Speaker 1: Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: it's Saturday. It's vault time. Uh. This episode originally aired
Speaker 1: on February two, and it's on the phenomenon of Paleo Burrows.
Speaker 1: Shall we go into the Tunnel's rob Let's venture in
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: I think today we're doing tunnels, Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to venture into some strange tunnels in the earth. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, Joe, but I love a
Speaker 1: good creepy tunnel story. Um. You know, any caliber of
Speaker 1: motion picture. If you have like a subway tunnel and
Speaker 1: you have a monster sham going around down there, even
Speaker 1: possibility of a monster shambling around down there, I'm generally
Speaker 1: on board. Oh yeah, I mean it's one of the classics.
Speaker 1: And you know your your your your fairy tale types.
Speaker 1: One of the big ones is you've got to go
Speaker 1: into the underworld, right, and what's what's closer in physical
Speaker 1: reality to an underworld than cave or a tunnel. Caves
Speaker 1: and tunnels, I mean, humans have have long been fascinated
Speaker 1: by them. You know, we see a cave, we want
Speaker 1: to get in there. We need to know what's going on,
Speaker 1: We need to find out what kind of sacred uh
Speaker 1: secrets are contained in there. And so, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: also continually fascinated by tales of of you know, modern
Speaker 1: tunnel systems, abandoned tunnel systems from from further back in history. UM.
Speaker 1: I also love a good you know, tunnel of unknown
Speaker 1: origin stories such as the Strange Tunnels and the Hyperion
Speaker 1: novels or oh another a film in this case that
Speaker 1: had some strange tunnels. There's the whole tunnel plotline in
Speaker 1: Jordan Peel's two thousand nineteen film US. Yeah. Yeah, that one.
Speaker 1: Let's not spoil anything about that. I'm not gonna spoil anything,
Speaker 1: but it does open with a with a fun text
Speaker 1: crawl uh quote. There are thousands of miles of tunnels
Speaker 1: beneath the United States, abandoned subway systems, unused service roots,
Speaker 1: and deserted mind shafts. Many have no known purpose at all.
Speaker 1: So I instantly I was, you know, on board for that.
Speaker 1: I love a good informational legend like that. And the
Speaker 1: fun thing about that quote is that it's a It's
Speaker 1: a fun one to ponder over because, on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's sort of true. There are a lot of of
Speaker 1: of abandoned tunnel systems in the United States, some with
Speaker 1: some pretty engaging stories about them at times. You know,
Speaker 1: old minds, abandoned subway projects, abandoned subway lines. I'm a
Speaker 1: real I'm a real sucker for that sort of thing. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately, I think this is the filming question
Speaker 1: is one that maybe doesn't you know, I supposed to
Speaker 1: take it completely seriously and think, well, there's this entire
Speaker 1: system of of tunnels and who knows what's going on
Speaker 1: down there. But it also reminds me of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here today, uh, the story of mysterious tunnels
Speaker 1: uh and caves caverns in South America. Now, what makes
Speaker 1: today's example really interesting is normally you're going to think
Speaker 1: about your your mysterious tunnels in two categories. One is
Speaker 1: one is obviously you know, a cave of geological origin,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, oh, you know here, here's a millions
Speaker 1: of years old cave with with stalactites and stalagmites, clearly
Speaker 1: a water formed cavity of some type. But then the
Speaker 1: other bucket, of course is who made this tunnel? What
Speaker 1: human doug this and for what purpose? But actually, uh,
Speaker 1: those two categories leave out leave out another option, don't they? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not aliens. The fun thing about this is
Speaker 1: you don't need aliens to get to the you know,
Speaker 1: the wow moment, to the to the amazing content of
Speaker 1: this particular topic, because we're still we still seem to
Speaker 1: be dealing with a non human entity, a non human
Speaker 1: will behind these um, these these tunnels or caves or
Speaker 1: or burrows, Uh, is probably more appropriate to call them
Speaker 1: these paleo burrows of South America. They're not the work
Speaker 1: of of a pre Columbian society. Uh, they're older and
Speaker 1: they're quite impressive. Well, but as we dive in here,
Speaker 1: I want to mention that that one of my main
Speaker 1: sources here is an excellent book that came out, I believe,
Speaker 1: in seventeen by Anthony J. Martin, a paleontologist at Emory
Speaker 1: University here here in Atlanta, titled The Evolution Underground Burrows, Bunkers,
Speaker 1: and the Marvelous subterranean world beneath our feet. Um, I've
Speaker 1: been meaning to cover this book in some form or
Speaker 1: another for a while and I saw it on the
Speaker 1: shelf again. I was like, all right, today's the day
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna bust this book out and see
Speaker 1: what grabs my attention. So I haven't read this yet,
Speaker 1: but my interest is p aeked because I like, you
Speaker 1: love a tunnel burrow, a din under the earth. But
Speaker 1: I was familiar with Anthony J. Martin's name, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but I think it was because he was
Speaker 1: one of the authors of research from two thousand seven
Speaker 1: that was famous for documenting the first fossil evidence of
Speaker 1: a dinosaur, the Dug Tunnels. Did you read about this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is covered in the in the in the book.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's something some wonderful illustrations, and even in
Speaker 1: one case I believe a bit of folk art depicting
Speaker 1: these creatures, which I loved. Uh So the brief rundown
Speaker 1: on this The paper where they described this find came
Speaker 1: out in two thousand seven and Proceedings of the Royal
Speaker 1: Society b Biological Sciences. It was by David J. Verikio
Speaker 1: Anthony J. Martin and Yoshihiro Katsura, and it was called
Speaker 1: first trace and body fossil evidence of a burrowing Denning dinosaur.
