Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: we're back with part two in our series on headless
Speaker 3: gods and monsters. This is a topic that we had
Speaker 3: talked about getting into for the Halloween season, but we
Speaker 3: never got around to it, so here we are turning
Speaker 3: things in late. So in part one, we talked about
Speaker 3: the biological origins of the Biletian head and about what
Speaker 3: factors probably drove our ancestors hundreds of millions of years
Speaker 3: ago to start concentrating nerve cells and sense organs and
Speaker 3: mouth parts all on one end of the body, and
Speaker 3: of course this is the development that would eventually turn
Speaker 3: into our faces and our brains. We also talked about
Speaker 3: stories of gods with no heads and cultures around the world,
Speaker 3: and today we're back to talk about some more headless ghosts,
Speaker 3: monsters and dubious historical claims of people who naturally have
Speaker 3: no heads or have heads located inside their torsos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we discussed in the last episode, no matter
Speaker 2: what direction you approach the topic from, it ends up
Speaker 2: being clear that like this idea of something without a head,
Speaker 2: it captivates us. It forces us to think and rethink
Speaker 2: various ideas about like what a person is, what an
Speaker 2: entity is, where a volition comes from, and so forth.
Speaker 2: So yeah, getting here into the idea of roughly speaking,
Speaker 2: the diabolical headless, there are any number of headless monsters
Speaker 2: and ghosts and global traditions we're probably not going to cover.
Speaker 2: We're definitely not going to cover all of them. We
Speaker 2: may leave out by error some key examples. And so
Speaker 2: if we do skip such a headless entity from folklore
Speaker 2: mythology right in, we'd love to hear from you, you know,
Speaker 2: especially if it's a situation where head and or body
Speaker 2: continue to live on afterwards. I guess you could roughly
Speaker 2: throw Medusa into that category, though we did a whole
Speaker 2: series on Medusa back in the day, so refer back
Speaker 2: to those if you want to hear about Medusa's head.
Speaker 2: I think it's also, you know, I think fair that
Speaker 2: we might presume that a lot of these different ideas
Speaker 2: have to do with, at least in concerning some of
Speaker 2: like the ghosts we're going to be talking about and
Speaker 2: so forth, taboos against the burial of incomplete remains also
Speaker 2: thoughts about beheading as a form of execution, So keeping
Speaker 2: all that in mind, that we'd bring up the first
Speaker 2: one here. And this is a pretty big one, especially
Speaker 2: when we start thinking about things like the headless horsemen
Speaker 2: from the legend of Sleepy Hollow. We have a creature
Speaker 2: from the Scottish Highlands. The name means the headless trunk,
Speaker 2: and I'm probably gonna butcher the pronunciation here, but colun
Speaker 2: gun Chen. It's said to haunt the Isle of Sky
Speaker 2: and it leaves women and children alone. But if it
Speaker 2: happens upon a male traveler at night, especially anyone who's
Speaker 2: out there on their own, well then it's going to
Speaker 2: brutally attack. In Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, James McKellop describes
Speaker 2: it as a form of boken or hobgoblin. He writes
Speaker 2: it it's often thought of as a tutelary or protector
Speaker 2: spirit of the McDonald's of Morale in the Western Highlands.
Speaker 3: Is there a commonly understood explanation of why this ghost
Speaker 3: is headless or is it just kind of that's the
Speaker 3: way it is.
Speaker 2: I'm not aware of a particular origin story here, but
Speaker 2: I could be missing something, by the way. He also
Speaker 2: writes of the Irish death coach and points out that
Speaker 2: the driver and or the horses are sometimes described as headless,
Speaker 2: and indeed sometimes it was called the headless coach, and
Speaker 2: it is sometimes driven by the headless phantom Dolahan.
Speaker 3: Doulahan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Delahan is the headless horseman of Irish folklore,
Speaker 2: and this one is I think often held up as
Speaker 2: the clear inspiration for the headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
Speaker 2: M Coloup describes it as indeed often riding a headless
Speaker 2: horse or driving the coach that we already mentioned, and
Speaker 2: sometimes that coach is made out of bones. There are
Speaker 2: a number of grizzly details regarding the coach that sometimes
Speaker 2: are left out of retellings. It actually does have a
Speaker 2: ghoulish head that has been removed from its body, described
Speaker 2: as a great chunk of moldy cheese with darting eyes.
Speaker 3: Wow, that is evocative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean it makes it sound like, Okay,
Speaker 2: the head is definitely dead, I guess, but again supernatural
Speaker 2: being so I guess anything is fair game. The dula
Speaker 2: hand is said to take this moldy cheese head off
Speaker 2: for shock, and may throw it around like a ball,
Speaker 2: so one can imagine, you know, sort of like bouncing
Speaker 2: it off the shoulders or something, or dribbling it like
Speaker 2: a basketball.
Speaker 3: Oh, this reminds me of something I read that I
Speaker 3: couldn't find a great worse for this. But allegedly, the
Speaker 3: the ghost of the English archbishop William Laude, who is
Speaker 3: believed to haunt Saint John's College in Oxfordshire, is said
Speaker 3: to sometimes either kick his head around like a soccer
Speaker 3: ball or bowl with his own head. But like I said,
Speaker 3: I couldn't find a great looking source for that. But
Speaker 3: that is a claim I've read attested.
Speaker 2: I mean, the human imagination just can't help. But go
Speaker 2: there right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now you might hearing this tale of the Dola h
Speaker 2: and you might think, well, if this character comes riding around,
Speaker 2: I've got to see this. This sounds impressive. Well, you
Speaker 2: were advised not to. If he comes riding around, don't
Speaker 2: peek out through a crack in the door the window,
Speaker 2: because he has a whip. Sometimes it's said to be
Speaker 2: crafted from a human spinal column, and he will crack
Speaker 2: it at you and if he catches your eyes it'll
Speaker 2: blind you.
Speaker 3: Why am I calling to mind, like an evil version
Speaker 3: of Santa Claus who catches the children peaking on, you know,
Speaker 3: on Christmas.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like that, you know. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: and I think we can all kind of relate to
Speaker 2: that idea of the supernatural. Like it's one thing to
Speaker 2: hear tales of the supernatural, but then do you dare
Speaker 2: see it? Because once you've seen it, you've crossed over. Right,
Speaker 2: You're no longer on this side of the stories, You're
Speaker 2: on the other side.
Speaker 3: And what does that mean for you?
