1 00:00:03,040 --> 00:00:05,840 Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 2 00:00:05,880 --> 00:00:14,319 Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow 3 00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:17,000 Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 4 00:00:17,079 --> 00:00:19,319 Speaker 1: And of course it's October, so we are still doing 5 00:00:19,360 --> 00:00:23,160 Speaker 1: some of our favorite stuff of the year. Monster content. 6 00:00:23,480 --> 00:00:26,920 Speaker 1: That's right, God, did I just say content. I'm the monster. 7 00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:30,200 Speaker 1: I'm the content creating monster. Let's think of it as 8 00:00:30,200 --> 00:00:33,560 Speaker 1: its monster cargo. Let's kress cargo. I think that we 9 00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:36,440 Speaker 1: are delivering to the listeners years, yeah, to create a 10 00:00:36,479 --> 00:00:41,839 Speaker 1: cargo cult of our listeners. So I was wondering just recently, 11 00:00:42,240 --> 00:00:47,440 Speaker 1: you know what is the oldest monster, Because as you 12 00:00:47,479 --> 00:00:50,519 Speaker 1: go back in time, monsters become, in a way, they 13 00:00:50,560 --> 00:00:55,760 Speaker 1: become less uniquely scary, and they become more elementally scary. 14 00:00:56,320 --> 00:00:58,720 Speaker 1: They become less like, I don't know, the girl in 15 00:00:58,760 --> 00:01:01,560 Speaker 1: the Ring and all that kind of recent popular monster 16 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:05,520 Speaker 1: fad stuff, and they become more like a dragon or 17 00:01:05,560 --> 00:01:09,280 Speaker 1: a beast with a bull's head or something. And so 18 00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:11,800 Speaker 1: I was wondering, like, you know what, what's the earliest 19 00:01:11,840 --> 00:01:14,440 Speaker 1: thing in recorded history? There there are some things in 20 00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:18,640 Speaker 1: ancient Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian texts. I just wanted to read 21 00:01:19,200 --> 00:01:21,760 Speaker 1: one sort of monster passage I came across from an 22 00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:25,240 Speaker 1: ancient Assyrian text called the Seven Evil Spirits. This is 23 00:01:25,280 --> 00:01:28,959 Speaker 1: translated into English by R. C. Thompson in nineteen o three, 24 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:34,680 Speaker 1: and it's this ancient Assyrian poem. It goes, raging storms, 25 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:38,880 Speaker 1: evil gods. Are they ruthless demons who in Heaven's vault 26 00:01:38,920 --> 00:01:42,760 Speaker 1: were created? Are they workers of evil? Are they they 27 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:46,920 Speaker 1: lift up the head to evil every day, to evil destruction, 28 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:50,600 Speaker 1: to work of the seven? The first is the south Wind. 29 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:54,280 Speaker 1: The second is a dragon whose mouth is opened that 30 00:01:54,360 --> 00:01:57,840 Speaker 1: none can measure. The third is a grim leopard, which 31 00:01:57,880 --> 00:02:01,440 Speaker 1: carries off the young. The four is a terrible shibou. 32 00:02:02,640 --> 00:02:06,240 Speaker 1: The fifth is a furious wolf who knoweth not to flee. 33 00:02:06,680 --> 00:02:10,600 Speaker 1: The sixth is a rampant thing. This is the illusion 34 00:02:10,919 --> 00:02:14,800 Speaker 1: which marches against God and King. The seventh is a storm, 35 00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:19,400 Speaker 1: an evil wind, which takes vengeance. Well, that those that 36 00:02:19,440 --> 00:02:22,680 Speaker 1: al sounds remarkable, But I'm instantly thinking some of those 37 00:02:22,680 --> 00:02:25,040 Speaker 1: are just animals. Like the wolf is just like a 38 00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:28,760 Speaker 1: dumb wolf, Like it's just not smart enough to run away, right. 39 00:02:28,840 --> 00:02:31,480 Speaker 1: I wonder about the grim leopard. The grim leopard sounds 40 00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:35,480 Speaker 1: kind of monstrous because it carries off the young grim. 41 00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:39,120 Speaker 1: Seems to that that implies some kind of human affect. Yeah, well, 42 00:02:39,200 --> 00:02:41,560 Speaker 1: you know, I guess you get into definitions of monster. Right. 43 00:02:41,639 --> 00:02:45,120 Speaker 1: Is a monster something that is a combination of things? 44 00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:47,400 Speaker 1: Is it something that is entirely unreal or is it 45 00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:52,120 Speaker 1: just something real that is exaggerated in size. Yeah, well, 46 00:02:52,160 --> 00:02:55,079 Speaker 1: I mean, if it's a an evil creature that works 47 00:02:55,120 --> 00:02:58,119 Speaker 1: destruction upon the earth and marches against God and King, 48 00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:01,880 Speaker 1: I'd say that's probably a monster or people. But I 49 00:03:01,919 --> 00:03:04,840 Speaker 1: feel like we're actually already too late, because we're muddling 50 00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:08,800 Speaker 1: around in recorded history and you can go much deeper. 51 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:13,080 Speaker 1: So in August of nineteen thirty nine, a group of 52 00:03:13,160 --> 00:03:16,160 Speaker 1: archaeologists were doing field work at a Stone Age cave 53 00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:19,640 Speaker 1: site in southern Germany, and the cave was called Stottlehole, 54 00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:23,119 Speaker 1: which means stable cave, and it was at Hollenstein near 55 00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:28,079 Speaker 1: vogel Herd. At this cave site, the researchers uncovered this 56 00:03:28,240 --> 00:03:34,160 Speaker 1: massive collection of ivory fragments, broken pieces made from the tusks. 57 00:03:34,280 --> 00:03:37,400 Speaker 1: Tusks of a Pleistocene mammoth and now it's Ice Age 58 00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:42,680 Speaker 1: mammoth of Europe. Wooly mammoth. Unfortunately, something happened. Just a 59 00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:46,040 Speaker 1: matter of days after this initial discovery. World War two 60 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:48,360 Speaker 1: broke out, not a great time to be digging in 61 00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:51,200 Speaker 1: southern Germany, and so the dig had to be quickly 62 00:03:51,240 --> 00:03:54,160 Speaker 1: abandoned and the dig was filled in and the broken 63 00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:57,640 Speaker 1: pieces of the mammoth ivory were laid in storage for decades, 64 00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:01,720 Speaker 1: and then about thirty years or a German archaeologist named 65 00:04:01,800 --> 00:04:06,040 Speaker 1: Joachim Han started trying to fit the ivory shards together 66 00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:08,880 Speaker 1: playing this. You know, if you've ever seen these games, 67 00:04:08,920 --> 00:04:12,160 Speaker 1: the three D jigsaw puzzle game of Artifactor Reconstruction, it 68 00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:15,240 Speaker 1: looks like a nightmare of trying to see how all 69 00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:17,960 Speaker 1: these things because obviously some pieces are missing. It's like 70 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:21,600 Speaker 1: trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with half half the puzzle. Uh. 71 00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:24,039 Speaker 1: And so we had more than two hundred fragments, and 72 00:04:24,080 --> 00:04:27,400 Speaker 1: he discovered that the pieces of ivory were originally part 73 00:04:27,480 --> 00:04:32,960 Speaker 1: of the same Paleolithic figurine. It was a statuette about 74 00:04:33,080 --> 00:04:35,960 Speaker 1: thirty one centimeters long, which is just over a foot, 75 00:04:36,440 --> 00:04:39,720 Speaker 1: and it was carbon fourteen dated to somewhere between thirty 76 00:04:39,760 --> 00:04:44,039 Speaker 1: five and forty thousand years old. And once the pieces 77 00:04:44,040 --> 00:04:47,360 Speaker 1: were put together, it became clear that you could still 78 00:04:47,400 --> 00:04:51,640 Speaker 1: make out representative features, features that appeared to be both 79 00:04:51,839 --> 00:04:56,680 Speaker 1: human and non human. And this is the central image 80 00:04:56,680 --> 00:04:58,600 Speaker 1: I want to talk about in today's episode. This is 81 00:04:58,640 --> 00:05:00,599 Speaker 1: the figure that would come to be non and as 82 00:05:00,640 --> 00:05:03,599 Speaker 1: the Lowan Lynch, which is German for the lion man. 83 00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:05,880 Speaker 1: And if you want to see an image of the 84 00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:08,120 Speaker 1: Loan Ninch, we will have a picture of it on 85 00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:09,960 Speaker 1: the landing page of this episode at stuff to Blow 86 00:05:09,960 --> 00:05:14,080 Speaker 1: you behind dot com. It Uh, it's it's rather regal looking. Yeah, well, 87 00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:16,520 Speaker 1: I would say it's regal like it's it's got this 88 00:05:16,640 --> 00:05:19,960 Speaker 1: upright posture, and it does look very stately, but also 89 00:05:20,080 --> 00:05:22,440 Speaker 1: in the spirit of the grim leopard of Assyria. It's 90 00:05:22,480 --> 00:05:25,560 Speaker 1: kind of grim. It's got this kind of like there 91 00:05:25,640 --> 00:05:28,960 Speaker 1: is no pity in the Lionman's face. No, no pity. 92 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:31,000 Speaker 1: I just looked in closer at it, and I don't 93 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:33,640 Speaker 1: see I don't see a shred of pity, Like it 94 00:05:33,680 --> 00:05:36,960 Speaker 1: would pass your sentence and and not not heed your tears. 95 00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:40,680 Speaker 1: So after this original reconstruction and the following decades, there 96 00:05:40,720 --> 00:05:44,400 Speaker 1: was this long, multi stage process that led to the 97 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:48,000 Speaker 1: final reconstruction of the artifact in fuller and fuller detail. 98 00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:50,599 Speaker 1: So in the nineteen eighties there was a paleontologist named 99 00:05:50,600 --> 00:05:55,240 Speaker 1: Elizabeth Schmidt who added more pieces from additional re excavations 100 00:05:55,279 --> 00:05:58,920 Speaker 1: of the site, and she corrected some errors and previous reconstructions, 101 00:05:59,279 --> 00:06:02,760 Speaker 1: and the clearer pression of this feline head began to emerge. 102 00:06:02,800 --> 00:06:05,320 Speaker 1: And then in the two thousands and other archaeologist named 103 00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:09,160 Speaker 1: Klaus Joachim Kind returned to the Stytle Cave to uncover 104 00:06:09,440 --> 00:06:13,760 Speaker 1: more original pieces and it led to this amazing version 105 00:06:13,800 --> 00:06:15,839 Speaker 1: of the artifact that you can go see today. I 106 00:06:15,839 --> 00:06:18,479 Speaker 1: think it's usually at the Oom Museum in Germany, but 107 00:06:18,560 --> 00:06:21,880 Speaker 1: I believe it is currently on loan at the British Museum. 108 00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:24,679 Speaker 1: In fact, I believe it was the British Museum tweeting 109 00:06:24,720 --> 00:06:29,320 Speaker 1: about the acquisition that or acquisition the loan that made 110 00:06:29,320 --> 00:06:32,720 Speaker 1: me think about doing this episode. So the lion man, 111 00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:36,760 Speaker 1: he stands like a human in this two footed, bipedal posture, 112 00:06:36,880 --> 00:06:39,800 Speaker 1: back straight with human arms straped down to the side, 113 00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:44,160 Speaker 1: human torso maybe lion ish kinds of legs, but this proud, 114 00:06:44,400 --> 00:06:49,159 Speaker 1: menacing head of a big cat, and you've got to wonder. 115 00:06:49,240 --> 00:06:51,599 Speaker 1: So this is thirty five to forty thousand years ago there, 116 00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:55,440 Speaker 1: long before recorded history, nobody was writing down what they 117 00:06:55,440 --> 00:06:58,920 Speaker 1: were thinking. There apparently was no written language. So what 118 00:06:58,960 --> 00:07:02,120 Speaker 1: did this figure mean to the Stone Age people who 119 00:07:02,200 --> 00:07:05,440 Speaker 1: made it? Yeah, I mean, for the most part, we 120 00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:08,320 Speaker 1: can only we can only guess. We can certainly look 121 00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:11,760 Speaker 1: to more to increasingly more complex ideals that came afterwards. 122 00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:13,200 Speaker 1: But you look at it and you think, was this 123 00:07:13,520 --> 00:07:16,320 Speaker 1: Is this a deity? Is this a punishing creature? Is 124 00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:21,240 Speaker 1: this a I've seen the term master of animals thrown 125 00:07:21,280 --> 00:07:27,040 Speaker 1: around in interpreting similar alleged figures from cave paintings, and 126 00:07:27,280 --> 00:07:30,880 Speaker 1: another ancient remains. Yeah, there is a sort of intuitive 127 00:07:30,920 --> 00:07:33,440 Speaker 1: sense in which you could see an ancient person seeing 128 00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:36,320 Speaker 1: an apex predator like a lion or any any kind 129 00:07:36,360 --> 00:07:39,440 Speaker 1: of big cat as some sort of god of the 130 00:07:39,480 --> 00:07:43,640 Speaker 1: wilderness that would have power over other animals because it 131 00:07:43,720 --> 00:07:45,680 Speaker 1: is at the top of the food chain. But it's 132 00:07:45,680 --> 00:07:49,520 Speaker 1: a serious question to imagine why people would make this artifact, 133 00:07:49,560 --> 00:07:52,600 Speaker 1: because making an artifact like this would have been an 134 00:07:52,640 --> 00:07:56,000 Speaker 1: extreme sacrifice. Uh. These would have been people, I think 135 00:07:56,160 --> 00:07:59,240 Speaker 1: very likely living not always very far from the edge 136 00:07:59,240 --> 00:08:02,880 Speaker 1: of starvation. Uh. And an artifact like this took resources 137 00:08:02,920 --> 00:08:05,320 Speaker 1: it took time, it took energy, It wore down your 138 00:08:05,360 --> 00:08:08,640 Speaker 1: sharp flint tools and the carving process. In fact, there 139 00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:10,960 Speaker 1: was a in recent years, there was an experiment by 140 00:08:10,960 --> 00:08:14,040 Speaker 1: a guy named wolf Heine that I watched a video 141 00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:17,680 Speaker 1: of online. And this guy specializes in replicating ancient artifacts 142 00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:20,280 Speaker 1: using the methods and tools that would have been available 143 00:08:20,320 --> 00:08:23,320 Speaker 1: to the people who made them. And his reconstruction of 144 00:08:23,320 --> 00:08:27,240 Speaker 1: the low and minch using these flint carving tools, he 145 00:08:27,280 --> 00:08:30,000 Speaker 1: says it took more than three hundred and seventy hours. 146 00:08:30,560 --> 00:08:32,439 Speaker 1: And in this video, if you sit and watch it, 147 00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:37,680 Speaker 1: like the unbelievable laborious nous of the project begins to 148 00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:40,320 Speaker 1: sink in. You just watch him going over and over 149 00:08:40,880 --> 00:08:44,160 Speaker 1: this ivory tusk with this piece of flint. And when 150 00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:46,160 Speaker 1: you look at the guy's hands, I started to feel 151 00:08:46,160 --> 00:08:49,440 Speaker 1: how working this flint rock over the ivory for hours 152 00:08:49,480 --> 00:08:52,640 Speaker 1: and hours would just turn your fingers into hot ground beef. 153 00:08:52,800 --> 00:08:55,440 Speaker 1: Just terrible. Yeah. And and to your point, these were 154 00:08:55,480 --> 00:08:59,080 Speaker 1: people that lived on the edge. They were they were wanderers. 155 00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:02,520 Speaker 1: They had not reach the point in the ascension of 156 00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:06,000 Speaker 1: human civilization where you had specialists who could set aside 157 00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:09,320 Speaker 1: time to create something like this. Uh, and if they 158 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:11,400 Speaker 1: created something like this, it obviously wasn't going to be 159 00:09:11,400 --> 00:09:13,679 Speaker 1: just a toy for a child to play with. It 160 00:09:13,720 --> 00:09:16,200 Speaker 1: was something important, right, And there are signs in the 161 00:09:16,280 --> 00:09:20,520 Speaker 1: artifact itself that seemed to signify that it had cultural importance. Right. Yeah. 162 00:09:20,559 --> 00:09:23,040 Speaker 1: The surface of the original artifacts seems to have been 163 00:09:23,080 --> 00:09:26,440 Speaker 1: smoothed from excessive handling, as if it were passed around 164 00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:29,280 Speaker 1: in a ritual for instance. Right. So, yeah, so it 165 00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:31,480 Speaker 1: looks like this is something that was handled a lot. 166 00:09:31,559 --> 00:09:35,040 Speaker 1: It's got that worn down feeling to it. Um And 167 00:09:35,240 --> 00:09:37,520 Speaker 1: this is one reason that the lowan mench is often 168 00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:42,720 Speaker 1: cited is perhaps the earliest evidence that exists of religious beliefs. Now, 169 00:09:42,840 --> 00:09:47,240 Speaker 1: who would the people that made this artifact have been, Well, 170 00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:51,480 Speaker 1: it was almost certainly modern humans living in the area 171 00:09:51,559 --> 00:09:53,800 Speaker 1: at the time. But but it's also worth noting that 172 00:09:53,880 --> 00:09:58,320 Speaker 1: modern humans and neander dolls um lived in this area 173 00:09:58,440 --> 00:10:00,360 Speaker 1: at this at the same time the coexist. This did 174 00:10:00,800 --> 00:10:04,839 Speaker 1: And uh I did find a quote from Jeffrey Brantingham, 175 00:10:04,880 --> 00:10:07,920 Speaker 1: an archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and 176 00:10:07,920 --> 00:10:10,040 Speaker 1: he says that he doesn't think it's far fetched to 177 00:10:10,160 --> 00:10:15,160 Speaker 1: think that Neanderthals. Uh you know, could have made similar items. 