1
00:00:03,040 --> 00:00:06,920
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:12,720 --> 00:00:14,440
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

3
00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:17,599
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

4
00:00:17,640 --> 00:00:20,720
Speaker 3: we're back with part two in our series on headless

5
00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:24,759
Speaker 3: gods and monsters. This is a topic that we had

6
00:00:24,800 --> 00:00:27,200
Speaker 3: talked about getting into for the Halloween season, but we

7
00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:30,600
Speaker 3: never got around to it, so here we are turning

8
00:00:30,680 --> 00:00:34,800
Speaker 3: things in late. So in part one, we talked about

9
00:00:34,840 --> 00:00:39,440
Speaker 3: the biological origins of the Biletian head and about what

10
00:00:39,560 --> 00:00:43,720
Speaker 3: factors probably drove our ancestors hundreds of millions of years

11
00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:47,920
Speaker 3: ago to start concentrating nerve cells and sense organs and

12
00:00:48,040 --> 00:00:51,320
Speaker 3: mouth parts all on one end of the body, and

13
00:00:51,479 --> 00:00:54,000
Speaker 3: of course this is the development that would eventually turn

14
00:00:54,160 --> 00:00:57,680
Speaker 3: into our faces and our brains. We also talked about

15
00:00:57,720 --> 00:01:01,560
Speaker 3: stories of gods with no heads and cultures around the world,

16
00:01:01,880 --> 00:01:05,039
Speaker 3: and today we're back to talk about some more headless ghosts,

17
00:01:05,160 --> 00:01:09,440
Speaker 3: monsters and dubious historical claims of people who naturally have

18
00:01:09,600 --> 00:01:12,920
Speaker 3: no heads or have heads located inside their torsos.

19
00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:16,959
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we discussed in the last episode, no matter

20
00:01:17,440 --> 00:01:20,880
Speaker 2: what direction you approach the topic from, it ends up

21
00:01:20,920 --> 00:01:24,160
Speaker 2: being clear that like this idea of something without a head,

22
00:01:24,600 --> 00:01:27,400
Speaker 2: it captivates us. It forces us to think and rethink

23
00:01:27,800 --> 00:01:31,200
Speaker 2: various ideas about like what a person is, what an

24
00:01:31,360 --> 00:01:35,520
Speaker 2: entity is, where a volition comes from, and so forth.

25
00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:40,880
Speaker 2: So yeah, getting here into the idea of roughly speaking,

26
00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:45,119
Speaker 2: the diabolical headless, there are any number of headless monsters

27
00:01:45,160 --> 00:01:49,160
Speaker 2: and ghosts and global traditions we're probably not going to cover.

28
00:01:49,560 --> 00:01:51,160
Speaker 2: We're definitely not going to cover all of them. We

29
00:01:51,240 --> 00:01:55,800
Speaker 2: may leave out by error some key examples. And so

30
00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:59,320
Speaker 2: if we do skip such a headless entity from folklore

31
00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:02,480
Speaker 2: mythology right in, we'd love to hear from you, you know,

32
00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:05,960
Speaker 2: especially if it's a situation where head and or body

33
00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:09,760
Speaker 2: continue to live on afterwards. I guess you could roughly

34
00:02:09,760 --> 00:02:13,000
Speaker 2: throw Medusa into that category, though we did a whole

35
00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:15,400
Speaker 2: series on Medusa back in the day, so refer back

36
00:02:15,440 --> 00:02:17,440
Speaker 2: to those if you want to hear about Medusa's head.

37
00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:21,240
Speaker 2: I think it's also, you know, I think fair that

38
00:02:21,280 --> 00:02:23,360
Speaker 2: we might presume that a lot of these different ideas

39
00:02:23,400 --> 00:02:26,360
Speaker 2: have to do with, at least in concerning some of

40
00:02:26,400 --> 00:02:28,120
Speaker 2: like the ghosts we're going to be talking about and

41
00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:33,080
Speaker 2: so forth, taboos against the burial of incomplete remains also

42
00:02:33,720 --> 00:02:38,120
Speaker 2: thoughts about beheading as a form of execution, So keeping

43
00:02:38,160 --> 00:02:40,840
Speaker 2: all that in mind, that we'd bring up the first

44
00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:43,320
Speaker 2: one here. And this is a pretty big one, especially

45
00:02:44,160 --> 00:02:47,200
Speaker 2: when we start thinking about things like the headless horsemen

46
00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:51,000
Speaker 2: from the legend of Sleepy Hollow. We have a creature

47
00:02:51,120 --> 00:02:55,600
Speaker 2: from the Scottish Highlands. The name means the headless trunk,

48
00:02:56,160 --> 00:02:59,880
Speaker 2: and I'm probably gonna butcher the pronunciation here, but colun

49
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:03,360
Speaker 2: gun Chen. It's said to haunt the Isle of Sky

50
00:03:03,600 --> 00:03:06,200
Speaker 2: and it leaves women and children alone. But if it

51
00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:09,800
Speaker 2: happens upon a male traveler at night, especially anyone who's

52
00:03:09,800 --> 00:03:12,400
Speaker 2: out there on their own, well then it's going to

53
00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:19,040
Speaker 2: brutally attack. In Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, James McKellop describes

54
00:03:19,080 --> 00:03:22,119
Speaker 2: it as a form of boken or hobgoblin. He writes

55
00:03:22,160 --> 00:03:24,960
Speaker 2: it it's often thought of as a tutelary or protector

56
00:03:25,040 --> 00:03:28,519
Speaker 2: spirit of the McDonald's of Morale in the Western Highlands.

57
00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:33,080
Speaker 3: Is there a commonly understood explanation of why this ghost

58
00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:35,160
Speaker 3: is headless or is it just kind of that's the

59
00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:35,680
Speaker 3: way it is.

60
00:03:36,320 --> 00:03:39,000
Speaker 2: I'm not aware of a particular origin story here, but

61
00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:41,360
Speaker 2: I could be missing something, by the way. He also

62
00:03:41,400 --> 00:03:43,800
Speaker 2: writes of the Irish death coach and points out that

63
00:03:43,880 --> 00:03:47,760
Speaker 2: the driver and or the horses are sometimes described as headless,

64
00:03:47,800 --> 00:03:50,560
Speaker 2: and indeed sometimes it was called the headless coach, and

65
00:03:50,600 --> 00:03:53,960
Speaker 2: it is sometimes driven by the headless phantom Dolahan.

66
00:03:54,440 --> 00:03:55,080
Speaker 3: Doulahan.

67
00:03:55,840 --> 00:03:59,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Delahan is the headless horseman of Irish folklore,

68
00:04:00,080 --> 00:04:01,880
Speaker 2: and this one is I think often held up as

69
00:04:01,920 --> 00:04:04,480
Speaker 2: the clear inspiration for the headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

70
00:04:04,920 --> 00:04:08,720
Speaker 2: M Coloup describes it as indeed often riding a headless

71
00:04:08,760 --> 00:04:12,200
Speaker 2: horse or driving the coach that we already mentioned, and

72
00:04:12,400 --> 00:04:15,200
Speaker 2: sometimes that coach is made out of bones. There are

73
00:04:15,200 --> 00:04:18,600
Speaker 2: a number of grizzly details regarding the coach that sometimes

74
00:04:18,640 --> 00:04:23,599
Speaker 2: are left out of retellings. It actually does have a

75
00:04:23,640 --> 00:04:28,000
Speaker 2: ghoulish head that has been removed from its body, described

76
00:04:28,040 --> 00:04:31,560
Speaker 2: as a great chunk of moldy cheese with darting eyes.

77
00:04:32,320 --> 00:04:34,000
Speaker 3: Wow, that is evocative.

78
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:36,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean it makes it sound like, Okay,

79
00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:40,400
Speaker 2: the head is definitely dead, I guess, but again supernatural

80
00:04:40,440 --> 00:04:44,000
Speaker 2: being so I guess anything is fair game. The dula

81
00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:47,039
Speaker 2: hand is said to take this moldy cheese head off

82
00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:50,640
Speaker 2: for shock, and may throw it around like a ball,

83
00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:52,839
Speaker 2: so one can imagine, you know, sort of like bouncing

84
00:04:52,839 --> 00:04:55,000
Speaker 2: it off the shoulders or something, or dribbling it like

85
00:04:55,040 --> 00:04:55,760
Speaker 2: a basketball.

86
00:04:56,279 --> 00:04:58,680
Speaker 3: Oh, this reminds me of something I read that I

87
00:04:58,680 --> 00:05:02,440
Speaker 3: couldn't find a great worse for this. But allegedly, the

88
00:05:02,440 --> 00:05:06,839
Speaker 3: the ghost of the English archbishop William Laude, who is

89
00:05:06,880 --> 00:05:12,200
Speaker 3: believed to haunt Saint John's College in Oxfordshire, is said

90
00:05:12,240 --> 00:05:16,440
Speaker 3: to sometimes either kick his head around like a soccer

91
00:05:16,480 --> 00:05:20,040
Speaker 3: ball or bowl with his own head. But like I said,

92
00:05:20,080 --> 00:05:22,280
Speaker 3: I couldn't find a great looking source for that. But

93
00:05:22,360 --> 00:05:24,479
Speaker 3: that is a claim I've read attested.

