Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. Production of my
Speaker 1: heart radio. Hey, are you welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, the last core episode, we discussed
Speaker 1: the nature of incense and how it factors into the
Speaker 1: mix with other fire based technologies, both as an occasional
Speaker 1: practical measure, but also something linked to sacred rights around
Speaker 1: the world, either as a kind of direct offering to
Speaker 1: divine beings or spirits, or is a means of setting
Speaker 1: aside a sacred space for ritual we've changed the atmosphere
Speaker 1: of this space with incense and now it is an
Speaker 1: appropriate place to do something that is not mundane, that
Speaker 1: is not part of the vulgar world, that is part
Speaker 1: of the sacred world. We also discussed some specific examples
Speaker 1: of dedicated sensors for incense, but we didn't touch on
Speaker 1: one of the most famous Western examples of incense use,
Speaker 1: and that's where we're gonna kick off today with this episode,
Speaker 1: Part Two of Incense, and that's of priests swinging metal
Speaker 1: sensors around on chains, wafting sacred smoke through holy spaces.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about the world of Thuribles. That's right.
Speaker 1: If you've ever watched, uh, you know, maybe a service
Speaker 1: on a particular holy day from from one of the
Speaker 1: sort of the high church denominations, so maybe a Catholic
Speaker 1: service or an eastern Orthodox service, you may have seen
Speaker 1: a member of the clergy walking around carrying some kind
Speaker 1: of cage suspended from chains, and out of that cage
Speaker 1: is wafting wisps of smoke. Now, I was reading about
Speaker 1: the history of Thuribles in a book called the history
Speaker 1: of the Church in art by Rosa Georgi. Uh, this
Speaker 1: was a getty art history publication from two thousand eight
Speaker 1: translated by Brian Phillips, and this is the entry in
Speaker 1: this book on the Thurrible and the incense boat. And
Speaker 1: Georgy here describes the Thurible as, quote, a cup shaped
Speaker 1: container with a lid controlled by four chains. It is
Speaker 1: used with a smaller container in the shape of an
Speaker 1: open boat. Both are made of precious metals. So, going
Speaker 1: back deep into the history of the pre Christian Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: it was customary to sprinkle a room with incense. The
Speaker 1: use of incense was initially controversial in Christian rights, and
Speaker 1: I'll get into more of the reasoning behind that in
Speaker 1: another paper I want to talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1: But this was especially because of its association with Pagan Rituals.
Speaker 1: But eventually incense was widely adopted for church uses, especially
Speaker 1: in the fourth and fifth centuries, uh and this would
Speaker 1: be for uses such as the veneration of the dead
Speaker 1: and the demarcation of special days of worship. Georgie writes
Speaker 1: that the thurible itself has been in use since roughly
Speaker 1: the seventh century and it usually consists of a cup
Speaker 1: shaped container, and you carry that hanging from four chains
Speaker 1: and you swing it around and the Cup has a
Speaker 1: lid with holes of some kind in it. The holes
Speaker 1: are important so that air can get in and so
Speaker 1: that smoke can get out, kind of like the vents
Speaker 1: on a grill, and in the middle of the cup
Speaker 1: there's usually a small container for the burning incense itself.
Speaker 1: If you look at the earliest examples, thuribles tend to
Speaker 1: be simply round or hexagonal boxes, but over time the
Speaker 1: thurible becomes more ornate. Quote in Gothic Times it took
Speaker 1: on architectural forms to symbolize the Church building itself, and
Speaker 1: from the seventeenth century onward it acquired freer forms. Now,
Speaker 1: I think this point about the the innovations of gothic
Speaker 1: times is very interesting. If you look at many historical Thuribles,
Speaker 1: you can often see this architectural Motif, how they might
Speaker 1: resemble the Dome or the spire that would be found
Speaker 1: atop the cathedral that you were carrying them around the
Speaker 1: inside of, all almost like this is a little model
Speaker 1: of our church and the smoke pouring out of it
Speaker 1: and floating up into the air. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the prayer and the worship floating up out of this
Speaker 1: building to reach God. Yeah, that's that's that's interesting. It is.
Speaker 1: I never thought about it like that before, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's kind of in many cases that you're looking at
Speaker 1: kind of like a little model of a church is
Speaker 1: being swung around inside of a church. Yeah, so there.
Speaker 1: So there's the thurible itself, but then there is also
Speaker 1: an attendant artifact called the NAVICULA, which, confusingly, is also
Speaker 1: the name of a genus of algae that are said
Speaker 1: to resemble boats. I think both these names come from
Speaker 1: the word for boat, uh, and if you look up
Speaker 1: navicula as algae, they really do look like boats. It's
Speaker 1: it's one of the better examples of naming an organism
Speaker 1: after a human made object because it actually does look
Speaker 1: like the thing, unlike many of those. Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: Now in the church context, the NAVICULA is a little
Speaker 1: spice tray. It's uh, it's a small boat shaped container
Speaker 1: and You keep the incense in there and then, when
Speaker 1: you're running out inside the Thurible, transfer more from the
Speaker 1: NAVICULA to the throuble with the spoon. And Georgie writes
Speaker 1: that the boat shape of the NAVICULA became common in
Speaker 1: the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries because it symbolized the church
Speaker 1: carrying Christians to salvation as if on a boat. And
Speaker 1: she also includes some interesting examples of artwork depicting the
Speaker 1: use of Thuribles in, say, Bible Stories. One is a
Speaker 1: painting by seventeenth century Italian artist named Filippo Abiati, called
Speaker 1: Solomon Making a sacrifice to the idols and rob I've
Speaker 1: included a copy of this painting for you to look
Speaker 1: at here. A few interesting things to note about it.