Speaker 1: So this fossil find came from a formation in southwest
Speaker 1: mont Hannah's near the border with Idaho. I think it's
Speaker 1: called the Black Leaf formation, and this formation dates back
Speaker 1: to the mid Cretaceous period. The find consisted of both
Speaker 1: the trace fossil of the borough itself as well as
Speaker 1: skeletal fossils found inside. The skeletal fossils were of one
Speaker 1: adult and two juveniles, which apparently all died and were
Speaker 1: fossilized inside the burrow. The dinosaur was a member of
Speaker 1: a previously undiscovered species of Ornithia, which the author's name
Speaker 1: or Ricto dromius cubicularis. And that genus name, or Ricto dromius,
Speaker 1: that means digging runners. That gives you a hint of
Speaker 1: like the two main talents of the stat build of
Speaker 1: this dinosaur. These would have been herbivorous dinosaurs that lived
Speaker 1: roughly ninety something million years ago. And so one question
Speaker 1: you might wonder is, well, how do we know that
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs we found inside actually made the tunnel or
Speaker 1: burrow instead of I don't know, finding a naturally occurring
Speaker 1: hollow or tunnel made by some other mysterious creature. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems likely that the dinosaurs themselves made it because
Speaker 1: of the creatures anatomy and because of its relationship to
Speaker 1: the burrow. So, in the words of the author's quote,
Speaker 1: the features of the snout, shoulder, girdle, and pelvis are
Speaker 1: consistent with digging habits. So it has multiple anatomical adaptations
Speaker 1: you would expect to find in a creature that specializes
Speaker 1: in digging. Like it's got a snout that is sort
Speaker 1: of fused together in a way that would make it
Speaker 1: kind of a good shovel for like kicking soil back
Speaker 1: and forth, and its skeletal structure seems well put together
Speaker 1: to kind of brace itself with the back limbs or
Speaker 1: the pelvis as it uses its four limbs to dig
Speaker 1: and and throw soil out behind it. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: something that's h that's touched on with various organisms in
Speaker 1: this book. That no organism needs the tools for burrowing
Speaker 1: or digging. But it's not just the you know, that's
Speaker 1: something on matter of having claws or some sort of snout.
Speaker 1: It also needs uh, like the body to back it up.
Speaker 1: And so we can look at the bodies of many
Speaker 1: of these organisms that are extinct now and we can
Speaker 1: we can make very informed uh guess is about what
Speaker 1: their body had evolved to do. Right. You need the
Speaker 1: right kind of chassis to give you leverage with which
Speaker 1: to dig, because you remember, your digging is not just
Speaker 1: about what the hands are doing in the front. The
Speaker 1: four limbs scraping away at things. You all, the bracing
Speaker 1: is really important. You gotta hold your ground while you're scraping. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't just put a big scoop on the front
Speaker 1: of your um, I don't know your prius and say
Speaker 1: you're gonna go out and start moving earth around. But
Speaker 1: another clue that that the dinosaurs inside this burrow dug
Speaker 1: it were the fact that the burrow almost perfectly matches
Speaker 1: the width and breadth of the torso of the adult.
Speaker 1: So it seems like this is a burrow of the
Speaker 1: right size to have been dug by the adult dinosaur.
Speaker 1: And adult is found along with two juveniles inside the borrow,
Speaker 1: and they were found with no bite marks or anything
Speaker 1: on the bones, no signs of of carnivore bone assemblies
Speaker 1: like you might sometimes find where you know, carnivore is
Speaker 1: dumping all the bones from its recent meals. So it
Speaker 1: looks like this was not just a tunnel dug by
Speaker 1: a dinosaur, but one that an adult dinosaur lived inside
Speaker 1: with its juveniles, and this would provide evidence of a
Speaker 1: case of extended parental care in dinosaurs, something that I
Speaker 1: think was uh less well evidenced and more controversial at
Speaker 1: the time. And based on the size of the juveniles,
Speaker 1: it appears that this parental care had gone on for
Speaker 1: at least several months. Yeah, yeah, this is a This
Speaker 1: is in stark contrast to some of the hypothesized ways
Speaker 1: that say, giant sauropods would have dealt with their young.
Speaker 1: I remember discussing that on the podcast, where like at
Speaker 1: least one hypothesis was the like the eggs kind of
Speaker 1: just fall out and they just rolled out the side
Speaker 1: and then they do their thing. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally different parenting strategy. Anyway. The authors of this paper
Speaker 1: note that vertebrates today create burrows, of course for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Some actually use tunneling as a as
Speaker 1: a food foraging strategy, trying to get underground food. Some
Speaker 1: use it for escaping predators. That's a common one as
Speaker 1: a type of shelter that protects you, and some use
Speaker 1: it for avoiding the elements in harsh environments. But the
Speaker 1: other half of the equation is that this animal, or rictodromus,
Speaker 1: was also a cursor, which means a runner. Remember the
Speaker 1: name means digging runner. And the authors of this paper
Speaker 1: say that if we look at analogies today, running animals
Speaker 1: that create burrows tend to do so for a pretty
Speaker 1: specific reason, which is they create them as dens for
Speaker 1: rearing their young. So, once you give birth to young,
Speaker 1: the young and the juveniles are pretty vulnerable for a
Speaker 1: while until they get bigger, big enough to run around
Speaker 1: and defend themselves like an adult can, and so a
Speaker 1: den provides a place to protect the young while they're
Speaker 1: growing and still vulnerable. Now, Joe, you included a fabulous
Speaker 1: bit of paleo art here from this uh this study.
Speaker 1: This is actually in the book as well. Um. I
Speaker 1: love a good bit of paleo art. But here we
Speaker 1: see the parent, we see a cutaway of the burrow,
Speaker 1: and we see the two young dinos at the bottom.