94
00:05:25,080 --> 00:05:27,359
Speaker 2: I mean, the human imagination just can't help. But go

95
00:05:27,440 --> 00:05:27,880
Speaker 2: there right.

96
00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:28,920
Speaker 3: Yeah.

97
00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:31,240
Speaker 2: Now you might hearing this tale of the Dola h

98
00:05:31,320 --> 00:05:33,960
Speaker 2: and you might think, well, if this character comes riding around,

99
00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:37,600
Speaker 2: I've got to see this. This sounds impressive. Well, you

100
00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:42,359
Speaker 2: were advised not to. If he comes riding around, don't

101
00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:45,280
Speaker 2: peek out through a crack in the door the window,

102
00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:48,479
Speaker 2: because he has a whip. Sometimes it's said to be

103
00:05:48,520 --> 00:05:52,000
Speaker 2: crafted from a human spinal column, and he will crack

104
00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:54,040
Speaker 2: it at you and if he catches your eyes it'll

105
00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:54,640
Speaker 2: blind you.

106
00:05:55,240 --> 00:05:57,559
Speaker 3: Why am I calling to mind, like an evil version

107
00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:00,599
Speaker 3: of Santa Claus who catches the children peaking on, you know,

108
00:06:00,640 --> 00:06:01,400
Speaker 3: on Christmas.

109
00:06:01,680 --> 00:06:03,480
Speaker 2: It's kind of like that, you know. I mean, there's

110
00:06:03,800 --> 00:06:05,440
Speaker 2: and I think we can all kind of relate to

111
00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:08,039
Speaker 2: that idea of the supernatural. Like it's one thing to

112
00:06:08,080 --> 00:06:10,840
Speaker 2: hear tales of the supernatural, but then do you dare

113
00:06:10,960 --> 00:06:13,800
Speaker 2: see it? Because once you've seen it, you've crossed over. Right,

114
00:06:14,440 --> 00:06:16,880
Speaker 2: You're no longer on this side of the stories, You're

115
00:06:16,920 --> 00:06:17,520
Speaker 2: on the other side.

116
00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:18,760
Speaker 3: And what does that mean for you?

117
00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:22,960
Speaker 2: There are also tales that if he catches you looking

118
00:06:23,120 --> 00:06:25,960
Speaker 2: peeking out the door, he'll just ride up and throw

119
00:06:26,040 --> 00:06:31,640
Speaker 2: a basin of blood in your face. Oh yeah, and

120
00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:34,560
Speaker 2: but but still all that being said, like he still

121
00:06:34,640 --> 00:06:37,360
Speaker 2: just riding by, the worst thing that could happen is

122
00:06:37,400 --> 00:06:42,599
Speaker 2: that you'll hear those those hoof falls stop. You'll hear

123
00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:46,600
Speaker 2: that he has stopped outside your house, that he's lingering

124
00:06:46,640 --> 00:06:49,880
Speaker 2: outside your house, which of course spells death for those

125
00:06:49,920 --> 00:06:52,359
Speaker 2: inside or for someone inside, Like he is not just

126
00:06:52,400 --> 00:06:54,839
Speaker 2: passing through. He has arrived.

127
00:06:55,000 --> 00:06:55,240
Speaker 3: Now.

128
00:06:55,400 --> 00:06:58,480
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to find as many sources on this,

129
00:06:58,880 --> 00:07:02,120
Speaker 2: but it is said that there is a modern Japanese

130
00:07:02,279 --> 00:07:06,719
Speaker 2: urban legend variation of the dou Lahan. The Kubanashi Rider

131
00:07:06,839 --> 00:07:10,480
Speaker 2: or headless Rider doesn't ride a horse, rides a motorcycle.

132
00:07:10,880 --> 00:07:12,920
Speaker 2: The story is that his head was cut off by

133
00:07:12,920 --> 00:07:15,920
Speaker 2: a piano wire spanning a roadway, a detail that has

134
00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:18,960
Speaker 2: been connected to the nineteen seventy four Australian outlaw biker

135
00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:23,000
Speaker 2: film Stone, which was then released in Japan in nineteen

136
00:07:23,040 --> 00:07:26,920
Speaker 2: eighty one and would have inspired this urban legend. Apparently,

137
00:07:27,440 --> 00:07:28,720
Speaker 2: I have not seen this one. I don't know if

138
00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:29,840
Speaker 2: you're familiar with Stone.

139
00:07:30,280 --> 00:07:31,920
Speaker 3: No, I'm not familiar with it, but it sounds like

140
00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:33,520
Speaker 3: a very Mad Max kind of detail.

141
00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:37,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in fact, it has Hugh keyes Burn in it,

142
00:07:37,280 --> 00:07:40,680
Speaker 2: the guy who played in Morton Joe in the most

143
00:07:40,680 --> 00:07:43,240
Speaker 2: recent Mad Max film and also played what was like

144
00:07:43,320 --> 00:07:45,720
Speaker 2: toe Cutter I think is his character in the original

145
00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:46,600
Speaker 2: Mad Max.

146
00:07:46,480 --> 00:07:49,080
Speaker 3: The villain in the first one in the fourth one,

147
00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:50,800
Speaker 3: but different characters. Yeah.

148
00:07:51,200 --> 00:07:54,640
Speaker 2: Now. McKillop also recounts a tale of a beheading game

149
00:07:55,080 --> 00:07:59,480
Speaker 2: involving the hero kucullin Now the Beheading Game. I think

150
00:07:59,480 --> 00:08:01,360
Speaker 2: we've talked about this before on the show. This is

151
00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:04,400
Speaker 2: a literary trope, perhaps best known for its place and

152
00:08:04,480 --> 00:08:09,440
Speaker 2: on Thurian legend concerning the Green Knight. Basically, the game

153
00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:11,560
Speaker 2: consists of this, you cut my head off, and then

154
00:08:11,600 --> 00:08:15,680
Speaker 2: I cut yours off. Sounds like an easy contest until

155
00:08:15,680 --> 00:08:18,320
Speaker 2: you realize that your opponent can get back up and

156
00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:21,080
Speaker 2: walk around without a head and will indeed be back

157
00:08:21,120 --> 00:08:22,720
Speaker 2: to cut yours off later on.

158
00:08:23,160 --> 00:08:26,600
Speaker 3: This is central in the Arthurian story of Sir Cowen

159
00:08:26,640 --> 00:08:28,720
Speaker 3: and the Green Knight. Sir Gowain is the one who

160
00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:32,959
Speaker 3: answers the challenge. The Knights of the Roundtable are feasting,

161
00:08:32,960 --> 00:08:35,440
Speaker 3: I believe on Christmas Day or it's around Christmas, and

162
00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:39,800
Speaker 3: the Green Knight, this man who is very much identified

163
00:08:39,840 --> 00:08:42,040
Speaker 3: with nature and seems to be some kind of symbol

164
00:08:42,040 --> 00:08:45,600
Speaker 3: of like paganism, This Green Knight figure comes in and

165
00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:49,560
Speaker 3: he insults all of the knights, and he challenges them

166
00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:51,920
Speaker 3: to this game, this beheading game, and they're allowed to

167
00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:54,560
Speaker 3: be head him first. So Sir Gawain, the young up

168
00:08:54,640 --> 00:08:56,839
Speaker 3: and comer, is like, yeah, okay, I'll do it. Yeah,

169
00:08:56,880 --> 00:08:58,480
Speaker 3: and he cuts the Green Knight's head off, and the

170
00:08:58,520 --> 00:09:00,600
Speaker 3: Green Knight is fine, he picks his own head up.

171
00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:02,920
Speaker 3: He's like, okay, now I'll do that to you a

172
00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:05,000
Speaker 3: year from now today. So You've got to come find

173
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:07,559
Speaker 3: me at the Green Chapel, And so there's like it's

174
00:09:07,559 --> 00:09:10,680
Speaker 3: a morality story about honor and all that that Sir

175
00:09:10,720 --> 00:09:12,680
Speaker 3: Gawain is like, well, am I going to go do it?

176
00:09:12,720 --> 00:09:14,680
Speaker 3: And he does. Yeah. Yeah.

177
00:09:14,720 --> 00:09:16,600
Speaker 2: So there's a lot more to dissect there, but at

178
00:09:16,679 --> 00:09:19,560
Speaker 2: heart you do have a story of headless or at

179
00:09:19,600 --> 00:09:21,200
Speaker 2: least temporarily headless.

180
00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:24,440
Speaker 3: Being I actually, Rachel and I just this past month

181
00:09:24,559 --> 00:09:27,760
Speaker 3: watched for the first time that that recent Sir Gawain

182
00:09:27,840 --> 00:09:29,760
Speaker 3: movie that they put out, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight,

183
00:09:30,120 --> 00:09:31,160
Speaker 3: and I thought it was great.

184
00:09:31,760 --> 00:09:33,280
Speaker 2: Oh cool. I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard

185
00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:35,640
Speaker 2: great things. I've only ever watched the one in which

186
00:09:35,640 --> 00:09:37,280
Speaker 2: Sean Connery plays the Green Knight.