Speaker 1: So this is based on a passage in first kings
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible. UH, talking about how you know,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that Solomon in some senses was very
Speaker 1: wise and worshiped the god of Israel. It's also kind
Speaker 1: of disparaging. It's like he ran around with some foreign
Speaker 1: idols and it says that, quote, he sacrificed and burnt
Speaker 1: incense at the high places, meaning two idols of of
Speaker 1: other gods, and the painting shows Solomon placing a thurible
Speaker 1: on a table in front of a humanoid idol. It
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a classical Greek statue and I
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting because the painting is correct in
Speaker 1: assuming that the use of incense burning uh took place
Speaker 1: in honoring the gods of many religions going back into
Speaker 1: ancient times and pre dates Christianity. But it's interesting that
Speaker 1: it shows him using a thurrible with a design that
Speaker 1: would have been contemporary and used in Christian churches at
Speaker 1: the time of the painting. Be kind of like if
Speaker 1: you had an illustration of Christ speaking to the masses
Speaker 1: and he's using a megaphone. Yeah, now, leap frogging off
Speaker 1: of this, I actually came across a paper that I
Speaker 1: found totally fascinating, a paper about the role of Aromas
Speaker 1: in the history of Christian theology, but specifically focusing on
Speaker 1: a figure named Saint Ephrem the Syrian, and this was
Speaker 1: a paper by Susan Ashbrook Harvey. I also want to
Speaker 1: give a shout out that I came across it by
Speaker 1: way of reference in a Jay store daily article by
Speaker 1: Livia Ger Shawn. But this, this paper by Susan Ashbrook Harvey,
Speaker 1: was published in the Journal of Theological Studies in Nineteen
Speaker 1: and it's called St from on the scent of salvation.
Speaker 1: Susan Ashbrook Harvey, the scholar who wrote this, as a
Speaker 1: professor of history and religion at Brown University. And this
Speaker 1: is all about this guy known as St Ephrem the Syrian,
Speaker 1: or St Ephraim. He lived in the fourth century, from
Speaker 1: three Oh six to three seventy three, in the eastern
Speaker 1: part of the Roman Empire, and he was a popular
Speaker 1: Christian theologian, but especially a prominent as a popular writer
Speaker 1: of Hymns, a hymnographer. So you may in fact have
Speaker 1: heard hymns where the lyrics were composed by this guy,
Speaker 1: by St e Ram interesting, and I have to fillock
Speaker 1: up which ones we can attribute to him. Generally, I'm
Speaker 1: just used to saying like John Wesley's name and that
Speaker 1: the Western names well I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much Ephraim you're going to get in English speaking churches.
Speaker 1: I think that some of his hymns are still sung
Speaker 1: in some Orthodox churches. But Anyway, Harvey highlights the fact
Speaker 1: that in many of his Hymns St Ephraim uses a
Speaker 1: very interesting phrase, rhea Dehyuta, which could be translated as
Speaker 1: the fragrance of life. Now, as a bit of background,
Speaker 1: smell and fragrance had an important place in the rituals of,
Speaker 1: according to Harvey, all the major religions of the ancient Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: not just the various pagan cults, but also in Judaism
Speaker 1: and eventually in Christianity, though it seems like the very
Speaker 1: earliest Christianity, the first few centuries of Christianity tended to
Speaker 1: avoid the use of fragrances and incense, but that changed
Speaker 1: over time and would change by Ephraim's time. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: across all these different distinct religions, the form of many
Speaker 1: sacrificial gifts to God or to the Gods was is
Speaker 1: a burnt offering. You would burn something to make that
Speaker 1: a gift to the Gods and you would expect the
Speaker 1: Gods to reward you in turn with with good favor,
Speaker 1: with blessings of some kind. Uh. This is the classic
Speaker 1: I scratch your back, you scratch my back, relationship between
Speaker 1: between humans and the Gods. And Uh, these burnt offerings
Speaker 1: could include anything from the burnt flesh of an animal
Speaker 1: sacrifice to the burning of incense on a God's altar.
Speaker 1: And it was often, I think this is one of
Speaker 1: the strangest things, it was often explicitly said that the
Speaker 1: smell of the offering in particular was pleasing to the gods.
Speaker 1: And this is not just in Pagan religions. There are
Speaker 1: loads of examples of this in the Hebrew Bible. In fact,
Speaker 1: I even alluded to one example I'm going to site
Speaker 1: in the last part of the series. Uh So, if
Speaker 1: you look to the book of Leviticus, Chapter One, the
Speaker 1: Lord is telling Moses how to perform sacrifices of livestock.
Speaker 1: It says, quote, then the priest shall turn the whole
Speaker 1: is referring to a bull. Shall turn the whole into
Speaker 1: smoke on the altar as a burnt offering, an offering
Speaker 1: by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord. And this
Speaker 1: is not the only reference like this. There are tons
Speaker 1: of references throughout the Bible of smells being pleasing to God.
Speaker 1: Just a few verses later, at the beginning of chapter two,
Speaker 1: we get a specific reference to incense. We learned that
Speaker 1: if somebody makes a grain offering instead of an animal offering. Quote,
Speaker 1: when anyone presents a grain offering to the Lord, the
Speaker 1: offering shall be of choice flower. The worshipers shall pour
Speaker 1: oil on it and put Frankincense on it and bring
Speaker 1: it to Aaron's sons the priests, after taking from it
Speaker 1: a handful of the choice flour and oil, with all
Speaker 1: its frankincense. The priests shall turn this token portion into
Speaker 1: smoke on the altar and offering by fire of pleasing
Speaker 1: odor to the Lord. So over and over again we
Speaker 1: learn that it was believed that the aroma of sacrifice
Speaker 1: itself is what gives the Lord Pleasure. And meanwhile, in
Speaker 1: Roman Pagan cults it was common practice to make a
Speaker 1: burnt offering of some kind. Also could be a burnt
Speaker 1: offering of an animal or an offering of sweet smelling incense.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think incense was often considered sort of
Speaker 1: the baseline sacrifice you could make to the Roman gods.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, you didn't have an whole animal,
Speaker 1: you could at least get a little chunk of incense
Speaker 1: and burn that. I love the wording in this uh,
Speaker 1: this this quote you read about turning the token portion
Speaker 1: into smoke, and it kind of gets to this, UH,
Speaker 1: something we've touched on with with fire technology before, about
Speaker 1: the the transformation of one thing into the other, the
Speaker 1: sort of alchemical power of of cooking or flame or
Speaker 1: in this case burnt offering. Right. I think that very
Speaker 1: transformation was something that that a lot of ancient theologians
Speaker 1: found kind of transfixing in a way, like they did
Speaker 1: write about it. I think we may get to a
Speaker 1: bit about that in in just a minute here. But
Speaker 1: another thing is it doesn't stop just with the smell
Speaker 1: of burnt offerings, whether that's, you know, the kind of
Speaker 1: barbecue smell of of an animal, or whether that is
Speaker 1: the scent of incense on the altar. Also, in religions
Speaker 1: of the ancient Mediterranean, fragrant holy oils were used to
Speaker 1: anoint new initiates or people specially blessed in some circumstance,
Speaker 1: or maybe the sick or the dying. So the point
Speaker 1: is smells were a deeply rooted part of religious life
Speaker 1: and the experience of the divine for multiple religions with
Speaker 1: otherwise very different beliefs. Now, coming back to St Ephraim,
Speaker 1: specifically of the fourth century and his idea of the
Speaker 1: fragrance of life, harvey notes that. One thing I think
Speaker 1: is worth pointing out. We often when we say the
Speaker 1: word fragrance, that has a positive connotation to it. You know,
Speaker 1: the fragrance of life is necessarily a good smell and,
Speaker 1: as Efraim used it, it does seem to often have
Speaker 1: positive connotations. But actually the word he's using here, Rehau,
Speaker 1: does not mean only pleasant smells. It could mean the
Speaker 1: smell of anything from a chunk of murder to a
Speaker 1: bookcave flowers to a big old tub of spoiled sour cream.