Speaker 1: I like that the paleo artist in this case has
Speaker 1: chosen to depict the adult Erictodromius as Sam the Eagle
Speaker 1: from the Muppets as a very severe eyebrow and uh
Speaker 1: and and a very well I think this is anatomically
Speaker 1: accurate the beak like mouth. Yes. Well, anyway, sorry if
Speaker 1: that was a digression from the paleo burrows, but I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say, Yeah, so you're looking at this
Speaker 1: book by Anthony J. Martin, and Martin has a history
Speaker 1: with with the Diggers. Yeah. And Martin knows his his
Speaker 1: tunnels and his his burrows here, and so he he
Speaker 1: discusses the paleo burrows in the Evolution Underground, uh, pointing
Speaker 1: out that geologists in Argentina and Brazil noted these burrows
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: had partially or wholly filled with sediment, but others remain
Speaker 1: quite open. Uh. They were cutting a variety of soft um, igneous,
Speaker 1: metamorphic and set and sedimentary bedrock. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: we're talking about rock here. That's one of the the
Speaker 1: important and I think really impressive things about about this. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of some were visible in outcrops, others as cylindrical chambers.
Speaker 1: There are some actually some wonderful photographs you can find
Speaker 1: online and attached to various um articles about these papers
Speaker 1: about these Uh, they're quite impressive. They look just like
Speaker 1: a tunnel cut through a rock. You can, uh, you
Speaker 1: know that you they look like that. They look like
Speaker 1: real tunnels. We're not just talking about just an indention
Speaker 1: in the side of a hill. Yeah. Some of them
Speaker 1: look like somebody brought in the boring machine, like a large,
Speaker 1: like several meter wide, basically circular, cylindrical tunnel. Others are smaller,
Speaker 1: more compact, or more kind of a half moon shape.
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to flag it. This was interesting
Speaker 1: because so Martin notes that the people had previously observed
Speaker 1: these things in the twenties and thirties in Argentina and Brazil. Now,
Speaker 1: I had been reading about the paleo burrows in some
Speaker 1: articles that came out in seventeen, and those articles were
Speaker 1: were essentially saying that that nobody had ever reported these
Speaker 1: things until just recently, that they just sort of come
Speaker 1: on the radar. But it seems like Martin has turned
Speaker 1: up some other previous reports of of these things. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's what seems to be the case. But the
Speaker 1: important thing is that they weren't exactly sure what they
Speaker 1: were looking at here now, and that over the decades
Speaker 1: to follow, hundreds of these caves were uncovered, with a
Speaker 1: lot of concentration in the area of what is now
Speaker 1: Rio Grande do So in southern Brazil. Um others, other
Speaker 1: of paleo burrows of this nature are simply undiscovered. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've seen a total number express somewhere around like fifteen hundred,
Speaker 1: and again they're likely others as well that haven't been
Speaker 1: discovered or will never be discovered, you know. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: reporting I was reading said that most of these are
Speaker 1: clustered in kind of a kind of strange geographical bands,
Speaker 1: like right in this area in southern Brazil, but not
Speaker 1: further south than like Uruguay. But then if you go
Speaker 1: even further south, there are some more down further into Argentina. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the archaeologists came back and they were studying them
Speaker 1: with renewed interest in the seventies and eighties, and they
Speaker 1: hypothesized that these were surely the work of human beings
Speaker 1: Martin Wrights quote. Considering their proportions and geological setting. This
Speaker 1: was a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, as they superficially resembled human
Speaker 1: made tunnels and chambers in Cappadocia and elsewhere. Now Capa
Speaker 1: Dosia Is is noted here as u is a place
Speaker 1: that in what is modern day Turkey where you have
Speaker 1: these hit wonderful historic cave houses that can still be
Speaker 1: seen today. Um, Joe, you might be interested to also
Speaker 1: note that they filmed parts of your The Hunter from
Speaker 1: the Future here. Yes, there there are quite clear signs
Speaker 1: of the movie has scenes of of the of its
Speaker 1: muscly superstar reb Brown scuttling around over these beautiful rock formations.
Speaker 1: I think he fights a dinosaur in what is clearly
Speaker 1: Cappadocia than now. While some of these paleo burrows, again
Speaker 1: in South America, who were too small to have served
Speaker 1: as anything other than hiding places for children, um, he
Speaker 1: writes that others were large enough to have potentially been
Speaker 1: human dwellings. The largest word as wide as thirteen feet
Speaker 1: or four meters. Um, they were six point six feet
Speaker 1: tall or you know, or two meters, and they were
Speaker 1: more than three hundred and thirty feet long or about
Speaker 1: a hundred meters in length. So again, well, you know,
Speaker 1: in many of these cases, we're not just talking about uh,
Speaker 1: some sort of a narrow burrow, but but something that
Speaker 1: that that a that a family or a small group
Speaker 1: could have lived in. Quote. Moreover, some tunnels connected with
Speaker 1: one another or join larger sub spherical chambers to make
Speaker 1: more complicated networks. Once put together, some of these spaces
Speaker 1: feasibly could have served as underground homes for families or
Speaker 1: small communities. A few even contain petroglyphs showing that pre
Speaker 1: Columbian people entered at least some of them. And as
Speaker 1: we've we've touched on already, and there's a there's a
Speaker 1: long history of humans using naturally occurring caves, if not
Speaker 1: for shelter, then for for other purposes, be it like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a burial or some sort of sacred purpose,
Speaker 1: or in some cases, you know, we're not sure exactly
Speaker 1: what that purpose might have been. Uh. And then we
Speaker 1: have excellent examples of places like Cappadocia, which we just mentioned,
Speaker 1: which demonstrate that if local geologic conditions are conducive to excavation,
Speaker 1: then homes can be manufactured in the substance of the earth.
