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

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back today with the

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Speaker 3: third part in our series called Dog Days and Death Stars.

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Speaker 3: In these episodes, we have been looking into the history

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Speaker 3: of the so called dog Days of summer and the

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Speaker 3: astronomical body from which the dog Days get their name,

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Speaker 3: that is the dog star serious in the constellation Canus Major.

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Speaker 3: In the first episode of the series, we talked about

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Speaker 3: misconceptions about where the phrase dog Days of Summer comes from.

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Speaker 3: We talked about the origins of the dog days tradition

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Speaker 3: and the astrology of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans,

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Speaker 3: who believed that what's called the halliacal rising of Sirius

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Speaker 3: at the time when the star is a first visible

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Speaker 3: in the sky on the east and horizon just before dawn,

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Speaker 3: that the timing of that in the mid to late

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Speaker 3: summer triggered important effects on Earth, both positive and negative.

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Speaker 3: It seems like the associations were mainly positive for the Egyptians,

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Speaker 3: thinking of it as the beginning of the Nile inundation season.

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Speaker 3: Which is very important for the ancient Egyptian agricultural cycle

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Speaker 3: and in ancient Egyptian religion, whereas the associations tended to

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Speaker 3: be more mixed or even more negative for the Greeks,

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Speaker 3: who believed that the rising star brought these deadly rays

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Speaker 3: of heat and also brought fevers and plague and omens

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Speaker 3: of doom. So we talked pretty extensively about the invocation

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Speaker 3: of the Dog Star in the Iliad of Homer, who

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Speaker 3: repeatedly uses it as this dual image of both brilliance

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Speaker 3: and destruction, as a kind of death star in the

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Speaker 3: words of Jay Holberg, an author whose book we've been

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Speaker 3: referring to in this series, And that's kind of fitting

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Speaker 3: given that it is actually both the brightest star in

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Speaker 3: the Earth's night sky and that the Greeks thought that

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Speaker 3: it literally had the power to inflict harm on mortals

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Speaker 3: through its rays. More about that in this episode. In

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Speaker 3: Part one, we also talked a good bit about the

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Speaker 3: star itself. The star is serious A, the larger star

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Speaker 3: in a binary system, along with a white dwarf called

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Speaker 3: Serious B. Serious A is very bright in our night sky,

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Speaker 3: both because of its high inherent luminosity and also because

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Speaker 3: it is relatively close. It is something like the fifth

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Speaker 3: closest star to our solar system. I think maybe that

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Speaker 3: depends on what types of objects you count as stars,

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Speaker 3: like to sub brown dwarfs and stuff. But also rob

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Speaker 3: you got into the long term evolution of our relationship

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Speaker 3: with Sirius, including like how long it's going to be

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Speaker 3: the brightest star in our night sky, and how the

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Speaker 3: rising of Sirius has changed over time for different historical

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Speaker 3: cultures on Earth. And also we got into explanation for

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Speaker 3: the differing accounts of the color of Sirius across the

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Speaker 3: course of history. In Part two, I talked about a

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Speaker 3: paper covering the historically influential but totally incorrect view that

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Speaker 3: the dog days of summer somehow give dogs rabies. This

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Speaker 3: led into a discussion of the work done in the

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Speaker 3: eighteen eighties by Louis Pasteur in developing a rabies vaccine.

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Speaker 3: Rob You talked about the different cultural understandings of the

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Speaker 3: dog star and its constellation around the world, like how

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Speaker 3: it's often associated with dogs or wolves in different cultures,

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Speaker 3: but other times with imagery like a bow and arrow,

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Speaker 3: And we talked about the significance of Sirius in Islam.

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Speaker 3: And I should also flag that a running theme across

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Speaker 3: both of the past two episodes has been to what

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Speaker 3: extent the classical themes of the Dog Days of Summer

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Speaker 3: emerge in the work of Don Henley. Rob, do you

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Speaker 3: have any more dog Don Henley to report on?

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Speaker 1: It?

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Speaker 3: Said?

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Speaker 2: I do not have any more Don Henley information for

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Speaker 2: this episode, so I don't know. I neglected to see

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Speaker 2: if there was anything else, like a draw from there

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Speaker 2: maybe next episode.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Well, anyway, we're back today to talk some more

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Speaker 3: about the Dog Days and the Dog Star, Rob, if

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Speaker 3: you're okay with it, I wanted to kick things off

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Speaker 3: with the idea of being twinkled to death by a star.

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Speaker 3: This is sort of picking up on a It's a

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Speaker 3: little bit of a tangent based on a paragraph in

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Speaker 3: a book we've been reading for these episodes, a book

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Speaker 3: called Serious Brightest Diamond in the Night Sky by Jay Holberg.

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Speaker 3: Jay Holberg is an astrophysicist and a sort of historian

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Speaker 3: of science. This book was published in the year two

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Speaker 3: thousand and seven by Springer, New York, and so this

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Speaker 3: book has come up a lot in the past couple

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Speaker 3: of episodes, but I was going back over the chapter

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Speaker 3: where Holberg looks especially at the ancient Greek significance of

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Speaker 3: the dog star, and so he's talking about it's use

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Speaker 3: in poems, famous poems by Hesied, like in this poem

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Speaker 3: called Works and Days by he Sid which is a

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Speaker 3: sort of an ancient farmer's almanac that takes the form

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Speaker 3: of a poem. It's funny how a lot of ancient

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Speaker 3: texts are, like even sort of practical or even scientific

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Speaker 3: texts are written as poems.

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Speaker 2: And if I remember correctly, that poem in particular is

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Speaker 2: the oldest known reference to Sirius by name. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 2: what I was reading.

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Speaker 3: I think that's correct. Yeah, And so in this poem

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Speaker 3: you get just a lot of different claims, you know.

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Speaker 3: He Seid as talking about how the dog days of

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Speaker 3: summer are a time when like goats are fat, wine

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Speaker 3: is sweet. He says men are at their weakest and

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Speaker 3: women are at their most wanton. Okay, but he's just like, okay,

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Speaker 3: it's you know, nothing much good is happening this time

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Speaker 3: of year. It's time to just like wait it out,

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Speaker 3: like chill out, get in the shade, drink wine, eat

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Speaker 3: good food, and just just wait and give libations to

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Speaker 3: the gods. Yes, And then Holberg also talks about its

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Speaker 3: significance in a more astronomy focused poem by the Greek

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Speaker 3: poet Aratus or Eretus, writing in the third century BC.

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Speaker 3: But anyway, finally he gets on to talking about ancient

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Speaker 3: beliefs about the direct dangers posed by Sirius. So he

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Speaker 3: mentions that the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates warned that Sirius

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Speaker 3: could inflict harm on people, that it could bring fevers

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Speaker 3: in danger, and he mentions that ancient Greek and Roman authors,

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Speaker 3: at least some of them, believed that Sirius could produce

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Speaker 3: what Holberg calls this is his word, emanations, which could

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Speaker 3: threaten humans and animals alike, especially dogs. And this brings

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Speaker 3: us back in line with that sort of false folk

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Speaker 3: etymology of the dog days, in which they are the

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Speaker 3: days of dogs panting. We know actually that it comes

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Speaker 3: from the astrology association, but ancient Greek authors wrote about

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Speaker 3: how the panting of dogs in the summer heat was

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Speaker 3: an effect of the star Sirius, which internally desiccated the

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Speaker 3: dog's guts, like it, you know, dried them out on

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Speaker 3: the insides. And this would lead to panting, and during

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Speaker 3: this state of internal dessication and excessive panting, dogs were

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Speaker 3: liable to have their saliva turn poisonous, so the dogs

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Speaker 3: could become rabid. It's almost like the heat of the

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Speaker 3: dog star transforms dogs into a kind of venomous animal

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Speaker 3: with you know, this venomous saliva that can kill humans

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Speaker 3: with the bite by way of rabies infection. That they

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Speaker 3: didn't have the concept obviously viral infection at the time,

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Speaker 3: So that kind of ties into what we talked about

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Speaker 3: in the last episode with the paper about rabies and

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Speaker 3: the dog days. But regarding these emanations of Sirius, I

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Speaker 3: got really interested in this because Holberg taught about how

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Speaker 3: ancient stargazers thought they could see visual evidence of these

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Speaker 3: emanations in optical phenomena that people observed when looking at

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Speaker 3: the star. Serious Mainly this seems to be a reference

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Speaker 3: to twinkling. Serious was prone to twinkling and producing flashes

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Speaker 3: of differently colored light. So that brought me to the

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Speaker 3: question of why is it exactly that stars twinkle. Twinkling

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Speaker 3: is what we call it when stars appear to fluctuate

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Speaker 3: in brightness, position, or color, so it can look like

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Speaker 3: a star is wobbling or increasing or decreasing in intensity,

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Speaker 3: or even kind of turning rainbow colors, maybe going from

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Speaker 3: white to red to blue. But when you ask the

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Speaker 3: question what causes stars to twinkle, there's a really interesting

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Speaker 3: fact that I think provides a good clue to the answer.