Speaker 2: There are also tales that if he catches you looking
Speaker 2: peeking out the door, he'll just ride up and throw
Speaker 2: a basin of blood in your face. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 2: but but still all that being said, like he still
Speaker 2: just riding by, the worst thing that could happen is
Speaker 2: that you'll hear those those hoof falls stop. You'll hear
Speaker 2: that he has stopped outside your house, that he's lingering
Speaker 2: outside your house, which of course spells death for those
Speaker 2: inside or for someone inside, Like he is not just
Speaker 2: passing through. He has arrived.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to find as many sources on this,
Speaker 2: but it is said that there is a modern Japanese
Speaker 2: urban legend variation of the dou Lahan. The Kubanashi Rider
Speaker 2: or headless Rider doesn't ride a horse, rides a motorcycle.
Speaker 2: The story is that his head was cut off by
Speaker 2: a piano wire spanning a roadway, a detail that has
Speaker 2: been connected to the nineteen seventy four Australian outlaw biker
Speaker 2: film Stone, which was then released in Japan in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one and would have inspired this urban legend. Apparently,
Speaker 2: I have not seen this one. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you're familiar with Stone.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not familiar with it, but it sounds like
Speaker 3: a very Mad Max kind of detail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in fact, it has Hugh keyes Burn in it,
Speaker 2: the guy who played in Morton Joe in the most
Speaker 2: recent Mad Max film and also played what was like
Speaker 2: toe Cutter I think is his character in the original
Speaker 2: Mad Max.
Speaker 3: The villain in the first one in the fourth one,
Speaker 3: but different characters. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now. McKillop also recounts a tale of a beheading game
Speaker 2: involving the hero kucullin Now the Beheading Game. I think
Speaker 2: we've talked about this before on the show. This is
Speaker 2: a literary trope, perhaps best known for its place and
Speaker 2: on Thurian legend concerning the Green Knight. Basically, the game
Speaker 2: consists of this, you cut my head off, and then
Speaker 2: I cut yours off. Sounds like an easy contest until
Speaker 2: you realize that your opponent can get back up and
Speaker 2: walk around without a head and will indeed be back
Speaker 2: to cut yours off later on.
Speaker 3: This is central in the Arthurian story of Sir Cowen
Speaker 3: and the Green Knight. Sir Gowain is the one who
Speaker 3: answers the challenge. The Knights of the Roundtable are feasting,
Speaker 3: I believe on Christmas Day or it's around Christmas, and
Speaker 3: the Green Knight, this man who is very much identified
Speaker 3: with nature and seems to be some kind of symbol
Speaker 3: of like paganism, This Green Knight figure comes in and
Speaker 3: he insults all of the knights, and he challenges them
Speaker 3: to this game, this beheading game, and they're allowed to
Speaker 3: be head him first. So Sir Gawain, the young up
Speaker 3: and comer, is like, yeah, okay, I'll do it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he cuts the Green Knight's head off, and the
Speaker 3: Green Knight is fine, he picks his own head up.
Speaker 3: He's like, okay, now I'll do that to you a
Speaker 3: year from now today. So You've got to come find
Speaker 3: me at the Green Chapel, And so there's like it's
Speaker 3: a morality story about honor and all that that Sir
Speaker 3: Gawain is like, well, am I going to go do it?
Speaker 3: And he does. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot more to dissect there, but at
Speaker 2: heart you do have a story of headless or at
Speaker 2: least temporarily headless.
Speaker 3: Being I actually, Rachel and I just this past month
Speaker 3: watched for the first time that that recent Sir Gawain
Speaker 3: movie that they put out, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight,
Speaker 3: and I thought it was great.
Speaker 2: Oh cool. I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard
Speaker 2: great things. I've only ever watched the one in which
Speaker 2: Sean Connery plays the Green Knight.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pretty good Green Knight. Now, in looking
Speaker 2: around for other examples of headless beings, there's one I
Speaker 2: ran across that I wanted to bring up that it
Speaker 2: extends from navago or dnnight traditions. Specifically, it's called the
Speaker 2: phil Gath. It's a form of annie monster, sometimes translated,
Speaker 2: especially back in the early twentieth century, as alien gods.
Speaker 2: Though I feel like that maybe that terminology could be
Speaker 2: confusing now I'm not sure, but some sort of like
Speaker 2: gods from the outside, I guess. In her Monster books,
Speaker 2: Carol Rose describes them as primal monsters, the offspring of
Speaker 2: wicked women who brought fear and misery into the world,
Speaker 2: the sons of Sun and Water, and I believe these
Speaker 2: are the Navajo hero twins slayed these monsters, and according
Speaker 2: to Rose, their offspring, however, lived on, the monster's offspring
Speaker 2: lived on to keep cold, famine, old age, and poverty
Speaker 2: alive in the world even if these, like more primal fears,
Speaker 2: had been defeated by the heroes. I was also reading
Speaker 2: that the monsters were slain by na Ye NEZGANI. This
Speaker 2: is a mythical hero from Navajo lore that is a
Speaker 2: monster slayer, and I believe is one of the Navajo
Speaker 2: twins referenced earlier. Gerald E. Levy in his book in
Speaker 2: the beginning The Navajo Genesis lists the translated names of
Speaker 2: the monsters killed by the slayer as big Ye, Horned Monster,
Speaker 2: Rock Monster, Eagle kicks off Rocks, and the Eye Killers.
Speaker 2: I believe Horned Monster is fel Gath or deal ged,
Speaker 2: but there's no mention of headlessness here. However, deel ged
Speaker 2: dell Gath or Phelgeth is listed as a quote unquote
Speaker 2: Harry headless antelope on the website Native Languagest Native hyphen
Speaker 2: Languages dot org, which is a nonprofit dedicated to the
Speaker 2: preservation and promotion of endangered American Indian languages. So that
Speaker 2: leads me to believe, well, maybe this is some sort
Speaker 2: of headless entity, at least in some tellings.
Speaker 3: Harry headless antelope. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So just another example that this idea of some
Speaker 2: sort of like headless entity, be it animal or human inform,
Speaker 2: like gonna touch a nerve, like there is something unnatural
Speaker 2: and dreadful about it that they were going to we
Speaker 2: can't help but connect with monstrosity.