178 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:19,000 Speaker 1: But for the most part, everyone seems to be on 179 00:10:19,040 --> 00:10:22,000 Speaker 1: board with the idea that these were modern Homo sapiens 180 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:25,680 Speaker 1: that created these artifacts. Anatomically modern, yes, except not quite 181 00:10:25,679 --> 00:10:29,240 Speaker 1: so hunched over from watching YouTube all day, right, uh yeah, 182 00:10:29,400 --> 00:10:33,360 Speaker 1: But there may be reasons to think that other members 183 00:10:33,440 --> 00:10:36,000 Speaker 1: of this this ancient culture or this you know, ancient 184 00:10:36,120 --> 00:10:37,760 Speaker 1: what would you call it, sort of a loose idea 185 00:10:37,760 --> 00:10:40,120 Speaker 1: of a culture if it was mostly small bands of 186 00:10:40,160 --> 00:10:44,080 Speaker 1: people rather than cities or nations, But that whatever, the 187 00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:47,560 Speaker 1: people of this time period were made artifacts like this 188 00:10:47,679 --> 00:10:50,920 Speaker 1: in general, because this isn't the only one, right, Yeah, 189 00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:53,880 Speaker 1: that's right. In two thousand three, another line was discovered 190 00:10:53,920 --> 00:10:57,240 Speaker 1: in southwestern Germany or what is now southwestern Germany, and 191 00:10:57,280 --> 00:10:58,920 Speaker 1: this one was carbon day to do around the same 192 00:10:58,960 --> 00:11:02,800 Speaker 1: time period. So by by by some estimates, it kind 193 00:11:02,800 --> 00:11:05,480 Speaker 1: of depends who's doing the math and who's you know, 194 00:11:05,520 --> 00:11:08,280 Speaker 1: doing the figure in but by some estimates these are 195 00:11:08,320 --> 00:11:12,640 Speaker 1: the oldest statues and the oldest examples of figurative art. However, 196 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:17,400 Speaker 1: we do have the venus of the whole fells and 197 00:11:17,559 --> 00:11:21,440 Speaker 1: uh and by some estimates this takes the title. But 198 00:11:21,480 --> 00:11:23,560 Speaker 1: the estimates here like thirty five thousand and forty thousand 199 00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:25,840 Speaker 1: years ago, so we're kind of placing it in basically 200 00:11:25,880 --> 00:11:29,560 Speaker 1: the same time period. They were just discoveries, key discoveries 201 00:11:29,600 --> 00:11:32,280 Speaker 1: made in two thousand and two thousand and sixteen. If 202 00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:34,200 Speaker 1: you've if you've looked at a lot of like really 203 00:11:34,360 --> 00:11:39,800 Speaker 1: ancient human artifacts, you've probably seen images of these. Uh. 204 00:11:40,480 --> 00:11:45,200 Speaker 1: The venous images are essentially a feminine figure, like you know, uh, 205 00:11:45,400 --> 00:11:49,319 Speaker 1: kind of kind of a round feminine figure with without 206 00:11:49,440 --> 00:11:53,400 Speaker 1: a head or or or very little detail provided outside 207 00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:57,560 Speaker 1: of like breasts and belly. Yeah. Yeah. It's often seen 208 00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:01,880 Speaker 1: as having the what we're perceived us the feminine figures exaggerated, 209 00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:04,240 Speaker 1: so it would be in large spreads, in large tips 210 00:12:04,360 --> 00:12:06,840 Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And for that reason, people often 211 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:08,480 Speaker 1: look at this and say that they think it had 212 00:12:08,520 --> 00:12:12,840 Speaker 1: some kind of fertility significance. Now you know where, depending 213 00:12:13,040 --> 00:12:15,520 Speaker 1: you can go back and forth over which one could 214 00:12:15,520 --> 00:12:17,840 Speaker 1: be older than the other, it seems like they likely 215 00:12:17,840 --> 00:12:20,160 Speaker 1: existed at the same time. But the key difference here 216 00:12:20,160 --> 00:12:22,880 Speaker 1: is that while the venus is a depiction essentially of 217 00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:26,840 Speaker 1: the feminine form of something that exists of a human being, right, uh, 218 00:12:27,080 --> 00:12:29,720 Speaker 1: that exists in the real world, the loan mention is 219 00:12:29,920 --> 00:12:33,400 Speaker 1: the human feuged with the beast. And in the words 220 00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:37,040 Speaker 1: of Clive Gamble, and archaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK, 221 00:12:37,240 --> 00:12:40,760 Speaker 1: as quoted in Nature quote, they depict the animal world 222 00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:44,360 Speaker 1: in a semi realistic way. It shows early man moving 223 00:12:44,400 --> 00:12:48,160 Speaker 1: from his immediate world to an imaginative world. Now this 224 00:12:48,280 --> 00:12:52,960 Speaker 1: is interesting because, yeah, you have to imagine that, I 225 00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:56,000 Speaker 1: don't know, there's no way to get inside say a 226 00:12:56,080 --> 00:12:59,160 Speaker 1: chimpanzees head or a dog's head, is some other mammal. 227 00:12:59,559 --> 00:13:04,560 Speaker 1: But if these animals have any kind of imaginative capacity, 228 00:13:04,600 --> 00:13:06,400 Speaker 1: and there's no proof, really, I guess that they have 229 00:13:06,440 --> 00:13:09,040 Speaker 1: any kind of ability to picture objects that are not 230 00:13:09,080 --> 00:13:11,360 Speaker 1: in front of them. If they do, you kind of 231 00:13:11,440 --> 00:13:14,280 Speaker 1: have to assume that they're sort of literal right that 232 00:13:14,360 --> 00:13:17,280 Speaker 1: they'd be, that they would be putting together ideas of 233 00:13:17,360 --> 00:13:22,040 Speaker 1: images that are from their direct experience. Yeah, I mean 234 00:13:23,080 --> 00:13:25,280 Speaker 1: so in this case. I mean one example that comes 235 00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:30,000 Speaker 1: to mind, One possible and perhaps nitpicking idea, is that 236 00:13:30,080 --> 00:13:32,680 Speaker 1: what if say thag, the member of your tribe. What 237 00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:36,199 Speaker 1: a fag likes to take a deer head or a 238 00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:38,839 Speaker 1: or a big cat head, and he likes to just 239 00:13:38,920 --> 00:13:41,240 Speaker 1: kind of houllow that sucker out or get the skin, 240 00:13:41,520 --> 00:13:43,760 Speaker 1: and they just put it over his own head. And 241 00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:46,079 Speaker 1: he's famous for this, and he's so famous for this 242 00:13:46,400 --> 00:13:49,160 Speaker 1: that one decides to create a statue of it. Like, 243 00:13:49,240 --> 00:13:52,520 Speaker 1: that's the only scenario I think in which you could 244 00:13:52,800 --> 00:13:54,840 Speaker 1: you could make the argument. I don't see anybody making 245 00:13:54,840 --> 00:13:56,840 Speaker 1: that argument, but I feel like that's the only example 246 00:13:56,960 --> 00:13:59,280 Speaker 1: you can make an argument for this being an image 247 00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:01,960 Speaker 1: of a thing that was as opposed to an image 248 00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:04,199 Speaker 1: of a thing that was not. Let me throw a 249 00:14:04,240 --> 00:14:07,240 Speaker 1: twist on your example, though, So maybe Thag does put 250 00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:10,240 Speaker 1: on the headdress or you know, the remains of some 251 00:14:10,280 --> 00:14:14,120 Speaker 1: other predator, and to simulate that in that sense, would 252 00:14:14,120 --> 00:14:18,040 Speaker 1: that not be becoming another kind of creature at least 253 00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:20,840 Speaker 1: in symbol? That's true? Yeah, I mean you can certainly 254 00:14:20,840 --> 00:14:23,000 Speaker 1: make the argument that that if Thag did that and 255 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:27,280 Speaker 1: bothered to put the beast's skin over his head, that 256 00:14:27,680 --> 00:14:30,120 Speaker 1: you know, he is pretending to be something else or 257 00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:33,360 Speaker 1: or participating in an experience that makes him feel as 258 00:14:33,400 --> 00:14:35,200 Speaker 1: if he has something else. So yeah, it all kind 259 00:14:35,240 --> 00:14:37,400 Speaker 1: of amounts to the same thing, doesn't it. Right, So, 260 00:14:37,400 --> 00:14:41,040 Speaker 1: whether it's Thag inspiring this, this lionman carving, or whoever 261 00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:43,880 Speaker 1: carved it, depicting some kind of being that they had 262 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:46,880 Speaker 1: never seen in nature. What's going on is a kind 263 00:14:46,880 --> 00:14:52,600 Speaker 1: of fusion into unreal creatures. And according to Jill Cook, 264 00:14:52,720 --> 00:14:55,520 Speaker 1: a curator at the British Museum who has a good 265 00:14:55,560 --> 00:14:58,800 Speaker 1: blog post about the Loan Mench for the British Museum's acquisition, 266 00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:01,800 Speaker 1: the loan Mench is the oldest known representation of a 267 00:15:01,840 --> 00:15:04,760 Speaker 1: creature that does not exist in nature, not necessarily the 268 00:15:04,800 --> 00:15:08,720 Speaker 1: oldest piece of art, but the oldest evidence of fantasy. 269 00:15:08,880 --> 00:15:14,480 Speaker 1: Quite literally, the world's oldest monster. Now by monster, of course, 270 00:15:14,520 --> 00:15:17,240 Speaker 1: we've got to clarify the way we use the term. 271 00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:20,520 Speaker 1: I mean an imaginary creature that does not occur in nature, 272 00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:23,560 Speaker 1: not necessarily a bad or evil creature. So this isn't 273 00:15:23,600 --> 00:15:25,600 Speaker 1: to say that the people who imagine the Loewen men 274 00:15:25,600 --> 00:15:28,960 Speaker 1: should necessarily would have thought of it as antagonistic. Though 275 00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:32,000 Speaker 1: I feel pretty strongly that even if whatever this being 276 00:15:32,200 --> 00:15:35,760 Speaker 1: was was treated with reverence, I suspect it would have 277 00:15:35,800 --> 00:15:38,600 Speaker 1: been the kind of awe in the classic sense of awe, 278 00:15:38,800 --> 00:15:41,800 Speaker 1: not like oh here's my friend the lionman, but like 279 00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:45,160 Speaker 1: a solemn blend of wonder and fear. Well, if you're 280 00:15:45,160 --> 00:15:48,520 Speaker 1: try and imagine what life was like at the time, 281 00:15:48,640 --> 00:15:50,760 Speaker 1: I mean, every every day would have a certain amount 282 00:15:50,760 --> 00:15:54,920 Speaker 1: of uncertainty. You're you're depending upon your ability to find 283 00:15:55,120 --> 00:15:57,400 Speaker 1: the food, to follow the patterns that lead to food, 284 00:15:57,640 --> 00:16:00,600 Speaker 1: to to hunt prey that will fee eat and can 285 00:16:00,600 --> 00:16:04,400 Speaker 1: clothe you through the harsh winter months especially, So there's 286 00:16:04,400 --> 00:16:06,760 Speaker 1: a certain amount of uncertainty, there's a certain amount of chaos, 287 00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:09,600 Speaker 1: and therefore we you know, you might expect to find 288 00:16:09,640 --> 00:16:13,240 Speaker 1: those elements in imagine beings. Yeah, I can see that. 289 00:16:13,360 --> 00:16:15,720 Speaker 1: So let's look at the ingredients of this imagine being. 290 00:16:15,800 --> 00:16:18,840 Speaker 1: Obviously it is one part human. We know about the 291 00:16:18,840 --> 00:16:22,400 Speaker 1: the upright bipedal human pretty well. But what is the 292 00:16:22,400 --> 00:16:25,080 Speaker 1: head of this creature and possibly the inspiration for the 293 00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:28,000 Speaker 1: muscily legs. Yeah, this is This is a great question 294 00:16:28,040 --> 00:16:29,840 Speaker 1: because I imagine a lot of people are thinking, Okay, 295 00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:34,680 Speaker 1: Southern Germany lions. Lions are in Africa and and or India, 296 00:16:34,800 --> 00:16:38,520 Speaker 1: so what are they doing in Europe. Well, given the 297 00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:41,320 Speaker 1: time frame in the location, experts believe that we're we're 298 00:16:41,320 --> 00:16:44,560 Speaker 1: seeing a human or humanoid body with the with the 299 00:16:44,560 --> 00:16:48,400 Speaker 1: head of a now extinct cave lion cave lion. Yeah. Now, 300 00:16:48,520 --> 00:16:50,480 Speaker 1: I think that's that's interesting, isn't it though, because you 301 00:16:50,520 --> 00:16:53,600 Speaker 1: have a partial likeness of one extinct animal in the 302 00:16:53,720 --> 00:16:58,600 Speaker 1: very tusk of another. Yeah, and it's created by a 303 00:16:58,720 --> 00:17:02,120 Speaker 1: species that probably played a role in the extinction of 304 00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:06,600 Speaker 1: both species. Oh, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, there's 305 00:17:06,640 --> 00:17:09,320 Speaker 1: there's actually there's not a lot of evidence for lion hunting. 306 00:17:09,359 --> 00:17:12,200 Speaker 1: But a two thousand sixteen Spanish study published in p 307 00:17:12,359 --> 00:17:16,200 Speaker 1: Los one they looked at fossilized cave lion toe bones 308 00:17:16,720 --> 00:17:20,240 Speaker 1: and they found human modifications, possibly made with stone tools 309 00:17:20,280 --> 00:17:22,679 Speaker 1: that were made for skinning. So they think that, uh, 310 00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:25,240 Speaker 1: that ancient peoples might have hunted them for their pelts. 311 00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:28,000 Speaker 1: But of course we know even if they didn't directly 312 00:17:28,119 --> 00:17:31,120 Speaker 1: hunt these lions, they could have contributed to their extinction 313 00:17:31,240 --> 00:17:34,840 Speaker 1: by encroaching on their habitats, by competition for large fauna 314 00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:39,360 Speaker 1: and food sources. Now, there were different varieties of cave lion. 315 00:17:40,480 --> 00:17:43,119 Speaker 1: One was found in America and there were two in Eurasia. 316 00:17:43,600 --> 00:17:47,639 Speaker 1: There was Panthera leo fossilus, and this was first. This 317 00:17:47,640 --> 00:17:50,400 Speaker 1: one first appeared in Europe seven hundred thousand years ago 318 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:56,240 Speaker 1: and evolved into Panthera leo spellia, and this cave lion 319 00:17:56,440 --> 00:17:58,560 Speaker 1: is the one that continued on. That's the one we're 320 00:17:58,560 --> 00:18:00,600 Speaker 1: seeing here, and this is the one that went on 321 00:18:00,640 --> 00:18:05,399 Speaker 1: to go extinct, probably by fourteen thousand years ago. But 322 00:18:05,560 --> 00:18:08,080 Speaker 1: so thirty five to forty thousand years ago when this 323 00:18:08,119 --> 00:18:11,000 Speaker 1: thing was made, they were still around. Yes. Now I've 324 00:18:11,040 --> 00:18:12,679 Speaker 1: also read I don't know how much stock we can 325 00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:15,640 Speaker 1: put in this, but I've also read in the past 326 00:18:15,920 --> 00:18:18,280 Speaker 1: that some people think it may have survived in the 327 00:18:18,320 --> 00:18:21,800 Speaker 1: Balkans up to two thousand years ago. But again I 328 00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:24,080 Speaker 1: don't know to what extent we should buy into that 329 00:18:24,080 --> 00:18:27,000 Speaker 1: that may get into cryptic territory, the grim leopard of 330 00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:32,400 Speaker 1: the Balkan. Yeah, but to be clear, Panthera leo spellia 331 00:18:32,640 --> 00:18:35,840 Speaker 1: was probably the largest cat that ever lived. It was 332 00:18:35,880 --> 00:18:39,640 Speaker 1: probably twenty larger than modern lions, and also bigger than 333 00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:43,399 Speaker 1: today's largest tigers. So we're talking up to eleven feet 334 00:18:43,480 --> 00:18:45,840 Speaker 1: six inches or three point five meters in length. That 335 00:18:46,040 --> 00:18:48,879 Speaker 1: is a crazy thing, because something you might not have 336 00:18:48,920 --> 00:18:52,199 Speaker 1: experienced if you haven't been to a zoo. Recently, I 337 00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:55,960 Speaker 1: noticed that I don't really have a correct vision in 338 00:18:56,040 --> 00:18:58,960 Speaker 1: my head of how large the big cats are like 339 00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:01,240 Speaker 1: a lion or a tieer. I think of them as 340 00:19:01,800 --> 00:19:04,320 Speaker 1: I don't know, like maybe large the size of a 341 00:19:04,359 --> 00:19:07,520 Speaker 1: great Dane or a little bit larger really, But if 342 00:19:07,640 --> 00:19:09,840 Speaker 1: if you go to a to a zoo and you 343 00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:12,360 Speaker 1: get like right up against the glass where these things are, 344 00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:15,360 Speaker 1: you realize like, oh, oh man, this is like as 345 00:19:15,359 --> 00:19:19,240 Speaker 1: big as a horse. These things are gigantic. Well they're 346 00:19:19,280 --> 00:19:22,760 Speaker 1: they're I mean, they're smaller than a horse, but but 347 00:19:22,880 --> 00:19:24,760 Speaker 1: it seems like a horse. But it does seem that 348 00:19:24,800 --> 00:19:27,159 Speaker 1: big if you're in the right position to observe them. 349 00:19:27,200 --> 00:19:29,439 Speaker 1: For instance, here at Zoo Atlanta, I go to the 350 00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:32,960 Speaker 1: zoo a lot with my son, and sometimes we get 351 00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:35,360 Speaker 1: there early. And when you get there early, sometimes you're 352 00:19:35,400 --> 00:19:38,800 Speaker 1: the only person close to the lion enclosure and they're 353 00:19:38,840 --> 00:19:41,920 Speaker 1: still kind of active because it's the morning. And I've 354 00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:45,000 Speaker 1: had some really creepy experiences walking up there with my 355 00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:49,280 Speaker 1: you know, small snack size child next to me. Delicious, Yeah, 356 00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:51,560 Speaker 1: And the way the lion looks at you, you just 357 00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:54,119 Speaker 1: feel this this primal feeling and you get a sense 358 00:19:54,280 --> 00:19:57,760 Speaker 1: of what this this beast is and how I'm supposed 359 00:19:57,800 --> 00:20:01,399 Speaker 1: to view this beast outside of the artificial confines of 360 00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:04,560 Speaker 1: the zoo environment. Isn't it funny that we've got spider 361 00:20:04,640 --> 00:20:07,600 Speaker 1: fear but we don't have lion fear. Well, it might 362 00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:09,879 Speaker 1: be very different if you live in proximity to lions. 