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Speaker 3: And that fact is if you look at the starrs

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Speaker 3: from outer space, which the ancient Greeks couldn't do. You know,

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Speaker 3: that's an advantage we have over them. If you look

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Speaker 3: at them from outer space, they stop twinkling. So astronauts

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Speaker 3: in the space station and space telescopes can look at

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Speaker 3: the stars and just see steady, crisp, unvarying points of light.

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Speaker 3: You know, a culture raised entirely in space would never

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Speaker 3: come up with the song Twinkle, Twinkle little star.

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Speaker 2: That's right, I mean, because they wouldn't twinkle, and they'd

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Speaker 2: know what they are. This is completely redundant, very good.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, twinkling is only a feature of stars wind

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Speaker 3: viewed from down here on Earth. And this points to

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Speaker 3: the fact that actually twinkling is not something stars do,

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Speaker 3: but something that our atmosphere does to the light emitted

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Speaker 3: by stars. Before that light reaches our eyes. The scientific

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Speaker 3: name for the twinkling of stars is atmospheric scintillation. So dially,

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Speaker 3: what happens here is that the turbulence of our atmosphere

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Speaker 3: causes variation in how rays of light are refracted or

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Speaker 3: bent as they travel through the air. So differences in

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Speaker 3: temperature and density across different blobs of air in our

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Speaker 3: atmosphere can speed up or slow down the light as

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Speaker 3: it passes through those blobs, which causes the light to

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Speaker 3: bend as it passes from one region of air to another,

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Speaker 3: like a much more subtle version of what happens when

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Speaker 3: sunlight passes through a prism. And the effect of this

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Speaker 3: is at the seeing end, is that starlight passing through

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Speaker 3: a turbulent atmosphere can appear to change in brightness and

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Speaker 3: in color, or to move slightly in position. And for

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Speaker 3: an analogy that's easy to understand from experience, think about

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Speaker 3: how objects in the background look strain or distorted when

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Speaker 3: you view them through masses of hot air, like the

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Speaker 3: heat mirage effect. So if you think of looking at

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Speaker 3: something you know across from you behind a bonfire, or

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Speaker 3: you think about being in the desert and looking at

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Speaker 3: a you know, a heat mirage.

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Speaker 2: Yet concrete and a summertime thriller, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes the stuff behind it, you know, from

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Speaker 3: your perspective look weird, though nothing is changed with that stuff. Actually,

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Speaker 3: something is changing with the light reflected off of that

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Speaker 3: stuff before it gets to your eyes. A similar thing

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Speaker 3: is happening to starlight when it twinkles. Stars appear to

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Speaker 3: us as point like sources of light, meaning that they

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Speaker 3: do not have an apparent diameter, and this, by the way,

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Speaker 3: distinguishes them from the planets, which many ancient people thought

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Speaker 3: of as movable stars. While to the naked eye, both

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Speaker 3: stars and other planets in the Solar System look like

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Speaker 3: points of light, the planets are close to enough that

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Speaker 3: they actually do have an apparent diameter. You often can't

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Speaker 3: quite tell looking without a telescope, but they do have

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Speaker 3: an apparent diameter, and as a result, they are far

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Speaker 3: less prone to twinkling when viewed through our atmosphere, essentially

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Speaker 3: because the beam of light projected from them is wider. Now,

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Speaker 3: all stars, as point like sources of light, can twinkle,

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Speaker 3: but there are some reasons that serious is especially prone

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Speaker 3: to a strong twinkling effect, and so if you are

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Speaker 3: primed to think of the twinkling of a star as

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Speaker 3: visual evidence that it is emitting something that is maybe

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Speaker 3: an attack or some kind of power it's exerting upon you.

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Speaker 3: It's like acting up, and you see that in the twinkling.

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Speaker 3: You can imagine how Serious would be especially prone to

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Speaker 3: these interpretations. Now, why is Serious a really twinkly star?

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Speaker 3: I was actually reading about this in a post on

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Speaker 3: Universe Today from twenty twelve by Adrian West called why

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Speaker 3: does Serious Twinkle? And West again says that all stars

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Speaker 3: can twinkle, of course, but points out a couple of

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Speaker 3: reasons that Sirius is among the twinkliest of stars. First

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Speaker 3: of all, it is the brightest, so the effect of

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Speaker 3: the twinkling is magnified. And I was trying to think

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Speaker 3: about how to understand this, and I actually thought back

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Speaker 3: to heat mirage effects again, So think about how a

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Speaker 3: bright object would be more noticeably distorted when viewed through

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Speaker 3: a heat mirage than an object that was already faint

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Speaker 3: and hard to see anyway. Also, another reason why Serious

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Speaker 3: is very twinkly stargazers are often looking at Sirious when

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Speaker 3: it is very low on the horizon. This is especially

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Speaker 3: true in the northern hemisphere where the cultures we've been

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Speaker 3: talking about are located Egyptians and Greeks and so forth,

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Speaker 3: northern hemisphere, looking at it when it's low on the horizon.

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Speaker 3: And that's especially true given the context of a astrology,

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Speaker 3: when many of these ancient stargazers would have been looking

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Speaker 3: for serious When it is just above the horizon at

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Speaker 3: its pre dawn rising at the beginning of the dog days,

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Speaker 3: that's when you know, it's like maybe signaling that the

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Speaker 3: nile is about to flood, or you know, when the

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Speaker 3: astronomers are saying, oh, okay, here come the hottest days

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Speaker 3: of summer. When a star is low on the horizon,

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Speaker 3: the light from the star is passing through more atmosphere

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Speaker 3: before it hits your eyes, because it's not just passing

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Speaker 3: down through the height of the atmosphere like it would

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Speaker 3: when it's directly overhead. It is cutting across many multiples

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Speaker 3: of that distance, sideways through the atmosphere.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why you know, obviously you should not stare

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Speaker 2: at the sunrise or the sunset, but it's one of

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Speaker 2: the one of the the reason why the sunrise or

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Speaker 2: the sunset, one of the reasons why the sun sunrise

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Speaker 2: of the sunset is more perceptible to the human eye,

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Speaker 2: like you can you can do something more more like

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Speaker 2: looking at it as opposed as the sun straight up

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Speaker 2: in the noonday sky.

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Speaker 3: There's more atmosphere filtering it before it gets to you.

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Speaker 2: It is not sufficient to protect your eyes entirely, but

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Speaker 2: it's easier on your eyes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, the fact that people are looking at

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Speaker 3: the star, maybe right before dawn, when it's very low

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Speaker 3: on the horizon, it's cutting through lots of atmosphere horizontally

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Speaker 3: to get to the eyes. This causes increased twinkling because

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Speaker 3: over that distance in the air, there's more opportunity for

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Speaker 3: the light to cross barriers between different pockets of air

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Speaker 3: and encounter atmospheric turbulence. So it gets all these opportunities

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Speaker 3: for refraction that causes the twinkling. And so Holberg writes, quote,

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Speaker 3: there was also a widespread association in the Greek mind

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Speaker 3: of the twinkling and flashing of Sirius with such physiological

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Speaker 3: conditions and states as seething, shaking, emptying, and oppression, as

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Speaker 3: if the star was in distress and spewing its light

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Speaker 3: about the sky. Indeed, serious acquired such and I think

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Speaker 3: there's a typo here. It actually says epitaphs. I think

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Speaker 3: it means epithets. I caught a typo acquired such epithets

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Speaker 3: as the shaker. But then I thought that was funny

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Speaker 3: because it also brings it back to the effect of

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Speaker 3: the emanations on dogs and how this connects to rabies,

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Speaker 3: where Holberg talks about the belief that the rapid panting

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Speaker 3: of dogs that got very hot in the summer during

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Speaker 3: the dog days, with their tongue hanging out, this was

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Speaker 3: viewed as a behavior that was characterized by the gaping

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Speaker 3: of the mouth, a gaping behavior, and so because of this,

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Speaker 3: Hlberg also says that quote serious was sometimes referred to

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Speaker 3: as the gaper. So, man, it just seems like people

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Speaker 3: can't get this, like dogs with mouths hanging open out

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Speaker 3: of their mind when they're thinking about the star.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean again, I think a big part of

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Speaker 2: it comes back to you have dogs or best friend.