Speaker 3: So I was looking for a good book that compiled
Speaker 3: stories about headless ghosts, and I found a chapter in
Speaker 3: a book by the well known skeptic and paranormal investigator
Speaker 3: Joe Nickel called The book is called The Science of Ghosts,
Speaker 3: Searching for Spirits of the Dead, published by Prometheus Books
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, and there's a chapter in this book
Speaker 3: called headless Ghosts. I have known so at the beginning
Speaker 3: of this chapter, Nickel points out a few just kind
Speaker 3: of interesting contradictions, some of which I don't know if
Speaker 3: I've ever considered before. One is the idea that you know,
Speaker 3: there are certain kinds of ghost realists, people who think
Speaker 3: that ghosts are real, independent, extraternal phenomena, and that certain
Speaker 3: of these ghost realists assert that a ghost is a
Speaker 3: form of physical energy peculiar to humans or perhaps to animals,
Speaker 3: that survives death and remains in the environment. And yet
Speaker 3: for some reason, ghosts are almost always perceived not only
Speaker 3: as manifestations of the human or animal body, but dressed
Speaker 3: as they might have been during life. So like, if
Speaker 3: this energy exists and persists, it also seems to manifest
Speaker 3: inanimate objects, such as like clothing and uniforms and jewelry
Speaker 3: other non living objects that ghosts would sometimes carry with them.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Ghosts tend to wear clothes.
Speaker 3: Along the same lines, some ideas about ghosts as real
Speaker 3: external phenomena explain them as some kind of lingering mental
Speaker 3: projection of the original person that persists after death, though
Speaker 3: this has interesting tension with the number of stories there
Speaker 3: are about headless ghosts, since mental fling phenomena are pretty
Speaker 3: well established to depend mostly on the brain, it would
Speaker 3: have to be a now dead brain projecting not itself
Speaker 3: into the future, but some kind of three dimensional representation
Speaker 3: of the part of the body that does not contain it,
Speaker 3: which is kind of interesting. But anyway, so those little
Speaker 3: observations aside, he goes on to document several types of
Speaker 3: stories of headless ghosts. In the United States. There are
Speaker 3: apparently a number of popular stories about soldiers from the
Speaker 3: American Civil War, like being decapitated by cannon fire and
Speaker 3: then wandering the battlefield forevermore as headless ghosts. He also
Speaker 3: mentions the various headless ghosts associated with the Tower of
Speaker 3: London in England, including several historical figures who were beheaded
Speaker 3: on the orders of Henry the Eighth, only a subset
Speaker 3: of which were his wives, the most famous of the
Speaker 3: Tower ghosts being Anne Boleyn. But there are also just
Speaker 3: some other enemies of Henry that end up there. But
Speaker 3: one of the stories that Nicol courts that really stuck
Speaker 3: with me involves criminals in medieval Germany. So there is
Speaker 3: a place in the Rhine Valley called the Reichenstein Castle
Speaker 3: where a legend says that a headless ghost sometimes wanders
Speaker 3: in the chapel adjoining the castle, and he describes a
Speaker 3: visit that he had to this castle to look into
Speaker 3: the legend. The origin story goes back to the thirteenth century,
Speaker 3: when this castle was the base of operations for a
Speaker 3: band of what he calls robber knights. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: fierce bandit horsemen. And then to quote from Nicol, and
Speaker 3: this is in part he is quoting from Dennis William
Speaker 3: Hawke's International Dictionary of Haunted Places. So when the quote
Speaker 3: comes in, that's what it is. But Nichol writes, quote,
Speaker 3: in twelve eighty two, they were captured, whereupon their leader,
Speaker 3: Dietrich von Hohenfels, entreated Emperor Rudolph von Habsburg to spare
Speaker 3: his nine sons. The emperor stated that Dietrich was to
Speaker 3: be beheaded, but with his sons lined in a row,
Speaker 3: everyone he could afterward run past would be spared. When
Speaker 3: the executioner's sword fell quote, Dietrich's head rolled to the ground,
Speaker 3: but his bloodied torso stood erect and lunged forward, stumbling
Speaker 3: and swaying, until it passed every one of his sons. Finally,
Speaker 3: the headless body fell to its knees, a fountain of
Speaker 3: blood shooting high in the air where its head had been.
Speaker 3: The sons were spared, and afterward on the execution site,
Speaker 3: the repentant family erected the Saint Clement Chapel. According to
Speaker 3: how Dietrich's headless ghost is sometimes seen inside the chapel.
Speaker 3: Also quote Dietrich is buried on the property and his
Speaker 3: red sandstone marker depicts a knight in armor with no head.
Speaker 3: But Nicol points out that there are several issues with
Speaker 3: this story. So first of all, this grave marker described
Speaker 3: wherever it is, it is now lost, or was, at
Speaker 3: least to the time he was writing this book. Though
Speaker 3: there is an account of a visit to the site
Speaker 3: by Victor Hugo, where Hugo claimed that the grave marker
Speaker 3: was from the fourteenth century, not the thirteenth, and the
Speaker 3: Dietrich's name was not on it. Also, the account does
Speaker 3: not square with the history of the bandit Knights of
Speaker 3: the Castle, where apparently the more reliable sequence of fact
Speaker 3: seems to be that Dietrich actually escaped and his companions
Speaker 3: the other robber knights, were in fact executed. They were
Speaker 3: hanged from trees in the Rhine Valley, and the basic
Speaker 3: outline of this folk tale about Dietrich seems to go
Speaker 3: back in earlier form to a story about a fourteenth
Speaker 3: century German pirate and privateer named Klaus Stortebecker, who was
Speaker 3: captured and executed for his crimes in the year fourteen
Speaker 3: oh one. Nicol writes, quote, kneeling before the executioner, he
Speaker 3: proposed a deal. Quote all those companions should be reprieved
Speaker 3: whom he could manage to walk by after being beheaded.
Speaker 3: This way he saved the lives of eleven pirates before
Speaker 3: the malicious executioner tripped him. That's a dirty trick. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, this talk of headless privateers and so forth. Of course,
Speaker 2: this brings to mind a modern retelling of this sort
Speaker 2: of story that I don't think we've mentioned so far,
Speaker 2: and that of course is Warren Zvon's nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 2: song roll in the Headless Thompson Gunner, which is an
Speaker 2: excellent song, wonderfully weird lyrics, a great ballad of headless
Speaker 2: being in revenge and so forth, but very much from
Speaker 2: in this sort of vein, you know, instead of a pirate,
Speaker 2: an international mercenary.
