Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: of our series on the horse hoof. Now. In part one,
Speaker 3: we discussed the anatomical form of the horse hoof, with
Speaker 3: an emphasis on the alarming fact that the hoof is
Speaker 3: essentially a highly specialized form of the tetrapod middle finger.
Speaker 3: So when you see a horse galloping around, yes, it
Speaker 3: is running around on all middle fingers and toes. We
Speaker 3: talked about an ancient legend about the horse ridden by
Speaker 3: Julius Caesar, which some artists have depicted as having dock
Speaker 3: and hair and human feet instead of hoofs, at least
Speaker 3: on the first two legs. Rob's idea, I think was
Speaker 3: that this it's possible that these stories could be based
Speaker 3: on observations of what are called polydactyl horses, horses born
Speaker 3: with extra hooflets on the sides of the primary hoof,
Speaker 3: which do in fact exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this seems to be the more sensible interpretation that
Speaker 2: you see taken by folks, and I don't think anyone's
Speaker 2: actually arguing that these horses had like human fore feet,
Speaker 2: but it looks hilarious in the illustrations. It does.
Speaker 3: And we finally talked about the evolution of the horse hoof,
Speaker 3: with the commonly accepted narrative being that millions of years ago,
Speaker 3: the ancestors of modern horses lived in more forested environments,
Speaker 3: maybe warmer, wetter environments. They were much smaller, maybe about
Speaker 3: the size of dogs, and had multiple toes per feet. Then,
Speaker 3: due to climate and habitat changes, they became grassland dwellers,
Speaker 3: which drove them to evolve larger body sizes and select
Speaker 3: for galloping speed. And these changes coincided with the law
Speaker 3: of peripheral toes until you end up with the modern
Speaker 3: horse and its relatives in the genus equis, so that
Speaker 3: would include the zebra and the ass, all having only
Speaker 3: one toe per foot, the columnar hoof. Now today, we
Speaker 3: wanted to continue the series on the horse hoof, getting
Speaker 3: into a couple other things about horsecof evolution as well
Speaker 3: as the invention of the horseshoe. But before we do that,
Speaker 3: I wanted to take a brief detour into a metaphorical
Speaker 3: connection to the hoof, which concerns medical diagnostics, and more generally,
Speaker 3: the realm of statistical reasoning. So there's a famous aphorism
Speaker 3: widely used in medical education, often invoked by practicing physicians,
Speaker 3: and it goes like this, when you hear hoof beats,
Speaker 3: look for horses, not zebras. Rob. I think this saying
Speaker 3: may have come up on the show in the past,
Speaker 3: though I couldn't remember when, but I'm sure you've heard
Speaker 3: this before, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically is what it sounds like, right, it's, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever the evidence seems to indicate, go for the more
Speaker 2: likely and more statistically reasonable explanation for the evidence. Right.
Speaker 3: So I was looking up the history of this quote
Speaker 3: in a chapter on medical aphorisms in a book called
Speaker 3: White Coat Tails Medicine's Heroes, Heritage and Misadventures by Robert B.
Speaker 3: Taylor published by Springer. So I'll refer back to that
Speaker 3: chapter in a second. But yeah, Rob, like you said,
Speaker 3: the point of this aphorism is that when a patient
Speaker 3: presents with symptoms X, Y, and Z, you should start
Speaker 3: by thinking about the most common conditions within the population
Speaker 3: associated with that cluster of symptoms, rather than jumping to
Speaker 3: assumptions about rare diseases. So, for example, if a patient
Speaker 3: presents at a US clinic with flu like symptoms, it's
Speaker 3: better to start by investigating the possibility that they have
Speaker 3: the flu or common cold, or now maybe COVID, rather
Speaker 3: than to by investigating whether they have contracted the hindra
Speaker 3: virus from a flying fox in Australia. Taylor traces this
Speaker 3: saying back to an American medical researcher named Theodore E.
Speaker 3: Woodward who lived nineteen fourteen to two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: who taught at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Speaker 3: And it seems actually the common form of this aphorism
Speaker 3: might be a paraphrase, and the more accurate original quote
Speaker 3: may have been don't look for zebras on Green Street.
Speaker 3: That might be a little perplexing, but it makes sense
Speaker 3: in the context because Green Street was the location of
Speaker 3: the University of Maryland hospital in Baltimore, and he was
Speaker 3: teaching at the University of Maryland two students there, So
Speaker 3: of course you can see why it would need to
Speaker 3: be rephrased to make more sense outside of its original locality.
Speaker 3: But I also think the localization to Baltimore geography highlights
Speaker 3: something important, which is that this aphorism is only useful
Speaker 3: when you're talking about a no own population of patients
Speaker 3: in which the frequency of certain diseases or conditions is
Speaker 3: fairly well understood. Because if you were talking to a
Speaker 3: group of medical students, maybe in a region of southern
Speaker 3: Africa where zebras are abundant, it might make sense to
Speaker 3: use the aphorism inverted, I guess, depending on how many
Speaker 3: horses there are around as well. But in the same sense,
Speaker 3: you have to know what the frequencies are in the
Speaker 3: population you're looking at before deploying this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: Now, I find this the reasoning behind the saying actually
Speaker 3: kind of interesting, because if you interpret it in the
Speaker 3: usual way, it's a piece of advice that can seem
Speaker 3: rather obvious, like common explanations are more common than rare ones.
Speaker 3: But I think as a general rule, when looking for explanations,
Speaker 3: we do have to be reminded to start by considering
Speaker 3: what is most likely in terms of frequency, because there
Speaker 3: are all kinds of mental biases that constantly tempt us
Speaker 3: to start looking for highly unusual causes for unexplained phenomena
Speaker 3: before we've exhausted all of the extremely commonplace candidates for
Speaker 3: one thing. Unusual causes and explanations are usually more exciting.