Speaker 1: There are also various traditions of pit houses partially buried
Speaker 1: or excavated homes. Again, it just kind of depends on
Speaker 1: the culture what's available there in the given environment. But
Speaker 1: in looking at these paleo burrows, researchers begin to notice
Speaker 1: things that made it less likely that humans built these
Speaker 1: particular tunnels at all. So, first of all, while artifacts
Speaker 1: and petroglyphs did factor into some of these sites, we
Speaker 1: did not find anywhere near the amount of human bones
Speaker 1: and human artifacts that we'd expect to find at a
Speaker 1: place where humans lived. Humans visited, but they did not
Speaker 1: seem to live here. And this is something that you know,
Speaker 1: you think of any of any of the episodes we've
Speaker 1: record or anything you read about about ancient sites of
Speaker 1: human habitation, you have, you know, you have these layers
Speaker 1: you can go through. You can you can essentially sort
Speaker 1: through the garbage of human civilizations and learn what they
Speaker 1: were up to and how long they were there. And
Speaker 1: in these cases, it does not seem like there is
Speaker 1: there are enough artifacts, enough remains or even enough you know,
Speaker 1: um petroglyphs uh to indicate that they were here. And
Speaker 1: that's another thing. Petroglyph rarity in these tunnels indicated. According
Speaker 1: to Martin quote folks were not inspired enough to hang
Speaker 1: out in these places and make art. Another fact, and
Speaker 1: this gets into the artifact issue as well, is indigenous
Speaker 1: people's in south eastern South America did not have access
Speaker 1: to the right materials for rock carving tools, and no
Speaker 1: evidence of of said tools were found. So, again getting
Speaker 1: back into the that the lack of artifacts to support
Speaker 1: the the idea that humans made these uh these burrows
Speaker 1: uh and or lived here. So during the nighties, researchers
Speaker 1: began to turn their attention away from human beings. Uh.
Speaker 1: They looked at the scale of these caves and tunnels.
Speaker 1: The small child size tunnels that we mentioned, they decided
Speaker 1: were likely the result of of a smaller burrowing prehistoric
Speaker 1: animals such as giant armadillo. But the grand caves and tunnels,
Speaker 1: the ones in which human families or communities could have
Speaker 1: potentially lived. A new hypothesis emerged for these architects, and
Speaker 1: it's it's not human beings. It's not flowing water or
Speaker 1: you know, natural geologic processes. It is the giant ground sloth.
Speaker 1: The big boys, the big boys. Yeah, so um, I
Speaker 1: know we've talked about sloths, uh, extant sloth species on
Speaker 1: the show before, and I guess giant ground sloths have
Speaker 1: come up but at least a time or two. But
Speaker 1: I don't think we've really discussed like what they were
Speaker 1: and why they're so cool, because today we have in
Speaker 1: the world, I believe, six extant species of our boreal sloths.
Speaker 1: You know, they live in the trees, and these are
Speaker 1: certainly weird and wonderful animals. Um. I'll be the first
Speaker 1: to admit that they can be a bit of a
Speaker 1: bore if you encounter them in the zoo. You know,
Speaker 1: they're typically just um, you know, bunched in the corner
Speaker 1: of a of an exhibit, you know, just chilling or
Speaker 1: staying warm. Uh. But I find that they often look
Speaker 1: like a like a wig hanging on a hook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, I mean I'm not commenting on their their
Speaker 1: happiness or lack of happiness there, but they're not as interests.
Speaker 1: They're not magical to behold. But in the wild, uh,
Speaker 1: they come off like these just strange elemental spirit beings.
Speaker 1: I had the privilege to glimpse one in the wild
Speaker 1: ones and it was just magical. It's got like this
Speaker 1: kind of thing that like slowly emerges out of the
Speaker 1: canopy and the distance and you glimpse it for a
Speaker 1: short amount of time and then it's gone. They're also
Speaker 1: magical in a different way if you get up close
Speaker 1: enough to see their face, because they often appear to
Speaker 1: be smiling. Yes, they have very the their faces are
Speaker 1: in this wonderful place that where they you know that
Speaker 1: we lean into anthropomorphizing them veryther easily. They look kind
Speaker 1: of like they're smiling. They look a little a little dirty,
Speaker 1: which is you know which, which is cute too? Cuteness
Speaker 1: um and yeah, and don't even get it started on
Speaker 1: baby sloths absolutely adorable. So we have today three toad
Speaker 1: slots and two toad slots. This refers to the four
Speaker 1: limbs only, and these represent two distantly related families that
Speaker 1: experience convergent evolution to our boreal life. Okay, so the
Speaker 1: sloth lineage is not one that that always existed in
Speaker 1: the trees. The species we have today are the ones
Speaker 1: that happened to move into the trees at some point
Speaker 1: in in in deep history. That's right. Yeah, Because plenty
Speaker 1: of these other slots or or slothes if you, if
Speaker 1: you were rather believe it's the British pronounciation, um, many
Speaker 1: of them were ground slots, and in some cases we're
Speaker 1: talking giant ground slots, and these can be quite impressive.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed looking at at bones, you know, fossil exhibits
Speaker 1: of these over time. There's also a wonderful, full scale,
Speaker 1: muddy and shaggy recreation of of of a ground slot
Speaker 1: at Atlanta's own firm Bank Museum of Natural History. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've been over to see this, Joe,
Speaker 1: but it's in the walk Through Time in Georgia exhibit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have been through that before, though I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly what this one looks like. I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: a picture of it online. Hold on, Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: here it is. I remember this now. Okay, this sloth
Speaker 1: needs a bath. First of all, it is filthy. It
Speaker 1: looks really gross. Yeah, it's it's it's it's impressive. I
Speaker 1: imagine it's been I don't know how long it's been there,
Speaker 1: but it has to have been impressing school children for
Speaker 1: for quite a while at this point. And I hope
Speaker 1: that if at some point they they they change anything
Speaker 1: in that exhibit, they keep the sloth. Uh. This would
Speaker 1: have been a keep it dirty, Keep it dirty, keep it,
Speaker 1: keep it, keep it on display. Uh, this would have
Speaker 1: I believe this would have been an airmatherium, which was
Speaker 1: a giant ground slow that would have lived four point
Speaker 1: nine million years ago to around eleven thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And it was It was a pretty big big guy,
Speaker 1: rivaling but not surpassing the megatherium in size. Now, megatherium,
Speaker 1: this is the this is the biggest of the known
Speaker 1: ground sloths of prehistoric times. Uh. Megatherium is Latin for
Speaker 1: the great beast. Oh, I've never put that together before.