Speaker 3: Right and so there are kind of like these story
Speaker 3: forms that just keep reappearing in stories about different people
Speaker 3: in different times and places in history. And Nicol ultimately
Speaker 3: thinks that the story about d Trick that he came
Speaker 3: across is probably grafted from this original story about Stordbecker.
Speaker 3: But in either case, Nicol argued that the story is implausible,
Speaker 3: like it probably did not actually happen based on what
Speaker 3: we know about physiology, Like you know, a chicken might
Speaker 3: be able to run around or walk around a bit
Speaker 3: after decapitation, but he does not think that a human
Speaker 3: would do the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it raises all sorts of questions about well,
Speaker 2: how was he standing when the head was cut off?
Speaker 2: Like how do you get ready for this attempted lurch
Speaker 2: across the execution yard to save other pirates?
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I don't know the answer there,
Speaker 3: But one more tangent I went on from Nichol's book.
Speaker 3: Later in the book, there's a short section on ghost
Speaker 3: dogs where Nicol brings up the English legend sometimes known
Speaker 3: as black Shuck, a spectral hound with sort of localized
Speaker 3: incarnations or tellings in different regions of England, such as Devon, Essex,
Speaker 3: Suffolk and Norfolk. And this ghost dog is said to
Speaker 3: have black hair and stand as large as a calf,
Speaker 3: quote sporting glowing eyes even when he is described as headless.
Speaker 3: And I loved that the image of a canine body
Speaker 3: that has glowing eyes despite having no head. Now, can
Speaker 3: you have eyes if you have no head? Well? I
Speaker 3: think if you're a dog, the answer is probably no,
Speaker 3: at least plausibly no, without some kind of sci fi
Speaker 3: Frankenstein thing going on. But if you're another kind of animal,
Speaker 3: the answer is absolutely yes. You can have eyes without
Speaker 3: a head. As weird as it sounds, there are animals
Speaker 3: exactly like that. Just one example I would like to
Speaker 3: briefly talk about. Are scallops, Oh, scallops, scollops? Which way
Speaker 3: do you say it? Robin scallops? Scollops?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a little further back in the Yeah, let's
Speaker 3: say scollops. Folks, if you are near a computer or
Speaker 3: are safely able to look at your phone right now,
Speaker 3: just do yourself a favor and look up scollop eyes.
Speaker 3: It's like something straight out of a monster movie. There
Speaker 3: are real unedited photos of scollop eyes that look like
Speaker 3: they can not be from nature, but they are, so
Speaker 3: you will sometimes see the shell will be just slightly open,
Speaker 3: you know, it's mostly closed, but there's a gap in between,
Speaker 3: and the inside of the shell is lined with a
Speaker 3: tissue that just has these these pale blue dots all
Speaker 3: along it, which clearly do read as eyes for some reason,
Speaker 3: they don't just look like dots. I mean, it looks
Speaker 3: like they're looking at you. And then in between that
Speaker 3: there are these tissues that kind of lock together with
Speaker 3: these spiky hairs that looks like the world's widest monster
Speaker 3: mouth with infinite teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're they're terrifying. They also they're so bright
Speaker 2: in some of these pictures too. They feel like it
Speaker 2: should be a legend of Zelda in me.
Speaker 3: You know, Yes, that's really good. Yeah. Yeah. You can
Speaker 3: imagine the treasure chest popping up when you defeat the Scallop. Hey,
Speaker 3: and if it's in one of the new Zelda games,
Speaker 3: surely you would end up getting to cook with with
Speaker 3: the Scallop from it, right, that's right.
Speaker 2: I hear all about. I don't play the game myself.
Speaker 2: My son does, and he tells me all about the
Speaker 2: different meats you cook, and then of course there's not
Speaker 2: just going to be one. There's going to be about
Speaker 2: eight different versions of it, right, with different head features.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can combine the body parts from the
Speaker 3: different ones to make different kinds of meals. That cooking
Speaker 3: mechanic is very pleasing. It's always a nice little surprise
Speaker 3: when you mix something new and it does make a dish.
Speaker 3: But anyway, scallops are interesting in that their visual anatomy
Speaker 3: differs substantially from ours. Scallops can, of course, have hundreds
Speaker 3: of eyes per organism. We only have two. And while
Speaker 3: our eyes use curved transparent lenses to focus light onto
Speaker 3: the retina, scallops focus light instead with tiny mirrors made
Speaker 3: of crystals of guanine. And if guanine's ringing a bell
Speaker 3: for you, yes, that is one of the four bases
Speaker 3: found in DNA. That's the one that pairs with seine.
Speaker 3: Strange fact I just learned while preparing for this episode.
Speaker 3: Guanine gets its name from guano, as in like bat
Speaker 3: dung or bird dung, because the compound was found in
Speaker 3: great quantities in guano, but in its crystalline form guanine,
Speaker 3: it forms the iridescent component in fish scales and other
Speaker 3: kind of pearly reflective surfaces in parts of animal bodies,
Speaker 3: sometimes in reptiles too, Like I believe chameleons, you know,
Speaker 3: have guanine. But in the case of scallops, scallop eyes
Speaker 3: focus light onto the light sensitive cells their equivalent of
Speaker 3: retinas with reflective mirrors made of segmented guanine crystals. I
Speaker 3: think they're actually square shaped crystal plates. And there's an
Speaker 3: interesting comparison to be made to technology to human made telescopes,
Speaker 3: because while the earliest telescopes like those used by Galileo,
Speaker 3: used transparent glass lenses to focus life into the eyepiece
Speaker 3: kind of like our eyes do, the most advanced telescopes
Speaker 3: today actually tend to use curved mirrors instead of lenses
Speaker 3: as the primary light gathering surface. Wow.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 3: But if there's one thing I want you to take
Speaker 3: away from this, it's just go google scollop eyes.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, these are amazing images, and it does feel
Speaker 2: like they're looking right at it all Right at this
Speaker 2: point in the episode, I want to turn back to
Speaker 2: this idea that we discussed a little bit in the
Speaker 2: last episode, this idea of headless creatures but with faces
Speaker 2: on their chest. So we looked at some examples from
Speaker 2: like Chinese mythology and Hindu mythology, where you had creatures
Speaker 2: that have no head, but have but the face is
Speaker 2: found away, you know, the nipples are pevy eyeballs, and
Speaker 2: the belly is a great big mouth. The most famous
Speaker 2: Western versions of these, though, the versions of these sort
Speaker 2: of monstrous ideas, the ones that cast the longest shadow,
Speaker 2: are generally referred to. They were referred to by various
Speaker 2: names by particularly by authors in antiquity, but then going
Speaker 2: on up through the Middle Ages and so forth. One
Speaker 2: of the names is the blimys. Another is the cephali,
Speaker 2: which just means headless. But many of the names that
Speaker 2: they were, they were that were attributed to them were
Speaker 2: actual peoples. That were the names of actual peoples that
Speaker 2: were said to live in remote parts of the known world,
Speaker 2: or i guess, more specifically, on the edges of what
Speaker 2: was the known world for the individuals creating maps, writing
Speaker 2: these various travelogs, and speculating about what sort of life
Speaker 2: and what sort of peoples there were on the far
Speaker 2: flung corners of the world.