Speaker 3: They kind of stick in the mind because of our
Speaker 3: level of interest in them, and they can quite easily
Speaker 3: then come to mind when we start searching around for
Speaker 3: an explanation. They're sort of at the top of the
Speaker 3: toy box right now. In this section of the book
Speaker 3: I was talking about, Taylor makes an interesting point about
Speaker 3: the zebra aphorism, which I hadn't quite considered. I was
Speaker 3: just thinking at the first order level of more common
Speaker 3: explanations and less common explanations. But Taylor also writes quote
Speaker 3: as a clinical corollary, experienced diagnosticians look first for uncommon
Speaker 3: manifestations of common conditions rather than common manifestations of uncommon diseases.
Speaker 3: Now that seemed really interesting to me. I hadn't quite
Speaker 3: thought about it that way. And of course it would
Speaker 3: depend on exactly how uncommon you mean in each clause
Speaker 3: of that sentence, Like if you were to represent them
Speaker 3: as actual percentage chances and stuff, the math might break
Speaker 3: out in different ways. But if a certain set of
Speaker 3: symptoms appears in I don't know, only three percent of
Speaker 3: cases of an extremely common condition that affects you, know,
Speaker 3: millions of people every year. It is probably still worth
Speaker 3: investigating that diagnosis, the uncommon manifestation of the extremely common
Speaker 3: condition before you look at the possibility of a condition
Speaker 3: that matches the symptoms very closely. But you know, you
Speaker 3: might only see only a couple of cases in the
Speaker 3: world per year, it's extremely rare. You'd still get way
Speaker 3: more hits of confirmation on the on the uncommon version
Speaker 3: of the common condition.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of various discussions we've had about cryptozoology
Speaker 2: and the interpretations and misinterpretations of dead animals and in
Speaker 2: some cases dead human beings, where you're looking at some
Speaker 2: rate of decay and yeah, are you looking at it
Speaker 2: as an uncommon manifestation of a common condition? In other words,
Speaker 2: are you looking at is kind of like a novel
Speaker 2: pattern or appearance in decay of just a normal, mundane animal,
Speaker 2: or are you going to jump to that extreme level
Speaker 2: and think, well, no, this is just how it looks
Speaker 2: and we've just never seen this creature before. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. However, I want to come back on the other end,
Speaker 3: because if you search for medical case reports citing this aphorism,
Speaker 3: which I was doing a lot of times, it will
Speaker 3: be specifically to discuss cases where it was a zebra
Speaker 3: on Green Street, the rare and unexpected diagnosis that turned
Speaker 3: out to be correct. So just one example I was
Speaker 3: looking at this was a case report published in Clinical
Speaker 3: Practice in Cases in Emergency Medicine in twenty nineteen by
Speaker 3: Loupez at All called Beware of the Zebra nine year
Speaker 3: old with Fever. I believe this incident took place in
Speaker 3: the US state of North Carolina. So it was a
Speaker 3: nine year old girl whose family spoke only French, and
Speaker 3: they presented at the hospital with the patient having an
Speaker 3: abdominal pain, vomiting, intermittent fevers, fatigue, and headache, and because
Speaker 3: there was a language barrier, everything had to be done
Speaker 3: with the help of an interpreter, and it seems that
Speaker 3: this led to some maybe some original misunderstandings about the
Speaker 3: case history. So the doctors tried to diagnose based on
Speaker 3: all the normal explanations that they would be likely to
Speaker 3: see in their patient population, but none of the common
Speaker 3: diagnoses really fit her case. Her condition continued to get worse,
Speaker 3: it even became life threatening, and the breakthrough seemed to
Speaker 3: come when the doctors began looking outside the normal slate
Speaker 3: of conditions encountered in their practice in the United States. Finally,
Speaker 3: they learned that the girl's family had just in the
Speaker 3: wa weeks before, arrived from the Congo, where malaria is common.
Speaker 3: The care providers eventually ordered a test that would put
Speaker 3: them on the right track. They write in their report, quote,
Speaker 3: this test was a peripheral blood smear, specifically a thick
Speaker 3: and thin smear, which revealed Plasmodium falciparum. And this is
Speaker 3: one of the protozoa responsible for causing malaria, leading to
Speaker 3: a final diagnosis of cerebral malaria. And then they write
Speaker 3: from here they contacted the twenty four hour CDC hotline
Speaker 3: to immediately get the appropriate anti malarial medication. They put
Speaker 3: the girl on a quinine drip and admitted her to
Speaker 3: the pediatric intensive care unit. And then they say, quote remarkably,
Speaker 3: within four weeks she made a full recovery and returned
Speaker 3: home with her family. So thankfully, the patient was all
Speaker 3: right in the end, but she potentially could have died
Speaker 3: if doctors hadn't made the locally unusual but correct diagnosis
Speaker 3: and given her the right treatment. And so the authors
Speaker 3: say in their conclusion quote, many of us are taught
Speaker 3: the common aphorism in medical school. When you hear hoof beats,
Speaker 3: think horses, not zebras. When approaching a nine year old
Speaker 3: with fever, we hear the hoof beat symptoms and tend
Speaker 3: to think of the typical diagnoses that are commonly seen
Speaker 3: in our pediatric population. Yet if we are not thinking
Speaker 3: about the zebras, we will miss this common presentation of
Speaker 3: a disease that is uncommon north of the equator, which
Speaker 3: could lead to high morbidity and possibly even mortality for patients.
Speaker 3: So it's very good that they were able to discover
Speaker 3: this intervene and probably save the girl's life. But it
Speaker 3: highlights how there's a difficult balance, Like if you go
Speaker 3: looking for zebras before you look for horses on Green Street,
Speaker 3: you will waste a lot of time and resources and
Speaker 3: potentially cause frequent misdiagnoses that could harm people. But if
Speaker 3: you never consider the possibility of zebras on Green Street,
Speaker 3: there will be rare but very real cases where you
Speaker 3: could save somebody's life but you don't.
Speaker 2: So that's a great point. Yeah, certainly looking at the
Speaker 2: like the professional end of the scenario, because on the
Speaker 2: other end, like say the user end and the media end.