Speaker 1: The theory um theoryum being beast. But that would be like,
Speaker 1: as in the word thee amorphic, taking the form of
Speaker 1: a beast. Yeah. So these guys reached heights of twenty
Speaker 1: ft or six meters and they probably weighed roughly four tons. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with the adults here obviously. Um. It
Speaker 1: was simply put the sloth as mega fauna fear and
Speaker 1: feeling that filling that niche in the in the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: A giant eating machine that didn't have to worry too
Speaker 1: much about predators, ate a lot to maintain their enormous
Speaker 1: bodies and then also slept a lot to digest it.
Speaker 1: This particular, a guy would have been as big as
Speaker 1: an elephant, and it exceeded at the time only in size,
Speaker 1: uh you know, concerning mammals by some terrestrial mammals, by
Speaker 1: some mammoths during its day. So this was a huge animal.
Speaker 1: And while there are some I think these are mainly controversial.
Speaker 1: There's a controversial hypothesis that it might have been partially carnivorous, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps feasting on scavenged dead animals, such as
Speaker 1: I believe the glyptodonts, but it's wildly thought. I believe
Speaker 1: that they were merely selective herbivores, though there are some
Speaker 1: ground slots that I think there there's more robust evidence
Speaker 1: that they may have been sporadically omnivorous, such as the
Speaker 1: Mila don Darwini. There was I believe a two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty one study looking at the copper lights of it,
Speaker 1: the fossil pooh of this particular slot, and they determined that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was probably scavenging some meat here and there to
Speaker 1: to make things to make ends meet. Though as we've
Speaker 1: discussed on the show several times, they're actually u quite
Speaker 1: a there's quite robust documentation that many animals we think
Speaker 1: of as pretty much strictly herbivorous, will in some strange
Speaker 1: occasions eat meat. Right. Nature is just pretty opportunistic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take what it gets. Yeah, So you know
Speaker 1: that this is just a starter on just how weird
Speaker 1: and strange these uh, these these sloths truly were. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're they're huge. There's the there's this idea that some
Speaker 1: of them are also eating a little meat here and there.
Speaker 1: But then when you start realizing that, Okay, looking at
Speaker 1: these paleo burrows, we're talking about giant ground sloths. They
Speaker 1: were not just digging in mud and dirt. They were
Speaker 1: burrowing through rock. Uh, We're just in a whole different
Speaker 1: dimension of wonder here. In my opinion, Martin writes that
Speaker 1: as paleontologists in Argentina and Brazil started looking closer at
Speaker 1: the at the the paleo burrows, they begin to find
Speaker 1: clear signs that they were made. They seem to have
Speaker 1: been made by giant sloths. They were so for of
Speaker 1: all they saw there were groove marks in the walls
Speaker 1: that matched the size and claw account of ground slots,
Speaker 1: usually two toad and then also the dimensions of the
Speaker 1: tunnels pointed towards the slots. These were not smooth and
Speaker 1: cylindrical tunnels, but quote a series of semi elliptical chambers
Speaker 1: with flat floors but ceilings that's that were possibly buffed
Speaker 1: out into concave shapes by the sloths backs and the
Speaker 1: resulting complexes of tunnels and rooms. Again this this feeling
Speaker 1: that you're going into a multi chambered subterranean habitat. These
Speaker 1: were likely the result of many generations of ground slots
Speaker 1: returning to a given sight year after year, So not
Speaker 1: just one creating this, but you know, coming back to
Speaker 1: the same location and uh and essentially adding onto it. Right,
Speaker 1: And from what I was reading these paleo burrows, they
Speaker 1: vary greatly in like size and complexity, right, So some
Speaker 1: are just sort of a straight cylinder that that goes
Speaker 1: aways in and and then terminates. But there are these
Speaker 1: other ones like you're talking about that have these uh
Speaker 1: more elaborate branching tunnels and sometimes open up into what
Speaker 1: appeared to be kind of rooms inside. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: these you know, I guess we could if you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's difficult to compare these types of constructions to
Speaker 1: human constructions, but you know, it's kind of like thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: think about a newspaper shop. Sometimes it's a freestanding place
Speaker 1: out here on on a street with nothing around it.
Speaker 1: Other times, well it's it's got this thing next to
Speaker 1: it and this other thing, and it gets depends on
Speaker 1: just how much uh sloth activity was going on in
Speaker 1: that given spot, like how how prime this location was
Speaker 1: for the burrows, and how many generations of of of
Speaker 1: animals were coming back to this place and digging these
Speaker 1: spaces out and redigging, thank thank, thank Okay. So another
Speaker 1: interesting point of comparison based on the articles I was
Speaker 1: reading versus Martin's take on this, is that the stuff
Speaker 1: I was reading made it seem like it was less
Speaker 1: well agreed on what what exactly had made these tunnels
Speaker 1: and why, and that the ground slots and extinct species
Speaker 1: of armadillos where the main contenders. But it sounds like
Speaker 1: Martin is is way more on the sloths side. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and he writes when you when you look at
Speaker 1: giant ground sloth anatomy as well, especially um uh skellow
Speaker 1: doth the ethereum and gloss ethereum, you find that their
Speaker 1: claw hands have these closely spaced thick fingers that make
Speaker 1: for quote natural shovels when applied against soft rock. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also had, you know, coming back to our example earlier,
Speaker 1: they had the muscle to back it all up. They
Speaker 1: had the four limbs and the shoulders. He compares it
Speaker 1: to the muscles necessary for a galloping power, like a
Speaker 1: galloping horse, except that in this case it's applied to digging.
Speaker 1: So instead of running, this is this is power that's
Speaker 1: clearly meant to dig. Also, their center of gravity was
Speaker 1: more towards the ear of the body, which he indicates
Speaker 1: would be would be more in line with a creature
Speaker 1: that's burrowing. Now, these two species that he ends up
Speaker 1: writing about, they're not they're not quite as big as
Speaker 1: the megathereum. But Martin he compares them to automobile. So
Speaker 1: he says that the skelet ethereum was the size of
Speaker 1: a Smart fort Woe electric car. These are these kind
Speaker 1: of mini car. I didn't really know what these were called,
Speaker 1: but you see them how driving around. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what these were called either, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're like the little little cars the I don't
Speaker 1: know which you could like compact electric cars, you might
Speaker 1: see it, you imagine driving around some European city or something,
Speaker 1: right right, Uh, And then he says that gloss ethereum
Speaker 1: was more of the size of an average midsize car.