Speaker 1: It would cover it all. So it might be better
Speaker 1: to think of it as smell, even though it's usually
Speaker 1: translated into English as fragrance. It's tough when you're talking
Speaker 1: about English because I I feel, and and this has
Speaker 1: been pointed out, I've seen this pointed out by researchers before,
Speaker 1: that English language, especially it's popular usage today, is not
Speaker 1: great at describing smells and odors like it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons whereas so often times you'll hear
Speaker 1: kids talking about food stinking like or smelling like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. They's just that sometimes the vocabulary is lacking there,
Speaker 1: and certainly our usage of the vocabulary to properly describe
Speaker 1: smells as more than just, you know, extremely pleasant or
Speaker 1: or extremely alarming. Yeah, a lot of smell words have
Speaker 1: too much front connotation, loading like they're already even if
Speaker 1: you say the words smell, which is supposed to be neutral,
Speaker 1: I think more often that's going to have a negative connotation,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, fragrance makes you think of flowers or something,
Speaker 1: or perfume. Aroma, I think, often makes me think of,
Speaker 1: I don't know, onions and garlic, like cooking aromatic cooking ingredients. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm always annoyed when there's talk of, quote, Stinky Cheeses, like,
Speaker 1: come on, wait, we have other words that we can use.
Speaker 1: So we can say that these these cheeses are pungent, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but but are they stinky? I think you're it's just
Speaker 1: it's just a loaded description. It's pre judging. Yeah, but okay.
Speaker 1: So what's the deal? What? What is the fragrance of life?
Speaker 1: According to St Efrem. Well, Harvey writes about it like this.
Speaker 1: Harvey writes, quote, for from knowledge of God is something
Speaker 1: not only cognitive in origin but also sensory, hence the
Speaker 1: arresting quality of his old factory imagery. Bypassing the mind
Speaker 1: body dichotomy and leaving aside the question of rationality, is
Speaker 1: the basis for establishing truth from finds in sensory experience
Speaker 1: a knowledge about God which cannot be gained any other way.
Speaker 1: So Harvey argues that for Efraim the fragrance of life
Speaker 1: is part of an idea that knowledge can be, quote,
Speaker 1: non cognitive yet genuinely revelatory of divine being, truth and action.
Speaker 1: Now that might be like, I don't know. At first
Speaker 1: I was like, what is she talking about? What does
Speaker 1: this mean? But I eventually got through it. She's saying
Speaker 1: that for Fraim, and not just him. There were other
Speaker 1: ancient theologians who thought this way. But for Efraim, like
Speaker 1: you can know God is there because you can sense
Speaker 1: him with your senses. And according to Harvey, this belief
Speaker 1: has interesting relationships to the religious context of asceticism in
Speaker 1: early Syrian Christianity, which was fram's context. So there's a
Speaker 1: section kind of on what you might call the natural
Speaker 1: theology of e Ram. You know sometimes, uh, you'll hear
Speaker 1: various versions of this where people look, will express their
Speaker 1: religious beliefs in terms of viewing the natural world. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, observe the way the regularity of nature, look
Speaker 1: at the way the tides work, look at the way
Speaker 1: plants grow, look at the way the sun comes up
Speaker 1: and comes down. That just proves that my religious beliefs
Speaker 1: are true. Yeah, sometimes this is very clunkily carried out
Speaker 1: as well, like you'll see a billboard by the highway
Speaker 1: and it's like proof of God and it's a picture
Speaker 1: of a baby, and I'm like, okay, well, it's cute
Speaker 1: and all, but I don't know if that's proof of
Speaker 1: anything other than like two people had a baby. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's it's making like it's like
Speaker 1: cutting out a step in the middle. So you look
Speaker 1: at all these things and they are indeed amazing and
Speaker 1: they can fill you with wonder and they can be
Speaker 1: inspiring and make you feel like wow, there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's so much more to life and to existence than
Speaker 1: I often realize when I'm just going about my tedious
Speaker 1: little everyday tasks. And that's all true. And then there's
Speaker 1: a second leap where the person says and therefore the
Speaker 1: fact that there is more means whatever I in particular
Speaker 1: happened to believe is what the more is. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the part that they're kind of skipping over.
Speaker 1: Truth of God confirmed. But but I think one thing
Speaker 1: I find very interesting about about the the the invocation
Speaker 1: of smell, he had the invocation of voters, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, as we've discussed on the show before, like
Speaker 1: there's an immediacy to the way we register smell that
Speaker 1: does often feel like it comes outside of reason and
Speaker 1: it comes outside of memory, and I think that's that's
Speaker 1: very fascinating to think about in this context. Like I
Speaker 1: would say, picture of a baby doesn't really tell you anything,
Speaker 1: but the smell of a baby, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That might that might be prooved of God confirmed.