Speaker 2: I mean, zebra on Green Street. That's a great headline.
Speaker 2: You're gonna that's this headline that's gonna stick in your mind,
Speaker 2: and then when you're going to see the doctor, you're
Speaker 2: gonna be like, hey, doc, is it possible that a
Speaker 2: rare amiba is eating my flesh? Or something to that effect,
Speaker 2: because that's what you saw in the headline, that's what
Speaker 2: you saw on the the documentary series that that that
Speaker 2: sensationalized a rare case, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, the the difficult thing is like, because of
Speaker 3: the way we emotionally react to stories like this, I
Speaker 3: feel like it kind of tends to have the effect
Speaker 3: of making us think, well, maybe then I should start
Speaker 3: looking for diagnoses of unusual diseases in patient populations. So
Speaker 3: it just highlights like diagnosis in the specific case of medicine,
Speaker 3: and searching for explanations for unknown phenomena generally is really difficult.
Speaker 3: It involves a balance between prioritizing likely explanations, which are
Speaker 3: you know, by very definition, almost always going to be correct,
Speaker 3: but also being open minded enough to catch the unusual
Speaker 3: ones when they arise. And obviously, I think a big
Speaker 3: part of the art of medicine is gaining good intuition
Speaker 3: and establishing sound processes to prioritize explanations in a reasonable
Speaker 3: way based on what we know about frequency, but then
Speaker 3: also to be able to catch the cases that are
Speaker 3: unusual and intervene appropriately to help people. All right, you
Speaker 3: want to talk a little bit about the evolution of
Speaker 3: the horse hoof?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we should probably talk a little bit more
Speaker 2: about how they came to run about in their middle fingers.
Speaker 3: We talked in the last episode about a pretty commonly
Speaker 3: accepted story of how that evolutionary process occurred, but there
Speaker 3: was still some uncertainty about exactly why the one toe
Speaker 3: making contact with the ground is favored over keeping the
Speaker 3: larger number of toes that the ancestors of horses used
Speaker 3: to have, And to some degree, I think that question
Speaker 3: is still not fully settled. There are still some questions
Speaker 3: about why exactly the one toe was favored. We do
Speaker 3: know that the ancestors of horses and zebras and asses
Speaker 3: had multiple toes per foot, But what is gained by
Speaker 3: going quad bird, you know, the middle fingers across all
Speaker 3: four feet. So the evolution of is called monodactyly having
Speaker 3: one toe Monodactyly, it has long been assumed that that
Speaker 3: was useful for allowing a large animal like a modern horse,
Speaker 3: to achieve greater running speed. But I came across an
Speaker 3: interesting alternative idea explored in a paper called the Evolution
Speaker 3: of equid monodact a review including a new hypothesis published
Speaker 3: in Frontiers and Ecology and Evolution by Christine M. Janis
Speaker 3: and Raymond Bernor. And basically here the authors ask what
Speaker 3: if the evolution of the modern equine hoof was a
Speaker 3: product of selection for endurance rather than speed, meaning that
Speaker 3: the primary advantage conferred was in the evolution of an
Speaker 3: efficient and energy efficient spring foot that would support long
Speaker 3: distance trots at medium speed to locate better food resources. So,
Speaker 3: under their hypothesis, the loss of extra toes may have
Speaker 3: been a coincidental byproduct of the selection for the more
Speaker 3: efficient spring foot, which helps the horse conserve energy while foraging,
Speaker 3: rather than an adaptation for top speed running, which again
Speaker 3: is assumed to be primarily for the purpose of escaping
Speaker 3: the jaws of predators. Now, I cite this not to
Speaker 3: say that I think their hypothesis is definitely correct. I
Speaker 3: have no expertise to decide between which explanation of the
Speaker 3: horstof evolution better fits the evidence. But this possibility made
Speaker 3: me think back again to the Zebras on Green Street
Speaker 3: saying about how sometimes certain explanations seem more likely to us,
Speaker 3: not because they're actually more common, but because they're more
Speaker 3: mentally salient. It reminds me I've talked before about this
Speaker 3: idea that I have the sort of sex and violence
Speaker 3: principle in evolutionary reasoning, where what I think I've observed
Speaker 3: is that when people without or sometimes even with biological training,
Speaker 3: are trying to think of possible evolutionary explanations for a
Speaker 3: trait in an organism, we are a little too quick
Speaker 3: to resort to explanations involving either predation or mating, and
Speaker 3: we often overlook extremely common mechanism in nature, like temperature
Speaker 3: regulation and energy efficiency, which play a huge role in
Speaker 3: the success of a life form. But I think maybe
Speaker 3: they're not as interesting to our brains as sex or violence,
Speaker 3: so we're less likely to think of them. They do
Speaker 3: not bleed, so they do not lead in the mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of past discussions we've
Speaker 2: talked about concerning the Stegosaurus, For example, you know, and
Speaker 2: memory serves you know that there have been various interpretations
Speaker 2: over the years, for there are those curious plates on
Speaker 2: their back, as well as very interpretations of just how
Speaker 2: they're positioned. But yeah, you can with something like that,
Speaker 2: you can. You're inevitably you're going to find those explanations
Speaker 2: that have to do with mating, or protection from predators,
Speaker 2: or protection when they're in conflict with others of their kind.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I guess sometimes these ideas that they're used
Speaker 2: for temperature regulation or something like that may may feel
Speaker 2: less excite, may feel more mundane. Though I guess you
Speaker 2: could also argue that maybe the more exotic or mysterious
Speaker 2: the feature is, like say those backridges on the stegosaurus,
Speaker 2: maybe that cancels it out to some degree. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's hard to imagine a like a seven year
Speaker 2: old or an eight year old playing with the toy
Speaker 2: Stegasaurus and be like, look, Mom and dad, this guy's
Speaker 2: warming up in the sun watching. That's not what bathtub
Speaker 2: dinosaurs do. They bite each other.