187
00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:39,600
Speaker 3: Oh no, I haven't seen that one.

188
00:09:40,120 --> 00:09:44,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pretty good Green Knight. Now, in looking

189
00:09:44,640 --> 00:09:50,520
Speaker 2: around for other examples of headless beings, there's one I

190
00:09:50,640 --> 00:09:53,720
Speaker 2: ran across that I wanted to bring up that it

191
00:09:53,760 --> 00:10:00,480
Speaker 2: extends from navago or dnnight traditions. Specifically, it's called the

192
00:10:00,679 --> 00:10:06,079
Speaker 2: phil Gath. It's a form of annie monster, sometimes translated,

193
00:10:06,679 --> 00:10:09,760
Speaker 2: especially back in the early twentieth century, as alien gods.

194
00:10:10,920 --> 00:10:13,560
Speaker 2: Though I feel like that maybe that terminology could be

195
00:10:13,760 --> 00:10:17,120
Speaker 2: confusing now I'm not sure, but some sort of like

196
00:10:17,200 --> 00:10:21,640
Speaker 2: gods from the outside, I guess. In her Monster books,

197
00:10:21,720 --> 00:10:25,199
Speaker 2: Carol Rose describes them as primal monsters, the offspring of

198
00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:28,679
Speaker 2: wicked women who brought fear and misery into the world,

199
00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:32,000
Speaker 2: the sons of Sun and Water, and I believe these

200
00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:37,319
Speaker 2: are the Navajo hero twins slayed these monsters, and according

201
00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:40,480
Speaker 2: to Rose, their offspring, however, lived on, the monster's offspring

202
00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:43,200
Speaker 2: lived on to keep cold, famine, old age, and poverty

203
00:10:43,240 --> 00:10:46,800
Speaker 2: alive in the world even if these, like more primal fears,

204
00:10:47,040 --> 00:10:51,240
Speaker 2: had been defeated by the heroes. I was also reading

205
00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:56,640
Speaker 2: that the monsters were slain by na Ye NEZGANI. This

206
00:10:56,720 --> 00:11:02,320
Speaker 2: is a mythical hero from Navajo lore that is a

207
00:11:02,360 --> 00:11:05,040
Speaker 2: monster slayer, and I believe is one of the Navajo

208
00:11:05,160 --> 00:11:10,160
Speaker 2: twins referenced earlier. Gerald E. Levy in his book in

209
00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:13,800
Speaker 2: the beginning The Navajo Genesis lists the translated names of

210
00:11:13,840 --> 00:11:18,960
Speaker 2: the monsters killed by the slayer as big Ye, Horned Monster,

211
00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:23,320
Speaker 2: Rock Monster, Eagle kicks off Rocks, and the Eye Killers.

212
00:11:23,400 --> 00:11:26,840
Speaker 2: I believe Horned Monster is fel Gath or deal ged,

213
00:11:27,840 --> 00:11:33,040
Speaker 2: but there's no mention of headlessness here. However, deel ged

214
00:11:33,640 --> 00:11:36,959
Speaker 2: dell Gath or Phelgeth is listed as a quote unquote

215
00:11:36,960 --> 00:11:42,199
Speaker 2: Harry headless antelope on the website Native Languagest Native hyphen

216
00:11:42,320 --> 00:11:45,199
Speaker 2: Languages dot org, which is a nonprofit dedicated to the

217
00:11:45,200 --> 00:11:50,560
Speaker 2: preservation and promotion of endangered American Indian languages. So that

218
00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:53,760
Speaker 2: leads me to believe, well, maybe this is some sort

219
00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:56,320
Speaker 2: of headless entity, at least in some tellings.

220
00:11:56,960 --> 00:11:59,040
Speaker 3: Harry headless antelope. Interesting.

221
00:11:59,679 --> 00:12:03,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, So just another example that this idea of some

222
00:12:03,280 --> 00:12:07,760
Speaker 2: sort of like headless entity, be it animal or human inform,

223
00:12:08,280 --> 00:12:12,120
Speaker 2: like gonna touch a nerve, like there is something unnatural

224
00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:15,480
Speaker 2: and dreadful about it that they were going to we

225
00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:17,400
Speaker 2: can't help but connect with monstrosity.

226
00:12:17,880 --> 00:12:21,120
Speaker 3: So I was looking for a good book that compiled

227
00:12:21,200 --> 00:12:24,880
Speaker 3: stories about headless ghosts, and I found a chapter in

228
00:12:24,920 --> 00:12:29,160
Speaker 3: a book by the well known skeptic and paranormal investigator

229
00:12:29,240 --> 00:12:33,000
Speaker 3: Joe Nickel called The book is called The Science of Ghosts,

230
00:12:33,120 --> 00:12:36,240
Speaker 3: Searching for Spirits of the Dead, published by Prometheus Books

231
00:12:36,280 --> 00:12:38,839
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, and there's a chapter in this book

232
00:12:38,840 --> 00:12:42,960
Speaker 3: called headless Ghosts. I have known so at the beginning

233
00:12:43,040 --> 00:12:46,160
Speaker 3: of this chapter, Nickel points out a few just kind

234
00:12:46,200 --> 00:12:49,400
Speaker 3: of interesting contradictions, some of which I don't know if

235
00:12:49,400 --> 00:12:53,320
Speaker 3: I've ever considered before. One is the idea that you know,

236
00:12:53,360 --> 00:12:56,679
Speaker 3: there are certain kinds of ghost realists, people who think

237
00:12:56,720 --> 00:13:02,839
Speaker 3: that ghosts are real, independent, extraternal phenomena, and that certain

238
00:13:02,880 --> 00:13:05,880
Speaker 3: of these ghost realists assert that a ghost is a

239
00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:10,760
Speaker 3: form of physical energy peculiar to humans or perhaps to animals,

240
00:13:11,200 --> 00:13:15,240
Speaker 3: that survives death and remains in the environment. And yet

241
00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:19,160
Speaker 3: for some reason, ghosts are almost always perceived not only

242
00:13:19,200 --> 00:13:24,120
Speaker 3: as manifestations of the human or animal body, but dressed

243
00:13:24,200 --> 00:13:27,160
Speaker 3: as they might have been during life. So like, if

244
00:13:27,160 --> 00:13:32,320
Speaker 3: this energy exists and persists, it also seems to manifest

245
00:13:32,480 --> 00:13:36,679
Speaker 3: inanimate objects, such as like clothing and uniforms and jewelry

246
00:13:36,800 --> 00:13:40,400
Speaker 3: other non living objects that ghosts would sometimes carry with them.

247
00:13:40,840 --> 00:13:43,000
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Ghosts tend to wear clothes.

248
00:13:43,320 --> 00:13:46,040
Speaker 3: Along the same lines, some ideas about ghosts as real

249
00:13:46,120 --> 00:13:49,600
Speaker 3: external phenomena explain them as some kind of lingering mental

250
00:13:49,679 --> 00:13:54,160
Speaker 3: projection of the original person that persists after death, though

251
00:13:54,200 --> 00:13:57,559
Speaker 3: this has interesting tension with the number of stories there

252
00:13:57,600 --> 00:14:00,880
Speaker 3: are about headless ghosts, since mental fling phenomena are pretty

253
00:14:00,880 --> 00:14:04,120
Speaker 3: well established to depend mostly on the brain, it would

254
00:14:04,120 --> 00:14:08,199
Speaker 3: have to be a now dead brain projecting not itself

255
00:14:08,280 --> 00:14:11,280
Speaker 3: into the future, but some kind of three dimensional representation

256
00:14:11,559 --> 00:14:14,960
Speaker 3: of the part of the body that does not contain it,

257
00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:19,320
Speaker 3: which is kind of interesting. But anyway, so those little

258
00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:22,920
Speaker 3: observations aside, he goes on to document several types of

259
00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:26,440
Speaker 3: stories of headless ghosts. In the United States. There are

260
00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:29,720
Speaker 3: apparently a number of popular stories about soldiers from the

261
00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:34,080
Speaker 3: American Civil War, like being decapitated by cannon fire and

262
00:14:34,120 --> 00:14:38,360
Speaker 3: then wandering the battlefield forevermore as headless ghosts. He also

263
00:14:38,400 --> 00:14:41,640
Speaker 3: mentions the various headless ghosts associated with the Tower of

264
00:14:41,720 --> 00:14:45,960
Speaker 3: London in England, including several historical figures who were beheaded

265
00:14:46,040 --> 00:14:48,640
Speaker 3: on the orders of Henry the Eighth, only a subset

266
00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:51,320
Speaker 3: of which were his wives, the most famous of the

267
00:14:51,320 --> 00:14:55,320
Speaker 3: Tower ghosts being Anne Boleyn. But there are also just

268
00:14:55,520 --> 00:14:58,400
Speaker 3: some other enemies of Henry that end up there. But

269
00:14:58,640 --> 00:15:01,960
Speaker 3: one of the stories that Nicol courts that really stuck

270
00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:07,680
Speaker 3: with me involves criminals in medieval Germany. So there is

271
00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:11,720
Speaker 3: a place in the Rhine Valley called the Reichenstein Castle

272
00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:16,560
Speaker 3: where a legend says that a headless ghost sometimes wanders