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Speaker 2: Dogs have always been there with us. They are the

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Speaker 2: closest organism to us that we see responding to environmental

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Speaker 2: changes and then we can't help but also factor in

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Speaker 2: potential astrological changes as well. So yeah, it's such a

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Speaker 2: fascinating history here. And while you know this, the the

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Speaker 2: twinkling light of Sirius is not actually doing anything to us,

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Speaker 2: you know, it's still fascinating to remind ourselves that it

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Speaker 2: is still light from a vast power source light years

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Speaker 2: away that has traveled all the way to us, and

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Speaker 2: we are we are receiving. I mean, there's not there's

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Speaker 2: not really any information there. There are no marching orders

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Speaker 2: or anything. But still it's pretty phenomenal in the same

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Speaker 2: way that you know, you're out under a star filled

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Speaker 2: sky and it's like all these uh, these streams of

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Speaker 2: light from you know, throughout the galaxy have converged on

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Speaker 2: you, you know, and it's it's kind of a kind of

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Speaker 2: a magical moment.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's always interesting to remember how alien the

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Speaker 3: most common features of nature are that, like sunshine is

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Speaker 3: radiation from a natural fusion reactor, and so forth, radiation

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Speaker 3: from a star.

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Speaker 2: All right, well, let's uh, let's veer a little bit

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Speaker 2: into the world of science fiction before we come back

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Speaker 2: around into the real world. Because, of course, is the

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Speaker 2: brightest star in humanity's terrestrial night sky. Sirius has also

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Speaker 2: factored into our science fiction from a pretty early point.

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Speaker 2: Uh So I was I was digging into this a

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Speaker 2: little bit, and most commentators seem to agree that the

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Speaker 2: earliest example of fictional consideration of aliens from Sirius Syrians,

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Speaker 2: if you will, as they are often referred to in

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Speaker 2: the literature, that it all stems back to the seventeen

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Speaker 2: fifty two novella Li Micromegas by French author Voltaire, best

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Speaker 2: known for Candide Candid's the one that I had to

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Speaker 2: read in school and remember richly enjoying. I haven't read

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Speaker 2: this particular book in which there is a character by

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Speaker 2: the name of Micromegas, a titan like humanoid from the

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Speaker 2: star Sirius, and he visits Earth with a companion like

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Speaker 2: a little short person like another humanoid but very small,

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Speaker 2: from Saturn, and they visit Earth and have adventures.

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Speaker 3: Wait, so, in my understanding this right Voltaire, is he

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Speaker 3: thinking of this as a heavenly domain and these are

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Speaker 3: heavenly beings or is he positing them as other biological

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Speaker 3: entities that live on the surface of another planet.

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Speaker 2: Well, I haven't read the text in full, so I

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Speaker 2: can't comment too much on that, but I will read

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Speaker 2: a quick quote from it. Okay, on one of the

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Speaker 2: planets that orbits the star, named Sirius. There lived a

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Speaker 2: spirited young man who I had the honor of meeting

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Speaker 2: on the last voyage he made to our little ant hill.

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Speaker 2: He was called Micromagus, a fitting name for anyone so great.

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Speaker 2: He was eight leagues tall, or twenty four thousand geometric

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Speaker 2: paces of five feet each. So that sounds like an

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Speaker 2: organic being from a planet orbiting serious. Of course, you know,

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Speaker 2: we have no reasona believe there are any planets orbiting serious.

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Speaker 2: But Voltaire wouldn't have known that. And obviously this was

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Speaker 2: not Voltaire's primary objective with this literary work. He had,

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Speaker 2: you know, other things he was exploring here, and not

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Speaker 2: just I wonder if there are giant people up there.

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Speaker 3: Wait, so I'm trying to do the math on how

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Speaker 3: tall he is? Twenty four thousand paces of five feet each?

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Speaker 3: What does that mean? How many he's really tall? Ye?

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Speaker 2: Really staggeringly tall, A true titan.

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Speaker 3: He's like one hundred and twenty thousand feet tall. All right.

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Speaker 2: So obviously this was not the last time we would

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Speaker 2: envision aliens from Sirius or somehow aligned with Sirius. One

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Speaker 2: pretty famous example is the nineteen eighty three mini series

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Speaker 2: V The Visitors, in which a race of reptilians are

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Speaker 2: invading Earth and they are said to hail from a

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Speaker 2: planet near Sirius. I did a little digging around and

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Speaker 2: found some other examples. Some of these I'm familiar with. Honestly,

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Speaker 2: most of them I'm not that familiar with. But let's

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Speaker 2: say there's a Frederick poll story from sixty five called

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Speaker 2: the Age of pussy Foot that entails the capture of

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Speaker 2: an alien in the Serious System, though it's not supposed

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Speaker 2: to be this alien's system of origin. The Sirious Sam

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Speaker 2: video games have some Syrians, The Star Control V game

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Speaker 2: series has some Syrians, and it was it was I

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Speaker 2: was curious to check, well, what does Star Trek say

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Speaker 2: about Sirius? Is a factory in there at all? And yes,

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Speaker 2: if you get into the Star Trek animated series, which

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Speaker 2: is apparently canon, there is mention of Serious nine as

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Speaker 2: an inhabited world where a human named Harold Mud introduced

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Speaker 2: a love potion that made everyone there ill and presumably

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Speaker 2: mad at him.

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Speaker 3: Is Mud the guy? He's like a recurring character from

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Speaker 3: the original series who's a space con man. Yes, okay, nice, So.

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Speaker 2: That character and this is one of his further adventures. Yeah, Now,

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Speaker 2: the Syrian sector does factor into the Dune universe and

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Speaker 2: some of the lore, though there are no there are

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Speaker 2: to my knowledge, no fictional world set there. But we

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Speaker 2: mentioned Cannabis in I believe the first episode, and I

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Speaker 2: didn't I gladly to mention this then, But Aracus, the

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Speaker 2: desert planet Dune itself, is supposed to orbit Cannapis in

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Speaker 2: the Dune universe. Now, obviously the Marvel Comics universe has

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Speaker 2: different treatments of Serious over the decades, because again with

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Speaker 2: all these things, it's like, if you're thinking about the cosmos,

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Speaker 2: you're thinking about stars. We have a history with Sirius.

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Speaker 2: We have familiarity with Sirius. It is the brightest star

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Speaker 2: in our heavens. So various alien species have been associated

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Speaker 2: with Sirius in the pages of Marvel Comics. I believe

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Speaker 2: the fifth Syrian planet that again, we have no reason

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Speaker 2: to believe there are planets there, but in the comic

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Speaker 2: books it's fair game.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Serious five was settled by the High Evolutionary and his

385
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Speaker 2: new Men. And then digging around a little bit more,

386
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Speaker 2: it looks like in the nineteen sixties the X Men

387
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Speaker 2: battled some sort of an octopus with hands that was

388
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Speaker 2: supposed to be from Sirius, and they also had contact

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Speaker 2: with the Syrians, who are humanoids that were enslaved by

390
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Speaker 2: the quisites a different species of alien humanoids, again from

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Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties and the pages of X Men.

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Speaker 3: I don't know why, but I'm offended by the idea

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Speaker 3: of an octopus with hands.

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Speaker 2: I don't know if all of the octopus arms end

395
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Speaker 2: in hands, but I did look up one of the

396
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Speaker 2: illustrations of this creature and it's like, at least one

397
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Speaker 2: pair of arms have hands at the end, kind of

398
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Speaker 2: like Hamburger helper hands.

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Speaker 3: Do only the hands have bones? Like, do the arms

400
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Speaker 3: have bones and it's still an octopus? Or do the

401
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Speaker 3: hands not have bones?

402
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Speaker 2: I think the fingers are maybe like sub arms.

403
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Speaker 3: You know, if you got octopus arms, why do you

404
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 3: need hands? They're perfectly dexterous?

405
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Speaker 2: Is the rule of cool, I guess, But then again

406
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Speaker 2: not too cool, because I don't know that this was

407
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Speaker 2: at all a recurring character, kind of a one shot,

408
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 2: and there was actually another interesting one shot from Sirius

409
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Speaker 2: that I found. This is from two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 2: two thousand and eight in the pages of Black Panther

411
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Speaker 2: or well, I'm not actually sure it was the Black

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Speaker 2: Panther comic book. It might have been one of these

413
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Speaker 2: these other sort of bigger, you know, ongoing Marvel stories.