Speaker 3: But again, I want to make clear, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: I think that the the trotting foraging spring hoof explanation
Speaker 3: is necessarily better than the high speed running explanation for
Speaker 3: the horse hoof. I don't know, but I think it's
Speaker 3: important to remember to consider those types of explanations as well. Now,
Speaker 3: another question that has come up in several things I
Speaker 3: was reading is about should we really say that the
Speaker 3: horse only has one toe? I mean, it really does
Speaker 3: basically have only one toe that makes contact with the
Speaker 3: with the ground, But in what sense did it really
Speaker 3: quote lose the other toes. One example of this counter
Speaker 3: narrative I was reading is in an article in The
Speaker 3: New York Times by Veronique Greenwood published February eighth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: called a horse has five toes and then it doesn't.
Speaker 3: And this article tells the story of a researcher named
Speaker 3: Catherine Kavanaugh, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth,
Speaker 3: who was looking at preserved horse embryos in the lab
Speaker 3: when she discovered something very interesting, which is that during
Speaker 3: the earliest stages of gestation, the area of the embryo
Speaker 3: that will eventually develop to become the foot become the hoof.
Speaker 3: In that area, the embryonic horses have five toes. So
Speaker 3: this period during development only lasts for a couple of
Speaker 3: days before the extra toes begin to sort of fuse
Speaker 3: and vanish. But to read from the article briefly, quote
Speaker 3: the discover reimplies something profound about how anatomical development works.
Speaker 3: As an embryo puts itself together, growing from a tiny
Speaker 3: wad of cells into multiple specialized tissues, fed by blood
Speaker 3: vessels and linked by the winding threads of nerves, it
Speaker 3: is following a template. That template is subject to evolution,
Speaker 3: just like other things about the animal. But some moments
Speaker 3: in the process or some routes that development takes may
Speaker 3: not easily be altered. And so the researcher here, Catherine Kavanaugh,
Speaker 3: is quoted saying something about the early steps in toe
Speaker 3: development is stabilized. We don't know why, but that's what
Speaker 3: we think is going on. So I found this also
Speaker 3: interesting because it's an example of how stages in development
Speaker 3: can become evolutionarily fixed even when they differ from the
Speaker 3: final form. So like, for some reason, as the horse
Speaker 3: is growing as an embryo, it needs to develop five
Speaker 3: fingers before or five toes before it can lose four
Speaker 3: of the toes per hoof, so you know, eventually it
Speaker 3: will have functionally one toe making contact with the ground,
Speaker 3: but the development process has to go through this other
Speaker 3: stage first.
Speaker 2: For some reason, it reminds me of something we discussed
Speaker 2: in our whale episodes about the blowhole of the whale
Speaker 2: being seen to, of course, through the fossil record, travel
Speaker 2: up the snout up to the top of the head.
Speaker 2: But we can also observe this movement in the womb
Speaker 2: as the fetal whale is developing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another interesting thing about the horse hoof is that
Speaker 3: there are some people who have pointed out how vestiges
Speaker 3: of the missing toes can still sort of be found
Speaker 3: as little sort of ridges on the sides of the hoof.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I ran across this a lot in some of
Speaker 2: the veterinary sources I was looking at.
Speaker 3: But don't let this take away from your mental enjoyment
Speaker 3: of thinking about the horses running around on its middle fingers,
Speaker 3: which functionally is it is?
Speaker 2: I mean to me, it makes it even more weird.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like if you were to It's kind
Speaker 2: of like if you're looking at Kermit the frog and
Speaker 2: someone were to tell you, like there's a difference in saying, hey,
Speaker 2: there's somebody's hand in there and and someone saying, actually,
Speaker 2: all the bones of a human hand are present in
Speaker 2: Kermit the frog, but they have been repurposed and formed
Speaker 2: into the skeletal structure of this bipedal frog creature. Like
Speaker 2: that's even crazier, and I feel like that's more in
Speaker 2: line with what we know about the horses.
Speaker 3: Splendid analogy.
Speaker 2: Bravo.
Speaker 3: All right, are we ready to talk about the horse shoe?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is something that originally I didn't think we
Speaker 2: were going to cover, or if we were to cover,
Speaker 2: we might come back, but I felt like it's kind
Speaker 2: of so closely linked to our understanding of the horse
Speaker 2: and the human use of the horse. And at the
Speaker 2: same time, in discussing this, we are going to be
Speaker 2: kind of blowing through the domestication of the horse rather quickly.
Speaker 2: Like this is a topic that has received a lot
Speaker 2: of attention over the years in varying fields. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's genetic research, there's archaeology, there's you know, various cultural inquiries.
Speaker 2: It's kind of all over the place, and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of unanswered questions about you know, especially when
Speaker 2: you get into you know, the exact who's and winds
Speaker 2: and wares, say horse domestication, and even the development or
Speaker 2: the horseshoe. But I feel like covering the horseshoe also
Speaker 2: helps us understand the hoof a little bit more so,
Speaker 2: briefly talking about the modern horse, the modern horse has
Speaker 2: a long and pivotal history as a human steed. Many
Speaker 2: animals have, of course served as mounts for human riders,
Speaker 2: and many have served as a pack and draft animals.
Speaker 2: I know that, at least on the Artifact and perhaps
Speaker 2: elsewhere in some core episodes, we've touched on the importance
Speaker 2: of the camel and the donkey, But the horse, the
Speaker 2: horse is just a whole different matter, both in terms
Speaker 2: of like the impact that it's had, like I think
Speaker 2: the larger impact that it's had globally, and also just
Speaker 2: how it has captured the imagination. Not to diminish the
Speaker 2: camel or the donkey, because in particular regions, the camel
Speaker 2: and the donkey have been far more important. Whole books
Speaker 2: have been written about the camel and the donkey, and
Speaker 2: I've read parts of them. If you want to hear
Speaker 2: a little bit more about that, go back to the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact episode that I did on Donkeys of Dune,
Speaker 2: which touched on this a little bit. Now, as we've discussed,
Speaker 2: the modern horse evolved over the course of fifty to
Speaker 2: sixty million years from a diminutive ancestor, and then it
Speaker 2: would have reached identifiable form somewhere around four to four
Speaker 2: point five million years ago, then migrating across the Bearing
Speaker 2: Straight via some sort of a primitive land bridge into
Speaker 2: Eurasia about eleven thousand years ago, and becoming stinct in
Speaker 2: North America after that, and it would not come back
Speaker 2: around the globe to North America until it was reintroduced
Speaker 2: the European conc West in the fifteenth century see now.