363 00:20:09,920 --> 00:20:12,680 Speaker 1: But I feel no natural fear about lions in the 364 00:20:12,720 --> 00:20:14,240 Speaker 1: same way I do when I see the image of 365 00:20:14,280 --> 00:20:17,359 Speaker 1: like a spider crawling towards my face. Well, I usually don't, 366 00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:19,520 Speaker 1: but I feel like in these moments, I'm willing to 367 00:20:19,560 --> 00:20:23,480 Speaker 1: buy that there's something they're like, like there's something situationally 368 00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:26,480 Speaker 1: and environmentally that has to be in place and such. 369 00:20:26,520 --> 00:20:30,359 Speaker 1: It's so standing, you know, beside a small child in 370 00:20:30,359 --> 00:20:32,920 Speaker 1: in a situation where the lions attention is on me, 371 00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:36,960 Speaker 1: it's very creepy, and I can I can buy into 372 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:40,240 Speaker 1: an idea that that there's something ingrained in me to 373 00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:43,399 Speaker 1: to fear them. It is terrifying itself to fear the 374 00:20:43,440 --> 00:20:46,280 Speaker 1: predatory gaze, like when you when you just see the 375 00:20:46,359 --> 00:20:48,880 Speaker 1: eyes of the creature that's large enough to eat you 376 00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:51,680 Speaker 1: and maybe wants to. That comes through a lot in 377 00:20:51,840 --> 00:20:53,679 Speaker 1: one of our favorite books to talk about in here 378 00:20:53,720 --> 00:20:56,320 Speaker 1: in Blind Site by Peter Watts, where he talks about 379 00:20:56,359 --> 00:20:59,400 Speaker 1: the vampires gaze. Uh, you know, they usually keep their 380 00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:03,480 Speaker 1: eyes cover because people like they wear the sunglasses because 381 00:21:03,520 --> 00:21:06,200 Speaker 1: if they don't, people can just constantly feel themselves being 382 00:21:06,240 --> 00:21:09,520 Speaker 1: looked at as prey. So it's it's easy for I mean, 383 00:21:09,520 --> 00:21:12,439 Speaker 1: it's it's relatively easy for us to lock eyes with 384 00:21:12,480 --> 00:21:14,560 Speaker 1: a predator like the lion, if you go to zoos 385 00:21:14,640 --> 00:21:19,560 Speaker 1: and whatnot. But but try to imagine living in this 386 00:21:19,640 --> 00:21:22,920 Speaker 1: ancient time, like the rare situations where you would make 387 00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:25,720 Speaker 1: eye contact with this creature and lift to tell about 388 00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:28,400 Speaker 1: and how powerful that would be, like that that would 389 00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:31,040 Speaker 1: have to play a role in the creation of of 390 00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:34,240 Speaker 1: this lion man. You can imagine it was a religious experience, 391 00:21:34,560 --> 00:21:36,800 Speaker 1: like if you came face to face with a cave 392 00:21:36,880 --> 00:21:39,520 Speaker 1: lion and did not die, that this would make you 393 00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:42,359 Speaker 1: feel like you had entered a higher plane of existence, 394 00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:45,159 Speaker 1: you had communed with some with the grim leopard of 395 00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:47,760 Speaker 1: the skies. Yeah. Now, of course, it's worth noting that 396 00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:50,280 Speaker 1: this this may have been, this may well have been 397 00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:56,240 Speaker 1: the first lion man lion humanoid hybrid in human beliefs, 398 00:21:56,840 --> 00:21:59,120 Speaker 1: but we would go on to have many more. Oh 399 00:21:59,119 --> 00:22:01,560 Speaker 1: of course, some of the some of the key examples 400 00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:04,800 Speaker 1: of the Egyptians had several or at least four may 401 00:22:04,880 --> 00:22:10,720 Speaker 1: Hee's pequette segment and tef nut and then in Hinduism 402 00:22:10,800 --> 00:22:15,280 Speaker 1: you have Nara Sima, which literally means manline in Sanskrit. 403 00:22:15,320 --> 00:22:18,520 Speaker 1: I've seen people online commenting that they believe that the 404 00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:22,600 Speaker 1: loan mention is and is a depiction of Nara sema. H. Well, 405 00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:26,119 Speaker 1: I mean it's it's essentially like visually the same idea. 406 00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:28,480 Speaker 1: It is that it is a humanoid with the lions head, 407 00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:31,880 Speaker 1: and this is in Hinduism, it's an avatar of Vishnu 408 00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:36,400 Speaker 1: and it's often seen it's often depicted slaying the demon 409 00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:41,600 Speaker 1: Haran yak a shippo, and it's always a grizzly scene 410 00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:46,760 Speaker 1: in which the lion avatar with its multiple arms is eviscerating, 411 00:22:46,800 --> 00:22:51,720 Speaker 1: like ripping this this human oid demon apart at the stomach. 412 00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:53,919 Speaker 1: I'm looking at an image right now. It is it 413 00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:57,640 Speaker 1: is rough, yeah, in trails flailing and you know their 414 00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:02,080 Speaker 1: intrails wrapped around the god's head. It's it's it's wonderful. Now. 415 00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:05,560 Speaker 1: The vision of the lion headed man in the loan 416 00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:08,480 Speaker 1: bench is as we said, it's kind of stately, it's 417 00:23:08,560 --> 00:23:11,400 Speaker 1: kind of serene, it's kind of pitiless, but it's not 418 00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:15,280 Speaker 1: doing anything overtly threatening. It's more like that that distant 419 00:23:15,320 --> 00:23:19,520 Speaker 1: predatory gaze that makes you uneasy. This depiction is roaring, 420 00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:21,879 Speaker 1: it's got the teeth beard, it's ready to bite you 421 00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:26,080 Speaker 1: in half. Now, there of course creatures in the myth 422 00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:29,680 Speaker 1: and legend that are the reverse of the lion man. 423 00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:31,959 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how about the sphinx, Right, it's the exact 424 00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:34,760 Speaker 1: opposite body of a lion with the head of a human. Yeah, 425 00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:37,560 Speaker 1: and you have you also have similar scenarios with of course, 426 00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:41,960 Speaker 1: the manticore, the chimera, and some depictions of of dragons 427 00:23:42,040 --> 00:23:48,439 Speaker 1: are are essentially lion headed intoities. Now another creature that 428 00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:51,240 Speaker 1: came up for me in my research, and this is 429 00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:53,439 Speaker 1: one I didn't I didn't know much about, and luckily 430 00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:56,040 Speaker 1: this is one that actually nobody knows a whole lot about. 431 00:23:56,400 --> 00:24:01,560 Speaker 1: It's still rather enigmatic. But the Lee onto Cephaline a 432 00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:05,800 Speaker 1: creature of Mythriyism, which is a mystery religion centered around 433 00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:08,399 Speaker 1: the god Mithrists in the Roman Empire from around the 434 00:24:08,440 --> 00:24:12,000 Speaker 1: first of the fourth centuries. Ce Mithraism is great because 435 00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:15,480 Speaker 1: it's got all these intriguing artifacts and artistic descriptions, but 436 00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:19,040 Speaker 1: people are not descriptions depictions from the ancient world, but 437 00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:21,280 Speaker 1: we don't know that much about it, where there's a 438 00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:24,560 Speaker 1: lot of mystery about what the content of this religion was. Yeah, 439 00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:26,399 Speaker 1: and this is a great example of because you have 440 00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:30,440 Speaker 1: a naked man with a lion's head. He's winged, has 441 00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:33,560 Speaker 1: like four wings. It looks like there's a serpent entwined 442 00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:37,560 Speaker 1: around him, much like a caduceus. And it's yeah, it's it's. 443 00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,520 Speaker 1: It's also also the lion's head seems like it might 444 00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:44,120 Speaker 1: be screaming or crying aloud in anguish. It's it's been 445 00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:48,160 Speaker 1: their additional cryptic details in the image as well, but uh, 446 00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:51,480 Speaker 1: it's very poorly understood. Well, whatever it's, it's a lot 447 00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:54,240 Speaker 1: of its secrets have have been lost to time. Can 448 00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:58,880 Speaker 1: you imagine if that happened to existing religions today. So 449 00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:02,040 Speaker 1: like imagine you are an archaeologist of the future and 450 00:25:02,080 --> 00:25:05,560 Speaker 1: you're digging through our artifacts of the twentieth century and 451 00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:09,679 Speaker 1: you can find some religious art, some religious art, I guess, 452 00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:13,120 Speaker 1: and some various depictions and descriptions of what's going on 453 00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:17,440 Speaker 1: and say Catholicism or modern Hinduism or something like that, 454 00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:21,480 Speaker 1: but you're mostly unable to discern what the like textual 455 00:25:21,560 --> 00:25:24,879 Speaker 1: contents of the religion were. Wouldn't that be fascinating, like 456 00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:28,000 Speaker 1: trying to piece it together? Yeah? Yeah, I mean you 457 00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:31,400 Speaker 1: could probably are probably various examples of just fashion shoots 458 00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:34,159 Speaker 1: and popular imagery from today. And if you didn't know 459 00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:37,080 Speaker 1: what the various icons were, I mean, how would you 460 00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:39,720 Speaker 1: figure it out? What's this hand sign that jay Z 461 00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:42,359 Speaker 1: is making in this image? What does it mean? You know, 462 00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,240 Speaker 1: it must have some kind of religious significance. Now, speaking 463 00:25:46,440 --> 00:25:49,919 Speaker 1: of now, earlier you mentioned what happens when Thag puts 464 00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,720 Speaker 1: on the the like lion head on top of his head, 465 00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:56,320 Speaker 1: And does that represent itself as some kind of alternate 466 00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,800 Speaker 1: creature or are we just looking at Thag wearing his clothes. 467 00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,920 Speaker 1: There is some debate about whether other ancient depictions of 468 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:07,320 Speaker 1: hybrid creatures are in fact hybrids, or whether we're looking 469 00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:12,040 Speaker 1: at somebody wearing an animal garment, right, yeah, yeah, Like 470 00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:15,239 Speaker 1: what instantly comes to mind is is something that is 471 00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:18,600 Speaker 1: at times referred to as the hornet God, which of 472 00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:22,760 Speaker 1: course I like, but also known as the Sorcerer. Nice, 473 00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,000 Speaker 1: So this one is from the Sorcerer. The most famous 474 00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:30,120 Speaker 1: sorcerer here is from a cavern known is the Sanctuary, 475 00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:34,600 Speaker 1: and this is from a cave in France, the Cave 476 00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:38,280 Speaker 1: of Troy fresh ri Age, and this is from around 477 00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:43,520 Speaker 1: estimates thirteen thousand BC E. Now the cave itself we discovered, 478 00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,639 Speaker 1: was discovered in nineteen fourteen, so it's it's interesting how 479 00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:49,960 Speaker 1: a lot of these discoveries are occurring in the early 480 00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,879 Speaker 1: part of the twentieth century. And the cave was found 481 00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,520 Speaker 1: to feature mostly cave art of animals, but also a 482 00:26:56,560 --> 00:27:00,760 Speaker 1: couple of these half human half animal figures. And the 483 00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:04,080 Speaker 1: dominant figure is the small humanoid again that is known 484 00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:06,439 Speaker 1: as the Horned God or the Sorcerer, and it's this 485 00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:10,399 Speaker 1: humanoid figure loosely with with with the head of a 486 00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:12,360 Speaker 1: of an animal. It's like with it with the handlers 487 00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:14,840 Speaker 1: with the head of a stagg or an elk or 488 00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:20,840 Speaker 1: something like that. Rob yeah and uh. And the interpretations vary. 489 00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,760 Speaker 1: Sometimes again there's this masters of animal argument or that 490 00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:30,680 Speaker 1: it's a divine figure. Priest and archaeologist Henry Bruel drew 491 00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:33,479 Speaker 1: and the sketch of the figure, and I have to 492 00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:37,080 Speaker 1: say it looks a little bit more elaborate than the 493 00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:41,439 Speaker 1: the actual photographs. So I think sometimes you know, a 494 00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:43,359 Speaker 1: lot of it falls to interpretation, you know, how do 495 00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:46,200 Speaker 1: you make sense of this image? And I've also read 496 00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:50,240 Speaker 1: some some criticism of of interpretations of the Sorcerer saying 497 00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:52,919 Speaker 1: that look what we could be looking at here just 498 00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:57,399 Speaker 1: just it's just the result of overlaps between depicted forms 499 00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:01,120 Speaker 1: or cases where one image was pain it over by another. 500 00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:03,880 Speaker 1: Now that being said, you can you can make those 501 00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:08,439 Speaker 1: kind of criticisms regarding some of these cave paintings. But 502 00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:12,280 Speaker 1: the lion Man is most definitely a line, right. There's 503 00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,199 Speaker 1: no room for like, oh goodness, I went to just 504 00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:19,560 Speaker 1: carve this image, to painstakingly spend four hours making this 505 00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:23,240 Speaker 1: image of a fag here, and then I accidentally gave 506 00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:26,880 Speaker 1: him a lion's head. It's just not gonna happen, right. 507 00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:29,919 Speaker 1: So when I was reading about this whole thing the 508 00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:33,359 Speaker 1: other day, about the loan manch, I thought, Okay, he 509 00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:37,080 Speaker 1: might be the oldest known evidence of a monster on Earth, 510 00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,800 Speaker 1: but it's probably not the first monster that ever existed 511 00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:44,760 Speaker 1: in somebody's imagination. And then it hit me, at some 512 00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,080 Speaker 1: point in time, there had to be a first monster. 