414
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Speaker 2: And I think this is somehow involving like gladiatorial combat

415
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:17,199
Speaker 2: somewhere in space. But Black Panther battles the Werewolf of

416
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Speaker 2: Sirius and it almost kills him almost immediately. Not a

417
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Speaker 2: very huge scene. They have to get a cool little

418
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Speaker 2: fight scene, and then the Werewolf of Sirius dies. We don't.

419
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Speaker 2: We end up not finding out is he from Sirius

420
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Speaker 2: or being of serious is he merely like under the

421
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Speaker 2: influence of the Dog Star. So many questions and as

422
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Speaker 2: far as I know, they are unanswered.

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Speaker 3: Oh interesting, like he's given rabies by the Dog Star.

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Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, I assume.

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Speaker 2: I included a screenshot here for you, Joe and other

426
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Speaker 2: other folks. You can you can look up images of this.

427
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Speaker 2: But he basically looks like a big, light blue were wolf,

428
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 2: like humanoid wolf, very muscular and has you know, some

429
00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:02,040
Speaker 2: some armour on, you know, ready to do battle, lots

430
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Speaker 2: of scars.

431
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Speaker 3: This is the werewolf form we've talked about many times,

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Speaker 3: the V shaped muscleman, where Wolf it's just bipedal Arnold

433
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger build with the doghead.

434
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:17,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, no match for black panther. Right, So those are

435
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 2: the main ones I'm gonna mention. But certainly, listeners out there,

436
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:22,640
Speaker 2: I know a number of you have some some very

437
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:26,719
Speaker 2: deep knowledge of different strains of science fiction. So if

438
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 2: there are utter other notable Syrians out there, you know,

439
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:32,880
Speaker 2: either from like serious science fiction or just like Saturday

440
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 2: Morning cartoons, please share them with us and we'll talk

441
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:38,359
Speaker 2: talk about them in a future episode of Stuff to

442
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:38,880
Speaker 2: Blow your mind.

443
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:43,639
Speaker 3: Listener mail from serious science fiction. Serious serious, yes, very

444
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 3: science serious science fiction, not silly serious science fiction.

445
00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:53,159
Speaker 2: Serious Syrian science fiction. Yes. It should of course come

446
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 2: to absolutely no surprise for anyone out there that Syrian

447
00:26:56,160 --> 00:27:01,960
Speaker 2: aliens also factor into ufology and UFO religions. Again, it

448
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:04,360
Speaker 2: is the brightest star in the night sky. It's deeply

449
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 2: rooted in human contemplations of the cosmos. So why not

450
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 2: Syrian UFO is visiting the Earth. You know, let's take

451
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 2: a look at at at least one of them, and

452
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,199
Speaker 2: the main one that you find if you look up

453
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 2: some images of this guy. Syrians often are depicted is

454
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:23,119
Speaker 2: looking a little bit like ET, but kind of like

455
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 2: ET meets King.

456
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 3: Of the Hill. Yeah, yeah, I gotta be honest, I

457
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:30,440
Speaker 3: don't like this. I don't like looking at it. It's

458
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 3: something it's not pleasant. It looks like a fire based

459
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 3: ET with yeah, with Peggy Hill hair, like big beehive hair.

460
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:39,960
Speaker 2: But at least drawn by a human being, and that

461
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:43,480
Speaker 2: I love. Like the older like Older, like a little

462
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 2: more sort of traditional ufology considerations of different supposed alien beings.

463
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:53,679
Speaker 2: You know, they're they're often very amateur looking drawings. I mean,

464
00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 2: some of them, I guess are quite nice, but they're

465
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 2: clearly the product of a human mind and human artistry.

466
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 2: Now nowadays, more and more of your imagery that is

467
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 2: dished up alongside ufology is of course AI generated, and

468
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 2: it makes it even more monstrous. In my opinion. It

469
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 2: just feels just it feels faker, and it already was

470
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:19,920
Speaker 2: lacking an air of authenticity, but now it looks even worse.

471
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, we've made some of our views

472
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 3: on this show clear before, you know, as far as

473
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 3: UFOs go, Like, I'm in theory, open to it, but

474
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 3: not convinced by any you know, any kind of lore

475
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 3: or stuff I've ever come across. So it's already not

476
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 3: stuff I believe in, but at least it used to

477
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 3: be kind of interesting and the AI stuff just makes

478
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:45,960
Speaker 3: it feel more expam it's just clutter. Yeah, and we know,

479
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 3: but we have talked about this off Mike. We sometimes

480
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 3: in our show Inbox we get reach outs from people

481
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 3: I don't know who want to be on the show,

482
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 3: who are like, hey, I'm a you know, I'm a

483
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 3: UFO influencer. These are the nine different types of aliens

484
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 3: I've talked to, And if you go to their website,

485
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 3: it's all AI generated stuff. Now it's like, how how

486
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 3: can those be pictures of the aliens you've talked to?

487
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 3: It's like a I generated Yeah.

488
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:14,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. But anyway, we do get into a really thought

489
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:19,240
Speaker 2: provoking area with consideration of supposed Syrians and ultimately their

490
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 2: consideration within ufology and different UFO based New Age lines

491
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 2: of thought. And Holberg discusses this a bit in his

492
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 2: book as well, and you know, he points out that,

493
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: you know, for all the reasons we've discussed already again,

494
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 2: brightest Star in the Sky one with a deep history,

495
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 2: deep cultural history, but also a very strong presence in

496
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptian thought, and of course Egyptomania has long been

497
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 2: a major component of various strains of new religious movements,

498
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 2: new age philosophies, and just general cultural excitement. So the

499
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 2: Space Age just ends up creating new connection points for

500
00:29:57,880 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 2: us to get excited about.

501
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 3: Sirius.

502
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 2: And there was a key publication in nineteen seventy six

503
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:11,479
Speaker 2: that really helped push a particular idea about serious and

504
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 2: really sort of inject it, you know, more steadily into

505
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 2: the UFO conspiracy theory ufology world. And that is a

506
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 2: book titled The Serious Mystery. And this was an ancient

507
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 2: astronaut's book by Robert KG Temple, who I believe is

508
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 2: still alive and still maintains a website. And before I

509
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 2: move on with this, I do want to point out

510
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 2: that if you're interested in our more complete takes on

511
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 2: ancient astronaut hypothesis, well we did a series of episodes

512
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 2: years back, and you can find those in the archives

513
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:51,479
Speaker 2: wherever you get stuff to blow your mind as an

514
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 2: audio podcast. But at any rate, this book deals mostly

515
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 2: with the Dogan people in in West Africa, and the

516
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 2: idea that is presented in that book is that these

517
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 2: peoples still preserve traditions that stem from ancient contact with

518
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 2: amphibious extraterrestrial visitors, who, among other things, informed them about

519
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 2: the existence of Serious B. Again, we know now that

520
00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 2: the star that we see, that we can see with

521
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 2: the naked eye is Serious A. And then there is

522
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 2: a much smaller white dwarf that is there with it

523
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 2: that we now know is Serious B that you cannot

524
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 2: see with the naked eye. It's far dimmer, far smaller,

525
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 2: and would not have would not have been visible and

526
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 2: would not have been known to human beings before the

527
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 2: advent of the telescope. Yeah, so the idea is well

528
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 2: before the advent of the telescope, the Dogan people knew

529
00:31:55,080 --> 00:32:00,080
Speaker 2: about Serious B somehow, and the somehow is aliens to

530
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 2: them about it. So Temple did not originate this idea. Rather,

531
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 2: he popularized concepts that were originally explored by a pair

532
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 2: of French anthropologists in the nineteen fifty publication A Pseudony

533
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:16,480
Speaker 2: System of Serious and The anthropologists here were Marcel Griol

534
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 2: and Germaine Dieterlin. Now the Dogan people are just for

535
00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 2: a little bit more information here. They are an indigenous

536
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 2: ethnic minority, and they currently have a pop population between

537
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 2: something like four hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand, and

538
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 2: they have a vibrant culture that features elaborate wooden masks,

539
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:42,720
Speaker 2: dance rituals, sculpture, architecture, and so much more. We're not

540
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 2: going to have time to really get into everything that

541
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 2: they legitimately have to offer. And it's ultimately one of

542
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 2: the sort of tragedies of the whole situation is that

543
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:54,960
Speaker 2: they often when they're talked about, they are often talked

544
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 2: about in reference to this particular idea, So you know,

545
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 2: it's we have to admit that it is ultimately kind

546
00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 2: of an injustice to them. And as we'll explore, I

547
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 2: think they're The more pervasive argument is that there of

548
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 2: course was no ancient contact with some sort of extraterrestrial entity.