Speaker 2: Of the wild horse's three ancestors, two when extinct, and
Speaker 2: a third the takei or Mongolian wild horse or Preswalski's horse,
Speaker 2: these are all the different names for the same creature. Essentially,
Speaker 2: this survived only in captivity and then was subsequently has
Speaker 2: been subsequently reintroduced into the wild, though with some important
Speaker 2: caveats worth discussing. Should we come back around to talk
Speaker 2: about the reintroduction of a species. There are lots of
Speaker 2: sort of ups and downs with that particular story, as
Speaker 2: there are with some other species reintroduction tales. Now much
Speaker 2: has been written about the role of the horse in
Speaker 2: the history of human conflict, and there is indeed just
Speaker 2: so much that we we could and I guess should
Speaker 2: one day discuss about that, you know, the use of say,
Speaker 2: chariot technology, even the saddle like, they're just so many
Speaker 2: different angles to take. Now. Its pointed out by equine
Speaker 2: warfare expert A Highland and this is in Brian fahe
Speaker 2: against the Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World. DNA
Speaker 2: evidence suggests that the domestication of the horse took place
Speaker 2: independently in several different places and times. And according to them,
Speaker 2: and this was this book came out in two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, so I'm going to touch in a more
Speaker 2: recent source on all this in just a second. They
Speaker 2: were talking about the earliest domestication having possibly taken place
Speaker 2: on the Eurasian Step somewhere around four thousand BCE, though
Speaker 2: they did highlight that the proof was inconclusive. I've also
Speaker 2: seen other sources just put it that the geographic origin
Speaker 2: of horse domestication is simply an unknown and there of
Speaker 2: course a handful of likely areas and times, based on
Speaker 2: different findings, spread across Eurasia from as far west as
Speaker 2: Iberia to as far east as Siberia now more recently.
Speaker 2: The more recent source I was looking at on this though,
Speaker 2: was a twenty twenty one analysis of ancient horse DNA,
Speaker 2: and this seemed to narrow it down to the Eurasian
Speaker 2: step the Volga Dawn region, so that would seem to
Speaker 2: possibly be the strong contender for where the who. That's
Speaker 2: a little bit more complex, is pointed out by Amber
Speaker 2: Dance in a solid twenty twenty two article for Smithsonian
Speaker 2: Magazine titled When Did Humans Domesticate the Horse? The region
Speaker 2: was home to diverse peoples who may have engaged in
Speaker 2: horse domestication, and the earliest time period the win in
Speaker 2: all of this sounds like it was maybe four two
Speaker 2: hundred years ago, pushing us back to the twenty one
Speaker 2: hundred s BCE. Based on all of this, though, Dance
Speaker 2: also points out that quote clear evidence of horse domestication
Speaker 2: doesn't appear in the archaeological record until about five five
Speaker 2: hundred years ago, and that would push things back obviously now.
Speaker 2: As Highland and Fagan pointed out, stud records from twenty
Speaker 2: three hundred BC and what is now a RAQ include
Speaker 2: data on donkeys, mules, and some horses. There are Sumerian
Speaker 2: proverbs that refer to horse riding during this time period.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like I say, this is topic we could
Speaker 2: go on about at some length, but suffice to say
Speaker 2: that the evidence points to this general time period, but
Speaker 2: it has still long been a topic of dispute. Now,
Speaker 2: one thing that I liked in Dance's article is that
Speaker 2: they point out that horses were coexisting alongside human beings
Speaker 2: long before we were able to ride them or really
Speaker 2: do anything with them. They were around during the time
Speaker 2: of Stone Age human beings. They no doubt inspired Stone
Speaker 2: Age human beings and human populations. Our ancestors depicted them
Speaker 2: in their cave art, but it would have been a
Speaker 2: long time before they could figure out how to master
Speaker 2: these beasts and truly harness the power of the horse. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is still the dominant view,
Speaker 3: but I recall reading years ago that many researchers thought
Speaker 3: that humans probably hunted horses for food before they domesticated them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's what I saw indicated, and these sources
Speaker 2: I was looking at as well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: you see them from afar. They look cool, They looked
Speaker 2: really neat. Look at that those flowing manes. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's kind of interesting to think that some of the
Speaker 2: some of the impressions we have watching a horse running
Speaker 2: about with its kind, you know, across the field. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe we're feeling some of the same things our ancient
Speaker 2: ancestors would have felt, you know, these sort of deep
Speaker 2: down impressions, but with the added level of we probably
Speaker 2: don't think about maybe running them down with our spears
Speaker 2: and cooking them up later and making things out of them.