Speaker 1: That you know, we do some some car ads for
Speaker 1: this show occasionally, and I think we need to start
Speaker 1: asking the advertisers to indicate what species of it of
Speaker 1: extinct ground sloth was the size of this vehicle, so
Speaker 1: that you know, listeners will be a little bit more
Speaker 1: informed about their potential auto purchases. Now what Martin doesn't
Speaker 1: really discuss megathereum in his book. It's but it seems
Speaker 1: like megatherium may have burrowed as well. I found some
Speaker 1: articles that we're talking about the megathereum and and burrowing possibilities.
Speaker 1: But this kind of blew me away. There's at least
Speaker 1: one hypothesis out there that megatherium might have have been hairless,
Speaker 1: like like a naked mole rat, like a towering naked
Speaker 1: mole rat. Uh yeah, And I included uh, a bit
Speaker 1: of paleo art here um indicating what this might have
Speaker 1: looked like. I found it completely strange and wonderful. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because you shared this with me and well, he looks
Speaker 1: like the engineers from the Alien franchise. Yeah, you managed
Speaker 1: to even find a pose from one of the engineers
Speaker 1: where it's it's it looks like they're they're doing the
Speaker 1: same pose here. Yeah. I wish I could have done
Speaker 1: it though. What would have been perfect is if it
Speaker 1: was the engineer but he had the mask on, like
Speaker 1: when they find the body in the original Alien. Oh goodness, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the this naked giant sloth head, it's fleshy head
Speaker 1: with it's it would have, you know, probably had a
Speaker 1: pretty like fleshy lip situation for uh, for all of
Speaker 1: the delicate consumption of of tree bits. Uh. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would have it looked it looks a lot like that
Speaker 1: mass that they wear in those in those movies. Okay,
Speaker 1: so wait a minute, did you did you credit this
Speaker 1: hypothesis yet? No, I haven't yet because the comment Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a hypothesis by a paleontologist from Uruguay, Richard A. Farina.
Speaker 1: He wrote a paper in two thousand and two titled
Speaker 1: Megathereum the Hairless Appearances of the Great Quaternary Sloths, arguing
Speaker 1: that this is in part because modern large this may
Speaker 1: be the case he's arguing in part because modern large
Speaker 1: mammals such as elephants and rhinos are mostly hairless to
Speaker 1: prevent overheating and hot climates. Okay, so, as far as
Speaker 1: I'm aware, this is not the dominant view of of
Speaker 1: of these ancient ground slots, but this is one idea.
Speaker 1: This is funny because I came across yet another paper
Speaker 1: where one of the two authors is the same guy,
Speaker 1: Richard Farina. Uh. This one was from nine in Proceedings
Speaker 1: of the Royal Society B by Farina and somebody named R. E. Blanco,
Speaker 1: And this one is called Megatherium the Stabber. That's the
Speaker 1: title of the paper. And this one hypothesizes. Now you
Speaker 1: may have already sort of touched on this when when
Speaker 1: talking about the the different ideas about the diets of
Speaker 1: these slots. But here Farina and Blanco are looking at
Speaker 1: characteristics of the remains of of the giant ground sloth
Speaker 1: of of Megathereum and saying maybe it wasn't so herbivorous.
Speaker 1: They write, uh, quote, Megatherium american um had morphological features
Speaker 1: that are better explained by its having had carnivorous habits
Speaker 1: rather than by solely herbivorous ones. Specifically, the question of
Speaker 1: its four arms having been designed for optimizing speed rather
Speaker 1: than strength of extension is addressed. So they argue that
Speaker 1: the anatomy of the four arms is such that this
Speaker 1: is an animal that would have been using vicious attacks
Speaker 1: with its claws rather than just sort of uh slow
Speaker 1: slow extending actions of like tearing branches out of trees
Speaker 1: or something. And then they also say that the high
Speaker 1: mechanical advantage of the megatherium's biceps would have made it
Speaker 1: possible for the animal to have lifted and carried heavy weights.
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, what if this means it was
Speaker 1: like turning animals over to get at the soft underbelly.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if anybody agrees with this today, this
Speaker 1: seems this seems possibly out there. But I like the
Speaker 1: idea that Verena has has made a career, at least
Speaker 1: partially on on proposing alternate interpretations of the megatherium. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I I did look at part of this paper.
Speaker 1: The idea I think is that glyptodonts it would have
Speaker 1: been like turning the glip to dot over and then
Speaker 1: using the claws and the forearms to like dig into
Speaker 1: the belly and start eating the flesh thing, flip it
Speaker 1: and then stab with the claws. Yeah, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure entirely if we're talking about a a living glipto
Speaker 1: dot or a dead one. If we're ultimately talking is
Speaker 1: he arguing like the this was the Mighty Hunter or
Speaker 1: that basically it's eating a lot of plants, but if
Speaker 1: it finds a dead glipto dot, yeah, it's going to
Speaker 1: flip it over and dig in a little bit. They're
Speaker 1: saying predatory behavior. So again, again I want to be
Speaker 1: very clear, I've not found any indication that this is
Speaker 1: a widely accepted interpretation of of megatherium remains. But interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, that's funny. Alright, So coming back to
Speaker 1: paleot burrows, um, one of the big remaining questions, and
Speaker 1: ultimately I guess one of the big remaining mysteries is Okay,
Speaker 1: so if we if we're gonna go with the hypothesis
Speaker 1: that these were dug out by giant ground slots, why
Speaker 1: did they burrow in the ground, why did they seem
Speaker 1: to come act to the same places, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: year after year, generation after generation and maintain these spaces.