273
00:15:16,760 --> 00:15:20,440
Speaker 3: in the chapel adjoining the castle, and he describes a

274
00:15:20,560 --> 00:15:24,080
Speaker 3: visit that he had to this castle to look into

275
00:15:24,120 --> 00:15:27,680
Speaker 3: the legend. The origin story goes back to the thirteenth century,

276
00:15:27,760 --> 00:15:30,480
Speaker 3: when this castle was the base of operations for a

277
00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:33,720
Speaker 3: band of what he calls robber knights. I think, you know,

278
00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:38,280
Speaker 3: fierce bandit horsemen. And then to quote from Nicol, and

279
00:15:38,400 --> 00:15:41,480
Speaker 3: this is in part he is quoting from Dennis William

280
00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:44,920
Speaker 3: Hawke's International Dictionary of Haunted Places. So when the quote

281
00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:47,520
Speaker 3: comes in, that's what it is. But Nichol writes, quote,

282
00:15:47,880 --> 00:15:51,400
Speaker 3: in twelve eighty two, they were captured, whereupon their leader,

283
00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:56,640
Speaker 3: Dietrich von Hohenfels, entreated Emperor Rudolph von Habsburg to spare

284
00:15:56,720 --> 00:16:00,240
Speaker 3: his nine sons. The emperor stated that Dietrich was to

285
00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:03,200
Speaker 3: be beheaded, but with his sons lined in a row,

286
00:16:03,400 --> 00:16:07,240
Speaker 3: everyone he could afterward run past would be spared. When

287
00:16:07,280 --> 00:16:11,760
Speaker 3: the executioner's sword fell quote, Dietrich's head rolled to the ground,

288
00:16:11,800 --> 00:16:15,760
Speaker 3: but his bloodied torso stood erect and lunged forward, stumbling

289
00:16:15,800 --> 00:16:19,960
Speaker 3: and swaying, until it passed every one of his sons. Finally,

290
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:22,760
Speaker 3: the headless body fell to its knees, a fountain of

291
00:16:22,800 --> 00:16:25,760
Speaker 3: blood shooting high in the air where its head had been.

292
00:16:26,560 --> 00:16:29,840
Speaker 3: The sons were spared, and afterward on the execution site,

293
00:16:29,880 --> 00:16:33,840
Speaker 3: the repentant family erected the Saint Clement Chapel. According to

294
00:16:33,920 --> 00:16:37,560
Speaker 3: how Dietrich's headless ghost is sometimes seen inside the chapel.

295
00:16:38,040 --> 00:16:41,240
Speaker 3: Also quote Dietrich is buried on the property and his

296
00:16:41,400 --> 00:16:45,280
Speaker 3: red sandstone marker depicts a knight in armor with no head.

297
00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:49,640
Speaker 3: But Nicol points out that there are several issues with

298
00:16:49,680 --> 00:16:52,760
Speaker 3: this story. So first of all, this grave marker described

299
00:16:53,080 --> 00:16:55,840
Speaker 3: wherever it is, it is now lost, or was, at

300
00:16:55,920 --> 00:16:58,640
Speaker 3: least to the time he was writing this book. Though

301
00:16:58,640 --> 00:17:00,560
Speaker 3: there is an account of a visit to the site

302
00:17:00,560 --> 00:17:04,119
Speaker 3: by Victor Hugo, where Hugo claimed that the grave marker

303
00:17:04,240 --> 00:17:07,320
Speaker 3: was from the fourteenth century, not the thirteenth, and the

304
00:17:07,359 --> 00:17:11,040
Speaker 3: Dietrich's name was not on it. Also, the account does

305
00:17:11,080 --> 00:17:13,480
Speaker 3: not square with the history of the bandit Knights of

306
00:17:13,520 --> 00:17:17,600
Speaker 3: the Castle, where apparently the more reliable sequence of fact

307
00:17:17,640 --> 00:17:21,800
Speaker 3: seems to be that Dietrich actually escaped and his companions

308
00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:25,359
Speaker 3: the other robber knights, were in fact executed. They were

309
00:17:25,400 --> 00:17:28,920
Speaker 3: hanged from trees in the Rhine Valley, and the basic

310
00:17:28,960 --> 00:17:31,679
Speaker 3: outline of this folk tale about Dietrich seems to go

311
00:17:31,800 --> 00:17:35,040
Speaker 3: back in earlier form to a story about a fourteenth

312
00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:40,919
Speaker 3: century German pirate and privateer named Klaus Stortebecker, who was

313
00:17:41,040 --> 00:17:44,680
Speaker 3: captured and executed for his crimes in the year fourteen

314
00:17:44,720 --> 00:17:48,679
Speaker 3: oh one. Nicol writes, quote, kneeling before the executioner, he

315
00:17:48,720 --> 00:17:52,919
Speaker 3: proposed a deal. Quote all those companions should be reprieved

316
00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:56,360
Speaker 3: whom he could manage to walk by after being beheaded.

317
00:17:56,720 --> 00:17:59,800
Speaker 3: This way he saved the lives of eleven pirates before

318
00:17:59,840 --> 00:18:06,080
Speaker 3: the malicious executioner tripped him. That's a dirty trick. Yeah.

319
00:18:06,400 --> 00:18:10,040
Speaker 2: Now, this talk of headless privateers and so forth. Of course,

320
00:18:10,040 --> 00:18:13,200
Speaker 2: this brings to mind a modern retelling of this sort

321
00:18:13,240 --> 00:18:15,800
Speaker 2: of story that I don't think we've mentioned so far,

322
00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:18,520
Speaker 2: and that of course is Warren Zvon's nineteen seventy eight

323
00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:23,239
Speaker 2: song roll in the Headless Thompson Gunner, which is an

324
00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:30,440
Speaker 2: excellent song, wonderfully weird lyrics, a great ballad of headless

325
00:18:30,480 --> 00:18:34,120
Speaker 2: being in revenge and so forth, but very much from

326
00:18:34,600 --> 00:18:37,880
Speaker 2: in this sort of vein, you know, instead of a pirate,

327
00:18:38,520 --> 00:18:40,520
Speaker 2: an international mercenary.

328
00:18:40,320 --> 00:18:42,920
Speaker 3: Right and so there are kind of like these story

329
00:18:43,240 --> 00:18:47,240
Speaker 3: forms that just keep reappearing in stories about different people

330
00:18:47,280 --> 00:18:50,560
Speaker 3: in different times and places in history. And Nicol ultimately

331
00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:52,840
Speaker 3: thinks that the story about d Trick that he came

332
00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:57,920
Speaker 3: across is probably grafted from this original story about Stordbecker.

333
00:18:58,320 --> 00:19:02,280
Speaker 3: But in either case, Nicol argued that the story is implausible,

334
00:19:02,359 --> 00:19:05,119
Speaker 3: like it probably did not actually happen based on what

335
00:19:05,119 --> 00:19:07,880
Speaker 3: we know about physiology, Like you know, a chicken might

336
00:19:07,920 --> 00:19:10,760
Speaker 3: be able to run around or walk around a bit

337
00:19:10,800 --> 00:19:13,480
Speaker 3: after decapitation, but he does not think that a human

338
00:19:13,520 --> 00:19:14,240
Speaker 3: would do the same.

339
00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:17,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it raises all sorts of questions about well,

340
00:19:17,160 --> 00:19:19,600
Speaker 2: how was he standing when the head was cut off?

341
00:19:19,680 --> 00:19:22,320
Speaker 2: Like how do you get ready for this attempted lurch

342
00:19:22,359 --> 00:19:25,240
Speaker 2: across the execution yard to save other pirates?

343
00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:27,800
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I don't know the answer there,

344
00:19:28,280 --> 00:19:30,840
Speaker 3: But one more tangent I went on from Nichol's book.

345
00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:34,080
Speaker 3: Later in the book, there's a short section on ghost

346
00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:38,840
Speaker 3: dogs where Nicol brings up the English legend sometimes known

347
00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:43,840
Speaker 3: as black Shuck, a spectral hound with sort of localized

348
00:19:44,200 --> 00:19:49,160
Speaker 3: incarnations or tellings in different regions of England, such as Devon, Essex,

349
00:19:49,320 --> 00:19:53,119
Speaker 3: Suffolk and Norfolk. And this ghost dog is said to

350
00:19:53,160 --> 00:19:56,040
Speaker 3: have black hair and stand as large as a calf,

351
00:19:56,280 --> 00:20:01,719
Speaker 3: quote sporting glowing eyes even when he is described as headless.

352
00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:05,760
Speaker 3: And I loved that the image of a canine body

353
00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:10,760
Speaker 3: that has glowing eyes despite having no head. Now, can

354
00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:13,159
Speaker 3: you have eyes if you have no head? Well? I

355
00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:15,560
Speaker 3: think if you're a dog, the answer is probably no,

356
00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:17,840
Speaker 3: at least plausibly no, without some kind of sci fi

357
00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:21,360
Speaker 3: Frankenstein thing going on. But if you're another kind of animal,

358
00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:24,400
Speaker 3: the answer is absolutely yes. You can have eyes without

359
00:20:24,440 --> 00:20:26,880
Speaker 3: a head. As weird as it sounds, there are animals

360
00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:29,679
Speaker 3: exactly like that. Just one example I would like to

361
00:20:29,680 --> 00:20:34,920
Speaker 3: briefly talk about. Are scallops, Oh, scallops, scollops? Which way

362
00:20:34,920 --> 00:20:37,840
Speaker 3: do you say it? Robin scallops? Scollops?