Speaker 2: But of course this would have been This was how
Speaker 2: we interacted with pretty much everything in the natural world
Speaker 2: during that time period. And of course if we were
Speaker 2: going to hunt a horse, we would have to depend
Speaker 2: on human ingenuity, human strategy, human tool use, and eventually
Speaker 2: when humans figure out about how to truly harness the horse,
Speaker 2: they also had to employ various tools. So if anyone
Speaker 2: out there, if you're like me, most of your experience
Speaker 2: with horses is probably in video games where you you
Speaker 2: break a wild horse or train a wild horse by
Speaker 2: doing something like I don't know, whistling at it, or
Speaker 2: you know, you jump up on its back. I was
Speaker 2: asking my son, how do you how do you get
Speaker 2: a horse and Zelden, He's like, oh, you just jump
Speaker 2: on its back and I don't know, you do something
Speaker 2: else and then you're good to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Breath of the Wild is kind of a
Speaker 3: bucking Bronco thing. You jump on the horse and if
Speaker 3: you can hold on long enough while it's trying to
Speaker 3: kick you off, then it becomes your friend.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, then that's fine for video game,
Speaker 2: but the reality is a lot more complex. If you
Speaker 2: read any like serious westerns about breaking horses and so forth,
Speaker 2: you get into a little Cornick McCarthy, you're gonna you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's a longer process, a lot more more kicking,
Speaker 2: maybe a few more busted ribs in the process. And
Speaker 2: so one thing that Highland and Fagan point out is
Speaker 2: that as humans were mastering horses, they inevitably turned to
Speaker 2: bovine control mechanisms, so cows were domesticated much earlier. Humans
Speaker 2: had much earlier figured out some of the ways that
Speaker 2: they could use tools and things they built to control
Speaker 2: these large and powerful creatures, and they were able to
Speaker 2: adapt some of those for the domestication of the horse,
Speaker 2: and they evolved from there to include things like metal
Speaker 2: bits and harnesses, ultimately things like armor, horse armor for battle,
Speaker 2: chariot technology, and of course things like the saddle and
Speaker 2: stirrup loops. But all of this discussion thus far has
Speaker 2: been in service of the horse hoof and of course
Speaker 2: the horseshoe. As we mentioned already in the previous episode
Speaker 2: on the horse hoof, the hoof, while certainly an amazing adaptation,
Speaker 2: is not indestructible, and the domestication of the horse took
Speaker 2: this creature out of its sort of normal environment and
Speaker 2: in activities and placed it in those that suited us best,
Speaker 2: especially in the use of things like agriculture, travel, ultimately warfare,
Speaker 2: and at some point, and much like horse domestication itself,
Speaker 2: likely various points in various times in ancient history, humans
Speaker 2: who made use of the horse realize that hoofs require
Speaker 2: special care, and that this care could in fact be
Speaker 2: preventative care, so the hoof, like the human foot, could
Speaker 2: be protected and reinforced.
Speaker 3: This is one of those things like drinking animal milk.
Speaker 3: That's the questions like, who's the first person who tried
Speaker 3: to do this? You really got to wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again this kind of gets into sort of
Speaker 2: the everyday nature of the horse and horse related technology.
Speaker 2: It just seems so common. You know, it's the stuff
Speaker 2: of Westerns and fantasy shows, fantasy shows in which the
Speaker 2: horse is not the most fantastic element. You know, we're
Speaker 2: focusing on the dragon, but while here's this animal running
Speaker 2: around on its on its single toes, and we have
Speaker 2: augmented this creature with various contraptions and straps and bits.
Speaker 2: And also we have we have nailed these these shoes.
Speaker 2: We call them a shoe, but you know, it's like
Speaker 2: it's like an iron loop onto the bottom of their
Speaker 2: their hoof walls in order to make them more capable
Speaker 2: of keeping up with what we need them to do.
Speaker 2: Technologically enhanced. Is the horse cyborgs? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: in some respects now, there have been many different approaches
Speaker 2: to to this over the ages, because again, like the
Speaker 2: basic nut of it is the realization that oh man,
Speaker 2: we're rough on these horses. We should we're having to
Speaker 2: like clean up and and take care of them after
Speaker 2: we we use them too hard. Let's try and protect
Speaker 2: that hoof a little bit. And there have been various
Speaker 2: ways to sort of address this again in different times,
Speaker 2: in different places. Some early examples from parts of Asia
Speaker 2: have been based in apparently in medicinal organic wrappings to
Speaker 2: treat injuries. So you're working your horse too hard, the
Speaker 2: horse is suffering various injuries or ailments of the hoof,
Speaker 2: so you start wrapping it up in things to protect
Speaker 2: it and to heal it. And then it seems to
Speaker 2: be a case of treatment becoming preventative, where it's realized, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, let's just keep something wrapped around the hoof
Speaker 2: or at least when we're using the horse, or at
Speaker 2: least in certain environmental circumstances, and that can help make
Speaker 2: the hoof last longer.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: Then there's this whole area of early hoof boots. Now
Speaker 2: these are not to be confused with the hoof boots.
Speaker 2: Humans make and wear themselves so that their own feet
Speaker 2: can look like hoofs. If you're not familiar with these,
Speaker 2: treat yourself, go do an image search. A lot of
Speaker 2: them are cloven hoofs for like sator costumes. Other times
Speaker 2: they are horse hoofs for horse related dress.
Speaker 3: When you first, I didn't realize. At first you meant
Speaker 3: like that these were for costumes, are recreational. I was like,
Speaker 3: what is the functional reason to make your foot into
Speaker 3: a hoof to.
Speaker 2: Be a satyr or to be a horsey, and you find,
Speaker 2: you know, some of them are very goth looking, some
Speaker 2: of them more and more on the furry end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum. But yeah, I saw some of these recently
Speaker 2: at a at a Renaissance festival that I went to
Speaker 2: with my family. There's a sador guy over there walking
Speaker 2: around on hoof boots.
Speaker 3: Man, you think being in high heels for a long
Speaker 3: time is rough? It turn your foot into a hoof.
Speaker 2: I know it does. It looks it looks unpleasant, I
Speaker 2: mean it, but it's I guess it's like really awesome
Speaker 2: high heels, right, I mean, nobody's wearing those for comfort.
Speaker 2: You're wearing them to look cool. And the same goes
Speaker 2: for those those weird goat boots you might be wearing
Speaker 2: to the ren fest. All right. So what we're talking
Speaker 2: about here not not those to sorts of hoof boots.
