattlesnakes.
Speaker 1: They can follow these back to wintering dens, but they
Speaker 1: can also use them to identify close relatives. Now, continuing
Speaker 1: discussing of rattlesnakes. Here, we talked about mythic artificial pits
Speaker 1: of snakes, and we've talked about these these dens that
Speaker 1: snakes are taking to naturally. Uh. Well, there's definitely an
Speaker 1: artificial rattlesnake pit uh to consider, and that's uh well,
Speaker 1: those are the pits that take place in um rattlesnake
Speaker 1: round ups, which are an annual affair in Texas. So
Speaker 1: this sort of thing uh one place in particular Sweetwater, Texas.
Speaker 1: I've seen multiple they're multiple pay uh news articles about
Speaker 1: this practice, including April NBR report by Lizzie Chenu. And
Speaker 1: basically this is something goes out about half a century
Speaker 1: uh local regularly round up Western diamondback rattlesnakes with the
Speaker 1: aim of keeping or the The claim is that it's
Speaker 1: about keeping the populations in check and protecting livestock and
Speaker 1: pets from venomous bites. So it's very tied to farming
Speaker 1: and agriculture. Chen writes, quote, on average, four thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of snakes are rounded up every year where they are weighed, sexed,
Speaker 1: meaning they're identified as male or female, milked, killed, and skinned.
Speaker 1: Uh So, obviously this has been heavily criticized by ecologist
Speaker 1: and animal rights activists, though interestingly enough, the proponents of
Speaker 1: these rattlesnake roundups. They often use it as a defense, Well,
Speaker 1: we're not really putting much of a dent in there
Speaker 1: in the rattlesnake population, which raises the issue then then
Speaker 1: why are we doing it? Right? It's like, what what
Speaker 1: is the purpose of of continuing to round them up
Speaker 1: and kill them if it's not actually doing the thing
Speaker 1: that it's supposed to do right. Um. Part of the
Speaker 1: issue that I've read is that it has to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that this this generates a lot of
Speaker 1: revenue for the area, like like a lot of things
Speaker 1: of this nature. It's you know, there's a whole festival um,
Speaker 1: kind of built up around it. So it brings you know,
Speaker 1: gets people out, it gets people spending money, um. And
Speaker 1: it seems uncertain if it is actually serving as a
Speaker 1: protective service at all. So again, is it is garnered
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism over time, Plus, rattlesnakes play an
Speaker 1: important role in the ecosystem. We discussed this um on
Speaker 1: an episode that we did with with guest Mark Mandinka. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, rattlesnakes in particular, they're gonna prey on disease
Speaker 1: carrying rodents. Uh, They're gonna help keep their numbers down,
Speaker 1: and they're going to serve as necessary prey for a
Speaker 1: host of animals, including owls, foxes, coyotes, and other snake species.
Speaker 1: And then on top of this, there even these rattlesnakes,
Speaker 1: which you know often have that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: Western danger reputation, They're not as dangerous to humans as
Speaker 1: those films would make you think for starters. We've we've
Speaker 1: certainly discussed this before. Snake venom is a precious resource
Speaker 1: that most snakes are loath to waste on the average
Speaker 1: cowboy or a captured germatic king. In fact, according to
Speaker 1: Texas Parks and Wildlife, first of all, about seven thousand
Speaker 1: people are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States annually,
Speaker 1: and only point two percent one out of five hundred
Speaker 1: hundred venomous snake bites result in death, and on average,
Speaker 1: only one to two people in Texas die each year
Speaker 1: from venomous snake bites. Roughly half of all venomous snake
Speaker 1: bites are dry. In other words, the snake does not
Speaker 1: inject venom into the victim. Yeah, I mean, I can
Speaker 1: certainly understand local cultural traditions and all that, but I
Speaker 1: do think obviously you're always kind of playing with fire
Speaker 1: when you're culling predators, right, I mean, we've seen this
Speaker 1: go wrong in a number of locations, just in the
Speaker 1: continental United States. Absolutely. It just brings about, you know,
Speaker 1: an unbalanced ecosystem which can result and and catastrophic consequences,
Speaker 1: sometimes in ways that you can't even quite predict ahead
Speaker 1: of time. It also brings to mind, uh an episode
Speaker 1: we did in the past about bounties being placed on cobras.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that? Right? Oh? Yeah, that makes me
Speaker 1: wonder Okay, Well, I mean I guess I could understand
Speaker 1: this in a different way of somebody was like farming
Speaker 1: rattlesnakes in order to bring in But that would be
Speaker 1: a somewhat different thing, wouldn't it. Yeah. So anyway, the
Speaker 1: story of of in the future of rattlesnake roundups continues
Speaker 1: to be written. But but I think it first of all,
Speaker 1: it serves as just an example of a modern activity
Speaker 1: that is essentially resulting in temporary snake pits, because the
Speaker 1: pictures are pretty pretty snake heavy. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a reason to drive home again the
Speaker 1: importance of snakes. Even though so much of this, uh
Speaker 1: you know we've been talking about, especially in the myths
Speaker 1: and the cinematic examples. Uh, you know, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: preying on our fear of snakes and our ideas the
Speaker 1: snakes are just inherently dangerous or lethal to humans. And
Speaker 1: really we have to step back and appreciate what snakes
Speaker 1: are and how they fit into our ecosystem. So I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm trying to say is watch out for snakes,
Speaker 1: but be respectful of snakes. Yeah, leave the snakes alone,
Speaker 1: all right. So there you have it. Obviously, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there regarding snake movies, uh,
Speaker 1: snake myths and legends, and also, you know, perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 1: real life encounters with snakes and snake dens. Have you
Speaker 1: seen these snake dens in question? I know we have
Speaker 1: Canadian listeners. If you have, if you have witnessed this
Speaker 1: spectacle in real life, we have to hear from you.
Speaker 1: I know some of you out there have been to
Speaker 1: the narciss Snake Dens. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Let us know what was it like. What did you
Speaker 1: hear the sound? Tell us about the friction. Yes. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you would like to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, well you know
Speaker 1: where to find us. It's wherever you get your podcasts
Speaker 1: and wherever that happens to be. Just make sure that
Speaker 1: you rate, review and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to tell us about your
Speaker 1: snaked in experience, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact and Stuff to Blow your Mind
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