363
00:20:38,040 --> 00:20:38,280
Speaker 2: Oh?

364
00:20:38,520 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a little further back in the Yeah, let's

365
00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:45,000
Speaker 3: say scollops. Folks, if you are near a computer or

366
00:20:45,200 --> 00:20:47,480
Speaker 3: are safely able to look at your phone right now,

367
00:20:47,600 --> 00:20:51,320
Speaker 3: just do yourself a favor and look up scollop eyes.

368
00:20:52,280 --> 00:20:55,160
Speaker 3: It's like something straight out of a monster movie. There

369
00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:59,439
Speaker 3: are real unedited photos of scollop eyes that look like

370
00:20:59,480 --> 00:21:03,679
Speaker 3: they can not be from nature, but they are, so

371
00:21:04,000 --> 00:21:08,000
Speaker 3: you will sometimes see the shell will be just slightly open,

372
00:21:08,119 --> 00:21:10,920
Speaker 3: you know, it's mostly closed, but there's a gap in between,

373
00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:14,119
Speaker 3: and the inside of the shell is lined with a

374
00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:19,679
Speaker 3: tissue that just has these these pale blue dots all

375
00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:23,080
Speaker 3: along it, which clearly do read as eyes for some reason,

376
00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:25,240
Speaker 3: they don't just look like dots. I mean, it looks

377
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:28,479
Speaker 3: like they're looking at you. And then in between that

378
00:21:29,080 --> 00:21:31,479
Speaker 3: there are these tissues that kind of lock together with

379
00:21:31,520 --> 00:21:36,000
Speaker 3: these spiky hairs that looks like the world's widest monster

380
00:21:36,119 --> 00:21:37,639
Speaker 3: mouth with infinite teeth.

381
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:41,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're they're terrifying. They also they're so bright

382
00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:44,040
Speaker 2: in some of these pictures too. They feel like it

383
00:21:44,040 --> 00:21:45,960
Speaker 2: should be a legend of Zelda in me.

384
00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:51,240
Speaker 3: You know, Yes, that's really good. Yeah. Yeah. You can

385
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:55,440
Speaker 3: imagine the treasure chest popping up when you defeat the Scallop. Hey,

386
00:21:55,480 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 3: and if it's in one of the new Zelda games,

387
00:21:57,240 --> 00:22:00,199
Speaker 3: surely you would end up getting to cook with with

388
00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:02,240
Speaker 3: the Scallop from it, right, that's right.

389
00:22:02,320 --> 00:22:04,840
Speaker 2: I hear all about. I don't play the game myself.

390
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:06,520
Speaker 2: My son does, and he tells me all about the

391
00:22:06,520 --> 00:22:09,040
Speaker 2: different meats you cook, and then of course there's not

392
00:22:09,119 --> 00:22:10,520
Speaker 2: just going to be one. There's going to be about

393
00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:13,480
Speaker 2: eight different versions of it, right, with different head features.

394
00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:15,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can combine the body parts from the

395
00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:19,600
Speaker 3: different ones to make different kinds of meals. That cooking

396
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:22,400
Speaker 3: mechanic is very pleasing. It's always a nice little surprise

397
00:22:22,400 --> 00:22:25,720
Speaker 3: when you mix something new and it does make a dish.

398
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:31,160
Speaker 3: But anyway, scallops are interesting in that their visual anatomy

399
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:36,240
Speaker 3: differs substantially from ours. Scallops can, of course, have hundreds

400
00:22:36,240 --> 00:22:39,240
Speaker 3: of eyes per organism. We only have two. And while

401
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 3: our eyes use curved transparent lenses to focus light onto

402
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:50,359
Speaker 3: the retina, scallops focus light instead with tiny mirrors made

403
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:54,720
Speaker 3: of crystals of guanine. And if guanine's ringing a bell

404
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:57,000
Speaker 3: for you, yes, that is one of the four bases

405
00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 3: found in DNA. That's the one that pairs with seine.

406
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:03,640
Speaker 3: Strange fact I just learned while preparing for this episode.

407
00:23:03,680 --> 00:23:07,920
Speaker 3: Guanine gets its name from guano, as in like bat

408
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:11,560
Speaker 3: dung or bird dung, because the compound was found in

409
00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:16,600
Speaker 3: great quantities in guano, but in its crystalline form guanine,

410
00:23:17,240 --> 00:23:21,200
Speaker 3: it forms the iridescent component in fish scales and other

411
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:25,240
Speaker 3: kind of pearly reflective surfaces in parts of animal bodies,

412
00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:29,040
Speaker 3: sometimes in reptiles too, Like I believe chameleons, you know,

413
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:33,679
Speaker 3: have guanine. But in the case of scallops, scallop eyes

414
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 3: focus light onto the light sensitive cells their equivalent of

415
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:43,359
Speaker 3: retinas with reflective mirrors made of segmented guanine crystals. I

416
00:23:43,359 --> 00:23:47,680
Speaker 3: think they're actually square shaped crystal plates. And there's an

417
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:52,320
Speaker 3: interesting comparison to be made to technology to human made telescopes,

418
00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:56,320
Speaker 3: because while the earliest telescopes like those used by Galileo,

419
00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 3: used transparent glass lenses to focus life into the eyepiece

420
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:04,719
Speaker 3: kind of like our eyes do, the most advanced telescopes

421
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:09,119
Speaker 3: today actually tend to use curved mirrors instead of lenses

422
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:12,240
Speaker 3: as the primary light gathering surface. Wow.

423
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:13,119
Speaker 2: That's incredible.

424
00:24:13,359 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 3: But if there's one thing I want you to take

425
00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:17,480
Speaker 3: away from this, it's just go google scollop eyes.

426
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:21,400
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, these are amazing images, and it does feel

427
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:33,200
Speaker 2: like they're looking right at it all Right at this

428
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:36,439
Speaker 2: point in the episode, I want to turn back to

429
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 2: this idea that we discussed a little bit in the

430
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:44,360
Speaker 2: last episode, this idea of headless creatures but with faces

431
00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:48,160
Speaker 2: on their chest. So we looked at some examples from

432
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 2: like Chinese mythology and Hindu mythology, where you had creatures

433
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:57,159
Speaker 2: that have no head, but have but the face is

434
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 2: found away, you know, the nipples are pevy eyeballs, and

435
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:05,639
Speaker 2: the belly is a great big mouth. The most famous

436
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:10,640
Speaker 2: Western versions of these, though, the versions of these sort

437
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 2: of monstrous ideas, the ones that cast the longest shadow,

438
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 2: are generally referred to. They were referred to by various

439
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 2: names by particularly by authors in antiquity, but then going

440
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:24,960
Speaker 2: on up through the Middle Ages and so forth. One

441
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 2: of the names is the blimys. Another is the cephali,

442
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 2: which just means headless. But many of the names that

443
00:25:32,600 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 2: they were, they were that were attributed to them were

444
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 2: actual peoples. That were the names of actual peoples that

445
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 2: were said to live in remote parts of the known world,

446
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 2: or i guess, more specifically, on the edges of what

447
00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:48,560
Speaker 2: was the known world for the individuals creating maps, writing

448
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 2: these various travelogs, and speculating about what sort of life

449
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:56,480
Speaker 2: and what sort of peoples there were on the far

450
00:25:56,520 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 2: flung corners of the world.

451
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:01,199
Speaker 3: And while it's certainly possible that these stories could be

452
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 3: based on you know, misinterpreted or misreported observations, things like

453
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:09,400
Speaker 3: that that we'll get into. You also really can't help

454
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 3: but notice that there would be a natural temptation when

455
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:16,399
Speaker 3: describing people who live like in the farthest place place

456
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 3: away from you, that you can imagine that maybe they

457
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 3: are really different somehow, maybe like they don't even have heads.

458
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:26,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and that's that's basically the idea.

459
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:27,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

460
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 2: And there were other monstrous races, to be sure, and

461
00:26:30,359 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 2: you can find various illustrations of these and various books

462
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 2: from the time periods in question. They include not only

463
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 2: people with faces on their chests and no head, but

464
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 2: also one legged people that hop around on one leg

465
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:46,360
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing, the so called monstrous races.