549
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 2: There are other reasons to explain why this interpretation has

550
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:23,720
Speaker 2: been given the attention that it has.

551
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 3: But worth looking up their masks and art, by the.

552
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 2: Way, absolutely yes, if even if you just go to

553
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 2: the Dogan people's the Wikipedia profile about them, you'll find

554
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:37,880
Speaker 2: some excellent visual examples of the mass that they create

555
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 2: of their their architecture, their sculpture art. So an incredibly

556
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 2: rich culture and that is going to be key when

557
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 2: we get into some of the reasons here as well. Now,

558
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,080
Speaker 2: one thing to keep in mind about all of this

559
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 2: something that we really drove home in our series on

560
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:08,759
Speaker 2: Ancient Astronauts, and it's also something that Carl Sagan was

561
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 2: very adamant about, and that is that there's no verifiable

562
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 2: physical evidence of historic or prehistoric contact with extraterrestrials. We

563
00:34:17,680 --> 00:34:20,439
Speaker 2: just don't have good, good evidence. And that includes that

564
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:24,440
Speaker 2: you know, recent history or certainly getting into into ancient history.

565
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 2: The best we can really do the best if you're

566
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 2: really looking for evidence of it, and you're looking for

567
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 2: good evidence, your best hope would really be, you know,

568
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:36,280
Speaker 2: short of actually discovering a you know, a buried alien

569
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 2: spaceship that we just haven't found thus far, we'd be

570
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 2: finding cultural evidence of it. So some sort of description

571
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 2: of an encounter in ancient literature that just seems to

572
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 2: line up in the right way and again wouldn't actually

573
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:53,040
Speaker 2: prove anything, would but would it at the very least

574
00:34:53,080 --> 00:34:56,360
Speaker 2: provide sort of a huh I wonder if evidence?

575
00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:59,359
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, one thing that I would say

576
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 3: we've talked about in the past as well, is that

577
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:06,359
Speaker 3: I think typically even with the most interesting stuff like that,

578
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 3: the stuff that sounds most like an ancient text describing

579
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 3: something from a science fiction movie, it does tend to

580
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:18,040
Speaker 3: rely on a lot of cultural bias, Like we're looking

581
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 3: for descriptions of the kinds of beings or events that

582
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 3: we're familiar with through science fiction of the modern world,

583
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:31,960
Speaker 3: not necessarily like objective accounts. I don't know how you'd

584
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 3: even know what these should be, but objective accounts of

585
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:39,840
Speaker 3: how ancient people would process and describe, you know, encounters

586
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,120
Speaker 3: with beings from space. And also when when you're taking

587
00:35:43,160 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 3: an ancient text that describes an encounter with a god

588
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:47,719
Speaker 3: or something like that and saying, oh, these must have

589
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 3: been aliens, you're inherently also just dismissing how the people

590
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 3: who created the text, what they thought the text meant,

591
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 3: and you know, how they were thinking about it. So

592
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:03,360
Speaker 3: I don't know, I strongly skeptical of interpretive attempts of

593
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 3: this kind.

594
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I guess the main thing, and this

595
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 2: is I think Sagan's point is that, at least on

596
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 2: the surface, the Dogan idea here would be the most

597
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 2: attractive because if true, and that's a big if, that

598
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:22,040
Speaker 2: we're going to come back to. If true, what you

599
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 2: would have is an ancient account in which something is

600
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,720
Speaker 2: known before humans should know it, Like in this case,

601
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 2: if the dough if there was actually a tradition among

602
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:35,320
Speaker 2: the Dogan people that said that you can contain knowledge

603
00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 2: of a star that humans wouldn't be able to see

604
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 2: for thousands of years, well then that could potentially be compelling. However,

605
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:45,320
Speaker 2: there are a number of factors we're going to have

606
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 2: to discuss here.

607
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could imagine, I mean, even if that were

608
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 3: the case, and again the caveats on that you could

609
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 3: imagine lists of much more highly specified information than like

610
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 3: the brightest star in the sky has a companion.

611
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, you know this case, as originally presented

612
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 2: by the French anthropologists does it does get into a

613
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:11,080
Speaker 2: little of that. So the idea discussed by these authors

614
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:15,400
Speaker 2: in that original paper from the fifties is they presented

615
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 2: this idea that the Dogan elders held a secret cosmology

616
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 2: that highly regarded Sirius and that they knew that Sirius

617
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 2: had an invisible companion with a fifty year elliptical orbit

618
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 2: around serious So you know, okay, you know, if true,

619
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:38,800
Speaker 2: you know that's pretty compelling. That's some specific information. Temple

620
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:43,160
Speaker 2: especially noted the connection on top of this between these

621
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:47,480
Speaker 2: ideas and our modern knowledge of serious b suspected is

622
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 2: suspected as far back as the nineteenth century, but not

623
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:53,880
Speaker 2: photographed till nineteen seventy. And then Temple further connected this

624
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 2: Dogan myth to their treatment of something called the Nomo,

625
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 2: an amphibious fish like ancestor who came from the sky

626
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:06,880
Speaker 2: in a kind of woven arc. So, you know, the

627
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 2: rest stitches itself together rather easily.

628
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 3: Here.

629
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 2: You know this idea that okay, some sort of amphibious

630
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 2: beings came down in something that is a spaceship, and

631
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:18,640
Speaker 2: they told us about where they came from, or in

632
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 2: some way pointed to the star in the sky that

633
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 2: the Dogan, you know, either already considered sacred or would

634
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:26,759
Speaker 2: certainly from now on consider sacred. And they said, oh,

635
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 2: by the way, there's another star there. It's two of them,

636
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 2: you just can't see the other one. And here's some

637
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:37,919
Speaker 2: figures related to that. Okay, So there are obviously, again

638
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 2: on the surface, that sounds very compelling, and if you

639
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 2: were inclined to want to believe this, well, you can

640
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:46,560
Speaker 2: just stop right there, right because you've arrived. Sadly, that's

641
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 2: how these things often work. But yeah, there are some

642
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 2: key problems here, So in addition to anything we've already cited,

643
00:38:56,280 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 2: it is highly important and this is key. This becomes

644
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 2: pretty much the key factor is that the Dogan were

645
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 2: not totally isolated when these anthropologists initially spoke with them.

646
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:11,799
Speaker 2: They had already had contact with French colonial authorities, with soldiers,

647
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 2: with missionaries and explorers, and bottom line, they could have

648
00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 2: very easily been contaminated by modern views and modern understanding

649
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 2: and the hypothesis that siries B existed via contact with

650
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 2: these various individuals, and Holberg in his book explores some

651
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,359
Speaker 2: of the possible candidates, like specific candidates for this transmission,

652
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 2: this cultural transmission, in a fair amount of depth. Another

653
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 2: factor worth keeping in mind is that in the nineteen

654
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 2: eighties and the nineteen nineties this would be and this

655
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 2: was after Sagan's publication as well, anthropologist Walter van Beek

656
00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 2: conducted interviews with Dogan elders and found no evidence of

657
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 2: a tradition. And this would have been, by the way,

658
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 2: an oral tradition this would have been. This had been true,

659
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 2: would be something that was passed down via storytelling and

660
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 2: so forth, not written down. But this guy Van Beek

661
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:11,400
Speaker 2: found no tradition of a companion star to Sirius, and

662
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 2: in this suggests that basically what could have been occurring

663
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 2: with Griol especially is that he could have been asking

664
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 2: some very leading questions and could have been the source

665
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:27,640
Speaker 2: of the cultural contamination himself. Okay, yeah, I've read that

666
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:30,560
Speaker 2: some think he might have been very aggressive in his

667
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 2: questioning and kind of was almost like it was almost

668
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 2: like cross examination, and so he could have effectively co

669
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:38,239
Speaker 2: created the myth in his interviews.

670
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 3: Well that's annoying if true.

671
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And well Sagan gets into this as well.

672
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:45,880
Speaker 2: I'm going to come out of what Sagan has to

673
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 2: have to say about have to say about this as well.

674
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 2: But another interesting point that Holberg brings up is that

675
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 2: the French anthropologists also reported that the Dogan held serious

676
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 2: to be read. We talked about the red serious issue

677
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:06,319
Speaker 2: a bit in the previous episode, and basically this could

678
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:09,760
Speaker 2: have been due to the revival of red serious theories

679
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 2: in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds introduced

680
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:18,360
Speaker 2: to the Dogan by any of these various contamination points.