Speaker 3: And while it's certainly possible that these stories could be
Speaker 3: based on you know, misinterpreted or misreported observations, things like
Speaker 3: that that we'll get into. You also really can't help
Speaker 3: but notice that there would be a natural temptation when
Speaker 3: describing people who live like in the farthest place place
Speaker 3: away from you, that you can imagine that maybe they
Speaker 3: are really different somehow, maybe like they don't even have heads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and that's that's basically the idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there were other monstrous races, to be sure, and
Speaker 2: you can find various illustrations of these and various books
Speaker 2: from the time periods in question. They include not only
Speaker 2: people with faces on their chests and no head, but
Speaker 2: also one legged people that hop around on one leg
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing, the so called monstrous races.
Speaker 2: But this idea goes way back, and you know, will
Speaker 2: unwrap some of the ideas that have been put forth
Speaker 2: as to why these concepts emerged and why they had
Speaker 2: such stickiness in the human imagination. And I do think
Speaker 2: the human imagination, as always should be, we should keep
Speaker 2: that in mind as being one of the primary factors here,
Speaker 2: like people thinking about again, like thinking about the edge
Speaker 2: of the world, thinking about other planets. We're dealing with
Speaker 2: sort of a gray area where we can just inject
Speaker 2: pure imagination. But then on top of that there's the
Speaker 2: normal telephone game of translations and accounts and some other
Speaker 2: factors we'll get into. So the Greeks called them the Acephala,
Speaker 2: or the headless ones. They were also known again as
Speaker 2: the Blimys, which was the name given to an actual
Speaker 2: people who seem to have lived in Lower Nubia during
Speaker 2: the seventh century BCE through the eighth century CE. So
Speaker 2: to be clear, the actual people that lived there had
Speaker 2: heads and were not monsters. They were people. But this
Speaker 2: is the idea that gets passed down through these various writings.
Speaker 2: Herodotus indirectly mentions the Acephali in the fifth century BCE
Speaker 2: work Histories, among other exact rated foreign peoples with inhuman descriptions,
Speaker 2: he refers to quote the headless men that have their
Speaker 2: eyes in their chests. During the first century CE, plenty
Speaker 2: of the Elder wrote about them as well in the
Speaker 2: Natural History, once more referring to them among other exaggerated
Speaker 2: and or you know, strange accounts of supposed foreign peoples
Speaker 2: and the far flung corners of the world, writing quote
Speaker 2: in translation. Of course, the Blimier are said to have
Speaker 2: no heads, their mouths and eyes being seated in their breasts,
Speaker 2: and you'll find various accounts like this repeated through the
Speaker 2: Middle Ages and into the Age of Discovery. You can
Speaker 2: look at works such as the travels of Sir John Mandivial,
Speaker 2: the writings of Walter Raleigh, and so forth. They are
Speaker 2: just more numerous. To mention here in this episode.
Speaker 3: To be clear, you're saying some of the other these
Speaker 3: like medieval travel writings, described people with implausible anatomy that
Speaker 3: were you know, this is not really how people's bodies were,
Speaker 3: but for some reason in some place, these authors would say, yeah,
Speaker 3: there are people here who they don't have a head,
Speaker 3: or they have one leg or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I gather that. You know, there are a
Speaker 2: mix of things going on here. On one level, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, plenty of the Elder wrote about it, so
Speaker 2: we're going to repeat that. Of course, you know plenty,
Speaker 2: as we discussed on the show, plenty has a lot
Speaker 2: of interesting things to share, some of which have truth,
Speaker 2: have an element of truth to them, or are you know,
Speaker 2: accounts of what's happening in the real world. Others are
Speaker 2: things that he heard and were passed down and don't
Speaker 2: relay any historic truth, but do tell us something about
Speaker 2: like the mindset of the time. Now before we get
Speaker 2: back into the question of where these stories came from
Speaker 2: and what they may have originally meant, you know, what
Speaker 2: things could have led to these interpretations entails. It's also
Speaker 2: I think it's also worthwhile to think about their staying
Speaker 2: power and usefulness and conveying different meanings, some but not
Speaker 2: all of which relate to like a general monsterization of
Speaker 2: the other. And again, I think it's also one of
Speaker 2: those things where it's imaginative and weird enough, and that
Speaker 2: alone is a reason that people keep coming back to it,
Speaker 2: and just sort of like some of the ideas we
Speaker 2: discussed in the first episode, like we think about creatures
Speaker 2: with heads and we take it for granted, and then
Speaker 2: you're presented with a form that's lacking ahead, but it's
Speaker 2: still alive, Like what does it mean? You can't help
Speaker 2: but interpret and have these various symbolic interpretations of metaphoric
Speaker 2: interpretations of what's going on there. So I was looking
Speaker 2: around for some insight on this general topics pointed out
Speaker 2: by Husband and Gilmore House in The wild Man, Medieval
Speaker 2: myth and symbolism. You had cases like that of thirteenth
Speaker 2: century Flemish writer Thomas de Contemporary, who compared such headless
Speaker 2: men to lawyers who quote misled clients into unnecessary legal
Speaker 2: processes and grew fat on inordinate fees. I love that
Speaker 2: because I can't help but imagine one of these various
Speaker 2: lawyer billboards you see everywhere on the highways. But instead
Speaker 2: of having that, you know, smiling dude in a suit,
Speaker 2: what if you had a belly faced man on them?
Speaker 3: What if Bob Odenkirk's face was on his chest exactly? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Husband and gilmore House also point out that the headless
Speaker 2: man has also been presented as an image of humility.