Speaker 1: So Martin gets into this because the whole book is about,
Speaker 1: you know, deals with questions of why animals do this,
Speaker 1: Why is the burrow advantageous, Why is it helped you know,
Speaker 1: why in some cases did it enable certain creatures to
Speaker 1: survive cataclysms on the earth? Well, well, Martin points out that, Okay,
Speaker 1: if we're looking at the small opaleo burrows, we're looking
Speaker 1: at the work presumed to be created by giant armadillos.
Speaker 1: He thinks they likely burrowed for the same reason that
Speaker 1: modern armadillos do. It's just it's safer underground. It allows
Speaker 1: them to hide somewhere that major predators cannot go. And um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, these ancient armadillos, even though there
Speaker 1: they were bigger than what we have today, they would
Speaker 1: still have to avoid things like sabertooth cats and short
Speaker 1: faced bears. But when we look at the great ground
Speaker 1: slots here, digging tunnels so big that they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been able to keep these predators out, you know, we
Speaker 1: have a slightly different situation. Uh, And we're also dealing
Speaker 1: with creatures that were they were you know, large enough
Speaker 1: in some cases that they probably didn't really have to
Speaker 1: worry about these predators, not while they were healthy at
Speaker 1: any rate, and you know, not when in uh, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly when you get into you know, young being around,
Speaker 1: that's just a different situation. But you know, they're not
Speaker 1: as threatened by these predators, and they also are not
Speaker 1: creating spaces that would adequately protect them anyway. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean these are kind of the perks of being megafauna,
Speaker 1: with only climate change and human hunting seeming to be
Speaker 1: big enough threats to to end their reigns. According to Martin,
Speaker 1: the most popular current hypothesis here is that the primary
Speaker 1: reason that ground the giant ground sloths um dug these
Speaker 1: tunnels was ultimately to cope with a climate that was
Speaker 1: drier than today's. So the idea here is the cave
Speaker 1: would have maintained more human conditions as well as an
Speaker 1: average temperature, thus helping the animal out no matter what
Speaker 1: the side temperature, as if it's colder or hotter than
Speaker 1: what would be comfortable for the organism. Now that is
Speaker 1: interesting and it also makes me think about how I
Speaker 1: think it's certainly the case that when animals get bigger,
Speaker 1: they have more heat dissipation problems to worry about, right right, right,
Speaker 1: So so that, Yeah, this hypothesis seems to revolve, you know,
Speaker 1: roughly around that like how does this this, this, uh, this,
Speaker 1: this large ground sloth maintain appropriate body temperatures? And um,
Speaker 1: I can only guess how this might mash or not
Speaker 1: mesh with Farina's hairless ground sloth hypothesis, Like does a
Speaker 1: hairless ground sloth would it need to climb into a burrow?
Speaker 1: Even more, I don't know. This is not something that
Speaker 1: I think experts have weight in on that I have seen.
Speaker 1: As a side note, I will say that I did
Speaker 1: notice that looks like giant ground sloths do feature into
Speaker 1: some video games. I wonder if anyone has been inspired
Speaker 1: by Phonina's hypotheses and decided to make them aggressive and
Speaker 1: maybe they come up and like they if you're in
Speaker 1: a vehicle, they turn your vehicle over and like dig
Speaker 1: you out through the bottom of the vehicle. Ground slots
Speaker 1: the naked stabber. Yeah. Now, as as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the ground slauce we're talking about, they did overlap with
Speaker 1: human beings for for at least a short time, and
Speaker 1: it seems like human beings probably had played a major
Speaker 1: role in their extinction. Um, you know, there there there
Speaker 1: have been sites where we find evidence of of butchery
Speaker 1: taking place with the with these giant ground sloths. So
Speaker 1: ultimately human beings survived, some arboreal sloth survived, but the
Speaker 1: age of the giant ground sloth um came to any end. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is not super related to what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But did you happen to read that thing about the
Speaker 1: giant ground slots and the paper arguing that that like
Speaker 1: twenty two of them that were found dead, all in
Speaker 1: the same place, died in a in a poop related
Speaker 1: mass casualty incident. No I did not. Uh. So the
Speaker 1: paper was published in paleo Geography, Paleoclimatology and Paleoecology in
Speaker 1: in by Lindsay at all uh and it was documenting
Speaker 1: a large death assemblage from the from the late place
Speaker 1: to scene in a place called tonke Loma in the
Speaker 1: southwest of of Ecuador. And so it was this place
Speaker 1: that had the remains of at least twenty two different
Speaker 1: giant ground sloths, the Ramotherium laurel ardi. And they they
Speaker 1: found all of these animals together in a in a
Speaker 1: deposition pattern that indicated that they basically all died right
Speaker 1: around the same time gathered around this marshy little pool
Speaker 1: of water that looked like a place that had repeatedly
Speaker 1: been been filled with water and then and then dried
Speaker 1: up and allowed plants to grow, and then filled with
Speaker 1: water again. So maybe one of these sort of intermittent
Speaker 1: watering holes, places that that sometimes have water and sometimes don't.
Speaker 1: And based on a number of cues around this area,
Speaker 1: the authors decided that they thought the most likely interpretation
Speaker 1: of what happened here is that a bunch of giant
Speaker 1: ground slots were hanging out in and around this water,
Speaker 1: using it to cool their bodies and as a as
Speaker 1: a watering hole, to drink from and to eat the
Speaker 1: plants that were growing around, and that by fouling this
Speaker 1: water source that was ever shrinking with their fecal matter,
Speaker 1: they essentially poop poison to themselves and and many of
Speaker 1: them ended up dying. You know, I don't have Is
Speaker 1: there a paleo art to go with this one show?
Speaker 1: It's not very inspiring for the children's books, is it.