681
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:23,680
Speaker 2: So essentially, you know, they could, upon questioning, could basically

682
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:29,080
Speaker 2: be incorporating late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds of views

683
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:33,839
Speaker 2: about serious and red serious excitement into their mythology.

684
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 3: Yeah. Could this also be related to the hypothesis we

685
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 3: talked about in I think part one of the series

686
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 3: that some ideas about the redness of serious could come

687
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 3: from times when it legitimately does look red due to

688
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 3: atmospheric Oh yeah, I.

689
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:52,160
Speaker 2: Mean, yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know, obviously they did

690
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 2: hold they do hold serious in high regards, so they

691
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 2: could have some tradition of having If the observation of

692
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 2: Sirius is read with something that was actually occurring for

693
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:03,880
Speaker 2: ancient people, then yeah, they could have actually had that

694
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 2: experience as well. But they could It could also just

695
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,319
Speaker 2: be more evidence that they are that they had that

696
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:14,279
Speaker 2: their understanding of serious has been contaminated by contact with

697
00:42:14,320 --> 00:42:15,319
Speaker 2: the with Westerners.

698
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:17,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, but am I remembering right? The idea is that

699
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 3: generally serious would not look red when it's like higher

700
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:23,359
Speaker 3: up in the sky, but maybe sometimes when it's very late.

701
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,760
Speaker 2: Maybe the atmospheric reddening was seemed to be the best

702
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:30,439
Speaker 2: possible case for some sort of legitimate reddening happening there,

703
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 2: and let's see on top of that. Yeah, it's also

704
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 2: worth noting that outside of their work, there is virtually

705
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 2: no serious academic consideration of the idea, while the influence

706
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,919
Speaker 2: of Temple's book on the subject, you know, has has

707
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 2: had a big influence on ufology and UFO related New

708
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 2: Age thought. So yeah, it's just there. There are not

709
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 2: really scientific experts that are that have agreed with them,

710
00:42:56,239 --> 00:43:00,920
Speaker 2: or anthropological experts that have agreed with them, you know, outside.

711
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:00,920
Speaker 3: Of the fringe.

712
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:04,280
Speaker 2: Okay, but I want to get back into what Sagan

713
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:06,399
Speaker 2: had to say about it in Broke his Brain back

714
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:09,719
Speaker 2: in seventy nine. And of note, it's worth stressing that

715
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 2: this came out just a few years after Temple's book,

716
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 2: and certainly before some of the additional refuting research that

717
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:21,279
Speaker 2: we've already mentioned. But Sagan at the time wrote that, Yeah,

718
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,800
Speaker 2: at first glance, the Dogan claim seems compelling, and indeed,

719
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 2: as we've discussed on the show before, Sagan did an

720
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 2: outright dismiss the possibility of ancient alien extraterrestrial contact. I mean,

721
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 2: he seemed to find it quite exciting. But the big question,

722
00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:39,120
Speaker 2: of course, is it is it possible. Is there evidence

723
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:41,920
Speaker 2: for it? What does the evidence seem to say? And

724
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 2: that's where we get into the nitty gritty here.

725
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean i'd go farther. Actually, I'd say

726
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 3: it is possible. Yeah, perfectly open to it. Is just

727
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:51,400
Speaker 3: where's the evidence?

728
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:55,319
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, you know, where is the evidence? And I'm

729
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 2: going to read a few quotes from Broke's brain here

730
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 2: from Sagan where he discusses this. So he says, quote,

731
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:04,840
Speaker 2: at first glanced, the serious legend of the Dogans seems

732
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:07,720
Speaker 2: to be the best candidate evidence available today for past

733
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 2: contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. As we begin a

734
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 2: closer look at this story, however, let us remember that

735
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:18,720
Speaker 2: the Dogan astronomical tradition is purely oral, that it dates

736
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 2: with certainty only from the nineteen thirties, and that the

737
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 2: diagrams are written with sticks in sand. So again we're

738
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 2: not dealing with you know, like you know, cuneiform evidence

739
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:35,240
Speaker 2: that has been preserved across time. It is oral tradition,

740
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 2: and we know that oral tradition can reveal a lot,

741
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 2: but it is you know, it is very susceptible to

742
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 2: change and certainly to contamination via contact with other cultures.

743
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 3: Sure, he makes.

744
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 2: Another excellent point here and that and that concerns Dogan mythology,

745
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 2: which he says is is very rich in detail, perhaps

746
00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 2: by some estimates some anthropologists say, richer than some of

747
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 2: their neighbors. And so Segan says, quote, where there is

748
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 2: a rich array of legends, there is of course a

749
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 2: greater chance of an accidental correspondence of one of the

750
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:15,600
Speaker 2: myths with a finding of modern science. A very spare

751
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:19,719
Speaker 2: mythology is much less likely to make such an accidental concordance.

752
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 2: But when we examine the rest of Dogan mythology, do

753
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:26,759
Speaker 2: we find other cases hauntingly reminiscent of something of some

754
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:30,399
Speaker 2: unexpected finding in modern science. So his point is, Yeah,

755
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 2: if you have a some sort of a rich pantheon

756
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:37,279
Speaker 2: of gods, a rich mythological tradition, you're going to find

757
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 2: something in there that you can cherry pick and compare

758
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 2: to whatever you're looking for, whether you're looking for like

759
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 2: ancient super weapons, UFOs, lost cities, whatever you like, something

760
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,239
Speaker 2: is going to line up. Because I mean, at the

761
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:56,359
Speaker 2: end of the day, you're dealing with different things that

762
00:45:56,440 --> 00:46:00,880
Speaker 2: emerge from the human imagination and human perception of the

763
00:46:00,960 --> 00:46:04,319
Speaker 2: natural world and consideration of the cosmos, and so of

764
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 2: course you're going to find those things lining up.

765
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 3: You are rolling the dice more times if you have

766
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:13,319
Speaker 3: more stories, more richly filled with detailed imagery in them.

767
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 3: Each time you increase the complexity, you're adding more chances

768
00:46:17,960 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 3: that one of those things could resemble something from science

769
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 3: fiction or from future science. Yeah.

770
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, And another point that he also makes in this

771
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 2: particular chapter, but I believe also references in other books

772
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:36,320
Speaker 2: where he had chapters that touched on ancient alien hypothesis. Okay,

773
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,360
Speaker 2: the Dogan case about the arc coming down from the sky.

774
00:46:40,600 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 2: I mean, within the context of this argument, you have

775
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 2: to say, well, that sounds like a spaceship. But so

776
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:51,319
Speaker 2: many different religions and mythologies have something like this. This

777
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:54,439
Speaker 2: is not unique to the Dogan. It's I mean, it's

778
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 2: basically universal. And yeah, you could also you could turn

779
00:46:57,800 --> 00:46:59,720
Speaker 2: that around and say, well, yeah, it's because all religions

780
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 2: are talking about space aliens. I mean, okay, go with that.

781
00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 2: But but yet, there's nothing specifically in this story, in

782
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:09,879
Speaker 2: this account of like people coming down on some sort

783
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:12,440
Speaker 2: of vehicle that is different from any other mythology in

784
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:13,279
Speaker 2: that regard.

785
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 3: And it's just not hard to imagine how the mind

786
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:19,319
Speaker 3: goes there. Like, it's not an idea that nobody ever

787
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 3: would have thought of with you know it, Like we

788
00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:25,359
Speaker 3: have ships, the boats that go on the water, what

789
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 3: if one could go in the sky. We see birds

790
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 3: that can fly, but we can't fly, so we imagine

791
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:32,880
Speaker 3: what it would be like to be up there and

792
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:36,720
Speaker 3: have that perspective. I mean, yeah, like it comes to mind.

793
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 2: Human dreams are remarkable, but it is not remarkable that

794
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:43,239
Speaker 2: someone in the ancient world had the same dream that

795
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 2: I'm having. Yeah, and I think that's that's the yeah,

796
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 2: the key. Now. Sagan briefly discusses the flawed idea of

797
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 2: wrapping Red Serious up in this example, and one of

798
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,080
Speaker 2: the ideas that he mentions here this is something we

799
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,839
Speaker 2: didn't get into the last episode. But apparently some made

800
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 2: the argument that, okay, what if Serious Bee was in

801
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 2: its red Giant phase in the past and that's what

802
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 2: people were seeing, and so there are some that have

803
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 2: made the case that this could be the reason for

804
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 2: Red Serious and so let's say, like ancient Greek writings,

805
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:21,120
Speaker 2: and maybe it's the reason that there's talk of a

806
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 2: Red Serious here among the dogan and maybe this is

807
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:29,320
Speaker 2: how they could see serious with the naked eye because

808
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:31,880
Speaker 2: at some point, you know, because now it's a white dwarf.