466
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:49,800
Speaker 2: But this idea goes way back, and you know, will

467
00:26:49,880 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 2: unwrap some of the ideas that have been put forth

468
00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 2: as to why these concepts emerged and why they had

469
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 2: such stickiness in the human imagination. And I do think

470
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:03,919
Speaker 2: the human imagination, as always should be, we should keep

471
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 2: that in mind as being one of the primary factors here,

472
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 2: like people thinking about again, like thinking about the edge

473
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:13,159
Speaker 2: of the world, thinking about other planets. We're dealing with

474
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:15,520
Speaker 2: sort of a gray area where we can just inject

475
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 2: pure imagination. But then on top of that there's the

476
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 2: normal telephone game of translations and accounts and some other

477
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 2: factors we'll get into. So the Greeks called them the Acephala,

478
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:28,640
Speaker 2: or the headless ones. They were also known again as

479
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 2: the Blimys, which was the name given to an actual

480
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 2: people who seem to have lived in Lower Nubia during

481
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:41,000
Speaker 2: the seventh century BCE through the eighth century CE. So

482
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 2: to be clear, the actual people that lived there had

483
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 2: heads and were not monsters. They were people. But this

484
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:51,920
Speaker 2: is the idea that gets passed down through these various writings.

485
00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 2: Herodotus indirectly mentions the Acephali in the fifth century BCE

486
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 2: work Histories, among other exact rated foreign peoples with inhuman descriptions,

487
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 2: he refers to quote the headless men that have their

488
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 2: eyes in their chests. During the first century CE, plenty

489
00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 2: of the Elder wrote about them as well in the

490
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 2: Natural History, once more referring to them among other exaggerated

491
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 2: and or you know, strange accounts of supposed foreign peoples

492
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 2: and the far flung corners of the world, writing quote

493
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 2: in translation. Of course, the Blimier are said to have

494
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 2: no heads, their mouths and eyes being seated in their breasts,

495
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:36,919
Speaker 2: and you'll find various accounts like this repeated through the

496
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 2: Middle Ages and into the Age of Discovery. You can

497
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 2: look at works such as the travels of Sir John Mandivial,

498
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 2: the writings of Walter Raleigh, and so forth. They are

499
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 2: just more numerous. To mention here in this episode.

500
00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:53,640
Speaker 3: To be clear, you're saying some of the other these

501
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 3: like medieval travel writings, described people with implausible anatomy that

502
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 3: were you know, this is not really how people's bodies were,

503
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:04,960
Speaker 3: but for some reason in some place, these authors would say, yeah,

504
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 3: there are people here who they don't have a head,

505
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 3: or they have one leg or something.

506
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I gather that. You know, there are a

507
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 2: mix of things going on here. On one level, it's like, well,

508
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,600
Speaker 2: you know, plenty of the Elder wrote about it, so

509
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 2: we're going to repeat that. Of course, you know plenty,

510
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 2: as we discussed on the show, plenty has a lot

511
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 2: of interesting things to share, some of which have truth,

512
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 2: have an element of truth to them, or are you know,

513
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 2: accounts of what's happening in the real world. Others are

514
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 2: things that he heard and were passed down and don't

515
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 2: relay any historic truth, but do tell us something about

516
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 2: like the mindset of the time. Now before we get

517
00:29:44,320 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 2: back into the question of where these stories came from

518
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 2: and what they may have originally meant, you know, what

519
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 2: things could have led to these interpretations entails. It's also

520
00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 2: I think it's also worthwhile to think about their staying

521
00:29:56,120 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 2: power and usefulness and conveying different meanings, some but not

522
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 2: all of which relate to like a general monsterization of

523
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 2: the other. And again, I think it's also one of

524
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 2: those things where it's imaginative and weird enough, and that

525
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 2: alone is a reason that people keep coming back to it,

526
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 2: and just sort of like some of the ideas we

527
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 2: discussed in the first episode, like we think about creatures

528
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 2: with heads and we take it for granted, and then

529
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 2: you're presented with a form that's lacking ahead, but it's

530
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 2: still alive, Like what does it mean? You can't help

531
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 2: but interpret and have these various symbolic interpretations of metaphoric

532
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:33,920
Speaker 2: interpretations of what's going on there. So I was looking

533
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 2: around for some insight on this general topics pointed out

534
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 2: by Husband and Gilmore House in The wild Man, Medieval

535
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 2: myth and symbolism. You had cases like that of thirteenth

536
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 2: century Flemish writer Thomas de Contemporary, who compared such headless

537
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:55,000
Speaker 2: men to lawyers who quote misled clients into unnecessary legal

538
00:30:55,080 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 2: processes and grew fat on inordinate fees. I love that

539
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 2: because I can't help but imagine one of these various

540
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 2: lawyer billboards you see everywhere on the highways. But instead

541
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 2: of having that, you know, smiling dude in a suit,

542
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 2: what if you had a belly faced man on them?

543
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 3: What if Bob Odenkirk's face was on his chest exactly? Yeah.

544
00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 2: Husband and gilmore House also point out that the headless

545
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 2: man has also been presented as an image of humility.

546
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 2: This is apparently from the thirteenth or fourteenth century texts

547
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:32,960
Speaker 2: Guest Romanorum. I consulted this text and I did find

548
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 2: the line I think they're referring to. Quote, humility is

549
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 2: signified by the absence of the head and the placing

550
00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 2: of the face in the breast. The text also includes

551
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 2: this bit of wisdom, No creature is so monstrous, no

552
00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 2: fable so incredible, but that the Monkish writers could give

553
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 2: it a moral form and extract from its crudities and

554
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:55,040
Speaker 2: quidities some moral or religious lesson.

555
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 3: Ah, this comes back to something we've talked about on

556
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,840
Speaker 3: the show before that a lot of times when you

557
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 3: get these older accounts, especially in say like a medieval

558
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 3: Christian context of anomalous beings, they were almost always in

559
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:15,280
Speaker 3: the texts where they're documented, used to illustrate some kind

560
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:19,280
Speaker 3: of moralistic teaching, and that should in some way color

561
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 3: your understanding of what purpose these stories were serving. Yeah.

562
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, this idea of taking a monstrous form using it

563
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 2: to relay a point or is this quote is kind

564
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 2: of alluding to It's like the monk cannot help, when

565
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 2: presented with a strange form, to come up with some

566
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 2: sort of theological argument for what it represents. Like one

567
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 2: example that I've brought up on the show before is

568
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 2: this creature that shows up in some medieval sources. Sorry

569
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 2: I don't remember the sources off hand, but I've referred

570
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:54,640
Speaker 2: to in a monster fact before of Christ with a

571
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 2: long neck and bird's head. And the idea here I

572
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 2: remember reading is that it's like, be more like Christ,

573
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 2: be more like an individual with a long neck and

574
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 2: a bird's head, because then the words that rise up

575
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 2: from your heart, well they have longer to have more

576
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 2: distance to cover before they reach your lips, before you

577
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 2: can speak them, and therefore it is wise and christ

578
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 2: like to to approach the world this way and so forth,

579
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 2: you know. But then on the other end, it's just

580
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 2: an amusing looking illustration as well, because it's clearly supposed

581
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 2: to be Jesus, but he has a bird's.

582
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 3: Head, you know. Just raises questions where I realized that

583
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 3: my intuitions are about what somebody would or would not

584
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 3: consider sacrilegious or not always correct. Yeah.

585
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many examples of that, just depictions of Christ,

586
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 2: like the three faced Christ that you saw that was

587
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 2: sometimes used as a as a way to visually describe

588
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 2: some aspect of the Holy Trinity, but also was then

589
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 2: viewed as potentially heretical by others, and so forth. Anyway,

590
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 2: coming back to the idea of creatures with no heads

591
00:34:06,800 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 2: and faces on their tour, So I guess one of

592
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,400
Speaker 2: the big questions that comes to mind looking at these

593
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 2: images is you know, where does this idea even come from?

594
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:17,479
Speaker 2: Because it's one thing to realize that once the idea

595
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:19,719
Speaker 2: is introduced, it has a stickiness to it. We can't

596
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:22,240
Speaker 2: help but think about it. And come up with reasons

597
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 2: for why it could be or what it means. And

598
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 2: looking around there seem to be a number of theories,

599
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:35,359
Speaker 2: some convincing, some far less convincing, And as always, it's

600
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 2: one of these cases where I feel like you could

601
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:40,440
Speaker 2: cobble various ideas together and possibly get at some truth,

602
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 2: though I would be very hesitant to take even the

603
00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 2: better theories and lean too heavily on them as like

604
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 2: an all inclusive theory, like this is the reason somebody

605
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:56,439
Speaker 2: described people on a distant continent as having no head

606
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 2: and having a face on their chest. So the first

607
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:01,319
Speaker 2: theory I wanted to bring up, and this is when

608
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 2: you've seen a number of sources, is the idea that

609
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:10,799
Speaker 2: these would have been essentially accounts based on limited observation

610
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 2: of certain groups of people, certain tribes or what not

611
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 2: from a distance, such as from a ship off of

612
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 2: a foreign coast. And you know, I imagine this alone,

613
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 2: without the aid of spyglasses, could potentially be enough. But

614
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:27,839
Speaker 2: then the idea is that this could have been compounded

615
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 2: by modes of dress, such as something worn on the

616
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:34,840
Speaker 2: head or specifically the use of some sort of a hood.

617
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 2: From a distance, it was apparently argued by seventeenth century

618
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 2: German author Adam Ollurius and others that hooded figures might

619
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 2: conceivably be interpreted as headless. So if you had a

620
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 2: group of people that traditionally wore some sort of headgear,

621
00:35:50,920 --> 00:35:53,800
Speaker 2: a hood, or what have you, then from a distance

622
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:56,319
Speaker 2: you might say, Hey, look at those people standing on

623
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,479
Speaker 2: that shore. They appear to have no head. Write it down,

624
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 2: maybe draw a picture. We'll bring that back at the

625
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:03,880
Speaker 2: end of the voyage.