Speaker 2: This is apparently from the thirteenth or fourteenth century texts
Speaker 2: Guest Romanorum. I consulted this text and I did find
Speaker 2: the line I think they're referring to. Quote, humility is
Speaker 2: signified by the absence of the head and the placing
Speaker 2: of the face in the breast. The text also includes
Speaker 2: this bit of wisdom, No creature is so monstrous, no
Speaker 2: fable so incredible, but that the Monkish writers could give
Speaker 2: it a moral form and extract from its crudities and
Speaker 2: quidities some moral or religious lesson.
Speaker 3: Ah, this comes back to something we've talked about on
Speaker 3: the show before that a lot of times when you
Speaker 3: get these older accounts, especially in say like a medieval
Speaker 3: Christian context of anomalous beings, they were almost always in
Speaker 3: the texts where they're documented, used to illustrate some kind
Speaker 3: of moralistic teaching, and that should in some way color
Speaker 3: your understanding of what purpose these stories were serving. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this idea of taking a monstrous form using it
Speaker 2: to relay a point or is this quote is kind
Speaker 2: of alluding to It's like the monk cannot help, when
Speaker 2: presented with a strange form, to come up with some
Speaker 2: sort of theological argument for what it represents. Like one
Speaker 2: example that I've brought up on the show before is
Speaker 2: this creature that shows up in some medieval sources. Sorry
Speaker 2: I don't remember the sources off hand, but I've referred
Speaker 2: to in a monster fact before of Christ with a
Speaker 2: long neck and bird's head. And the idea here I
Speaker 2: remember reading is that it's like, be more like Christ,
Speaker 2: be more like an individual with a long neck and
Speaker 2: a bird's head, because then the words that rise up
Speaker 2: from your heart, well they have longer to have more
Speaker 2: distance to cover before they reach your lips, before you
Speaker 2: can speak them, and therefore it is wise and christ
Speaker 2: like to to approach the world this way and so forth,
Speaker 2: you know. But then on the other end, it's just
Speaker 2: an amusing looking illustration as well, because it's clearly supposed
Speaker 2: to be Jesus, but he has a bird's.
Speaker 3: Head, you know. Just raises questions where I realized that
Speaker 3: my intuitions are about what somebody would or would not
Speaker 3: consider sacrilegious or not always correct. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many examples of that, just depictions of Christ,
Speaker 2: like the three faced Christ that you saw that was
Speaker 2: sometimes used as a as a way to visually describe
Speaker 2: some aspect of the Holy Trinity, but also was then
Speaker 2: viewed as potentially heretical by others, and so forth. Anyway,
Speaker 2: coming back to the idea of creatures with no heads
Speaker 2: and faces on their tour, So I guess one of
Speaker 2: the big questions that comes to mind looking at these
Speaker 2: images is you know, where does this idea even come from?
Speaker 2: Because it's one thing to realize that once the idea
Speaker 2: is introduced, it has a stickiness to it. We can't
Speaker 2: help but think about it. And come up with reasons
Speaker 2: for why it could be or what it means. And
Speaker 2: looking around there seem to be a number of theories,
Speaker 2: some convincing, some far less convincing, And as always, it's
Speaker 2: one of these cases where I feel like you could
Speaker 2: cobble various ideas together and possibly get at some truth,
Speaker 2: though I would be very hesitant to take even the
Speaker 2: better theories and lean too heavily on them as like
Speaker 2: an all inclusive theory, like this is the reason somebody
Speaker 2: described people on a distant continent as having no head
Speaker 2: and having a face on their chest. So the first
Speaker 2: theory I wanted to bring up, and this is when
Speaker 2: you've seen a number of sources, is the idea that
Speaker 2: these would have been essentially accounts based on limited observation
Speaker 2: of certain groups of people, certain tribes or what not
Speaker 2: from a distance, such as from a ship off of
Speaker 2: a foreign coast. And you know, I imagine this alone,
Speaker 2: without the aid of spyglasses, could potentially be enough. But
Speaker 2: then the idea is that this could have been compounded
Speaker 2: by modes of dress, such as something worn on the
Speaker 2: head or specifically the use of some sort of a hood.
Speaker 2: From a distance, it was apparently argued by seventeenth century
Speaker 2: German author Adam Ollurius and others that hooded figures might
Speaker 2: conceivably be interpreted as headless. So if you had a
Speaker 2: group of people that traditionally wore some sort of headgear,
Speaker 2: a hood, or what have you, then from a distance
Speaker 2: you might say, Hey, look at those people standing on
Speaker 2: that shore. They appear to have no head. Write it down,
Speaker 2: maybe draw a picture. We'll bring that back at the
Speaker 2: end of the voyage.
Speaker 3: Okay, I could imagine that. But along the same lines
Speaker 3: as somebody seeing and misinterpreting clothing or adornment of the body,
Speaker 3: you would also have to wonder about somebody seeing and
Speaker 3: misinterpreting somebody with just a particular posture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the one you read about as well.
Speaker 2: In fact, John Bostock and H. T. Riley chime in
Speaker 2: on this in their liner notes to their translation of
Speaker 2: Plenty's Natural History. Something you might think of is good.
Speaker 2: I think of it as like the warrior stance theory here,
Speaker 2: And basically they point out quote from a statement in
Speaker 2: the Ethiopica of Heliodorus Marcus suggests that the story as
Speaker 2: to the blimier having no heads arose from the circumstance
Speaker 2: that on the invasion of the Persians, they were in
Speaker 2: the habit of falling on one knee and bowing the
Speaker 2: head to the breast, by which means, without injury to themselves,
Speaker 2: they afforded a passage to the horses of the enemy. Now,
Speaker 2: I have to admit that is a sentence. I do
Speaker 2: not fully understand exactly what they're describing there, but I
Speaker 2: take it to mean that there's some sort of like
Speaker 2: a uniform posture that certain individuals were said to take on,
Speaker 2: as some sort of like a defensive posture, a warrior stance,
Speaker 2: or what have you, that could be interpreted even from
Speaker 2: a distance, as being people with no head.
Speaker 3: I guess you could imagine a similar thing being that
Speaker 3: somebody without experience of seeing warriors in a phalanx formation
Speaker 3: might say, oh, wow, these people, you know, they have
Speaker 3: a one hundred legs and a hundred spear arms and
Speaker 3: they're one massive organism because you're unfamiliar with the way
Speaker 3: that they're grouping their bodies and what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now that leads to another I think important thing
Speaker 2: here is the is again coming back to that telephone
Speaker 2: game of accounts, and the idea of one source speaking
Speaker 2: not speaking literally literally about something and then it being
Speaker 2: interpreted as a literal description of something. So you can
Speaker 2: imagine somebody saying, yes, it was like they were this
Speaker 2: beast with one hundred feet and a shell all around them,
Speaker 2: and then you know, at the end of the telephone
Speaker 2: game of account, someone is saying they literally use large
Speaker 2: insects in their back. And so you see some variations
Speaker 2: on that with the dissection of the of the the headless.