809
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:33,320
Speaker 2: But what about when it was a red giant?

810
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:35,960
Speaker 3: You mean, see serious B, the serious B.

811
00:48:36,160 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 2: Sorry, yes, serious as has been visible you know, the

812
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 2: whole time in different degrees of luminosity for humans. But yeah,

813
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:48,560
Speaker 2: what if this invisible to the naked eye white dwarf

814
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 2: was visible to us when it was a red giant

815
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:54,920
Speaker 2: An idea that sounds compelling at first, but the stellar

816
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:58,360
Speaker 2: timeline does not work at all for this. I believe

817
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 2: it's estimated, estimated that Series B would have been in

818
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 2: its red giant phase on the order of one hundred

819
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 2: and twenty million years ago. So I'm you know, the

820
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:09,560
Speaker 2: Cretaceous period, there were no there were no humans to

821
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:12,200
Speaker 2: see it and generate myths about it.

822
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 3: Missed our species by a bit, yeah, yeah.

823
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 2: And so Sagan therefore thinks that European cultural transmission of

824
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:24,720
Speaker 2: astronomical ideas is the most likely explanation here. For instance,

825
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:28,360
Speaker 2: other aspects of their astronomical knowledge does seem rooted in

826
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:32,480
Speaker 2: late eighteenth or early nineteenth century European knowledge of the Cosmos.

827
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:36,480
Speaker 2: For instance, he points out that the Dogan do not

828
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:39,560
Speaker 2: talk of another planet beyond Saturn with rings, and he

829
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 2: thinks that this lines up with the sort of that

830
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:46,480
Speaker 2: that level of European understanding that would have been transmitted

831
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 2: to them. And I'm going to read one more bit

832
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:54,000
Speaker 2: from Sagan here, he says, where he's kind of like

833
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 2: summing up how he sees this having occurred. He says,

834
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:00,520
Speaker 2: in my mind's eye, I see a picture of a

835
00:50:00,560 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 2: Gothic visitor to the Dogan people in what was then

836
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:07,080
Speaker 2: French West Africa in the early part of this century.

837
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 2: He may have been a diplomat, an explorer, an adventure

838
00:50:10,239 --> 00:50:14,800
Speaker 2: or an early anthropologist. Such people, for example, Richard Francis Burton,

839
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 2: were in West Africa many decades earlier. The conversation turns

840
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:21,960
Speaker 2: to astronomical lore. Serious is the brightest star in the sky.

841
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:26,000
Speaker 2: The Dogan regaled the visitor with their serious mythology. Then,

842
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 2: smiling politely expectantly, they inquire of their visitor what is

843
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:34,240
Speaker 2: his what his serious myths might be? Perhaps, he refers,

844
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 2: before answering to a well worn book in his baggage,

845
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 2: the white dwarf companion of Sirius being a current astronomical sensation.

846
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 2: The traveler exchanges when spectacular myth for a routine one.

847
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 2: After he leaves, his account is remembered, retold, and eventually

848
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 2: incorporated into the corpus of Dogan mythology, or at least

849
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 2: into a collateral branch.

850
00:50:57,040 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 3: Interesting. Okay, well, I mean that makes sense to me

851
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 3: as a perfectly plausible and normal account of where something

852
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 3: like this could come from. But we should be reminded

853
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 3: again that Sagan was writing this trying to come up

854
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 3: with an explanation of the facts before we had this

855
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 3: subsequent research that cast doubt on the original anthropological reporting, right,

856
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 3: that attributed the companion Stars story to the Dogun elders.

857
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 2: Right, right, So yeah, we have even more reason to

858
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 2: not believe this connection in general. But yeah, at the time,

859
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:34,720
Speaker 2: Sagan I think made a number of very strong points

860
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 2: and like further pointed out that, Okay, yeah, this is

861
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:42,120
Speaker 2: what happened. If this is about like cultural contamination of

862
00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:45,799
Speaker 2: an indigenous mythology with you know, contemporary at the time,

863
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 2: European you know, astronomical ideas, you know, this sort of thing.

864
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:54,719
Speaker 2: Maybe not with with astronomical ideas, but this sort of

865
00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 2: cultural contamination has occurred before, and Sagan points to examples

866
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:05,000
Speaker 2: North America and in New Guinea where where yeah, you

867
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 2: end up actually like feeding the idea to the people

868
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:14,000
Speaker 2: you're talking to and then receiving it back again within

869
00:52:14,080 --> 00:52:17,560
Speaker 2: the trappings of their own mythology. So you know, yeah,

870
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 2: it becomes It highlights just how complex these cultural exchanges

871
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 2: are and the sorts of miscommunications and contaminations that can occur.

872
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 3: By the way, I would just flag that the only

873
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:35,440
Speaker 3: reason the word contamination is being used there is because

874
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 3: it may be, you know, bringing a negative connotation is

875
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:42,880
Speaker 3: because it may be potentially confusing you about what beliefs

876
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:46,520
Speaker 3: and stories were present in a culture before contact with

877
00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 3: a person talking to them. Right, So it's not like

878
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 3: that the idea of mixing and sharing ideas between cultures

879
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 3: has any inherently negative thing about.

880
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 2: It, right right, Yeah, I guess the main comparison I

881
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:01,600
Speaker 2: would be making here would be to say, we send

882
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 2: a probe to Mars to look for signs of microbial life.

883
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 2: That probe has microbial life on it, and then we

884
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 2: discover that same life, or seem to discover that same

885
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:15,239
Speaker 2: life in the soil of Mars. We we have contaminated

886
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,440
Speaker 2: the thing that we're examining looking for, you know, things

887
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:23,080
Speaker 2: that are that originate on Mars. We're already there and

888
00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:24,880
Speaker 2: we've just found the thing that we brought with us.

889
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 2: And that's kind of what's happening here culturally examining these

890
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:31,560
Speaker 2: myths and what we just found something that we actually

891
00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:36,320
Speaker 2: introduced into it. Yeah, and and to also be clear,

892
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:40,319
Speaker 2: I don't I don't think anyone's making the argument that

893
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:45,279
Speaker 2: the anthropologists in question like we're planting evidence, you know,

894
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:48,239
Speaker 2: it's this is the I think it highlights the complexity

895
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:52,399
Speaker 2: of the task at hand, you know, trying to understand

896
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:57,120
Speaker 2: traditional beliefs and again within an oral tradition and trying

897
00:53:57,160 --> 00:53:59,359
Speaker 2: to figure out like, you know what, what did they know?

898
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 2: What had what sort of observational information did they have

899
00:54:03,239 --> 00:54:06,279
Speaker 2: and did they you know what is how how does

900
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:09,719
Speaker 2: their knowledge of serious matchup with their modern understanding what

901
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:11,600
Speaker 2: connections could be made there? I mean, it's it's a

902
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:14,800
Speaker 2: complex task and in doing if you're not super careful

903
00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:16,920
Speaker 2: and you don't have all the guard rails, you know,

904
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:19,840
Speaker 2: many of which would not be developed until later, you know,

905
00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:23,360
Speaker 2: you're going to potentially get miscommunications like this.

906
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:25,680
Speaker 3: This is totally tangential, but I would say it also

907
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 3: highlights the absurdity of attempting to try to prevent the

908
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 3: mixing of cultures.

909
00:54:31,640 --> 00:54:34,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean, because this is this is

910
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:36,879
Speaker 2: the way, you know, this is the way it's always been,

911
00:54:37,080 --> 00:54:40,960
Speaker 2: you know. Uh, some new ideas introduced and it's folded in,

912
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 2: it's incorporated.

913
00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:44,600
Speaker 3: Uh, and the sharing goes both ways.

914
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:46,799
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and we you know, we see so many

915
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 2: examples of that. It even occurs, and is it you

916
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:53,080
Speaker 2: We've touched on other examples of this occurring, where religion

917
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:57,279
Speaker 2: will change based on astronomical information. You know, we talked

918
00:54:57,280 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 2: about this when we were discussing you know, more recent

919
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 2: new religious movements that start reflecting ideas that are present

920
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 2: in sort of the scientific understanding of the world. So yeah,

921
00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 2: you can't prevent it from happening.

922
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,799
Speaker 3: Okay, Rob, Before we wrap up for today, do you

923
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:26,400
Speaker 3: mind if I read you one pretty cool thing I

924
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:29,360
Speaker 3: came across about the dog days of summer in medieval

925
00:55:29,360 --> 00:55:30,440
Speaker 3: European medicine.