513 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,040 Speaker 1: There had to be the first time a human or 514 00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,960 Speaker 1: maybe some other previous animal human ancestor was able to 515 00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:59,320 Speaker 1: form a mental picture of a horrifying creature that was 516 00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:03,200 Speaker 1: not some known predator or even some known predator made 517 00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:07,000 Speaker 1: a little bit bigger, but an unholy being that did 518 00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:09,600 Speaker 1: not exist in nature, you know, the clause of a 519 00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:12,160 Speaker 1: crab on the body of a lion or something. Yeah, 520 00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:15,160 Speaker 1: I mean there's a there's a cognitive step involved here. 521 00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,760 Speaker 1: This is there's a cognitive first step that is that 522 00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,520 Speaker 1: you can't just gloss over, you know, because even you know, 523 00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:24,959 Speaker 1: if you were to drag in say that you know 524 00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:28,000 Speaker 1: the content of the bicameral mind episodes that we did. 525 00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:30,920 Speaker 1: You know, even in that case where you have have 526 00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:34,160 Speaker 1: you know, something drastically different taking place with the human mind, 527 00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:36,560 Speaker 1: it would still need to draw that image from somewhere 528 00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:39,840 Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, they would have to get put together somehow. Yeah, 529 00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:43,400 Speaker 1: So at some point the bicameral mind would have to stop. 530 00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:46,080 Speaker 1: Suddenly it's not just speaking through humans or animals, but 531 00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,000 Speaker 1: it is speaking through a human animal hybrid. And what 532 00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,200 Speaker 1: is causing that? Where does that come from? As much 533 00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:53,120 Speaker 1: as I love it, we we can't keep coming back 534 00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:54,760 Speaker 1: to the bi cameral mind because people are going to 535 00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:58,960 Speaker 1: start to think, yeah, they are. But but I know people, people, listeners, 536 00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:00,640 Speaker 1: minds are going there, so I I had to dip 537 00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:02,920 Speaker 1: in for a second. Well, I appreciate you doing that, Robert, 538 00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:06,600 Speaker 1: but I still hold out my skepticism on the bicameral mind. 539 00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:08,640 Speaker 1: But yeah, so I want to come back to this 540 00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:11,760 Speaker 1: question for the rest of today's episode. Are there any 541 00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:15,840 Speaker 1: clues about where this first monster came from? Obviously it's 542 00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:19,040 Speaker 1: lost to prehistory. We can know when that happened and 543 00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,680 Speaker 1: what the monster consisted of, but we might be able 544 00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:24,560 Speaker 1: to look at, or at least suppose some things about 545 00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:29,000 Speaker 1: human monster creation, monster fear that we give us ideas 546 00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:32,400 Speaker 1: about the circumstances in which this monster might have arisen. 547 00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:34,600 Speaker 1: And I guess we'll start on that journey when we 548 00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:40,040 Speaker 1: come back from a break. All right, we're back. So, Robert, 549 00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,880 Speaker 1: what is a monster? Well? You know, I love this 550 00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:46,440 Speaker 1: question because the answers tend to vary depending on who's 551 00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:52,000 Speaker 1: thinking hard about monsters. Give me Jessup's answer first, and 552 00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:56,600 Speaker 1: jessep has a more literal interpretation of these things. But uh, 553 00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:59,320 Speaker 1: one example that I love is that the idea that 554 00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:04,000 Speaker 1: the word monstrosity originates from the Latin uh monsterr ary 555 00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:07,840 Speaker 1: which means to show or illustrate a point. This is 556 00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:09,760 Speaker 1: a good point. I mean very often if you think 557 00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,000 Speaker 1: about monster legends, they come with the moral, don't they. Yeah, 558 00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,320 Speaker 1: Or there's some idea wrapped up in it, like I'm 559 00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:20,360 Speaker 1: afraid of this, but why this thing exists? But why? 560 00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:23,400 Speaker 1: And he can vary, you know, it can involve various symbolism, 561 00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:30,560 Speaker 1: it can involved just very simple metaphorical extrapolations. But yeah, 562 00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,080 Speaker 1: very often there is a there's a message, there's an 563 00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,200 Speaker 1: idea there, and you know, I think this falls in 564 00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:40,120 Speaker 1: line with what St. Augustine had to say about monsters. 565 00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,239 Speaker 1: He said that monster is part of God's plan, an 566 00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:47,080 Speaker 1: adornment of the universe that can also teach us about 567 00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:51,480 Speaker 1: the dangers of sin. But other medieval commentators also they 568 00:31:51,560 --> 00:31:54,680 Speaker 1: just defined a monster is a thing that's against nature. Now, 569 00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:59,000 Speaker 1: for people who believe that nature was thoroughly populated with monsters, 570 00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:02,760 Speaker 1: what gave them the like? What made the distinction? Right? 571 00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:05,880 Speaker 1: It's against nature? But nature is full of them? Where 572 00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:08,000 Speaker 1: did that come from? Well? I mean the other thing, 573 00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:10,640 Speaker 1: of course, is that even how can it be if 574 00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,760 Speaker 1: it's it's if it's against nature, but it's also it's 575 00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:14,840 Speaker 1: made of nature. I mean, that's one of the whole 576 00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:17,360 Speaker 1: things we've been hitting so far, is it's a cave 577 00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:20,800 Speaker 1: lion plus a man. It's a combination of things that exists. 578 00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:24,040 Speaker 1: So it's not just whole cloth, you know, because I 579 00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:28,040 Speaker 1: mean virtually no monster out there is completely removed from 580 00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:33,000 Speaker 1: our biological world. Most of them have some analog in 581 00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:36,560 Speaker 1: in the natural world, and there's there's something to be 582 00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:39,720 Speaker 1: said there about our connection with nature. I mean, even 583 00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:41,760 Speaker 1: when people try to come up with monsters from the 584 00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:44,640 Speaker 1: outer dark, some kind of you know, the cosmic kind 585 00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:46,880 Speaker 1: of monsters, there's still it's like, well, it's a human 586 00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:49,000 Speaker 1: with a squid head and it's really big. Yeah, Or 587 00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:52,040 Speaker 1: you're just struggling to come up with something that doesn't 588 00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,120 Speaker 1: have an analogy in nature, right, Or if you think 589 00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:56,560 Speaker 1: you've created something that has no analogy in nature, you're 590 00:32:56,600 --> 00:33:01,040 Speaker 1: just recreating like a Cambrian era organism that you just 591 00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:03,400 Speaker 1: didn't know about. Hey, if you haven't listened to our 592 00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:06,320 Speaker 1: Cambrian Monsters episode, you should go back to the I 593 00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,680 Speaker 1: guess it was last week or whenever this airs. Check 594 00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:13,640 Speaker 1: out the Cambrian Monster mash. Those were some monster with monsters. Now, 595 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:18,719 Speaker 1: speaking of of monsters, particularly sea monsters. Thirteenth century theologian 596 00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:22,400 Speaker 1: Thomas of contemporary he devoted an entire book to see 597 00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:26,200 Speaker 1: monsters and another to the fish of the sea. So 598 00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:28,560 Speaker 1: his dividing line here, But you know what goes in 599 00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:31,600 Speaker 1: which book? This is answering my question. Right, nature is 600 00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:34,400 Speaker 1: full of monsters. How can you tell what the monsters are? Yeah? Yeah, 601 00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:36,720 Speaker 1: his answer would be, what it all comes down to, 602 00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:39,920 Speaker 1: rarity inside, that's what's mad. That's what makes a C monster. 603 00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:45,280 Speaker 1: Um so, so like blue whales would be C monsters. Yeah, 604 00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:47,840 Speaker 1: because they're just so big. It's I mean, it's quite 605 00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:52,520 Speaker 1: literally monstrous, and it's it's essentially rare, especially I guess 606 00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:54,600 Speaker 1: if it's yeah, if it's like an apex predator, so 607 00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:58,360 Speaker 1: like a megalodon would have been a CE monster. They 608 00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:00,320 Speaker 1: didn't exist at the time, right, Or you know, we're 609 00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:03,360 Speaker 1: saying a horse is a rather large creature, but it's 610 00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:05,440 Speaker 1: not a rarity, so you know it's not a monster. 611 00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:07,880 Speaker 1: But if you had a dog the side of a 612 00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:09,840 Speaker 1: size of a horse, that would be a rarity, that 613 00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:12,920 Speaker 1: would be a monster. I feel like this is a 614 00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:18,239 Speaker 1: really dumb and unimaginative I don't think that's good at all. No, 615 00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:22,080 Speaker 1: it doesn't really help us out here. But regardless of 616 00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:26,240 Speaker 1: how you define monsters, we of course have countless monsters, 617 00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:28,120 Speaker 1: and not just of course the ones that we've dreamt 618 00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,520 Speaker 1: up to, you know, recently to entertain this though, I 619 00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:34,880 Speaker 1: think that in many cases we're we're not simply entertaining 620 00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:37,840 Speaker 1: ourselves with monsters. We are we are creating something that 621 00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:42,440 Speaker 1: speaks to two deeper fears, that speaks to, you know, 622 00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:45,600 Speaker 1: some level of anxiety about our lives or the modern world. 623 00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:49,560 Speaker 1: And of course religion and myth and legend folklore are 624 00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:53,719 Speaker 1: just just totally populated with creatures that are that are 625 00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:56,919 Speaker 1: hybrids of various forms. Yeah, I like what you said 626 00:34:56,960 --> 00:34:58,799 Speaker 1: that we I think I've said this on the show before, 627 00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:01,840 Speaker 1: but one reason times people ask me, like, what, what 628 00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:04,560 Speaker 1: do you like about horror movies? I mean, they're so dumb. 629 00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:07,800 Speaker 1: It's true that the horror genre has a lot of 630 00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:11,040 Speaker 1: really really bad movies in it, But I think horror 631 00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:14,839 Speaker 1: movies are interesting because even when they're bad, they sort 632 00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:19,400 Speaker 1: of show you something. They're instructive about the anxieties of 633 00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:22,439 Speaker 1: the age in which they're produced, and they they tap 634 00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:26,040 Speaker 1: into something primal about what our what our deepest fears 635 00:35:26,120 --> 00:35:29,200 Speaker 1: are what's occupying, occupying our minds when we're in the 636 00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:32,400 Speaker 1: dark alone. And I like that about them. I like 637 00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:36,160 Speaker 1: even when they're not good stories and they're not told well, 638 00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:39,640 Speaker 1: they're still instructive about the society and the people that 639 00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,960 Speaker 1: made them. Well. A lot of it comes down to symbols, Right. 640 00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:45,600 Speaker 1: If you can have somebody who has no clue what 641 00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:48,680 Speaker 1: they're doing, and if you're taking existing symbols and you're 642 00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:52,520 Speaker 1: combining them one way or another, you're going to inevitably 643 00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:55,840 Speaker 1: make a statement. You may be completely deaf to that statement, 644 00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,799 Speaker 1: completely blind to that statement, but that's often when it's 645 00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:02,280 Speaker 1: the most interesting. Yeah, like, oh my goodness, you accidentally 646 00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:06,880 Speaker 1: created something brilliant. Uh. Like you made that the killer's mask, 647 00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:09,040 Speaker 1: and you you didn't even think about all of the 648 00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:13,200 Speaker 1: ramifications of of that symbol. Yeah, what does it mean 649 00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:15,400 Speaker 1: that the killer wears a hockey mask? Yeah? Or a 650 00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:18,360 Speaker 1: baby mask or a or a you know, an obviously 651 00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,520 Speaker 1: store bought ghost face mask. I mean, you can you 652 00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,080 Speaker 1: can kind of go wild with any of these these examples, 653 00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:26,399 Speaker 1: and uh and and try and tease out a big 654 00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,000 Speaker 1: academic paper on what the what the meaning of the 655 00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:32,120 Speaker 1: film is obviously it's the hockey will kill us all 656 00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:35,480 Speaker 1: in the end, fear of Canadians. I think, yeah, all right, Well, 657 00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:38,400 Speaker 1: to keep chasing this question about where the first monster 658 00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:40,480 Speaker 1: might have come from, I think maybe we should take 659 00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:43,640 Speaker 1: a detour and look at this one paper that I 660 00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:46,080 Speaker 1: found that that I thought was really interesting. It doesn't 661 00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:49,040 Speaker 1: directly answer the question we're talking about, but it comes 662 00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:52,640 Speaker 1: really close. It goes along similar pathways of thinking. And 663 00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:55,200 Speaker 1: it's a paper by a scholar called Stephen T. Asthma, 664 00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:58,239 Speaker 1: and the paper is titled Monsters on the Brain and 665 00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:03,240 Speaker 1: Evolutionary epistem all Legy of Horror published in Social Research 666 00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:06,520 Speaker 1: and International Quarterly, And that's a social science journal that 667 00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:09,640 Speaker 1: has a lot of different social science genres in it. 668 00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,840 Speaker 1: And basically, what Asthma is trying to do in this 669 00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:18,680 Speaker 1: article is trace what the biological origins of the experience 670 00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:21,719 Speaker 1: of horror are. And I think if we look at that, 671 00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,520 Speaker 1: that might provide some insights about where monsters could emerge 672 00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:29,720 Speaker 1: in our anthropological history. And Asthma starts with an interesting question, 673 00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:33,040 Speaker 1: one that's very common with all kinds of studies about behavior. 674 00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:39,600 Speaker 1: Our fear responses modular or conditioned. In other words, are 675 00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:43,640 Speaker 1: our fear responses and our monster fears instinctual born into 676 00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:47,759 Speaker 1: us or they just learned and conditioned by culture and experience. 