Speaker 3: Entity.
Speaker 2: For instance, seventeenth century Danish physician Thomas Bartholin argued that
Speaker 2: it was a metaphor that ends up being taken literally
Speaker 2: in that the people described were, for one reason or another,
Speaker 2: thought to be headless in the non literal sense. So
Speaker 2: perhaps they couldn't be reasoned with, or they otherwise conducted
Speaker 2: themselves in a difficult to understand fashion, what have you,
Speaker 2: and then it just gets translated into oh, yes, and
Speaker 2: they had no heads.
Speaker 3: So what begins maybe is more like a metaphor ethnocentric
Speaker 3: derogation of some other group of people, turns in is
Speaker 3: misinterpreted as a literal statement about their bodies.
Speaker 2: Right, So a lot of these interpretations are also like
Speaker 2: essentially saying, Okay, clearly these are not creatures that exist,
Speaker 2: but there has to be some middle ground. There has
Speaker 2: to be something kind of like it. And you see
Speaker 2: a number of these that I think you could classify
Speaker 2: as sunken head theories, the idea that you wouldn't be
Speaker 2: dealing with someone with a face on their chest, but
Speaker 2: what if you had a group of people that had,
Speaker 2: for one reason, one hypothetical reason or another, greatly shortened neck,
Speaker 2: or even a seeming absence of a neck.
Speaker 3: So assuming that, I guess giving more credence to the
Speaker 3: original claims as saying like, well, they really did see
Speaker 3: some people who they were describing in a more reliable
Speaker 3: fashion than whatever we were just talking about. But there's
Speaker 3: some there's some explanation for it. I'm often skeptical of
Speaker 3: explanent of explanats or attempts to explain historical claims like this,
Speaker 3: but let's see what they say.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it ends up coming down to
Speaker 2: situations where you had individuals like eighteenth century Justuit naturalist
Speaker 2: La Faton. There's also Johannes de Layte, a seventeenth century geographer,
Speaker 2: and basically like a lot of their arguments come down
Speaker 2: to the same thing saying, Okay, well here's this thing
Speaker 2: in these travelogus, in these accounts, and look, here we
Speaker 2: have evidence. We have accounts of people with some sort
Speaker 2: of a sunken head situation. Like some of these seem
Speaker 2: to be more along the lines of, well, here's some
Speaker 2: individuals with really thick necks or they have, you know,
Speaker 2: more highly developed muscles that Yeah, you could lean into
Speaker 2: some description of them having a sunken head or less
Speaker 2: of a neck, but I don't know, it seems kind
Speaker 2: of a flimsy argument to make. I mean, likewise, you'll
Speaker 2: see allusions to various congenital conditions where you know, a
Speaker 2: person would be born with fused neck bones or a
Speaker 2: short neck. Accounts of this from the ancient world are known.
Speaker 2: I think there are even some controversial theories that King
Speaker 2: Tut could have had some variation on one of these syndromes.
Speaker 2: But there are a whole host of theories as to
Speaker 2: what may or may not have been going on with
Speaker 2: his personal health.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not exactly sure why, but I'm intuitively a
Speaker 3: little more skeptical of explanations like this for where these
Speaker 3: claims came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then Likewise, you have other examples where people
Speaker 2: are bringing up birth defects and various again congenital abnormalities
Speaker 2: that you know are generally cases where the individual would
Speaker 2: not survive. And you're not even talking about an individual
Speaker 2: in the scenario. You're talking about the idea that there's
Speaker 2: a whole group of people or beings out there that
Speaker 2: all have the same appearance, that all have some sort
Speaker 2: of a shortened neck or sunken head scenario going on. Now,
Speaker 2: another source I was looking at here was nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: four is The Coasts of Illusion, a study of travel
Speaker 2: tales by author of Carl B. Firestone. He brings up
Speaker 2: an argument made by eighteenth century French naturalists George Louis L. Buffon,
Speaker 2: who says, what we could be looking at here are
Speaker 2: reports of body modification, and Buffon apparently compared it to
Speaker 2: certain known practices of neck and head elongation that you
Speaker 2: see in some groups. So I guess this argument is
Speaker 2: based a little bit in fact. But also I really
Speaker 2: can't put a lot of faith in this argument. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: there are cases where people have elongated the structure of
Speaker 2: the head or done body moutives of the neck or shoulders.
Speaker 2: I think more specifically the shoulders than the neck. But
Speaker 2: it's a stretch to go from there to the idea
Speaker 2: of people like pushing their head down into their body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I
Speaker 3: can imagine a lot more somebody doing a body modification
Speaker 3: that could make it look like they had a face
Speaker 3: in their torso than that could make it look like
Speaker 3: they didn't have a head on their shoulders.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, another example, This one kind of goes back
Speaker 2: to what we were just talking about earlier with warriors
Speaker 2: and warriors stances in the monstrous races in medieval art
Speaker 2: and thought. Author John Block Friedman discusses the possibility that
Speaker 2: shields with faces on them or some sort of facelike
Speaker 2: motif on chestwear or armor might have also given this impression. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's another case where again, it maybe one
Speaker 2: instance of this being observed, and then it gets the
Speaker 2: story gets told, it gets translated, it gets passed on,
Speaker 2: and it becomes people with faces on their chest.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, that somehow seems to be the kind of
Speaker 3: thing that feels more plausible to me that it could
Speaker 3: be a misinterpretation seeing from a distance of or a
Speaker 3: misinterpretation of the original report of certain appearances of like
Speaker 3: shields or armor or clothing that could look like a
Speaker 3: face on the body. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, another possible theory here is the you might think
Speaker 2: of as the primate theory, and that's the idea that
Speaker 2: what we're really looking at here are very distorted descriptions
Speaker 2: of chimpanzees or bonobos rather than human beings. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: this was actually cited in the nineteenth century by none
Speaker 2: other than Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He speaks of
Speaker 2: the quote savage exaggeration of ape sightings, saying specifically pointing
Speaker 2: out the blemiers as being the kind of thing that, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: this is just based on somebody exaggerating a sighting they
Speaker 2: made of an ape, a bonobo, a chimpanzee or something
Speaker 2: like that. And you can I've seen some examples too
Speaker 2: where we people bring up people will bring up photographs
Speaker 2: of chimps or bonobos and point to like the stance,
Speaker 2: the sort of basic body morphology of the primating question
Speaker 2: and say like, well, if you're looking at it from
Speaker 2: the right angle, this could lead into an interpretation of
Speaker 2: a creature without a head, or a creature even with
Speaker 2: a face position somewhere in the torso, so.