Speaker 1: That's more uh, it's at least more convincing to the brain.
Speaker 1: Like the emotional impact is more powerful than the billboard. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: but so what's the deal with Ephraim's natural theology? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think this is the less interesting part of what
Speaker 1: he's trying to say. He's saying like you can sense
Speaker 1: God with nature because like every element of nature is
Speaker 1: in some sense stamped with his seal. An example given
Speaker 1: in the paper that I thought was funny. Harvey talks
Speaker 1: about how Efrem said, you know, birds have to extend
Speaker 1: their wings in order to fly and when they extend
Speaker 1: their wings they make the shape of the cross. There
Speaker 1: you go. There is a lot of Christian theology from
Speaker 1: the early centuries that reads kind of like this. To
Speaker 1: me it's like you're kind of reaching, but I admire
Speaker 1: the effort. Thank thank but anyway. So Efraim believes that
Speaker 1: baptism kind of changes the body, allowing it to acquire
Speaker 1: new senses that can literally directly sense God and the
Speaker 1: divine through sites and sounds and tastes and smells. Uh So,
Speaker 1: to read from Harvey here quote in Efraim's hymns, eating
Speaker 1: and smelling are closely related experiences. So too are the
Speaker 1: concepts bread of life and fragrance of life. Bread of
Speaker 1: life is a is a phrase directly from the Gospels
Speaker 1: in the New Testament, where Jesus says I am the
Speaker 1: bread of life, and this is taken in mass to
Speaker 1: refer to, like the sharing of communion, the eating of
Speaker 1: bread at communion. But anyway, Harvey goes on. When eaten
Speaker 1: as the bread of life, Christ pervades the whole of
Speaker 1: the believer's being. When inhaled, as the fragrance of life,
Speaker 1: Christ again penetrates throughout the believer. EFREM titles Christ, quote
Speaker 1: the Glorious Lily, quote the treasure of perfumes around whom
Speaker 1: the faithful gather, quote that they might inhale and be
Speaker 1: sated and that the power of Christ's deeds might permeate
Speaker 1: their senses. And then harvey goes on with her own writing. Here,
Speaker 1: through the act of breathing the life force itself, Christ's
Speaker 1: presence saturates the believer. Interestingly, it is fragrance rather than
Speaker 1: breath that efrem highlights again and again. His old factory
Speaker 1: imagery is about encounter, not animation. The breath of life
Speaker 1: that Adam received at creation animated his lifeless body. The
Speaker 1: fragrance of Christ inhaled by the believer indicates by its
Speaker 1: smell the action of human slash divine encounter through sensory experience.
Speaker 1: So this probably seems very weird to most people today,
Speaker 1: even to most Christians today, I would guess, the idea
Speaker 1: that you could literally sense the resurrection of Christ directly
Speaker 1: by smelling him. But as weird as that might seem
Speaker 1: to us today, Harvey again emphasizes that Special Aromas were
Speaker 1: a very important part of the rituals of basically every
Speaker 1: religion in the ancient Mediterranean and in ancient literature, divinity
Speaker 1: is often described as having a sweet smell. Harvey writs, quote,
Speaker 1: the Association was not capricious, immaterial, invisible yet tangibly experienced.
Speaker 1: Scent provided a fitting metaphor for divinity that exceeded physicality
Speaker 1: or comprehension. Scent conveyed s rather than substance. It could
Speaker 1: not be contained or circumscribed. Circumscribed it had the powered
Speaker 1: across boundaries. The experience of it could not be voluntarily controlled,
Speaker 1: since was affective yet ineffable. Wow, that's that's neat that.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of the bit we're discussing the last
Speaker 1: episode about the presence of the the imperial Chinese court
Speaker 1: and in the presence of the emperor, who again has
Speaker 1: divine connotations. And you can compare that to various traditions
Speaker 1: of divine kings and cultures around the world, but the
Speaker 1: idea that this, this would be a presence that had
Speaker 1: its own unique olfactory reality and that by by smelling that,
Speaker 1: you're smelling the divine as well. Yeah, exactly. And and
Speaker 1: she goes on to include many examples of the way
Speaker 1: from Uh reimagined like existing pre existing Bible stories, as
Speaker 1: essentially being about smell, like when St Ephraim describes the
Speaker 1: story of the first pentecost in the book of acts.
Speaker 1: This is a story where, after the death of Jesus,
Speaker 1: the apostles are said to be they're said to suddenly
Speaker 1: be filled with the Holy Spirit and they begin to
Speaker 1: speak in tongues to the multitudes. Ef Him writing about
Speaker 1: this in him writes again in translation quote. When the
Speaker 1: blessed apostles were gathered together, the place shook and the
Speaker 1: scent of Paradise, having recognized its home, poured forth its perfumes.
Speaker 1: So the infilling of the Holy Spirit is like the
Speaker 1: pouring of a perfume. You can literally smell it. So
Speaker 1: Harvey summarizes at the end of this section. Quote. For Efraim,
Speaker 1: Olfactory Experience Mirror sacramental reality. To Smell God is to
Speaker 1: know God as a transcendent yet transforming experience, a presence
Speaker 1: actively known through bodily experience. Okay, so so that's section
Speaker 1: one of this paper, the one that I think actually
Speaker 1: I found the most interesting. This is about how Efraim
Speaker 1: believes smell can literally directly reveal the presence of God.
Speaker 1: God has a smell, you can smell him and that's
Speaker 1: how you know he's there. But it also sort of
Speaker 1: goes the other way. Harvey after this as a section
Speaker 1: on how Efraim believed humans can use smells to commune
Speaker 1: with God. And yet again, this is not uh, this
Speaker 1: is not unique to Ephraim. I mean this is widespread.
Speaker 1: We talked about all the examples of humans using various
Speaker 1: smells to give something to God, to give a sacrifice
Speaker 1: or a gift to God or to communicate with God.