677 00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:51,040 Speaker 1: And just to rephrase from the beginning, I think one 678 00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:53,320 Speaker 1: thing we can eliminate is that it's quite obvious that 679 00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:56,360 Speaker 1: at least some of our fears are conditioned or learned. Like, 680 00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:58,399 Speaker 1: there is no way you were born with a fear 681 00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:03,279 Speaker 1: of airplanes. That's not part of your revolutionary heritage. So 682 00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:05,120 Speaker 1: though you might have, you know, you might have an 683 00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:07,160 Speaker 1: inborn fear of heights, you could see that could be 684 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:10,840 Speaker 1: part of evolutionary here, but not like silver machines filled 685 00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,480 Speaker 1: with other humans or barreling through the sky. Right, So 686 00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:16,120 Speaker 1: there might be instinctual elements that go into that fear, 687 00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:19,319 Speaker 1: but the fear itself, the content there, is clearly conditioned 688 00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:22,759 Speaker 1: or learned. But the real question is are any of 689 00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:27,719 Speaker 1: our fears modular or instinctual or are they all conditioned 690 00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:31,799 Speaker 1: or learned. So Asthma kicks off this favor by by 691 00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,120 Speaker 1: pretty much stating the obvious fear exists in our bodies 692 00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:40,440 Speaker 1: and minds. Fearful stimulized stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, so 693 00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:43,480 Speaker 1: perhaps you'll freeze in the face of fear, maybe you'll flee, 694 00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,359 Speaker 1: maybe you'll you'll suddenly have this burst of bravery, you'll 695 00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:49,239 Speaker 1: turn around and fight. But the object of terror gives 696 00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:52,680 Speaker 1: us a physical jolt, and it demands reaction. And he 697 00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:56,280 Speaker 1: also points out that there's a strong hormonal component entailing 698 00:38:56,320 --> 00:38:59,480 Speaker 1: the cortico trope in releasing hormone or c r H, 699 00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:04,239 Speaker 1: cortisol and adrenaline. Asthma points to a study in fact 700 00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:08,920 Speaker 1: in which scientists inserted a gene in mice that makes CRH, 701 00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:12,879 Speaker 1: resulting in more fearful mice, or removing it to make 702 00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:17,120 Speaker 1: quote an extremely fearless mouse. I would I would venture 703 00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:22,600 Speaker 1: to say that both prospects are horrifying. So Asthma argues 704 00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:25,560 Speaker 1: that these are all old brain systems. So this is 705 00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:29,600 Speaker 1: the basement of horror, and we advanced organisms. Well, we 706 00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:32,839 Speaker 1: have an entire haunted house built atop these ancient brain 707 00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,200 Speaker 1: stem ruins. Like this analogy you're going with, Yeah, you 708 00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,960 Speaker 1: have all the limbic emotional circuits here. You can think 709 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:43,040 Speaker 1: of this neural mammalian haunted house containing seven key rooms. 710 00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:45,960 Speaker 1: You got your fear room, your care room, your lust room, 711 00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:49,719 Speaker 1: your rage room, your panic room, your your seeking room 712 00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:54,320 Speaker 1: in your playroom, and each room commands specific neural pathways 713 00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,040 Speaker 1: through the brain pipes wriggling around and diving down into 714 00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:00,480 Speaker 1: the haunted ruins beneath. So we'd be thing that when 715 00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:03,680 Speaker 1: you have these different types of affective reactions, say like 716 00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:07,280 Speaker 1: you're engaged in play behaviors or you're engaged in lust 717 00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,400 Speaker 1: behaviors or fear behaviors, they don't look the same in 718 00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:13,560 Speaker 1: the brain. They take different avenues through your different brain 719 00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:17,719 Speaker 1: regions and excite different types of tissue. Right now, the 720 00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:21,480 Speaker 1: million fear is rooted in the amigdola. And we can 721 00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:23,680 Speaker 1: talk about some direct evidence of this later, but this 722 00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,480 Speaker 1: is a pretty well evidenced proposition, right, And we can 723 00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:30,400 Speaker 1: think of this is a haunted laboratory, and it's probably 724 00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:34,400 Speaker 1: right next to the memory late and haunted library of 725 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:39,040 Speaker 1: the hippocampus, and they worked together to enable conditioned learning. Right, So, 726 00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:43,719 Speaker 1: the amygdala is what regulates fear, and the hippocampus supplies 727 00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:47,160 Speaker 1: the information content of the fear uh and the and 728 00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:50,359 Speaker 1: this is conditioned learning. So the simple version is, let's 729 00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,600 Speaker 1: say somebody puts you in a lab and they keep 730 00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:55,120 Speaker 1: showing you episodes of TV shows and every time they 731 00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:57,680 Speaker 1: show you an episode of Seinfeld, you get an electric 732 00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:00,680 Speaker 1: shock and it goes for the duration of the episode. 733 00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:04,680 Speaker 1: You will probably develop a conditioned seinfeld phobia, which is 734 00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:08,880 Speaker 1: an avoidance or aversion reaction to Jerry Seinfeld's face. And 735 00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,880 Speaker 1: this is this is a standard accounting of how conditioned 736 00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:15,680 Speaker 1: fears are developed. Alright, so we have our haunted house here. 737 00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:18,880 Speaker 1: What's a haunted house without a few ghosts? And the 738 00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:22,840 Speaker 1: ghosts come to us via evolution. This is what ASMA 739 00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:26,799 Speaker 1: refers to as the heritable dispositional levels of fear or timidity. Now, 740 00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:28,759 Speaker 1: refer back to what you mentioned a minute ago, which 741 00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:32,320 Speaker 1: those mice, right, you can you can inherit different levels 742 00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,560 Speaker 1: of fear disposition, So you can have these really brave 743 00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:38,680 Speaker 1: mice that you artificially select for, or these really scared 744 00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:42,200 Speaker 1: mice that you artificially select for. But also, could the 745 00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:45,080 Speaker 1: contents of our fears be heritable? That's sort of part 746 00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:47,640 Speaker 1: of the question. We're asking not just how likely you 747 00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:50,000 Speaker 1: are to become afraid, but what you're afraid of? Can 748 00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:53,520 Speaker 1: you get that from your parents through your genes? Well, 749 00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:56,200 Speaker 1: there's some there's some interesting supporting evidence for this, and 750 00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:59,760 Speaker 1: I imagine a number of you have encountered videos online 751 00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:03,520 Speaker 1: of cats reacting to cucumbers. You know, they turn around, 752 00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:05,719 Speaker 1: they see a cucumber, they freak out. The ideas that 753 00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:09,000 Speaker 1: they have this this uh, this ingrained response to something 754 00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:11,880 Speaker 1: that is snake like, and they have been experienced experiments 755 00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,480 Speaker 1: to show similar reactions in chimps as well. Uh. We 756 00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:19,120 Speaker 1: also see this along with spider fears in humans. Yeah. 757 00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:21,560 Speaker 1: One example showing this was in the nineteen forties, the 758 00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:26,560 Speaker 1: psychologist Donald Hebb found that even infant chimpanzees were terrified 759 00:42:26,640 --> 00:42:29,680 Speaker 1: of images of snakes, even if they'd never been exposed 760 00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:33,280 Speaker 1: to images of snakes before. Now there's an interesting update 761 00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:35,880 Speaker 1: to that, which is that have found that chimps weren't 762 00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:38,759 Speaker 1: just afraid of snakes, but of any quote. And this 763 00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:43,840 Speaker 1: is Asthma's wording extremely varied morphology, as they encountered so 764 00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:46,840 Speaker 1: like really odd shapes that weren't part of their normal 765 00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:50,320 Speaker 1: day to day life. But for more evidence of of 766 00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:54,879 Speaker 1: the brains conditioning towards reaction to snakes, I found one 767 00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:57,680 Speaker 1: recent study. It was about neural pathways for evolution of 768 00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:01,560 Speaker 1: rapid detection of snakes and it was by uh vanle 769 00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:05,920 Speaker 1: quant at All and it's called pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological 770 00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,960 Speaker 1: evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes in 771 00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:12,640 Speaker 1: p n A S. And basically it found that there 772 00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:17,640 Speaker 1: are neurons in the primate medial and dorsolateral pulvinar that 773 00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:21,919 Speaker 1: responds selectively to snakes, seeming to indicate that there's something 774 00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:25,920 Speaker 1: hardwired in the primate brain to cause this rapid detection 775 00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,919 Speaker 1: of snakelike shapes as opposed to images of other things 776 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,600 Speaker 1: like monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometric shapes, and so 777 00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:37,800 Speaker 1: Asthma in his paper, he wonders, quote if some of 778 00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:41,479 Speaker 1: our deep seated monster fears may be rooted in real 779 00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:46,439 Speaker 1: predators or environmental threats from our prehistory. So we're talking 780 00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:53,040 Speaker 1: about cognitive model shaped in the Plistocene era, genetically engraved 781 00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:57,120 Speaker 1: archetypes that continue to resonate, uh, you know on up 782 00:43:57,160 --> 00:43:59,719 Speaker 1: into modern times. Now, you can totally see why that 783 00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:02,400 Speaker 1: would the case. Right, It's clear that some types of 784 00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:06,160 Speaker 1: fears could be adaptive. If you are born with a 785 00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:10,480 Speaker 1: natural fear of lion shaped things, you're probably gonna survive 786 00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,080 Speaker 1: more often than people not born with the fear of 787 00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:16,600 Speaker 1: lion shaped things, Right, And so The question is, is 788 00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,640 Speaker 1: the image of a snake or a spider, or anything 789 00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:22,760 Speaker 1: that conforms to a to a common part of monster 790 00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:27,120 Speaker 1: imagery somehow encoded deeply in your biology. Is it an 791 00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:30,600 Speaker 1: inherited fear response that you get from threats faced by 792 00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:34,600 Speaker 1: your ancestors, or are these all things we learned to 793 00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:38,040 Speaker 1: fear from culture and experience. So Asthma sites some lines 794 00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:41,680 Speaker 1: of thinking against heritable fear content, Like, one thing he 795 00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:46,560 Speaker 1: asks is how does the content itself get transmitted? You know, like, 796 00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:50,400 Speaker 1: if you're afraid of snakes, how could that image of 797 00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:53,600 Speaker 1: a snake literally come down through the generations. Now I'm 798 00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:57,239 Speaker 1: not sure I buy that objection so much, because I 799 00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,880 Speaker 1: do think it seems likely that we can inherit some 800 00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:04,640 Speaker 1: types of image re recognition. I mean, here's one example. 801 00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:08,799 Speaker 1: If you can't inherit any kind of image re recognition 802 00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:13,440 Speaker 1: from your parents, how would animals know what visual cues 803 00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:16,600 Speaker 1: to look for in mating? You could say with humans, 804 00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:19,239 Speaker 1: you could say, well, maybe it's all culturally conditioned and 805 00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:22,680 Speaker 1: that's how But what about non human animals, what about 806 00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,440 Speaker 1: non social non human animals? There seem to be I 807 00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:29,720 Speaker 1: would think that you can transmit some types of imagery 808 00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:34,680 Speaker 1: across generations through heritable predispositions, and of course it's important 809 00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,600 Speaker 1: to wonder what kind of content is actually getting transmitted here. Yeah, 810 00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:42,759 Speaker 1: and that's one objection that Asthma doesn't really go into 811 00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:46,080 Speaker 1: is deeply, but I think actually does matter why snakes 812 00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:49,200 Speaker 1: and spiders, Like I can think of animals that are 813 00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:52,800 Speaker 1: generally much much more dangerous and probably much more dangerous 814 00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:57,960 Speaker 1: to our direct ancestors on the African savannah than spiders 815 00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:00,600 Speaker 1: and snakes, and yet they don't inspire nearly the same 816 00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:05,120 Speaker 1: visual revulsion. Like a hippopotamus is ten thousand times more 817 00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:08,160 Speaker 1: dangerous than the average snake or spider, and yet it 818 00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,200 Speaker 1: does not present as a universal phobia. You don't see 819 00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:14,800 Speaker 1: humans all over the world being terrified of hippopotami. Yeah, so, 820 00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:19,000 Speaker 1: or at least certainly not outside of a direct contact 821 00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:21,640 Speaker 1: with them, like environmental contact with them. Yeah, unless you've 822 00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:25,440 Speaker 1: learned to be afraid of them because they're actually dangerous. Otherwise, 823 00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:27,439 Speaker 1: I think we all have that point growing up where 824 00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:30,359 Speaker 1: we're told, oh, actually hippos are exceedingly dangerous and they're 825 00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:33,920 Speaker 1: more dangerous than the crocodiles. Yeah, as always take that 826 00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:36,280 Speaker 1: with the caveat that we don't want to demonize animals 827 00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,160 Speaker 1: that are wonderful, right, don't go kill in hippos. I 828 00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:42,640 Speaker 1: can't watch enough hippo videos on life of their of 829 00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:46,239 Speaker 1: what of their their viral explosive defecation. No, well that 830 00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:48,640 Speaker 1: I think that's a fabulous topic as well. There's a 831 00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:52,160 Speaker 1: lot to that actually, Um, I've read papers about the 832 00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:55,600 Speaker 1: way that they spin their tails to distribute the fecal 833 00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:58,320 Speaker 1: matter h and the different theories as to why. I 834 00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:01,920 Speaker 1: mean it gets into parricide and leeches. It's fabulous stuff. 