Speaker 2: These are basically different approaches where you would take like
Speaker 2: essentially like a leather sheath for the hoof, sometimes augmented
Speaker 2: with metal studs on the bottom, essentially making you know,
Speaker 2: you think about basically the same sort of adaptations you
Speaker 2: would make to a human boot. You know, well, it's like,
Speaker 2: let's wrap that foot up in leather, or it's a
Speaker 2: little slippery, let's put some studs on the bottom of
Speaker 2: that so it doesn't slip around. And it's also worth
Speaker 2: noting that modern hoof boots exist as horseshoe alternatives. You
Speaker 2: see a lot of this, particularly in the realm of
Speaker 2: natural horsemanship, sort of like modern backing away from some
Speaker 2: of the the aspects of horsemanship that might be, you know,
Speaker 2: considered a little bit too rough or unnecessarily rough, especially
Speaker 2: for what we might be asking of our horses in
Speaker 2: the modern age, and so you might see a hoof boot,
Speaker 2: which in many of these cases they look like like
Speaker 2: little like sports shoes for a horse. They can slip
Speaker 2: those on, and I'm to understand that also sometimes they're
Speaker 2: used in a dish to a normal horseshoe. Equestrians out
Speaker 2: there listening to the episode, if you have some thoughts
Speaker 2: on hoof boots right in, we would love to see them.
Speaker 2: Same goes for people who just like dressing like satyrs.
Speaker 2: We also want to see your hoof boots. Nobody needs
Speaker 2: to feel left out. But then there's also the hippo
Speaker 2: sandal and this is exactly what it sounds like. It
Speaker 2: is a sandal of sorts for horse hoofs These were
Speaker 2: especially common in the Northwestern Roman Empire and it was
Speaker 2: I think largely a temporary solution. So the idea is
Speaker 2: this is not something that was nailed on. It was
Speaker 2: something that was strapped on, and if you look at examples,
Speaker 2: it looks like basically like a strap on horse hoof.
Speaker 2: You can see that like these were generally made out
Speaker 2: of iron. They would cover the bottom of the hoof
Speaker 2: wall and then you would strap it on, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't going to be on their long term. Once you
Speaker 2: got wherever you were riding to, or I don't know,
Speaker 2: after battle or whatever the scenario is, then it's time
Speaker 2: to take these hippo sandals off. And then eventually we
Speaker 2: get to the proper iron horseshoe, which everyone knows what
Speaker 2: this looks like. Because it exists in the public mind
Speaker 2: outside of mere equestrian interests, and even outside of its
Speaker 2: use on the horse, it has become an artifact of
Speaker 2: some significance across multiple cultures. It is this U shaped
Speaker 2: twist of iron that is actually nailed into place in
Speaker 2: the horse's hoof falls. The origin of this particular invention
Speaker 2: or artifact is also difficult to well nail down, I
Speaker 2: guess you could say, with different possibilities emerging. I've read
Speaker 2: that the gulls are thought to have possibly innovated this.
Speaker 2: Others have said the Celts may have done it, or
Speaker 2: being among the first to do it, and there's some
Speaker 2: evidence stemming from ancient grave sites. But one thing to
Speaker 2: keep in mind here is that initially you might think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: they're made out of iron, at least they're going to
Speaker 2: keep longer. But then we have to realize iron would
Speaker 2: have been precious, and therefore iron would often be reused
Speaker 2: or even re forged, thus robbing us of evidence in
Speaker 2: many cases of these particular artifacts. But it's possible that
Speaker 2: the use of iron horseshoes go back to perhaps four
Speaker 2: hundred BCE. But like a lot of this, the use
Speaker 2: of iron horseshoes is rather broadly difficult to define and
Speaker 2: nail down because their use often bumps up against and
Speaker 2: coexists with other forms of protecting the hoof. So you
Speaker 2: might have like a period of time and a part
Speaker 2: of the world where some people are using a horseshoe,
Speaker 2: some are using the hippo sandal or some other innovation,
Speaker 2: or indeed where there'll be a whole culture that's not
Speaker 2: using anything and they're depending on stage just switching out
Speaker 2: horses and find you know, realizing that they can't and
Speaker 2: shouldn't just run the horse to death, but they realize, well,
Speaker 2: we just need to switch them out more, and this
Speaker 2: is going to be our approach to making the most
Speaker 2: out of a given hoof and making the hoofs and
Speaker 2: therefore the horse itself lasts longer for us. Now the
Speaker 2: horse shoe itself has a life all its own at
Speaker 2: this point outside of merely nailing it in place in
Speaker 2: the bottom of a horse's foot. As we've touched on
Speaker 2: a bit already, the horseshoe has long been seen as
Speaker 2: a good luck icon in many different cultures, in many
Speaker 2: different times, and it's only kind of interesting to chase
Speaker 2: down like why this is? Like why did people start
Speaker 2: admiring the horseshoe and nailing it up and attracting some
Speaker 2: level of significance to it?
Speaker 3: Very good question. I often find myself wondering about things
Speaker 3: like this, like how did a certain item or image
Speaker 3: come to have good magic or bad magic associated with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I One of the first places I
Speaker 2: turned to for an answer on this is the book
Speaker 2: Magical House Protection by Brian Hoggard, a former guest on
Speaker 2: the show. I think he was on last October while
Speaker 2: you were on a printal leave. But the book deals
Speaker 2: with various things that people have hidden away in their
Speaker 2: walls and under their floorboards throughout Europe, in the US predominantly,
Speaker 2: but also just throughout the world as a way of
Speaker 2: protecting the house from bad luck, evil spirits, and what
Speaker 2: have you. And Hoggard wrote that, yeah, you find horseshoes
Speaker 2: being associated with good luck throughout the British Isles, Europe,
Speaker 2: the United States, quote, and it would seem the rest
Speaker 2: of the world. He writes that the horseshoe is sometimes
Speaker 2: displayed pointing upward quote, so that the luck doesn't run out,
Speaker 2: which I thought was fun. You know this idea that
Speaker 2: it's like, well, don't have it facing down, because then
Speaker 2: all the luck's going to run out of the ends
Speaker 2: of the horseshoe. While in other areas other traditions, it
Speaker 2: is common to display the horseshoe with the points down.