Speaker 1: And here's where there's a little bit of interesting uh
Speaker 1: tension in the Christian history of the use of smells. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Ephraim was living in the fourth century, in the three hundreds,
Speaker 1: and this comes at a turning point for the use
Speaker 1: of incense in Christian worship. Before this period, Christians mostly
Speaker 1: avoided the use of incense. UH, setting themselves apart from
Speaker 1: basically every other religion in the empire, and the Early
Speaker 1: Avoidance of Incense May in fact have been a kind
Speaker 1: of intentional segregating maneuver. It's saying like no, we're different
Speaker 1: from all these other religions because we don't do that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Another problem for the of Incense and Christianity,
Speaker 1: especially in the third century, arose because the burnt offering
Speaker 1: of incense was a was a standard ritual of worship
Speaker 1: of the Roman gods, who the Christians considered the pagan gods,
Speaker 1: and especially of emperor reverence, the reverence for the Roman Emperor.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about this on the show before. There's
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a misperception that it was like
Speaker 1: consistently illegal to be a Christian in the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: before Constantine, and that's not true at all. Like, for
Speaker 1: the most part, Roman authorities really did not care what
Speaker 1: religion you were what God you worshiped. But there were
Speaker 1: brutal persecutions of Christians in periodic outbreaks in the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: not for their positive belief in Christianity but for their
Speaker 1: refusal to participate in the imperial cult. So this could
Speaker 1: take the form of a kind of loyalty test. This
Speaker 1: was especially bad under the emperor deseus at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the third century. So a Roman Authority might like
Speaker 1: grab some Christians and, you know, bring them in and say, okay,
Speaker 1: we hear you're you're not showing proper fealty to the
Speaker 1: Roman gods and to the emperor. All we need you
Speaker 1: to do is do a little burnt offering, burn some
Speaker 1: incense for the emperor, for the Roman Gods, and then
Speaker 1: you're you'll be fine. Sometimes they would do it, which
Speaker 1: Christians saw when, you know, when some of them did that,
Speaker 1: they saw that as a big betrayal. Some of them
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it, and then they might be they might
Speaker 1: face really harsh penalties, including being put to death. It's
Speaker 1: worth noting that Roman Pagans viewed the UH. Their refusal
Speaker 1: sometimes to do the offering incance of incence is really confusing,
Speaker 1: like why not just do it? What's the problem? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's it might seem a strange hill too, in
Speaker 1: some cases literally die on. But you can certainly see
Speaker 1: how if Christians in the third century are encountering these
Speaker 1: situations where, like they you know, the burning of Incense,
Speaker 1: of an incense offering is what the Romans are trying
Speaker 1: to force you to do or you die, and it
Speaker 1: is the thing that some of you did in order
Speaker 1: to avoid death, but in a way that now makes you, uh,
Speaker 1: shamed and excluded from the Christian community. You can understand
Speaker 1: why they might not think burning in since was cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean and certainly you can get into various
Speaker 1: histories of different like fringe groups and uh and belief
Speaker 1: systems that that have set themselves outside of the rest
Speaker 1: of a given culture, and you often enforce those barriers
Speaker 1: by having prohibitions like this in place. Like that, we
Speaker 1: are not going to do the thing that everyone else
Speaker 1: is doing because we are set apart. However, it seems
Speaker 1: like all this changed in the fourth century. So in
Speaker 1: the fourth century, for one thing, you get the Emperor Constantine,
Speaker 1: the first Christian emperor, and this is a period of
Speaker 1: big transition, roughly when Christianity goes from a a sort
Speaker 1: of reviled, large minority religion to suddenly a culturally and
Speaker 1: politically dominant and in vogue religion. And this is concurrent
Speaker 1: with what Harvey Calls A, quote, broader embellishment of Christian
Speaker 1: ceremonial I think this means a sort of in meshing
Speaker 1: of Christian belief with the more mainstream esthetic elements of
Speaker 1: just religion generally as understood in the Roman Empire. So
Speaker 1: this is where you get the kind of mixing of
Speaker 1: the superficial trappings of Roman religion with the core theological
Speaker 1: beliefs of Christianity. And by the fifth century the change
Speaker 1: seems to have been complete and the use of incense
Speaker 1: was just normative for pretty much all Christian worship. So
Speaker 1: e from is writing in the Fourth Century when incense
Speaker 1: usage in Christianity is becoming more popular, and he uses
Speaker 1: incense imagery a lot. UH, from is careful to distinguish
Speaker 1: between incense used in what he calls True Religion, which
Speaker 1: of course for him was Christianity and Judaism, and false religion,
Speaker 1: which for him was everything else. He refers to the
Speaker 1: instance offerings of Pagan's interestingly, as quote, foul, gloomy in
Speaker 1: their vapor and loathsome in their odor. And yet uh,
Speaker 1: and yet, he says, of course, in sence burning is
Speaker 1: great in what he thought were the true religions. And
Speaker 1: when incense has a sweet smell, this is because, according
Speaker 1: to Ephrom, Christ intervenes to make it smell good. That
Speaker 1: that raises questions. But and he repeatedly uses the image
Speaker 1: of a sensor or Thurible, like we were talking about before,
Speaker 1: as a metaphor for the worship of Christians. To quote
Speaker 1: one of his hymns, he says, come, let us make
Speaker 1: our love a great common sensor. Let us offer up
Speaker 1: our songs and prayers like incense to the one who
Speaker 1: made his cross a sensor to the divinity and offered
Speaker 1: his blood on behalf of us all. So the sensor
Speaker 1: is doing a lot of work in this kind of imagery.
Speaker 1: So are he's saying our love of the divine is
Speaker 1: a sensor that you know, and that kind of fits
Speaker 1: with the church imagery right like that. The you might
Speaker 1: carry a sensor that looks like the church you're in,
Speaker 1: and of course the church is often a metonym for
Speaker 1: the church community. So it's like the church in a
Speaker 1: sense is a sensor and the smoke coming out of
Speaker 1: it as the prayers and the faith and all that.