835 00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:04,359 Speaker 1: But their babies are super cute, That's what I'm getting at. 836 00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:09,560 Speaker 1: You ever watched the obi with their their their mom's. Yeah, 837 00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:11,439 Speaker 1: they'll grow up to bite your legs off, but they're 838 00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,600 Speaker 1: they're very cute as babies. But yeah, no demonization of hippos. 839 00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:18,680 Speaker 1: Don't go killing hippos or anything anyway. But back to Asthma. Okay, 840 00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:22,520 Speaker 1: so we do have these potential pitfalls and the idea 841 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,080 Speaker 1: that our fears are predatory fears are inherited directly and 842 00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:30,520 Speaker 1: biologically from our parents. But Asthma thinks he sort of 843 00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:34,120 Speaker 1: has a solution to this dilemma, right, Yeah, he gets 844 00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:39,080 Speaker 1: into this topic of specific versus generic pattern recognition systems. 845 00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:42,800 Speaker 1: So he points to the universality of snake and spider 846 00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:45,920 Speaker 1: phobias as we've been discussing, but also to studies by 847 00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:52,200 Speaker 1: ethologists Wolfgang Schleet who he carried out these experiments where 848 00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:54,960 Speaker 1: he took bird chicks and he exposed them to fly 849 00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:59,719 Speaker 1: over silhouettes of both hawks and goose and geese. The 850 00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:04,279 Speaker 1: caused fear, but seemingly not the goose. But if they 851 00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:08,360 Speaker 1: were exposed to repeated hawk fly over shapes very earlier 852 00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:12,640 Speaker 1: in the development, they feared the goose but not the hawk. 853 00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,680 Speaker 1: So it it's it's curious. So you basically it was 854 00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:19,400 Speaker 1: about what they were exposed to early on. And by 855 00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:20,839 Speaker 1: the way, I have to add the fact these were 856 00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:26,120 Speaker 1: turkey chicks, your your butterballs were being experimented on a 857 00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:28,640 Speaker 1: little bit in infancy. By the way, I love that 858 00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:30,960 Speaker 1: idea of of fearing the goose. I think we should 859 00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:33,680 Speaker 1: we should incorporate that into our discussions of fear. If 860 00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:35,919 Speaker 1: you have an unfounded fear, you can say, oh, you're 861 00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,239 Speaker 1: really fearing the goose on that one. So that's like 862 00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,360 Speaker 1: when you're afraid of something that isn't really dangerous, but 863 00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:43,560 Speaker 1: it's because you had a bad experience with it as 864 00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:46,319 Speaker 1: a child. Yeah, I mean, but you know, as we're 865 00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:48,600 Speaker 1: discussing the development of fears, like, that's kind of that's 866 00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:50,600 Speaker 1: how we work, That's how you survive in the wild. 867 00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:53,959 Speaker 1: You the person who fears the lion that is not there, 868 00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:56,359 Speaker 1: that has a better chance of surviving than the person 869 00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:58,919 Speaker 1: who does not fear the lions that may be there. 870 00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:02,120 Speaker 1: It's true, you'd rather have false positives than false negatives. 871 00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:06,200 Speaker 1: I should correct myself there, because fearing the goose wouldn't 872 00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:08,359 Speaker 1: be that you had a bad experience with the goose, 873 00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:10,760 Speaker 1: would be that you never had an experience with a goose. 874 00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:13,239 Speaker 1: Un Thus, you're afraid of them because they don't they 875 00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:16,919 Speaker 1: don't fit into your your picture of the world. Maybe 876 00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:19,080 Speaker 1: it's a good expression for like when your kid won't 877 00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:21,919 Speaker 1: try some new food or something's like, stop fearing the goose. 878 00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:28,680 Speaker 1: Don't just go for it, baby, And oh I should 879 00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:31,760 Speaker 1: stop laughing at my own jokes. Okay. Uh So. Slights 880 00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:35,960 Speaker 1: work focused on replications of older experiments originally carried out 881 00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:39,880 Speaker 1: by Lorenz and ten Bergen in the nineteen thirties, and 882 00:49:40,120 --> 00:49:44,759 Speaker 1: to quote from Asthma, this is quote corroborating Hebb's idea. 883 00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:48,480 Speaker 1: Remember Donald Hebb from earlier idea that some discrepancy between 884 00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:53,400 Speaker 1: a new perception and previous background stored experiences causes the 885 00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:56,200 Speaker 1: fearful response. Remember how the chimps were frightened by any 886 00:49:56,360 --> 00:50:01,640 Speaker 1: unfamiliar morphology shapes they weren't familiar with. So, Asthma continues, quote, 887 00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:05,600 Speaker 1: theoretically one could condition an animal to be unresponsive to 888 00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:10,640 Speaker 1: snakes and hawks, but utterly terrified of fluffy bunnies. So 889 00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:14,600 Speaker 1: this is Asthma's position. Um, he's sort of working towards 890 00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,000 Speaker 1: this thing. Well, let's let's let's get there on our 891 00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:19,359 Speaker 1: own time. Yeah. He says that all of this makes 892 00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:21,879 Speaker 1: sense though if you look at it in the light 893 00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:26,160 Speaker 1: of Darwin, Right, he's talking about the generic conditioning idea, right, Yeah, 894 00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:30,960 Speaker 1: because he talks about the quote fearful reaction to categorical mismatch. So, 895 00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:34,240 Speaker 1: as Asthma puts it, quote, the local environment will condition 896 00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,799 Speaker 1: the infant animal, and then the cognitive development will lock 897 00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:41,960 Speaker 1: in the categories, creating a software program that recognizes some 898 00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:46,440 Speaker 1: animals and mismatches novelties. So Asthma is sort of proposing 899 00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:49,759 Speaker 1: a hybrid model of the origins of fear imagery. Not 900 00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:54,000 Speaker 1: necessarily that it's that it's received imagery from your ancestors, 901 00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:56,719 Speaker 1: and not necessarily that it's all learned in life. But 902 00:50:56,760 --> 00:50:59,920 Speaker 1: it's one that combines elements that are automatic and instinctual 903 00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:03,400 Speaker 1: along with elements that are modifiable and learned. Yeah, he 904 00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:06,880 Speaker 1: calls it a quote content free recognition system. And so 905 00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:10,480 Speaker 1: the basis of this is that we whatever we are 906 00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:15,120 Speaker 1: exposed to an early childhood becomes part of our okay category, 907 00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:18,120 Speaker 1: and whatever we're not exposed to become as part of 908 00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:21,680 Speaker 1: the fear category. Exactly. And in fact, he points to 909 00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:25,239 Speaker 1: a specific study. This is the studies, uh that we're 910 00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:29,240 Speaker 1: conducted by Mary Ainsworth in the nineties seventies, the Strange 911 00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:34,279 Speaker 1: situation experiments, and uh, these these backed up the notion 912 00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:37,560 Speaker 1: that there's a window of opportunity for template formation and 913 00:51:37,640 --> 00:51:40,160 Speaker 1: it closes after six months. This is great. This is 914 00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:43,960 Speaker 1: part of the freaking out your children genre experiments. Everything 915 00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:46,920 Speaker 1: is stored as normal in those first six months, the 916 00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:50,480 Speaker 1: argument goes, and only after that are the new experiences 917 00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:54,239 Speaker 1: initially stored a strange and novel and judged in light 918 00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:58,480 Speaker 1: of existing templates. That's why if you encounter a child 919 00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:01,160 Speaker 1: that is less than six months, they're looking at everything 920 00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:03,800 Speaker 1: the same. You're not going to get those shifty baby 921 00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:06,600 Speaker 1: eyes and a shifty toddler rized till later, you know, 922 00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:09,279 Speaker 1: because we've all encountered those kids that like instantly distrust you. 923 00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:11,759 Speaker 1: They look at you and you can tell they distrust you. 924 00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:14,160 Speaker 1: You're like, what are you doing? Yeah, I just got here. 925 00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:16,080 Speaker 1: What are you basing this on? And they're basing it 926 00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:17,800 Speaker 1: on the template that they have. You were not in 927 00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:20,120 Speaker 1: that template. So this would seem to back up his 928 00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:23,160 Speaker 1: idea of the fact that there's a sort of content 929 00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:27,120 Speaker 1: free recognition system. Uh. And it also would would help 930 00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:30,239 Speaker 1: answer this question of how come infants, if this is 931 00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:33,600 Speaker 1: the case, don't become terrified of every new image they 932 00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:38,360 Speaker 1: encounter right right now. It's it's uh, it's worth noting asthma. 933 00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:40,320 Speaker 1: In all this, he points out some of the obvious 934 00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:42,960 Speaker 1: that many of our monsters or hybrids of threatening creatures, 935 00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:47,480 Speaker 1: and specifically he points out the alien face hugger because 936 00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:51,840 Speaker 1: this is essentially a spider and a snake fused together 937 00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:56,600 Speaker 1: into one awful crab like entity. You know, it's the 938 00:52:56,680 --> 00:52:58,680 Speaker 1: worst parts of the spider and the worst parts of 939 00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:02,000 Speaker 1: a snake and the worst part of an oyster. Well yeah, yeah, 940 00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:03,919 Speaker 1: once you start cutting into it, for sure, but there's 941 00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,239 Speaker 1: no worse part of an oyster. It's all good. Uh. 942 00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:10,480 Speaker 1: So Asthma says that this what we have here is uh, 943 00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:15,080 Speaker 1: the phylogenetic memory of ancient danger and monstrous hybrids allow 944 00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:19,120 Speaker 1: us to to further strengthen, augment, and transmit those fears. Right, 945 00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:21,160 Speaker 1: And that would seem to go to this like instinctual 946 00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,920 Speaker 1: fear read But Asthma has this other interesting hypothesis. He 947 00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:29,719 Speaker 1: discusses about what what contributes to what makes spiders and 948 00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:32,480 Speaker 1: snakes specifically scary, and this might answer some of my 949 00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:36,680 Speaker 1: problems with why them and not hippopotamus? Is uh, if 950 00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:40,239 Speaker 1: you assume that babies are generally carried and kept off 951 00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:43,080 Speaker 1: the ground outside for their first six months of life, 952 00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:46,640 Speaker 1: they won't be seeing many spiders or snakes, but they 953 00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:49,480 Speaker 1: will be able to see people and other larger, non 954 00:53:49,560 --> 00:53:53,040 Speaker 1: threatening animals. So Asthma seems to think this sort of 955 00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:56,879 Speaker 1: fits the category violation model. That would make sense. Yeah, 956 00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:01,279 Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of ADU even today taking 957 00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:02,680 Speaker 1: their baby. Well, I mean, un once you're taking to 958 00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:06,080 Speaker 1: the zoo, I guess. But even then they're not they're 959 00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:07,920 Speaker 1: encountering them in the zoo. And I've already talked a 960 00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:10,600 Speaker 1: little bit about the differences between encountering an animal in 961 00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:13,520 Speaker 1: the wild and encountering them in an artificial environment right now. 962 00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:16,400 Speaker 1: Of course, another way to violate these categories is to 963 00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:22,000 Speaker 1: present beings with totally nonsensical ontologies, creatures that could never 964 00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:25,120 Speaker 1: be conditioned in a natural environment, or sorry, that you 965 00:54:25,239 --> 00:54:28,320 Speaker 1: could never be conditioned to accept in a natural environment, 966 00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:32,080 Speaker 1: because they don't exist in a natural environment. Here, maybe 967 00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:35,760 Speaker 1: the origin of our hybrid monsters are lion headed humans 968 00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:39,880 Speaker 1: and the grim sentient leopards and other beasts. All right, well, 969 00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:41,359 Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break, 970 00:54:41,440 --> 00:54:43,719 Speaker 1: and when we come back we will return to our 971 00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:51,760 Speaker 1: discussion of ancient monsters. Alright, we're back now. Asthma invokes 972 00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:55,960 Speaker 1: a concept in his paper invented by the philosopher Nol Carol, 973 00:54:56,080 --> 00:54:59,280 Speaker 1: which is called category jamming, and in his two thousand 974 00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:02,600 Speaker 1: three book The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart, 975 00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:06,160 Speaker 1: Carol makes a distinction between what he calls the monsters 976 00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:08,920 Speaker 1: of myth and the monsters of horror I thought this 977 00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:11,560 Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. So he writes about how, you know, 978 00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:14,080 Speaker 1: there might be fearsome creatures in the world of myths, 979 00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:17,440 Speaker 1: but they are not quote unnatural, and they can be 980 00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:21,719 Speaker 1: accommodated by the metaphysics of the cosmology that produced them. 981 00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:24,320 Speaker 1: All right, So this idea is that, say, the Medusa, 982 00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:27,080 Speaker 1: is that if you take them meduce and you put 983 00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:29,560 Speaker 1: it in our real world, yeah, it's breaking all these 984 00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:33,719 Speaker 1: laws of physics and nature. But the Medusa encountered within 985 00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:36,919 Speaker 1: the world of Greek myth, Well, then she's just part 986 00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:40,400 Speaker 1: of this world, Like, she's not breaking any laws exactly. 