626
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:06,720
Speaker 3: Okay, I could imagine that. But along the same lines

627
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 3: as somebody seeing and misinterpreting clothing or adornment of the body,

628
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 3: you would also have to wonder about somebody seeing and

629
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,320
Speaker 3: misinterpreting somebody with just a particular posture.

630
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the one you read about as well.

631
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 2: In fact, John Bostock and H. T. Riley chime in

632
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 2: on this in their liner notes to their translation of

633
00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 2: Plenty's Natural History. Something you might think of is good.

634
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:33,919
Speaker 2: I think of it as like the warrior stance theory here,

635
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 2: And basically they point out quote from a statement in

636
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 2: the Ethiopica of Heliodorus Marcus suggests that the story as

637
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 2: to the blimier having no heads arose from the circumstance

638
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,400
Speaker 2: that on the invasion of the Persians, they were in

639
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 2: the habit of falling on one knee and bowing the

640
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 2: head to the breast, by which means, without injury to themselves,

641
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:02,760
Speaker 2: they afforded a passage to the horses of the enemy. Now,

642
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 2: I have to admit that is a sentence. I do

643
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 2: not fully understand exactly what they're describing there, but I

644
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 2: take it to mean that there's some sort of like

645
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:18,319
Speaker 2: a uniform posture that certain individuals were said to take on,

646
00:37:18,440 --> 00:37:21,760
Speaker 2: as some sort of like a defensive posture, a warrior stance,

647
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 2: or what have you, that could be interpreted even from

648
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:27,479
Speaker 2: a distance, as being people with no head.

649
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 3: I guess you could imagine a similar thing being that

650
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:34,920
Speaker 3: somebody without experience of seeing warriors in a phalanx formation

651
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:37,399
Speaker 3: might say, oh, wow, these people, you know, they have

652
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 3: a one hundred legs and a hundred spear arms and

653
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 3: they're one massive organism because you're unfamiliar with the way

654
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 3: that they're grouping their bodies and what they're doing.

655
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, now that leads to another I think important thing

656
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 2: here is the is again coming back to that telephone

657
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 2: game of accounts, and the idea of one source speaking

658
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 2: not speaking literally literally about something and then it being

659
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:04,319
Speaker 2: interpreted as a literal description of something. So you can

660
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 2: imagine somebody saying, yes, it was like they were this

661
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:11,799
Speaker 2: beast with one hundred feet and a shell all around them,

662
00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 2: and then you know, at the end of the telephone

663
00:38:13,920 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 2: game of account, someone is saying they literally use large

664
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 2: insects in their back. And so you see some variations

665
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 2: on that with the dissection of the of the the headless.

666
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 3: Entity.

667
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 2: For instance, seventeenth century Danish physician Thomas Bartholin argued that

668
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:36,720
Speaker 2: it was a metaphor that ends up being taken literally

669
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 2: in that the people described were, for one reason or another,

670
00:38:42,080 --> 00:38:44,839
Speaker 2: thought to be headless in the non literal sense. So

671
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 2: perhaps they couldn't be reasoned with, or they otherwise conducted

672
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 2: themselves in a difficult to understand fashion, what have you,

673
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 2: and then it just gets translated into oh, yes, and

674
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 2: they had no heads.

675
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 3: So what begins maybe is more like a metaphor ethnocentric

676
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 3: derogation of some other group of people, turns in is

677
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:08,240
Speaker 3: misinterpreted as a literal statement about their bodies.

678
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 2: Right, So a lot of these interpretations are also like

679
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 2: essentially saying, Okay, clearly these are not creatures that exist,

680
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 2: but there has to be some middle ground. There has

681
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 2: to be something kind of like it. And you see

682
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 2: a number of these that I think you could classify

683
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:26,880
Speaker 2: as sunken head theories, the idea that you wouldn't be

684
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 2: dealing with someone with a face on their chest, but

685
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:32,799
Speaker 2: what if you had a group of people that had,

686
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 2: for one reason, one hypothetical reason or another, greatly shortened neck,

687
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 2: or even a seeming absence of a neck.

688
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 3: So assuming that, I guess giving more credence to the

689
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:47,720
Speaker 3: original claims as saying like, well, they really did see

690
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 3: some people who they were describing in a more reliable

691
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 3: fashion than whatever we were just talking about. But there's

692
00:39:56,200 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 3: some there's some explanation for it. I'm often skeptical of

693
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 3: explanent of explanats or attempts to explain historical claims like this,

694
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 3: but let's see what they say.

695
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it ends up coming down to

696
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,719
Speaker 2: situations where you had individuals like eighteenth century Justuit naturalist

697
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:20,799
Speaker 2: La Faton. There's also Johannes de Layte, a seventeenth century geographer,

698
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 2: and basically like a lot of their arguments come down

699
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 2: to the same thing saying, Okay, well here's this thing

700
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,920
Speaker 2: in these travelogus, in these accounts, and look, here we

701
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:32,919
Speaker 2: have evidence. We have accounts of people with some sort

702
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:37,919
Speaker 2: of a sunken head situation. Like some of these seem

703
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 2: to be more along the lines of, well, here's some

704
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:44,759
Speaker 2: individuals with really thick necks or they have, you know,

705
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 2: more highly developed muscles that Yeah, you could lean into

706
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 2: some description of them having a sunken head or less

707
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 2: of a neck, but I don't know, it seems kind

708
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:59,319
Speaker 2: of a flimsy argument to make. I mean, likewise, you'll

709
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 2: see allusions to various congenital conditions where you know, a

710
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 2: person would be born with fused neck bones or a

711
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:14,319
Speaker 2: short neck. Accounts of this from the ancient world are known.

712
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:19,520
Speaker 2: I think there are even some controversial theories that King

713
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 2: Tut could have had some variation on one of these syndromes.

714
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:25,920
Speaker 2: But there are a whole host of theories as to

715
00:41:26,200 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 2: what may or may not have been going on with

716
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 2: his personal health.

717
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:33,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not exactly sure why, but I'm intuitively a

718
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:36,520
Speaker 3: little more skeptical of explanations like this for where these

719
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:37,359
Speaker 3: claims came from.

720
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then Likewise, you have other examples where people

721
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 2: are bringing up birth defects and various again congenital abnormalities

722
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:48,439
Speaker 2: that you know are generally cases where the individual would

723
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 2: not survive. And you're not even talking about an individual

724
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 2: in the scenario. You're talking about the idea that there's

725
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 2: a whole group of people or beings out there that

726
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 2: all have the same appearance, that all have some sort

727
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:14,399
Speaker 2: of a shortened neck or sunken head scenario going on. Now,

728
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 2: another source I was looking at here was nineteen twenty

729
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:20,720
Speaker 2: four is The Coasts of Illusion, a study of travel

730
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 2: tales by author of Carl B. Firestone. He brings up

731
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:30,360
Speaker 2: an argument made by eighteenth century French naturalists George Louis L. Buffon,

732
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 2: who says, what we could be looking at here are

733
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 2: reports of body modification, and Buffon apparently compared it to

734
00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 2: certain known practices of neck and head elongation that you

735
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 2: see in some groups. So I guess this argument is

736
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 2: based a little bit in fact. But also I really

737
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 2: can't put a lot of faith in this argument. Like, yes,

738
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 2: there are cases where people have elongated the structure of

739
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 2: the head or done body moutives of the neck or shoulders.

740
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:04,400
Speaker 2: I think more specifically the shoulders than the neck. But

741
00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 2: it's a stretch to go from there to the idea

742
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 2: of people like pushing their head down into their body.

743
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I

744
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 3: can imagine a lot more somebody doing a body modification

745
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 3: that could make it look like they had a face

746
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 3: in their torso than that could make it look like

747
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:25,920
Speaker 3: they didn't have a head on their shoulders.

748
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:29,319
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, another example, This one kind of goes back

749
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:31,760
Speaker 2: to what we were just talking about earlier with warriors

750
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 2: and warriors stances in the monstrous races in medieval art

751
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 2: and thought. Author John Block Friedman discusses the possibility that

752
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 2: shields with faces on them or some sort of facelike

753
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:49,600
Speaker 2: motif on chestwear or armor might have also given this impression. So,

754
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 2: I mean, that's another case where again, it maybe one

755
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 2: instance of this being observed, and then it gets the

756
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 2: story gets told, it gets translated, it gets passed on,

757
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 2: and it becomes people with faces on their chest.

758
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, that somehow seems to be the kind of

759
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 3: thing that feels more plausible to me that it could

760
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:14,799
Speaker 3: be a misinterpretation seeing from a distance of or a

761
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,880
Speaker 3: misinterpretation of the original report of certain appearances of like

762
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 3: shields or armor or clothing that could look like a

763
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 3: face on the body. Yeah.