Speaker 1: But then he also says that Jesus made his cross
Speaker 1: a sensor. Uh, I think I've lost track of what
Speaker 1: the image is doing there, but clearly he's really into
Speaker 1: the idea of of like of faith and love as smells. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're needed at least and symbolic religious technology at
Speaker 1: this point. Right now there's all this stuff about theological tension,
Speaker 1: about like whether the burning of incense should be thought of,
Speaker 1: as you know, honoring of God or not, because some
Speaker 1: Christian theologians would say, wait a minute now, uh, we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be sacrificing to God anymore. Christ was
Speaker 1: the sacrifice, so that's not part of our religion anymore.
Speaker 1: But I guess they were just overruled because like it,
Speaker 1: it became part of what most of the Church did.
Speaker 1: And then, finally, the last thing in Harvey's paper here
Speaker 1: is this whole idea of Ephraim and these other theologians
Speaker 1: talking about smells as having come some kind of saving
Speaker 1: or animating power, like creating stories in which the the
Speaker 1: salvation of Christ, is itself an animating smell. So like
Speaker 1: when the when a Christian dies, according to these theologians, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the body dies, but then upon the second
Speaker 1: coming of Christ, quote, the wondrous odor of that treasury
Speaker 1: of life flies into the body. So the idea of
Speaker 1: the resurrection is that life returns because animating smells are
Speaker 1: are are sort of injected into the dead body by
Speaker 1: Christ or or by the Holy Spirit. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: goes along with all kinds of stuff. Ef Firm writes
Speaker 1: about how like when you go to heaven, you don't
Speaker 1: actually need to eat bread in heaven, you know you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be hungry because instead of bread there is
Speaker 1: the very fragrance of paradise. You will live on smells alone.
Speaker 1: I mean it's enough to make you wonder if he
Speaker 1: was a super smeller, if he yeah, it had just
Speaker 1: like heightened sense of smell compared to average people. And that,
Speaker 1: I mean that alone wouldn't account for all of this,
Speaker 1: but perhaps that's sort of uh, played into this. Just
Speaker 1: just hyper obsession with sacred smells. I was wondering about
Speaker 1: that very thing. One this is the very last thing
Speaker 1: I want to mention from this paper, but I thought
Speaker 1: this was interesting too. Uh. So, Harvey described Syriac Christian traditions.
Speaker 1: That's and this is related to from two that said
Speaker 1: that when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden
Speaker 1: of Eden, you know the Garden of Eden story, they
Speaker 1: eat the fruit. No, they weren't supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: They get kicked out. In these Syrian Christian traditions, they
Speaker 1: say it was because the serpent had breathed on Adam
Speaker 1: and Adam became mortal. And quote, Eden could not tolerate
Speaker 1: the stench of mortality. So He after the serpent breathed
Speaker 1: on him, he stunk, he stunk of death, so the
Speaker 1: garden had to vomit him out, and then it was
Speaker 1: the fragrance of life supplied by Christ that reversed this
Speaker 1: curse and frightened away death itself. So it's a parallel
Speaker 1: to the garden. Uh, it said that the grave could
Speaker 1: not tolerate the smell of life, and thus it's spit
Speaker 1: Christ out and he was resurrected. Oh Wow. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't help but wonder. You know, Terry Jones of
Speaker 1: Monty Python was a pretty bright fell lane and very
Speaker 1: well read, especially when it came to medieval topics. I
Speaker 1: wonder if that any of this played into the bog
Speaker 1: of eternal stench and labyrinth, because this is, you know,
Speaker 1: this idea that if Jareth, the ruler of the realm
Speaker 1: or to cast you out, you would be cast into
Speaker 1: the bog of eternal stench. And of course, if anything
Speaker 1: in the in the bog there touches you, you will
Speaker 1: smell bad for the rest of your life. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wonder if there's any connection there.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, maybe it's that, but I wouldn't put it
Speaker 1: past Terry Jones. But that's interesting. I didn't make that connection,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting how it's reimagining these theological beliefs
Speaker 1: in terms of, you know, just understanding our basic physiology that,
Speaker 1: like smell, is clearly a sense that is very crucial
Speaker 1: to our discussed reaction and that, like bad smells, can
Speaker 1: easily cause the like the emitic function, you know, the
Speaker 1: desire to vomit and, uh, I don't know where I'm
Speaker 1: going with that, but it makes sense to me. I
Speaker 1: also was wondering. I mean obviously different types of sensory
Speaker 1: hallucinations exist and olfactory hallucinations also exist. Um, but I
Speaker 1: feel like most of the time when I've read about
Speaker 1: olfactory hallucinations, they tend to be negative as opposed to positive.
Speaker 1: They tend to be bad smells, they tend to be
Speaker 1: situations where, instead of smelling flowers, you smell, you know,
Speaker 1: rot as opposed to the reverse or something, or smelling.
Speaker 1: I said it may be the case that exists, but
Speaker 1: I don't think I've read anything about hallucinated pleasant smells.
Speaker 1: But if such a thing did exist, I guess it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility you could have
Speaker 1: positive olfactory hallucinations induced by religious experience. Than this kind
Speaker 1: of ties into the next thing I wanted to mention,
Speaker 1: which is a scientific study about the connection between a
Speaker 1: commonly used smell in religious rituals, specifically Frankincense, and pharmacological
Speaker 1: effects in the brain. So this is a study that
Speaker 1: was published in the F A S Eb Journal in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight by Aria Musiaf at all, and it's
Speaker 1: called Incensial Acetate, an incense component ellicit psychoactivity by activating
Speaker 1: trpv three channels in the brain. Okay, so we know
Speaker 1: Frankincense and other incense, you know aromatic smells have been
Speaker 1: used in religious rituals going way back. But this is
Speaker 1: an interesting finding that the smoke of Buzzwellia Resin again
Speaker 1: frankincense may not only affect us by habit or by
Speaker 1: learned cognitive association, there may actually be a armacological mechanistic
Speaker 1: effect on the brain as well. Uh, so the authors
Speaker 1: begin by observing you know that people have been burning
Speaker 1: Boswellia resin going back to ancient times for ceremonies of
Speaker 1: all different sorts, and that the smell is often said
Speaker 1: to help people feel spiritual exaltation. This study was designed
Speaker 1: to investigate the neurological and behavioral effects of an organic
Speaker 1: compound called Incenseil Acetate, which is found in some types
Speaker 1: of Frankincense. INSENSEIL ACETATE has had already been shown at
Speaker 1: the time of this study to have some anti inflammatory effects,
Speaker 1: and the authors here we're looking at the effects on
Speaker 1: the central nervous system. One key discovery seems to be
Speaker 1: that Incenseil Acetate is a potent agonist or activator for
Speaker 1: something called the transient receptor potential Valenoid, or TRP v
Speaker 1: three ion channel. Now, the TRP v channels are typically
Speaker 1: used by the skin and other tissues to detect temperature
Speaker 1: changes and warmth, as well as chemical changes that simulate warmth.