987 00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:43,760 Speaker 1: But then he says, quote, the monsters of horror breach 988 00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:48,399 Speaker 1: the norms of ontological propriety presumed by the positive human 989 00:55:48,520 --> 00:55:51,800 Speaker 1: characters in the story. That is, in examples of horror, 990 00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:54,880 Speaker 1: it would appear that the monster is an extraordinary character 991 00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:59,600 Speaker 1: in our ordinary world. Yeah. I like this because this 992 00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:02,040 Speaker 1: is a distinction. I feel very much like there are 993 00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:06,400 Speaker 1: different kinds of monsters, and they even the same monster 994 00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:11,239 Speaker 1: could be more or less terrifying given different context. And 995 00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:13,239 Speaker 1: so it makes me think back to the Loan Mench, 996 00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:17,480 Speaker 1: which one was the loan Mench? Was this a monster 997 00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:21,560 Speaker 1: of myth? That existed within some kind of epic poem 998 00:56:21,680 --> 00:56:24,560 Speaker 1: that these people you know, recited orally or something like that, 999 00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:28,000 Speaker 1: something outside the world that could be accommodated by its 1000 00:56:28,040 --> 00:56:32,280 Speaker 1: own cosmology. Or was this the monster of horror, something 1001 00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:36,040 Speaker 1: that haunted the woods beyond the cave. Yeah. To glimpse 1002 00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:39,080 Speaker 1: this creature, or to imagine glimpsinginess creature, is it to 1003 00:56:39,239 --> 00:56:41,520 Speaker 1: see something broken in the world or something that is 1004 00:56:42,080 --> 00:56:44,279 Speaker 1: just part of its fabric and we have no way 1005 00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:47,200 Speaker 1: of knowing. Yeah, though clearly I think if it is 1006 00:56:47,280 --> 00:56:50,600 Speaker 1: part of that broken vision of the world, then there 1007 00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:54,279 Speaker 1: is a stronger fear element to it. It's not part 1008 00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:58,880 Speaker 1: of a fantasy. It is a fantastical deviation from your 1009 00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:02,120 Speaker 1: day to day life. But Carol also writes about this 1010 00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:06,000 Speaker 1: idea that monsters are jamming of categories. He says, quote 1011 00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:11,560 Speaker 1: monsters are repelling because they violate standing categories and another 1012 00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:15,120 Speaker 1: quote also elsewhere, um quote. If what is of primary 1013 00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:19,320 Speaker 1: importance about horrific creatures is that they're very impossibility visa 1014 00:57:19,440 --> 00:57:22,760 Speaker 1: v our conceptual categories is what makes them function so 1015 00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:27,760 Speaker 1: compelling lee in dramas of discovery and confirmation. Then their disclosure, 1016 00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:32,200 Speaker 1: insofar as they are categorical violations will be attached to 1017 00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:37,840 Speaker 1: some sense of disturbance, distress, and disgust. Consequently, the role 1018 00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:41,360 Speaker 1: of the horrific creature in such narratives where their disclosure 1019 00:57:41,480 --> 00:57:46,000 Speaker 1: captures our interest and delivers pleasure, will simultaneously mandate some 1020 00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:50,320 Speaker 1: probable revulsion. That is, in order to reward our interest 1021 00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:54,000 Speaker 1: by the disclosure of the putatively impossible beings of the plot. 1022 00:57:54,480 --> 00:57:58,280 Speaker 1: Said beings ought to be disturbing, distressing, and repulsive in 1023 00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:01,000 Speaker 1: the way that theorists like doug list and there's referring 1024 00:58:01,080 --> 00:58:05,280 Speaker 1: to Dame Mary Douglas predict phenomena that ill fit cultural 1025 00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:10,080 Speaker 1: classifications will be So the idea is that creatures that 1026 00:58:10,360 --> 00:58:15,040 Speaker 1: violate our culturally established categories of existence we will find 1027 00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:19,280 Speaker 1: repulsive and distressing. And this is definitely a very common 1028 00:58:19,520 --> 00:58:23,560 Speaker 1: way of explaining horrific creatures, right the category confusion model. 1029 00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:25,960 Speaker 1: There's a lion, there's a man, but a man with 1030 00:58:26,040 --> 00:58:28,520 Speaker 1: a lion's head that just that breaks all the rules. 1031 00:58:28,600 --> 00:58:31,480 Speaker 1: It's the thing that should not be exactly Yeah, but 1032 00:58:31,640 --> 00:58:34,760 Speaker 1: then again, I have so on one hand, I'm attracted 1033 00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:37,480 Speaker 1: to this theory, and I find that lots of horror 1034 00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:40,840 Speaker 1: creatures very much seemed to fit this theory. But at 1035 00:58:40,880 --> 00:58:44,080 Speaker 1: the same time, I wonder, is it really possible that 1036 00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:48,520 Speaker 1: our experience of monster horror could be so thoroughly cognitive, 1037 00:58:48,760 --> 00:58:52,280 Speaker 1: because like, comparing these categories like this established by culture, 1038 00:58:52,720 --> 00:58:54,680 Speaker 1: that really would seem to be like it takes some 1039 00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:58,600 Speaker 1: kind of thought. Right, Do you really have to think 1040 00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:02,720 Speaker 1: about a monster to find it scary? No? I mean, 1041 00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:07,280 Speaker 1: like we've been discussing with something like like Jason, say, 1042 00:59:07,440 --> 00:59:11,080 Speaker 1: Jason Varies from the Friday of their tenth series. You 1043 00:59:11,160 --> 00:59:13,240 Speaker 1: don't have to think very hard in those films to 1044 00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:16,400 Speaker 1: find Jason terrifying. Though there's there's plenty of stuff going 1045 00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:18,760 Speaker 1: on to make you feel terror, right down to the 1046 00:59:18,880 --> 00:59:22,920 Speaker 1: music and uh and and and other forms of priming. Uh. 1047 00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:25,800 Speaker 1: But if you if you tease it apart, you can say, yes, 1048 00:59:25,880 --> 00:59:29,360 Speaker 1: this is an unnatural thing. It's, depending on your interpretation, 1049 00:59:29,480 --> 00:59:32,160 Speaker 1: is either a dead person that's walking around killing people, 1050 00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:36,720 Speaker 1: or at the very least, it is an unrealistically relentless 1051 00:59:36,800 --> 00:59:41,600 Speaker 1: and unstoppable humanoid killer. And it's equally terrifying no matter 1052 00:59:41,640 --> 00:59:43,520 Speaker 1: how much thought you put into it. Right, And that 1053 00:59:43,840 --> 00:59:47,800 Speaker 1: whenever I feel monster fear, the initial pang of monster 1054 00:59:47,960 --> 00:59:52,960 Speaker 1: fear definitely feels deeper than cognitive category analysis, Like I 1055 00:59:53,040 --> 00:59:57,080 Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm comparing anything in my mind. It 1056 00:59:57,280 --> 00:59:59,680 Speaker 1: hits me on the same level as like, you know, 1057 01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:03,400 Speaker 1: being something flying at my face. Anyway, Well, we'll come 1058 01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:05,680 Speaker 1: back to the cognitive elements in a minute. I wanted 1059 01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:08,720 Speaker 1: to discuss one other tangent that's really interesting that Asthma 1060 01:00:08,760 --> 01:00:10,880 Speaker 1: goes on, that might provide some kind of light on this. 1061 01:00:11,640 --> 01:00:14,720 Speaker 1: I loved his section about horror blindness. Oh yeah, I 1062 01:00:15,080 --> 01:00:18,120 Speaker 1: don't think I'd ever read about this before. So here's 1063 01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:20,720 Speaker 1: how to get into it. A question that might help 1064 01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:23,200 Speaker 1: us understand the origin of monsters is why do we 1065 01:00:23,360 --> 01:00:27,520 Speaker 1: keep creating them? Like, why can't we stop making monsters 1066 01:00:27,640 --> 01:00:30,920 Speaker 1: even if they make us feel the putatively negative emotion 1067 01:00:31,040 --> 01:00:34,600 Speaker 1: of fear. Well, I think that they're kind of like cocktails, right, 1068 01:00:34,920 --> 01:00:39,120 Speaker 1: Like there's a there's a basic reason that humans consume alcohol, 1069 01:00:39,200 --> 01:00:42,720 Speaker 1: and there's a basic reason humans consume various other elements 1070 01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:45,560 Speaker 1: that have specific taste. But we can't stop coming up 1071 01:00:45,600 --> 01:00:50,200 Speaker 1: with new combinations, a new novel, combinations that will give 1072 01:00:50,320 --> 01:00:54,760 Speaker 1: us the same and then in increasingly varied experiences based 1073 01:00:54,800 --> 01:00:57,880 Speaker 1: on that original. We like to fear and so we're 1074 01:00:57,880 --> 01:01:00,600 Speaker 1: going to continue to to tweak what make says feel 1075 01:01:00,680 --> 01:01:03,720 Speaker 1: that that tear but do well. Okay, So that's one theory. 1076 01:01:03,800 --> 01:01:07,000 Speaker 1: You could say that we like to fear. I think 1077 01:01:07,080 --> 01:01:10,080 Speaker 1: there's another possibility, which is that we don't actually like 1078 01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:13,560 Speaker 1: to fear. We like something else that comes with fear. 1079 01:01:14,280 --> 01:01:19,120 Speaker 1: That fear has sort of a secret, hidden cousin. Whenever 1080 01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:22,320 Speaker 1: the fear pathways in the brain are ignited, there's something 1081 01:01:22,400 --> 01:01:25,160 Speaker 1: that happens along with that, and that's the thing we like, 1082 01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:28,840 Speaker 1: and we mistake it for its cousin, the fear the 1083 01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:32,360 Speaker 1: main emotion. So let's look at an example and see 1084 01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:35,560 Speaker 1: what we think. One way to study the biological roots 1085 01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:38,040 Speaker 1: of horror monster or of monster fear would be to 1086 01:01:38,080 --> 01:01:40,400 Speaker 1: look at the behavior of a person who's incapable of 1087 01:01:40,520 --> 01:01:44,240 Speaker 1: feeling that fear. And strangely enough, such a person does exist, 1088 01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:46,960 Speaker 1: Asthma points to the case of this person, known in 1089 01:01:47,040 --> 01:01:49,960 Speaker 1: the scientific literature only as s M, who is a 1090 01:01:50,080 --> 01:01:54,400 Speaker 1: woman with horror blindness. SM has a brain anomally. She 1091 01:01:54,480 --> 01:01:58,520 Speaker 1: has focal bilateral amygdala aleegions, and because the amygdala is 1092 01:01:58,600 --> 01:02:01,360 Speaker 1: so bound up so in horton and generating the brain's 1093 01:02:01,400 --> 01:02:05,120 Speaker 1: fear response. These lesions mean that SM has an extreme 1094 01:02:05,400 --> 01:02:09,960 Speaker 1: fear deficiency, sometimes characterized as the complete inability to fear, 1095 01:02:10,840 --> 01:02:13,320 Speaker 1: and researchers have tested her with all kinds of fear 1096 01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:17,960 Speaker 1: inducing stimuli like haunted houses, horror movies, snakes and spiders, 1097 01:02:18,640 --> 01:02:21,520 Speaker 1: and these experiments showed that for SM what would normally 1098 01:02:21,640 --> 01:02:26,360 Speaker 1: be horrifying stimuli were indeed attention grabbing, but did not 1099 01:02:26,600 --> 01:02:31,920 Speaker 1: cause avoidance behaviors. In fact, they found that this combination 1100 01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:35,680 Speaker 1: of attentional arousal, the attention grabbing nature of it, and 1101 01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,040 Speaker 1: the lack of fear response tended to manifest itself as 1102 01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:43,400 Speaker 1: something like an attraction. So this study was there's one 1103 01:02:43,440 --> 01:02:46,439 Speaker 1: study by Justin S. Feinstein at All called the Human 1104 01:02:46,480 --> 01:02:50,080 Speaker 1: Amygdala and the Induction UH and the Induction and Experience 1105 01:02:50,160 --> 01:02:54,240 Speaker 1: of Fear in Current Biology INN. And what they what 1106 01:02:54,360 --> 01:02:56,800 Speaker 1: the researchers did is they took SM to a haunted 1107 01:02:56,880 --> 01:03:00,600 Speaker 1: house put together at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium, which is 1108 01:03:00,640 --> 01:03:04,120 Speaker 1: an abandoned medical facility in Louisville, Kentucky. And I want 1109 01:03:04,120 --> 01:03:06,280 Speaker 1: to read a quote about what happened when they went 1110 01:03:06,520 --> 01:03:09,440 Speaker 1: with SM through this facility, which had people addressed as 1111 01:03:09,520 --> 01:03:13,640 Speaker 1: monsters jumping out and scaring, they said, quote, the hidden 1112 01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:17,640 Speaker 1: monsters attempted to scare sm numerous times, but to no avail. 1113 01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:21,880 Speaker 1: She reacted to the monsters by smiling, laughing, or trying 1114 01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:25,880 Speaker 1: to talk to them. In contrast, their scare tactics typically 1115 01:03:25,920 --> 01:03:28,800 Speaker 1: elicited loud screams of fright from the other members of 1116 01:03:28,840 --> 01:03:31,840 Speaker 1: the group. More than showing a lack of fear, sm 1117 01:03:31,960 --> 01:03:38,280 Speaker 1: exhibited an unusual inclination to approach and touch the monsters. Ironically, 1118 01:03:38,520 --> 01:03:41,120 Speaker 1: sm scared one of the monsters when she poked it 1119 01:03:41,200 --> 01:03:44,120 Speaker 1: in the head because she was quote curious as to 1120 01:03:44,200 --> 01:03:46,439 Speaker 1: what it would feel like. You're not supposed to touch 1121 01:03:46,560 --> 01:03:49,800 Speaker 1: the actors that are haunted attraction should have known that, well, 1122 01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:52,960 Speaker 1: apparently she didn't. Now I thought this was really interesting 1123 01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:57,160 Speaker 1: because what they're saying is that in this condition where 1124 01:03:57,200 --> 01:03:59,920 Speaker 1: you don't have the normal avoidance behaviors, because you've got 1125 01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:03,080 Speaker 1: a deficiency of fear, if you're amygdalas damaged and you 1126 01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:05,880 Speaker 1: can't feel fear, things that would normally make you fear 1127 01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:08,520 Speaker 1: aren't just neutral. It's not like I don't care about that. 1128 01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:12,000 Speaker 1: You you find yourself attracted to it. It's like you 1129 01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:15,560 Speaker 1: love it, you want to touch it. Well, I mean 1130 01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:17,400 Speaker 1: I totally buy into that, because I mean, there are 1131 01:04:17,400 --> 01:04:19,800 Speaker 1: plenty of examples, I think in our own lives where 1132 01:04:19,840 --> 01:04:22,480 Speaker 1: we see like a really cool monster design in a 1133 01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:25,680 Speaker 1: film or a book or some art, and yeah, we're 1134 01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:27,800 Speaker 1: not thinking, oh my goodness, I'm so afraid right now. 1135 01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:30,480 Speaker 1: We think, oh, man, that's pretty gnarly, that's pretty cool. Yeah, 1136 01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:33,240 Speaker 1: And so I think that maybe what's going on with 1137 01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:36,640 Speaker 1: fear now I I accepted that the opposite could be true. 1138 01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:39,120 Speaker 1: It could be true that in some way the fear 1139 01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:43,520 Speaker 1: itself is satisfying, is thrilling, is fun. Well, of course 1140 01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:46,400 Speaker 1: the after effect of the monster not killing you, you 1141 01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:49,920 Speaker 1: get that that surge of relief, the endorphin and the 1142 01:04:49,960 --> 01:04:53,560 Speaker 1: adrenaline rush. Yeah, there's that hormonal element to it as well. 1143 01:04:54,160 --> 01:04:56,520 Speaker 1: But yeah, I do think that part of what the 1144 01:04:56,600 --> 01:04:59,360 Speaker 1: appeal must be is what's happening with s M here. 1145 01:04:59,800 --> 01:05:02,600 Speaker 1: It that she's only getting the good half of the 1146 01:05:02,680 --> 01:05:05,640 Speaker 1: horror feeling. She's not feeling the fear. But when we 1147 01:05:05,960 --> 01:05:08,720 Speaker 1: experience horror in the good way and the pleasurable way 1148 01:05:08,800 --> 01:05:10,680 Speaker 1: that makes us keep returning to it, it's what's a 1149 01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:14,600 Speaker 1: Whatever is happening with her, they're except not tempered by 1150 01:05:15,200 --> 01:05:17,760 Speaker 1: by the normal kind of avoidance response we would have. 1151 01:05:18,840 --> 01:05:22,000 Speaker 1: So essentially what's being proposed is that is that fear 1152 01:05:22,120 --> 01:05:26,040 Speaker 1: and arousal are separate things, but they're deeply linked. And 1153 01:05:26,600 --> 01:05:29,400 Speaker 1: and in in SMS case, she is attracted to the 1154 01:05:29,520 --> 01:05:31,800 Speaker 1: novelty of it. It is the novelty of this thing 1155 01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:35,880 Speaker 1: that is a hybrid creation or just an unreal entity 1156 01:05:36,000 --> 01:05:39,840 Speaker 1: that doesn't match up with the existing expectations. Right, She's 1157 01:05:39,880 --> 01:05:42,320 Speaker 1: being excited by the neural pathway that says, look at this, 1158 01:05:42,600 --> 01:05:45,000 Speaker 1: this is worth your attention, You should pay attention to it. 1159 01:05:45,520 --> 01:05:47,760 Speaker 1: But she's not getting the part that says, get the 1160 01:05:47,840 --> 01:05:51,320 Speaker 1: hell away. Interesting. Now, on the other hand, if you 1161 01:05:51,400 --> 01:05:54,400 Speaker 1: think this condition of having a fear deficiency sounds great, 1162 01:05:54,480 --> 01:05:58,480 Speaker 1: like like you're like, I wish I had an amygdala religion, Uh, 1163 01:05:59,120 --> 01:06:02,760 Speaker 1: think again. ASTHMA reports that researchers have repeatedly had to 1164 01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:06,480 Speaker 1: prevent sm from putting herself in actual danger because the 1165 01:06:06,560 --> 01:06:09,320 Speaker 1: fear that would have prevented her from endangering herself was 1166 01:06:09,360 --> 01:06:12,680 Speaker 1: simply not operative. In the same way, you might not 1167 01:06:13,000 --> 01:06:15,720 Speaker 1: enjoy pain, but you wouldn't actually want to have the 1168 01:06:15,800 --> 01:06:18,600 Speaker 1: condition that prevents you from feeling pain. Because pain is 1169 01:06:18,680 --> 01:06:21,320 Speaker 1: very useful for survival. Well, I mean that matches up 1170 01:06:21,360 --> 01:06:24,800 Speaker 1: with touching the actors at a haunted attraction, like it 1171 01:06:24,880 --> 01:06:28,560 Speaker 1: shows like a lack of boundaries and understanding of those boundaries. 