926
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:31,680
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, what do you got?

927
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:35,160
Speaker 3: Okay? So this was in a blog post called the

928
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:38,920
Speaker 3: dog Days of Medieval Summer. This was on the website

929
00:55:39,040 --> 00:55:41,800
Speaker 3: History Today, but it's written by an author named Eleanor

930
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:45,919
Speaker 3: Parker who is a lecturer in Medieval English literature at

931
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 3: Brazenose College, Oxford. And so this author is in the

932
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:54,160
Speaker 3: post generally talking about the tradition of the dog days,

933
00:55:54,200 --> 00:55:57,239
Speaker 3: you know them being thought of since ancient times as

934
00:55:57,360 --> 00:56:02,720
Speaker 3: maybe a time of danger when there are special risks

935
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:06,719
Speaker 3: to health. As she mentions that the dog days are

936
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 3: noted in the fifteen fifty two English Book of Common

937
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:12,399
Speaker 3: Prayer and talks about some of the things we've already

938
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:14,640
Speaker 3: gotten into how you know, the beginning and ending dates

939
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 3: of the dog days are not consistent across time and place,

940
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 3: but they're most often thought to be, you know, in July, August, September.

941
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 3: But anyway, she talks about how in the Middle Ages

942
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 3: in English texts, the dog days were considered key like

943
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:37,560
Speaker 3: the timing of the dog days were considered key medical information,

944
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:42,239
Speaker 3: and she cites the tenth century English medical manual known

945
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:45,920
Speaker 3: as Bald's Leech Book, which I feel like I want

946
00:56:45,960 --> 00:56:48,319
Speaker 3: to get a print copy of that if I can.

947
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:53,600
Speaker 3: But it's interesting because Bald's Leech Book mentions both some

948
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:59,000
Speaker 3: good and bad medical implications of the dog days. So

949
00:57:00,080 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 3: mind if I read from the leech book here, Yes,

950
00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:06,319
Speaker 3: let's do it. So then this is the translation that

951
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:11,560
Speaker 3: Parker presents in her post quote. Fifteen nights before Lamas,

952
00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:15,200
Speaker 3: which is the first of August, and thirty five nights afterwards.

953
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 3: Blood letting is to be avoided because at that time

954
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:23,680
Speaker 3: all venomous things fly and greatly injure human beings. The

955
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:27,000
Speaker 3: wisest physicians have taught that in this month no one

956
00:57:27,040 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 3: should drink medicine or in any way weak in his

957
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:34,200
Speaker 3: body unless it is absolutely necessary, and in that case

958
00:57:34,240 --> 00:57:36,800
Speaker 3: he should stay inside around the middle of the day,

959
00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 3: because at that time the air is most impure. For

960
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 3: this reason, the Romans and all southern peoples made earth

961
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:46,600
Speaker 3: houses for themselves because of the heat and poison of

962
00:57:46,640 --> 00:57:50,360
Speaker 3: the air. Physicians also say that growing herbs are best

963
00:57:50,400 --> 00:57:54,320
Speaker 3: to prepare at this time, whether for potions, salves, or powder.

964
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:59,040
Speaker 3: So dog day's bad time for health, generally good time

965
00:57:59,080 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 3: for venomous in SCX, good time for preparing herbal medicines,

966
00:58:02,520 --> 00:58:05,560
Speaker 3: so you have them in stock. But I do appreciate

967
00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 3: the detail that you're going to get a respite from

968
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:11,120
Speaker 3: the blood letter. The local leechman is not going to

969
00:58:11,120 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 3: be draining you of blood for what the thirty five

970
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:16,440
Speaker 3: nights afterwards of lamas.

971
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:20,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, maybe that's for the best. Everyone get a

972
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:21,640
Speaker 2: little break from the bleedings.

973
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, blood letting. Do we have to say this generally

974
00:58:26,600 --> 00:58:27,880
Speaker 3: not effective medicine?

975
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:30,120
Speaker 2: Actually yeah, yeah, I feel like we've covered this in

976
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:31,720
Speaker 2: the past. But yeah, generally not.

977
00:58:33,240 --> 00:58:35,320
Speaker 3: Though maybe one thing we can come back to in

978
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 3: the future is I did go on a tangent on

979
00:58:37,760 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 3: Bald's leech book after reading this. There was an interesting

980
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:45,000
Speaker 3: study that tried a recipe from Bald's leech Book for

981
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 3: an I salve that from what I was reading, based

982
00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:51,640
Speaker 3: on a couple of experiments that looked into it, did

983
00:58:51,680 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 3: seem to actually be somewhat effective or better than placebo,

984
00:58:55,720 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 3: and then even better than the main active ingredient alone,

985
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,440
Speaker 3: which was garlic. Like so, you know, little garlic in

986
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:05,080
Speaker 3: your eye. But but yeah, maybe we'll come back talk

987
00:59:05,120 --> 00:59:06,360
Speaker 3: about the ice al of sometime.

988
00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:11,120
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, or even talk in depth about garlic. Yeah, totally.

989
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:14,760
Speaker 3: I love garlic. I actually love garlic a little bit

990
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:17,440
Speaker 3: too much. I'm one of those people, you know, I

991
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 3: put many multiples of whatever the recommended amount of garlic

992
00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:21,880
Speaker 3: in any recipe is.

993
00:59:22,240 --> 00:59:25,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never found a recipe where I could overdo

994
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 2: the garlic. Like, it's just, however many bulbs you care

995
00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:32,400
Speaker 2: to actually cut up, like that's that's the limit once

996
00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:34,680
Speaker 2: once you get sick of it, Well, that's probably enough garlic.

997
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 3: Isn't it funny all these recipes that say two clothes

998
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 3: of garlic.

999
00:59:38,640 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, the clothes they vary so much. It's

1000
00:59:43,440 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 2: like like sometimes there are those there's those little ones

1001
00:59:46,040 --> 00:59:49,400
Speaker 2: that you know, it's like a tiny tooth and it's like, okay,

1002
00:59:49,400 --> 00:59:51,520
Speaker 2: one of these, or it's one that's about the size

1003
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 2: of my thumb. You know, it varies so greatly. It's

1004
00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:56,720
Speaker 2: not an accurate measurement. It's just basically they should just

1005
00:59:56,720 --> 00:59:58,640
Speaker 2: say as much garlic as you care to throw.

1006
00:59:58,480 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 3: It, especially in the summer. Yeah, that's a good feeling

1007
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:05,680
Speaker 3: just having garlic sweatnut your pores.

1008
01:00:05,960 --> 01:00:10,240
Speaker 2: There you go, Yeah, garlic in the dog days. All right,

1009
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:12,360
Speaker 2: we're gonna go ahead and close this episode out, but

1010
01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from anyone out there if you

1011
01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:16,080
Speaker 2: have thoughts on anything we've discussed here. If you want

1012
01:00:16,080 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 2: to argue with us about ancient aliens, please do. If

1013
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:23,960
Speaker 2: you have examples of other Syrians from science fiction, definitely

1014
01:00:23,960 --> 01:00:26,400
Speaker 2: share that with us. Thoughts on garlic, thoughts on anything

1015
01:00:26,440 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 2: else we've discussed here, or anything else related to serious

1016
01:00:29,720 --> 01:00:33,280
Speaker 2: in the Dog Days in general right in we would

1017
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:35,680
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff

1018
01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,

1019
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:40,280
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1020
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:44,200
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, Weird House Cinema on Fridays, and we'll just

1021
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:47,280
Speaker 2: remind you that we have been an audio podcast for

1022
01:00:47,400 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 2: years and years at this point. You can find a

1023
01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:53,680
Speaker 2: huge archive of our material wherever you get your audio podcasts,

1024
01:00:53,960 --> 01:00:55,919
Speaker 2: but if you go over to Netflix, you'll also find

1025
01:00:56,000 --> 01:00:58,720
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1026
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:02,520
Speaker 2: just a little while now, but multiple episodes are available

1027
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:04,439
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1028
01:01:04,560 --> 01:01:08,040
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1029
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:10,200
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1030
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:12,240
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1031
01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:14,720
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1032
01:01:14,760 --> 01:01:19,160
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1033
01:01:19,400 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 2: All of these measures help us out.

1034
01:01:21,440 --> 01:01:25,040
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1035
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:26,840
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1036
01:01:26,880 --> 01:01:29,280
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1037
01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:31,200
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1038
01:01:31,360 --> 01:01:34,000
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1039
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:41,800
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1040
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:45,200
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1041
01:01:45,280 --> 01:01:48,080
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1042
01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:57,360
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1043
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