Speaker 1: One example is that this is a different one, but
Speaker 1: spicy foods are known to work, at least in part,
Speaker 1: by stimulating the TRP V one channel, which is naturally
Speaker 1: used to detect burning sensations and pain via heat via
Speaker 1: real heat. But you eat some spicy food, the CAPSAS
Speaker 1: and in the spite in the hot peppers will activate
Speaker 1: those trpv one channels and create the the false sensation
Speaker 1: of burning or heat in the mouth. Meanwhile, the authors
Speaker 1: of this study point out that the TRPV three channel
Speaker 1: specifically appears specialized to detect temperatures with a threshold in
Speaker 1: the range of thirty one to thirty nine degrees Celsius,
Speaker 1: which is about eighty eight to one oh two degrees Fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: or roughly the range of human body temperature. And so generally,
Speaker 1: when this ion channel is activated, it is Experien Riens
Speaker 1: by the brain as the feeling of warmth on the
Speaker 1: skin or in the mouth, wherever the wherever it's activated.
Speaker 1: So these trpv three channels are expressed in places like
Speaker 1: the skin, in the mouth, the mouth cavity, of course,
Speaker 1: but strangely they are also expressed in the brain tissue itself.
Speaker 1: And since the body is supposed to always keep the
Speaker 1: brain at a relatively constant temperature, it doesn't really make
Speaker 1: sense for the brain tissue to be sensitive to temperature changes.
Speaker 1: So what is the TRPV three channel doing in there?
Speaker 1: What's it? Why is it in the brain tissue? At
Speaker 1: the time of this study the answer to the question
Speaker 1: was unknown and I don't know whether there's been much
Speaker 1: development on that since then, but this study itself might
Speaker 1: help provide at least one small clue, and it goes
Speaker 1: like this. So you've got this compound, instance all Acetate,
Speaker 1: found in frank instance, and it is shown in this
Speaker 1: study to be an agonist or activator for the TRP
Speaker 1: v Three Channel. It's activating these receptors that trigger are
Speaker 1: a feeling of warmth, as well as perhaps having other
Speaker 1: unknown effects within the brain. Could we look at behavior
Speaker 1: of animals that are stimulated with this compound in order
Speaker 1: to see what those effects might be? Well, what do
Speaker 1: you know? They did that and yes, there are some
Speaker 1: effects in wild type mice. They found that Incenseil Acetate
Speaker 1: was shown to reduce anxiety and depression. Quote, at fifty
Speaker 1: milligrams per kilogram, I exerted a potent anxiolytic like effect,
Speaker 1: meeting anxiety quelling causing mice to spend significantly more time
Speaker 1: in the aversive open arms of an elevated plus maze. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: rob we've talked about the elevated plus maze test on
Speaker 1: the show before. That's a test commonly used to try
Speaker 1: to investigate Um anxiety, or the lack thereof in animals,
Speaker 1: where they're placed in a condition where they, you know,
Speaker 1: they can explore different parts of of of a simple
Speaker 1: cross shaped maze. Some parts of that maze are are covered,
Speaker 1: they're sheltered, so they create a feeling of safety or
Speaker 1: shelter for the animal. Other parts are uncovered and so
Speaker 1: generally when an animal spends more time exploring the uncovered parts,
Speaker 1: they are showing less anxiety. You know, they're less worried
Speaker 1: about what's going to happen to them and they're more
Speaker 1: willing to engage in full exploratory behaviors without the without
Speaker 1: worries about harm. Uh, and this is used to test
Speaker 1: various kinds of anxiety drugs that are designed to reduce anxiety.
Speaker 1: But it appears that Frankinsense also will call, at least
Speaker 1: at this dose, will cause mice to have less anxiety
Speaker 1: about these uncovered, exposed spaces. And they also showed in
Speaker 1: some different tests that the compound had antidepressant effects on
Speaker 1: swimming tests and mice. And they double checked this mechanism
Speaker 1: by trying to reproduce these results on mice that had
Speaker 1: been genetically altered to have their trpv three receptors knocked out,
Speaker 1: and the frankinstance compound had no effect on those. So
Speaker 1: it looks like it is indeed working via trpv three. Now,
Speaker 1: the study was in mice and the same thing might
Speaker 1: not hold true for humans, or it might not hold
Speaker 1: true at the doses one would be likely to receive
Speaker 1: just from being in a room that is, you know,
Speaker 1: lightly smoked with Frankinsense. But it does at least raise
Speaker 1: this interesting question. Is Frankinsense in particular selected for religious
Speaker 1: rituals not only because of tradition and the pleasant smell,
Speaker 1: but because of some kind of possible downstream pharmacological effects
Speaker 1: associated with activation of the TRPV three channel? And these
Speaker 1: these again, could include sensations of warmth as well as
Speaker 1: regulation of emotional states, particularly anxiety and depression. This is fascinating.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, on one level, potentially good news
Speaker 1: for the church mice in general. Yeah, with nothing else,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, like trying to imagine, like how this
Speaker 1: could feed into ideas and rituals revolving around frankinsense. I
Speaker 1: mean again, obviously church members at large or not huffing
Speaker 1: Frankincense uh in in in their worship. And also we're
Speaker 1: talking about we're often talking about rather large spaces with
Speaker 1: just kind of wafting about. But if at some point
Speaker 1: somebody in a position of sort of spiritual, theolotological power,
Speaker 1: uh had been in a more confined space with this
Speaker 1: and had experienced some of these Um sensations whilst uh,
Speaker 1: you know, breathing in some frankincense saturated air, you could
Speaker 1: see how that might lead into uh emphasises that are
Speaker 1: placed on on Frankincense moving forward. This absolutely got me
Speaker 1: wondering about formative experience in which I wonder if one
Speaker 1: St Ephraim maybe got into a little hot box room,
Speaker 1: got very, you know, a confined space, and went hard
Speaker 1: on the Frankincense and that did something to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he emerges believing that he can not only metaphorically but
Speaker 1: literally smell the presence of God. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is fascinating. I guess I'd love to hear from frankinsince
Speaker 1: enthusiasts out there, UM, and also, I guess in general,
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to hear from people whose religious
Speaker 1: practices do have a a dedicated incense or specific odor
Speaker 1: like like. Certainly I can think of like Asheram type environments.