1172 01:06:29,360 --> 01:06:31,120 Speaker 1: I mean, not that the the actor is going to 1173 01:06:31,200 --> 01:06:34,440 Speaker 1: physically attack you, but you know she's she's breaking certain 1174 01:06:34,600 --> 01:06:38,200 Speaker 1: rules and expectations there. So yeah, I wonder what role 1175 01:06:38,320 --> 01:06:42,920 Speaker 1: these types of arousal play in what led somebody in 1176 01:06:43,200 --> 01:06:47,720 Speaker 1: the ice age to create a lionman figuring. I mean, 1177 01:06:47,760 --> 01:06:50,640 Speaker 1: assuming that this figure had some kind of fear or 1178 01:06:50,760 --> 01:06:53,920 Speaker 1: on inducing uh significance. We don't know that it did, 1179 01:06:53,960 --> 01:06:56,200 Speaker 1: but we think you know, monsters usually have some kind 1180 01:06:56,240 --> 01:07:02,160 Speaker 1: of fear on inducing properties. If that's what was part 1181 01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:04,600 Speaker 1: of the attitude towards this creature, Could it be that 1182 01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:08,080 Speaker 1: it was created for this attentional arousal, this feeling of 1183 01:07:08,200 --> 01:07:10,600 Speaker 1: like this isn't part of what I normally see, you know, 1184 01:07:10,760 --> 01:07:14,480 Speaker 1: the stimulation of the imagination. Yeah, I mean what if 1185 01:07:15,200 --> 01:07:17,440 Speaker 1: what if this thing was crafted and as it was passed, 1186 01:07:17,440 --> 01:07:21,720 Speaker 1: it passed around like they were just feeling the novelty 1187 01:07:21,840 --> 01:07:24,560 Speaker 1: of it. They were and maybe you know, engaging with 1188 01:07:24,720 --> 01:07:27,320 Speaker 1: with certain feelings of fear that came out of it, 1189 01:07:27,360 --> 01:07:30,280 Speaker 1: but they didn't have, say, a whole cosmology built up 1190 01:07:30,320 --> 01:07:32,840 Speaker 1: around it. Maybe it didn't have a name or a 1191 01:07:33,560 --> 01:07:37,400 Speaker 1: purpose in the in the magical world around them, but 1192 01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:40,480 Speaker 1: it was it was almost like like doing shots of espresso. 1193 01:07:41,280 --> 01:07:44,920 Speaker 1: You know, it's difficulse, it's simplifying here, it's but it's 1194 01:07:45,120 --> 01:07:46,920 Speaker 1: it is very difficult to try and put ourselves in 1195 01:07:47,360 --> 01:07:50,240 Speaker 1: in the mind of of of such people. Yeah, No, 1196 01:07:50,360 --> 01:07:53,120 Speaker 1: I mean I think that's worth considering. Like we tend 1197 01:07:53,200 --> 01:07:56,360 Speaker 1: to assume it had something like what we would think 1198 01:07:56,400 --> 01:07:59,000 Speaker 1: of as a sacred or religious significance right now, where 1199 01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:01,720 Speaker 1: you'd you'd ha paid in a ritual with it. But 1200 01:08:01,880 --> 01:08:05,400 Speaker 1: what if it was much more like us watching a 1201 01:08:05,520 --> 01:08:08,440 Speaker 1: horror movie or going to a haunted house. I think 1202 01:08:08,480 --> 01:08:11,320 Speaker 1: that's not impossible. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like 1203 01:08:11,480 --> 01:08:14,600 Speaker 1: say an image of of of the Hindu God that 1204 01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:18,320 Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, Narasima, Like you can look 1205 01:08:18,360 --> 01:08:21,559 Speaker 1: at that image without knowing anything about Hinduism, anything about 1206 01:08:21,600 --> 01:08:24,840 Speaker 1: the story that's being told, anything about the you know, 1207 01:08:24,920 --> 01:08:27,840 Speaker 1: the various symbols that are at play here, and you 1208 01:08:27,920 --> 01:08:30,720 Speaker 1: can still have a very this or reaction to it. 1209 01:08:30,760 --> 01:08:33,200 Speaker 1: You can have a you feel something when you look 1210 01:08:33,280 --> 01:08:36,599 Speaker 1: at it, uh, and then you can you can feel 1211 01:08:36,680 --> 01:08:40,080 Speaker 1: something rather different when you have this additional information about it. 1212 01:08:40,240 --> 01:08:42,800 Speaker 1: So it could be that maybe the Lionman was part 1213 01:08:42,960 --> 01:08:45,840 Speaker 1: of a religious ritual or religious belief. But it could 1214 01:08:45,920 --> 01:08:48,360 Speaker 1: also just be that for some people who had a 1215 01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:51,479 Speaker 1: shallower engagement, it was just a thrill. It was just 1216 01:08:51,800 --> 01:08:55,160 Speaker 1: facing the monster again, because how many we have so 1217 01:08:55,240 --> 01:08:57,519 Speaker 1: many unreal things in our world. We have so many 1218 01:08:57,600 --> 01:09:00,720 Speaker 1: monsters to turn to. But imagine living in a world 1219 01:09:00,800 --> 01:09:05,000 Speaker 1: where there's one unreal thing. There's one unreal image, that's it, 1220 01:09:05,040 --> 01:09:06,599 Speaker 1: and you get to touch it once a week. That's 1221 01:09:06,640 --> 01:09:10,479 Speaker 1: given me the creeps Man. A world with only one monster. 1222 01:09:11,720 --> 01:09:13,400 Speaker 1: All right, Well, I want to get on one more 1223 01:09:13,600 --> 01:09:16,400 Speaker 1: aspect of Asthma's paper before we finish out today. He 1224 01:09:16,400 --> 01:09:18,439 Speaker 1: actually talks about a bunch more stuff in his paper, 1225 01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:22,120 Speaker 1: like the second half of it is all about like 1226 01:09:22,360 --> 01:09:26,000 Speaker 1: xenophobia and the social implications of monster fear. And I 1227 01:09:26,080 --> 01:09:28,840 Speaker 1: want to talk about one more idea that he goes to, 1228 01:09:28,960 --> 01:09:31,640 Speaker 1: which is that monster horror is not just cognitive recognition 1229 01:09:31,720 --> 01:09:36,280 Speaker 1: but also an affective emotional state. So Asthma writes, quote 1230 01:09:36,720 --> 01:09:40,200 Speaker 1: the emotion slash cognition complex, and horror is a Yannis 1231 01:09:40,280 --> 01:09:44,519 Speaker 1: faced experience, partly imperative, as in I should run away, 1232 01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:48,840 Speaker 1: and partly indicative that creature is part man and part snake. 1233 01:09:49,600 --> 01:09:53,200 Speaker 1: According to some philosophers of mine, like Ruth Milliken, this 1234 01:09:53,400 --> 01:09:58,120 Speaker 1: yannis faced and representation is strongly coupled together in lower animals. Mice, 1235 01:09:58,240 --> 01:10:02,000 Speaker 1: for example, simultaneously recognize cats as a kind of thing 1236 01:10:02,360 --> 01:10:05,679 Speaker 1: in a category and as dangerous, so that's the fear 1237 01:10:05,720 --> 01:10:09,040 Speaker 1: affect I should run away. Humans, on the other hand, 1238 01:10:09,400 --> 01:10:13,439 Speaker 1: can decouple these two pathways indicative and imperative, and fear 1239 01:10:13,520 --> 01:10:17,640 Speaker 1: can be reattached to alternative kinds of creatures and perceptions. 1240 01:10:18,280 --> 01:10:22,200 Speaker 1: So here's where he's getting into the monster generative capacity. 1241 01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:25,320 Speaker 1: It's like, we've got these monster recognition pathways in the brain, 1242 01:10:25,800 --> 01:10:29,280 Speaker 1: but they're made for natural predators, and once we've got 1243 01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:32,840 Speaker 1: the power to put imaginative content on them, they can 1244 01:10:32,920 --> 01:10:36,800 Speaker 1: still be used in the same way. And in this way, 1245 01:10:36,880 --> 01:10:39,160 Speaker 1: Asthma seems to think, monster fear is caused by a 1246 01:10:39,280 --> 01:10:43,439 Speaker 1: system of what's known as quote somatic markers. Essentially these 1247 01:10:43,520 --> 01:10:47,200 Speaker 1: trainable neural pathways that can be filled with emotional content 1248 01:10:47,800 --> 01:10:50,680 Speaker 1: based on experience. One more quote of his quote. The 1249 01:10:50,760 --> 01:10:54,439 Speaker 1: point is that these emotional responses are not instincts in 1250 01:10:54,520 --> 01:10:58,760 Speaker 1: the sense of prewired or genetically engraved responses. The affective 1251 01:10:58,800 --> 01:11:01,160 Speaker 1: systems are ancient in the sense that they have many 1252 01:11:01,280 --> 01:11:05,000 Speaker 1: homologies with non human animals, but in our individual lives 1253 01:11:05,080 --> 01:11:10,000 Speaker 1: their idiosyncratically assigned and have significant plasticity, so you can 1254 01:11:10,120 --> 01:11:13,439 Speaker 1: fill them up with whatever monsters happened to catch your fancy. 1255 01:11:14,280 --> 01:11:17,640 Speaker 1: And and the idea here is that imaginative monsters have 1256 01:11:17,880 --> 01:11:21,559 Speaker 1: this adaptive survival value. I mean, we talked in uh 1257 01:11:21,880 --> 01:11:25,360 Speaker 1: not to go again to the bi cameral mind episode, 1258 01:11:25,439 --> 01:11:28,080 Speaker 1: but one thing that apart from the whole bi cameral 1259 01:11:28,160 --> 01:11:30,880 Speaker 1: mind hypothesis just taking out the whole all of the 1260 01:11:30,920 --> 01:11:34,400 Speaker 1: bi camerality, one thing Julian Jaynes talked about was that 1261 01:11:34,560 --> 01:11:38,479 Speaker 1: he thought that the primary adaptive benefit of consciousness is 1262 01:11:38,600 --> 01:11:42,000 Speaker 1: that you could run simulations in your mind. When you've 1263 01:11:42,040 --> 01:11:44,880 Speaker 1: got conscious thought, you've got this mind space where you 1264 01:11:44,960 --> 01:11:49,639 Speaker 1: can experiment with things. And uh, Ultimately, Asthma talks about 1265 01:11:49,920 --> 01:11:53,120 Speaker 1: fear of monsters being a similar thing, monsters in your 1266 01:11:53,160 --> 01:11:57,880 Speaker 1: mind can provide a kind of mental training simulator, a 1267 01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:00,960 Speaker 1: place to work out emotional and behave yeal responses to 1268 01:12:01,080 --> 01:12:05,759 Speaker 1: danger within the safety of the imagination. But because horror 1269 01:12:05,840 --> 01:12:10,240 Speaker 1: images have such strong access to our emotional reactions, he says, 1270 01:12:10,479 --> 01:12:13,120 Speaker 1: and this is an an interesting bridge. They don't just 1271 01:12:13,240 --> 01:12:17,920 Speaker 1: train our behaviors, they train our values, which gives them 1272 01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:21,040 Speaker 1: great power for good and ill in conditioning our moral 1273 01:12:21,160 --> 01:12:24,040 Speaker 1: judgments and opinions. This takes us back to St. Augustine 1274 01:12:24,160 --> 01:12:27,960 Speaker 1: right that monsters instruct a point. Stories about monsters so 1275 01:12:28,200 --> 01:12:31,920 Speaker 1: often have a moral or they teach some virtue. They 1276 01:12:32,000 --> 01:12:34,720 Speaker 1: tell you what you should do in a certain situation 1277 01:12:34,920 --> 01:12:38,040 Speaker 1: and condition your responses to it. And they're much more 1278 01:12:38,160 --> 01:12:42,639 Speaker 1: effective than normal teaching and instruction because they get at 1279 01:12:42,720 --> 01:12:45,320 Speaker 1: you emotionally. They you know, you don't have to be 1280 01:12:45,520 --> 01:12:47,880 Speaker 1: lectured about what you should do. If you see an 1281 01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:51,600 Speaker 1: illustration within a monster story, you just feel emotionally what 1282 01:12:51,720 --> 01:12:54,280 Speaker 1: you should do. Yeah, Because on one hand, they're simply saying, hey, 1283 01:12:54,400 --> 01:12:58,240 Speaker 1: kids don't go swim in that creek without the adults around. 1284 01:12:58,439 --> 01:13:00,439 Speaker 1: And then there's hey, kids don't go in that creek 1285 01:13:00,479 --> 01:13:03,320 Speaker 1: without the adults around because there's electric turtle man, we 1286 01:13:03,360 --> 01:13:05,840 Speaker 1: will drown you, you know. And yet we see that, 1287 01:13:05,920 --> 01:13:08,680 Speaker 1: of course time and time again, in folklore's where there 1288 01:13:08,760 --> 01:13:12,040 Speaker 1: is some sort of foul creature who will drown you 1289 01:13:12,560 --> 01:13:15,840 Speaker 1: if you swim unattended. Yeah, and so I think this 1290 01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:19,360 Speaker 1: could be a very plausible explanation for the emergence of 1291 01:13:19,479 --> 01:13:23,400 Speaker 1: monsters in human history, that they could have emerged around 1292 01:13:23,479 --> 01:13:27,480 Speaker 1: the same time as language, as a social cohesion technique 1293 01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:32,080 Speaker 1: and as a social value instilling technique. They're they're there 1294 01:13:32,640 --> 01:13:36,080 Speaker 1: to get people to believe things that would be hard 1295 01:13:36,160 --> 01:13:38,680 Speaker 1: to convince them to believe just by telling them I 1296 01:13:38,800 --> 01:13:41,479 Speaker 1: like that, Yeah, I shouldn't go off the path, I 1297 01:13:41,560 --> 01:13:44,880 Speaker 1: shouldn't mess around with somebody else's spouse. I shouldn't you 1298 01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:47,599 Speaker 1: know all these things? Because why because a monster will 1299 01:13:47,680 --> 01:13:50,040 Speaker 1: get you if you do. Yeah. So many monsters are 1300 01:13:50,080 --> 01:13:53,679 Speaker 1: tied to boundaries. Cross the boundary and face the monster. Yeah. 1301 01:13:54,080 --> 01:13:56,280 Speaker 1: So so, Yeah, I guess that's the end that we 1302 01:13:56,600 --> 01:13:59,360 Speaker 1: we don't have ultimately the answer about when the first 1303 01:13:59,439 --> 01:14:02,640 Speaker 1: monster rose, But I think it's very plausible that they 1304 01:14:02,760 --> 01:14:08,080 Speaker 1: could have their their roots in social teaching. Yeah, I think. So. 1305 01:14:08,360 --> 01:14:11,200 Speaker 1: I feel like we've given we've given everybody some tremendous 1306 01:14:11,240 --> 01:14:15,960 Speaker 1: food for thought in trying to unravel the meaning of 1307 01:14:16,120 --> 01:14:18,760 Speaker 1: that lion headed figure and what what it meant to 1308 01:14:18,840 --> 01:14:21,640 Speaker 1: people then and what the idea of monster of the 1309 01:14:21,720 --> 01:14:26,480 Speaker 1: monster has continued to mean for people in all subsequent generations. 1310 01:14:26,720 --> 01:14:28,479 Speaker 1: So what do you think, mab What what could the 1311 01:14:28,560 --> 01:14:31,560 Speaker 1: Lionman have been teaching? Was the loan mens uh a 1312 01:14:31,680 --> 01:14:36,360 Speaker 1: story about how don't go in strange caves? Or uh? Yeah, 1313 01:14:36,439 --> 01:14:39,320 Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I'm will based on things I've 1314 01:14:39,360 --> 01:14:43,000 Speaker 1: read in the past, I'm more inclined to give it 1315 01:14:43,120 --> 01:14:46,240 Speaker 1: sort of a chaotic vibe, you know, like thinking of 1316 01:14:46,280 --> 01:14:49,439 Speaker 1: it in terms of ancient gods of the hunt and whatnot, 1317 01:14:49,640 --> 01:14:53,040 Speaker 1: that that this is some sort of an entity that represented, 1318 01:14:53,200 --> 01:14:55,519 Speaker 1: to whatever extent they were able to really think about it, 1319 01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:58,920 Speaker 1: this is a figure that represented the uncertainty of the 1320 01:14:59,040 --> 01:15:01,679 Speaker 1: wild world they it in. Now, was it chaotic good, 1321 01:15:01,800 --> 01:15:05,320 Speaker 1: chaotic neutral, or chaotic evil? I think just chaotic neutral, 1322 01:15:05,479 --> 01:15:08,280 Speaker 1: Like the world has a certain amount of chaos in it, 1323 01:15:08,880 --> 01:15:11,000 Speaker 1: and some days you're gonna go into the cave and 1324 01:15:11,000 --> 01:15:15,240 Speaker 1: there's gonna be and you will face the Lionman and 1325 01:15:15,360 --> 01:15:17,880 Speaker 1: then you know, maybe you'll lock eyes with it and 1326 01:15:17,960 --> 01:15:20,120 Speaker 1: walk away, but maybe not. Some days you eat the 1327 01:15:20,160 --> 01:15:25,559 Speaker 1: loan mench, and some days the loan Mench it's you, amen, partner. Alright. Well, 1328 01:15:25,600 --> 01:15:27,840 Speaker 1: on that note, hey, if you want to see an 1329 01:15:27,840 --> 01:15:30,360 Speaker 1: image of this fabulous statue and maybe some of these 1330 01:15:30,400 --> 01:15:33,920 Speaker 1: other critters we've talked about, head on over to stuff 1331 01:15:33,920 --> 01:15:35,639 Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find 1332 01:15:35,760 --> 01:15:38,639 Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode, along with all past 1333 01:15:38,680 --> 01:15:41,040 Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and links out 1334 01:15:41,080 --> 01:15:45,400 Speaker 1: to our various social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler, 1335 01:15:45,600 --> 01:15:48,479 Speaker 1: and hay on Facebook. 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