764
00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 2: Now, another possible theory here is the you might think

765
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,520
Speaker 2: of as the primate theory, and that's the idea that

766
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:36,480
Speaker 2: what we're really looking at here are very distorted descriptions

767
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 2: of chimpanzees or bonobos rather than human beings. And interestingly enough,

768
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 2: this was actually cited in the nineteenth century by none

769
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:48,759
Speaker 2: other than Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He speaks of

770
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 2: the quote savage exaggeration of ape sightings, saying specifically pointing

771
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 2: out the blemiers as being the kind of thing that, Okay, well,

772
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 2: this is just based on somebody exaggerating a sighting they

773
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 2: made of an ape, a bonobo, a chimpanzee or something

774
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 2: like that. And you can I've seen some examples too

775
00:45:09,560 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 2: where we people bring up people will bring up photographs

776
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 2: of chimps or bonobos and point to like the stance,

777
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 2: the sort of basic body morphology of the primating question

778
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 2: and say like, well, if you're looking at it from

779
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 2: the right angle, this could lead into an interpretation of

780
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 2: a creature without a head, or a creature even with

781
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 2: a face position somewhere in the torso, so.

782
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 3: You could understand how you could see an ape and

783
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:39,200
Speaker 3: imagine maybe as a certain posture, that its head was

784
00:45:39,280 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 3: lower than it was. It's hard to imagine how that

785
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 3: could be mistaken for like a people living in a

786
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 3: certain land. Yeah.

787
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 2: So, like I say, any one of these theories I

788
00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:55,319
Speaker 2: think is not strong enough to support the general principle here.

789
00:45:55,520 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 2: I feel like inevitably you're dealing with a whole lot

790
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,240
Speaker 2: of different ideas, and just in general, like the stickiness

791
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 2: of the concept once it's been introduced, where people just

792
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:07,200
Speaker 2: continue to repeat it even if logically they think, well,

793
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 2: this probably isn't possible. And of course, no matter which

794
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 2: idea you end up gravitating to, or if you'd reject

795
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:16,360
Speaker 2: all of them, there's still something undeniable about all of

796
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,839
Speaker 2: these stories, in that there is just an undeniable xenophobic

797
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:24,720
Speaker 2: and racist nature of depicting the people of foreign lands

798
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 2: as monsters or something monster like is something less than

799
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 2: indifferent from human beings. Earlier, I referred in passing to

800
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:37,719
Speaker 2: the age of discovery, but of course it wasn't just

801
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 2: an age of discovery. It was an age of conquest

802
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 2: and exploitation and the wages of which have never ceased,

803
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 2: and so this is very much a part of any

804
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:54,839
Speaker 2: rational analysis of this scenario. I found a very good

805
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 2: source on this that was discussing this monstrous alterity in

806
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 2: early modern travels. This was published in two thousand and

807
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:07,800
Speaker 2: eight from the journal le Esprite Creteur or the Creative Spirit,

808
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:11,800
Speaker 2: and in it in this particular article, author Lynn Ramy

809
00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:14,960
Speaker 2: links these accounts of belly mouthed and one legged beings

810
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:18,440
Speaker 2: two broader theological discussions about whether or not the occupants

811
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 2: of foreign lands were truly human with souls. Quote Eventually,

812
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:28,359
Speaker 2: and inevitably, Augustine's ambiguous conclusion that the monstrous races either

813
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 2: were men and should be saved or were not men

814
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:37,800
Speaker 2: became untenable. Augustine might well suggest that blimier and scopods

815
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 2: or one legged men are questionably human based on their

816
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 2: physical bodies, but the inhabitants of the Americas resembled very

817
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 2: much their conquerors. Apologists for Christian colonialists came to the

818
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 2: conclusion that they were in fact men without souls, born

819
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 2: from spontaneous generation but not descended from adam, equating some

820
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:58,799
Speaker 2: ethnic groups with soulless animals lifted the onus of conversion

821
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:04,280
Speaker 2: from the colonists and easily justified oppression and exploitation, unfortunately

822
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 2: proving to be a line of thought that unfortunately proved

823
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:09,120
Speaker 2: extremely difficult to eradicate.

824
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I sense that there's a kind of uncomfortable

825
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 3: thing that's all throughout reading these accounts of people with

826
00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 3: these impossible bodies, even going back to, you know, accounts

827
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 3: from the ancient world where it wasn't necessarily part of

828
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 3: an explicit attempt to justify colonial enterprise. Even in those cases,

829
00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 3: you can just sense a kind of a lack of

830
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:38,960
Speaker 3: a universal sense of humanity. You know, there's this kind

831
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 3: of feeling that like, well, whatever, those other people are

832
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 3: living very far away, you know, I don't know if

833
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:48,319
Speaker 3: there are even really beings like we are. In fact,

834
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:51,000
Speaker 3: here are even some strange claims about their bodies that

835
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 3: could not possibly be true, And so that just kind

836
00:48:55,520 --> 00:48:58,279
Speaker 3: of leads to this suggestion that like, well, I don't know,

837
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:02,280
Speaker 3: people from from far away are not really people. So anyway,

838
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 3: I don't know. There's a quality that's always just made

839
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:08,520
Speaker 3: me feel a little a little uneasy when reading these

840
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 3: these accounts of like men with faces and their torsos

841
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:15,040
Speaker 3: and stuff like that that isn't really there for like

842
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 3: the gods and fantastical beings, but these ancient accounts about

843
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 3: alleged peoples of this kind. And I guess I didn't

844
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:24,919
Speaker 3: always know exactly what it was that made me feel

845
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 3: that way, but I guess it is some kind of

846
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 3: implicit understanding of this, that it is a way of

847
00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 3: questioning the full humanity of peoples elsewhere.

848
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,879
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, because if you populate the edges of your

849
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 2: known world with monsters, well then it's it's more appropriate

850
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 2: that you go out and exploit and conquer those lands. Right,

851
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:51,839
Speaker 2: as alluded to in that quote. You don't have any

852
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 2: kind of spiritual obligation to those people because in your view,

853
00:49:55,520 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 2: they're not people and so forth. All right, well, did

854
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 2: we stick the land on a nice depressing finish these

855
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:10,640
Speaker 2: episodes on headless creatures and fantasy and fiction and mythology

856
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 2: and legend and so forth.

857
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 3: I guess. So that's a sad place to end, but

858
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:16,400
Speaker 3: an important thing to understand. Yeah.

859
00:50:16,520 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to admit the examples from the last

860
00:50:19,160 --> 00:50:21,880
Speaker 2: episode are definitely more fun where you just have a

861
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:25,919
Speaker 2: situation where some sort of a divine being gets into

862
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:28,000
Speaker 2: a fight with a god or an argument with a

863
00:50:28,040 --> 00:50:33,160
Speaker 2: god and just has their head stoved in or has

864
00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 2: their head cut off by a god, but then their

865
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:39,280
Speaker 2: body finds a way to manifest a face, manifest nipple

866
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:42,319
Speaker 2: eyes and a big gaping mouth in the belly, or

867
00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:44,359
Speaker 2: even these ideas that we discussed in this episode of

868
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 2: like the Headless Avengers, you know, the roll in the

869
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 2: thops and Gunner's head is gone, but still he keeps going.

870
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:54,359
Speaker 2: Headless Horsemen, they have no head anymore, and yet the

871
00:50:54,400 --> 00:50:58,680
Speaker 2: body continues. There's some sort of like level of volition

872
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 2: that is still that is still burning in these mythological,

873
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 2: folkloreic and fictional beings that can't be extinguished even by

874
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 2: removing the head. The thing that we all know is

875
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 2: the definite end of any mortal being.

876
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,759
Speaker 3: Also, please look up scollops and they're two hundred Betty

877
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:18,479
Speaker 3: Davis eyes.

878
00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:21,319
Speaker 2: That's right, look up the scallops. All right, we're going

879
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 2: to gohea and close this episode out, but we'd love

880
00:51:23,280 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there. Just a reminder that

881
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:28,560
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast,

882
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,800
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Lister Mail on Mondays,

883
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:35,640
Speaker 2: short Form, Monster Factor, Artifact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays.

884
00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

885
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you use

886
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:45,240
Speaker 2: social media, follow us look us up. We are SDBYM

887
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:49,960
Speaker 2: podcast on Instagram. If you use Facebook, there's a discussion

888
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 2: module there. Seek it out. It's a Facebook group. Ask

889
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:56,440
Speaker 2: to join. If you can guess the name of this podcast,

890
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 2: you can get in, and if you can't, you don't

891
00:51:58,520 --> 00:52:01,799
Speaker 2: belong there anyway. And oh, I've used discord. There's also

892
00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:06,280
Speaker 2: a discord what discussion group a discord channel. I forget

893
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:10,440
Speaker 2: what the terminology is, but we're on the server, yeah, server.

894
00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:13,800
Speaker 2: If you would like to be in that discord server

895
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 2: or whatever we're supposed to call it, just shoot us

896
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:19,239
Speaker 2: an email and we will send you the link.

897
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

898
00:52:23,400 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

899
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:27,480
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

900
00:52:27,640 --> 00:52:29,799
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

901
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

902
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:41,440
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

903
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio For

904
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:47,359
Speaker 1: more podcasts from My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

905
00:52:47,520 --> 00:53:00,240
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

906
00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:02,439
Speaker 3: Its ratatata