Speaker 1: I've been in uh you know where there is there's
Speaker 1: incense burned and I don't even know what specific incense
Speaker 1: would be, but it does contribute to that space. But
Speaker 1: I think back on growing up in a like a
Speaker 1: Protestant church environment and I don't I would be hard
Speaker 1: pressed to say what the smell, but the odor of
Speaker 1: the sacred spaces was. You know, it was just like
Speaker 1: what vacuumed carpet, freshly vacuum carpet maybe something like that,
Speaker 1: something very neutral and almost invisible, air conditioning perhaps, or Um,
Speaker 1: I guess, kind of the wood of the pews, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But nothing. It's like that is like
Speaker 1: literally piped in or literally burnt and created in the space.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been in some Protestant churches that
Speaker 1: almost had new car smell. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: explain what that is. New Car smell is interesting to
Speaker 1: think of in terms of like religious experience, at least
Speaker 1: within the uh the sort of pseudo religious experience in
Speaker 1: the secular capitalist world of consumerist worship of the automobile.
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes there is that new church smell sometimes
Speaker 1: that you do encounter that right where it's just like
Speaker 1: the new construction smell, new paint, that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now one one last thing I wanted to touch on here. UH,
Speaker 1: would be remiss if we were talking about Thuribles and
Speaker 1: we did not mention the UH, the the Botea fumeriou.
Speaker 1: This is the largest of all thuribles. It is found
Speaker 1: in Spain's Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, and this is literally translated.
Speaker 1: It is the smoke expeller. It is a rate. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is a huge eight M or hundred and seventy six
Speaker 1: pound thurible. That's stay. If it's it's standing upright on
Speaker 1: the ground. It would stand one point uh, six meters,
Speaker 1: or five ft two in height. So it's like the
Speaker 1: size of a person. Is this the height of a person?
Speaker 1: And Uh, and therefore it's too large for one individual
Speaker 1: to swing. No, instead it swings from a pulley system
Speaker 1: on the ceiling like a great pendulum through the space here,
Speaker 1: and you can look up videos of it and it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty intimidating. It's this silver finished, brass, bronze comet
Speaker 1: burning its way back and forth through the church. You
Speaker 1: can imagine like if someone were to walk in front
Speaker 1: of this and they would just be completely walloped. Um,
Speaker 1: it's UH, yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. It's I think
Speaker 1: the current one only goes back a hundred, seventy one years,
Speaker 1: but the use of the pulley system and the use
Speaker 1: of a large thurible in this church goes back centuries,
Speaker 1: to I think the fourteen hundreds, and there have been
Speaker 1: some notable accidents over the years. Every now and then
Speaker 1: you know something's gonna go awry. I think in six
Speaker 1: two and it allegedly flew out of a window, but
Speaker 1: nobody was hurt. Um, this is I mean, I love
Speaker 1: this thing, but also I just got sad thinking about
Speaker 1: how I'm positive that Dan Brown has written a novel
Speaker 1: in which someone is murdered with this object. It just
Speaker 1: has to be. Yeah, it seems like that would be
Speaker 1: an irresistible scene for for a novel like that. Like
Speaker 1: maybe that's how you you do in your villain, or
Speaker 1: maybe that's the sort of James Bond esque scheme that
Speaker 1: your villain has to take out, uh, your your hero.
Speaker 1: What would be the plot to be like? Oh, no,
Speaker 1: the Dalai Lama has been crushed to death by a
Speaker 1: giant Thurible and it's up to our symbologist, who only
Speaker 1: as twenty four hours, to catch the killer before the
Speaker 1: volcano erupts. That I don't know. I guess it would
Speaker 1: also be irresistible because I think in Bertaccos fucos pendle
Speaker 1: Um somebody ends up hanging from the pendulum or something.
Speaker 1: It's been a very long tent since I read that one.
Speaker 1: So it would make sense give, you know, all this
Speaker 1: Dan Brown stuff, since the sort of sense to sort
Speaker 1: of come in the wake of Umberto Eco. It would
Speaker 1: make sense that that it would go in that direction.
Speaker 1: Now I actually was researching another angle on sensors for incense,
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a pretty exciting area
Speaker 1: of religious technology bleeding into the history of technology in general.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna set that aside. We'll come back to that.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't had enough incense yet, don't worry.
Speaker 1: There's going to essentially be more incense content coming out,
Speaker 1: but instead of it being incense part three, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a separate discussion. That just involved since, since
Speaker 1: now we didn't touch on anywhere near all the various
Speaker 1: incense traditions from cultures around the world. They're marvelous examples
Speaker 1: that I know I was running across from parts of Africa,
Speaker 1: Mezzo in South America, the Middle East and much more
Speaker 1: are so please you're right in if there's a specific
Speaker 1: example you'd like to highlight, something that's part of your
Speaker 1: practice or culture, because we'd love to hear from you all.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of stuff to blow your mind, our core
Speaker 1: episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind podcast feed, you can find that wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast episodes. On Monday's we do listen mail.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do an artifact or monster fact, and
Speaker 1: this week's, by the way, in case you missed it,
Speaker 1: is incense themed, so go back and listen to that
Speaker 1: one if you missed it. And on Fridays we do
Speaker 1: weird how cinema. That's our time to set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film, huge things,
Speaker 1: as always, to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. Stuff to blow your mind is
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