Speaker 1: But but they end up writing and and their their
Speaker 1: modern analogies for this. The fountains like like shrinking watering
Speaker 1: holes in in the present day savannah environments. They write, quote,
Speaker 1: we suggest that this death event could have resulted from
Speaker 1: drought ind or disease stemming from the contamination of the wallow,
Speaker 1: paralleling situations observed among hippopotamus populations in watering holes on
Speaker 1: the present day African savannah. So sometimes this apparently happens,
Speaker 1: like a watering hole in a in a dry area
Speaker 1: is filled with hippos and they just keep pooping into
Speaker 1: it and drinking it, and obviously that's that's not good
Speaker 1: for them. Well, we can see how, you know, we
Speaker 1: can see like changing climates potentially impacting these situations as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so um Martin and his But again, the whole book
Speaker 1: is full of full is full of wonderful explorations of
Speaker 1: of burrowing creatures, um, you know, and not all of
Speaker 1: which are vertebrates. H for sure, I recommend picking that
Speaker 1: up if you're at all interested in this topic. But
Speaker 1: he writes that scientists would have once thought that creatures
Speaker 1: as large as these, uh these ground floss would have
Speaker 1: would not have burrowed, that the borrowed burrowing creatures do
Speaker 1: not grow this big. But he points out that in fact,
Speaker 1: the largest burrowing animals today are bears, especially, says if
Speaker 1: you count snow as a substrate for burrowing, which he does,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we've all seen uh. He points
Speaker 1: out that, you know, we've all seen documentaries at this
Speaker 1: point showing polar bears doing the burling in the snow,
Speaker 1: creating a burrow. Uh. Mother Polo polar bear anyway for
Speaker 1: her young and uh and yeah, if you if you
Speaker 1: count snow as a substrate for burrowing, then that's that's burrowing,
Speaker 1: and that's a pretty impressive. Interesting. So this comes in
Speaker 1: a way back to the dinosaur paper we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: because this would primarily be a dinning behavior for the
Speaker 1: protection of young while they're while they're still vulnerable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I do have to mention as well, quite amusingly
Speaker 1: and of course very much touching on my interest. He
Speaker 1: also compares the giant ground sloth to the grab lloids
Speaker 1: from the movie Trimmers. This was pretty fun when I
Speaker 1: was looking through the index and this. When I first
Speaker 1: got the book, I was like, oh, he talks about
Speaker 1: trimmers at some point. This seems like our our kind
Speaker 1: of scientists, because was the giant ground sloths also had
Speaker 1: multiple snake tongues that would go out and get well, no,
Speaker 1: but but he points out, like he seems to be
Speaker 1: a fan of tremmors. But he points out that, Okay,
Speaker 1: you have these fabulous worm like creatures that are digging
Speaker 1: these tunnels, burrowing through the ground in this corner of Nevada. Um.
Speaker 1: He says, well, well, there would probably be some remnant
Speaker 1: of that. There would be some uh, there's some evidence
Speaker 1: so the ancient grab boids in this area, um where
Speaker 1: the burrowing would have taken place. Right, So even if
Speaker 1: the animal decomposed, it would leave the trace fossils of
Speaker 1: its burrows, right. And I don't know, thinking back on
Speaker 1: the grab Boids, it looked like there were some hard
Speaker 1: parts that might fossilize. Oh yeah, maybe that's beaks or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the beak. Yeah, I don't know. Awaiting his his full
Speaker 1: paper break doing a breakdown of the grab Boids. Now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. Didn't we learn in some of the
Speaker 1: Deep Trimmor sequels that they have multiple life cycle stages
Speaker 1: and that some of them are like flying and junk
Speaker 1: like running around. There's a version of legs. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I I don't know that I ever really watched any
Speaker 1: of the sequels, but I have a lot of love
Speaker 1: for that first Trimor's film. That was just that's a
Speaker 1: pretty perfect monster movie, pretty great. So Kevin Bacon is
Speaker 1: not in the sequels. The sequels end up focusing back
Speaker 1: at some point, or he was because they did a
Speaker 1: TV series. They did a lot of I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that Sci Fi Channel kind of sequels there,
Speaker 1: but then they did a TV show at some point,
Speaker 1: and um, I feel I feel like Kevin Bacon finally
Speaker 1: came back. The sequels I'm familiar with don't have Bacon.
Speaker 1: They focus more on that guy who's Reba's husband, and
Speaker 1: the first one, the like the gun the gun prepper guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that played by Michael Gross. Yeah that's right. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the he's the like heavily armed Dale Gribble guy in
Speaker 1: the first movie. Yeah. Yeah, he was in a bunch
Speaker 1: of him and he was fun in that. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but we we often go around quoting Reba
Speaker 1: McIntire from the first Trimmer's movie. She she's just got
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of punchy delivery. You know,
Speaker 1: he didn't get pantrition anyone with the elphant gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Reba's great in that yeah. Oh, and I am correct.
Speaker 1: There was a two thousand eighteen TV movie called Trimmers
Speaker 1: and it had the return of Kevin Bacon and Fred Wards.
Speaker 1: So there you go. I have not seen it, can't
Speaker 1: vouch for it. I apologize I was wrong. All right,
Speaker 1: Well we're gonna go. Yeah, I'm sorry. I just I
Speaker 1: just googled it and I found that, uh sorry, on
Speaker 1: Reba's website, she has a page dedicated to Trimmer's. Oh
Speaker 1: that's great, so you can go to reba dot com
Speaker 1: slash trimmers. Let's let's also not forget that Victor Wong.
Speaker 1: Isn't that and it's also pretty fabulous? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: it out here, but we'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: out there who has thoughts on these if you had,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have any thoughts on giant ground
Speaker 1: sloths or modern arboreal sloths. Um, everything is is up
Speaker 1: for grabs. Here. Are there interesting tunnels that you're aware of,
Speaker 1: be they you know, naturally occurring caves and so forth,
Speaker 1: or modern or ancient human constructions that we're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out. We'd love to hear about all of that.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to listen to
Speaker 1: more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find
Speaker 1: us in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 1: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener Mail on Monday,
Speaker 1: Artifact on Wednesday, and on Friday, we do Weird How Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to satisfide most serious matters and just
Speaker 1: talk about a strange film. Big thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
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