Speaker 3: You could understand how you could see an ape and
Speaker 3: imagine maybe as a certain posture, that its head was
Speaker 3: lower than it was. It's hard to imagine how that
Speaker 3: could be mistaken for like a people living in a
Speaker 3: certain land. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, like I say, any one of these theories I
Speaker 2: think is not strong enough to support the general principle here.
Speaker 2: I feel like inevitably you're dealing with a whole lot
Speaker 2: of different ideas, and just in general, like the stickiness
Speaker 2: of the concept once it's been introduced, where people just
Speaker 2: continue to repeat it even if logically they think, well,
Speaker 2: this probably isn't possible. And of course, no matter which
Speaker 2: idea you end up gravitating to, or if you'd reject
Speaker 2: all of them, there's still something undeniable about all of
Speaker 2: these stories, in that there is just an undeniable xenophobic
Speaker 2: and racist nature of depicting the people of foreign lands
Speaker 2: as monsters or something monster like is something less than
Speaker 2: indifferent from human beings. Earlier, I referred in passing to
Speaker 2: the age of discovery, but of course it wasn't just
Speaker 2: an age of discovery. It was an age of conquest
Speaker 2: and exploitation and the wages of which have never ceased,
Speaker 2: and so this is very much a part of any
Speaker 2: rational analysis of this scenario. I found a very good
Speaker 2: source on this that was discussing this monstrous alterity in
Speaker 2: early modern travels. This was published in two thousand and
Speaker 2: eight from the journal le Esprite Creteur or the Creative Spirit,
Speaker 2: and in it in this particular article, author Lynn Ramy
Speaker 2: links these accounts of belly mouthed and one legged beings
Speaker 2: two broader theological discussions about whether or not the occupants
Speaker 2: of foreign lands were truly human with souls. Quote Eventually,
Speaker 2: and inevitably, Augustine's ambiguous conclusion that the monstrous races either
Speaker 2: were men and should be saved or were not men
Speaker 2: became untenable. Augustine might well suggest that blimier and scopods
Speaker 2: or one legged men are questionably human based on their
Speaker 2: physical bodies, but the inhabitants of the Americas resembled very
Speaker 2: much their conquerors. Apologists for Christian colonialists came to the
Speaker 2: conclusion that they were in fact men without souls, born
Speaker 2: from spontaneous generation but not descended from adam, equating some
Speaker 2: ethnic groups with soulless animals lifted the onus of conversion
Speaker 2: from the colonists and easily justified oppression and exploitation, unfortunately
Speaker 2: proving to be a line of thought that unfortunately proved
Speaker 2: extremely difficult to eradicate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I sense that there's a kind of uncomfortable
Speaker 3: thing that's all throughout reading these accounts of people with
Speaker 3: these impossible bodies, even going back to, you know, accounts
Speaker 3: from the ancient world where it wasn't necessarily part of
Speaker 3: an explicit attempt to justify colonial enterprise. Even in those cases,
Speaker 3: you can just sense a kind of a lack of
Speaker 3: a universal sense of humanity. You know, there's this kind
Speaker 3: of feeling that like, well, whatever, those other people are
Speaker 3: living very far away, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 3: there are even really beings like we are. In fact,
Speaker 3: here are even some strange claims about their bodies that
Speaker 3: could not possibly be true, And so that just kind
Speaker 3: of leads to this suggestion that like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 3: people from from far away are not really people. So anyway,
Speaker 3: I don't know. There's a quality that's always just made
Speaker 3: me feel a little a little uneasy when reading these
Speaker 3: these accounts of like men with faces and their torsos
Speaker 3: and stuff like that that isn't really there for like
Speaker 3: the gods and fantastical beings, but these ancient accounts about
Speaker 3: alleged peoples of this kind. And I guess I didn't
Speaker 3: always know exactly what it was that made me feel
Speaker 3: that way, but I guess it is some kind of
Speaker 3: implicit understanding of this, that it is a way of
Speaker 3: questioning the full humanity of peoples elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, because if you populate the edges of your
Speaker 2: known world with monsters, well then it's it's more appropriate
Speaker 2: that you go out and exploit and conquer those lands. Right,
Speaker 2: as alluded to in that quote. You don't have any
Speaker 2: kind of spiritual obligation to those people because in your view,
Speaker 2: they're not people and so forth. All right, well, did
Speaker 2: we stick the land on a nice depressing finish these
Speaker 2: episodes on headless creatures and fantasy and fiction and mythology
Speaker 2: and legend and so forth.
Speaker 3: I guess. So that's a sad place to end, but
Speaker 3: an important thing to understand. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to admit the examples from the last
Speaker 2: episode are definitely more fun where you just have a
Speaker 2: situation where some sort of a divine being gets into
Speaker 2: a fight with a god or an argument with a
Speaker 2: god and just has their head stoved in or has
Speaker 2: their head cut off by a god, but then their
Speaker 2: body finds a way to manifest a face, manifest nipple
Speaker 2: eyes and a big gaping mouth in the belly, or
Speaker 2: even these ideas that we discussed in this episode of
Speaker 2: like the Headless Avengers, you know, the roll in the
Speaker 2: thops and Gunner's head is gone, but still he keeps going.
Speaker 2: Headless Horsemen, they have no head anymore, and yet the
Speaker 2: body continues. There's some sort of like level of volition
Speaker 2: that is still that is still burning in these mythological,
Speaker 2: folkloreic and fictional beings that can't be extinguished even by
Speaker 2: removing the head. The thing that we all know is
Speaker 2: the definite end of any mortal being.
Speaker 3: Also, please look up scollops and they're two hundred Betty
Speaker 3: Davis eyes.
Speaker 2: That's right, look up the scallops. All right, we're going
Speaker 2: to gohea and close this episode out, but we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there. Just a reminder that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast,
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Speaker 2: short Form, Monster Factor, Artifact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays.
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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