Speaker 3: I think of it with the points down. I think
Speaker 3: because I think of it hanging up just by a
Speaker 3: nail through the middle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the easiest to do, right. If you hang
Speaker 2: it the other way, you've it's a little more complicated
Speaker 2: or well, I guess it depends. I mean you cause
Speaker 2: the thing about the horseshoe I guess too, is it
Speaker 2: is made to be nailed in place, and therefore it
Speaker 2: can be nailed in its intended place, the bottom of
Speaker 2: a horse's hoof, or it can be nailed in place
Speaker 2: on a barn wall or above your door or what
Speaker 2: have you. Anyway, Haggard highlights two main reasons for the
Speaker 2: horseshoes perceived power. One, and it's certainly a big one,
Speaker 2: is the closer relationship between humans and their horses. You know,
Speaker 2: these are animals that were highly important to the people
Speaker 2: who owned them and or used them. They were animals
Speaker 2: that we ultimately cared about, and we also had various,
Speaker 2: you know, supernatural traditions concerning them. And if not you're
Speaker 2: mundane horses, you have these ideas of mythic horses and
Speaker 2: so forth. And this is something that also influenced the
Speaker 2: use of horse skulls and things like that in other traditions.
Speaker 2: The other key fact that he highlights is that these
Speaker 2: are made of iron, and iron was thought to provide
Speaker 2: protection against quote, witchcraft and the fairy folk. Yes, and
Speaker 2: as Hoggard chronicles in that book, iron horseshoes and iron
Speaker 2: nails were often used in these household productive magics, hidden
Speaker 2: in walls and so forth. I also looked at this
Speaker 2: was an older paper, but I thought it highlighted some
Speaker 2: interesting concepts. This is an eighteen ninety six paper by
Speaker 2: Robert M. Lawrence published in the Journal of American Folklore
Speaker 2: titled The Folklore of the Horseshoe, and Lawrence points out
Speaker 2: that the horseshoe, though shaped the way it's shaped for
Speaker 2: practical reasons, obviously it would have essentially stood in or
Speaker 2: resembled pre existing and potent symbols in different traditions and
Speaker 2: in different cultures. And he highlights some of the key
Speaker 2: ones here. So sure the horseshoe just a standard horseshoe,
Speaker 2: and then think about these. The first one he mentions
Speaker 2: is the idea of a of an arch, just a
Speaker 2: protective arch, something that would be even in an age
Speaker 2: before horseshoes positioned above a doorway or you know, on
Speaker 2: a threshold. I believe he highlights the I want to
Speaker 2: say a Scottish tradition of having an arch shaped from
Speaker 2: from just the branch of a tree would sometimes be
Speaker 2: used like this.
Speaker 3: Well, this may be saying the same thing as saying
Speaker 3: that it sort of resembles an arch, but it also
Speaker 3: sort of resembles a doorway, which is like an arch
Speaker 3: and good luck. Symbols of various kinds are often put
Speaker 3: on or around a doorway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's a pretty solid one.
Speaker 2: The next one he brings up is that a horseshoe
Speaker 2: is also reminiscent of a serpent, and therefore it could
Speaker 2: tie into various traditions and it involve the use of
Speaker 2: some sort of a serpent symbol, be that a serpent.
Speaker 2: That's you know, I guess it depends what your snack
Speaker 2: is doing. It may be it may be straight, it
Speaker 2: may be coiled up, it may eating its own tail.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many different ways the snake has
Speaker 2: been utilized in different iconography over the ages, but this
Speaker 2: one seems sensible. The idea of like the horseshoe as
Speaker 2: a serpent. Another big one the horseshoe is the crescent moon. Now,
Speaker 2: the next one is one that he writes that he
Speaker 2: thinks the evidence is mediocre for this, and he's kind
Speaker 2: of begrudgingly mentioned that. He's like, I'm gonna mention it,
Speaker 2: but I don't like it. And that's the horseshoe could
Speaker 2: also stand in for various ophallic imagery. So the horseshoe
Speaker 2: as thallus.
Speaker 3: Huh, I need to have the case made for that.
Speaker 3: It's not evident to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I looked around for more sources on this to
Speaker 2: see if there was anybody advocating for this, and I
Speaker 2: didn't find anything. Maybe it's out there and I just
Speaker 2: couldn't find it. I did see some images of some
Speaker 2: Roman phallic icons and charms that maybe kind of remind
Speaker 2: like I could maybe see it, like there's more than
Speaker 2: one way to create a phallic symbol, and some of
Speaker 2: them are I guess, more horseshoe like than others. But
Speaker 2: still I think maybe Lawrence is right and saying that
Speaker 2: maybe there's not as much sense behind this. This one
Speaker 2: I thought was interesting. The prong shape of the horseshoe
Speaker 2: has a deterrent to evil spirits or as a kind
Speaker 2: of trap. So the idea that the horseshoe is either
Speaker 2: the thing that's going to kind of like catch the
Speaker 2: limb of an evil spirit, you know, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 2: you put your limb, your arm in there, and now
Speaker 2: you can't get it out, or kind of like the
Speaker 2: prongs of some sort of a poking fork.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, that the horseshoe does have a shape that
Speaker 3: seems to contain Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this this lined up with a lot of what
Speaker 2: Hoggard wrote about concerning witch bottles. Witch bottles would often
Speaker 2: have a bunch of nails in them, and the idea
Speaker 2: that like, here's this evil spirit coming into your house
Speaker 2: and then it smells some of your hair that's in
Speaker 2: this bottle that's buried under the floorboards. Oh, it went
Speaker 2: into that bottle after that hair smell, and now found
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of nails. Good luck getting out of
Speaker 2: their spirit.
Speaker 3: Iron nails maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe they would have been in
Speaker 2: most of these cases. Now. Lawrence also points to the
Speaker 2: sacred nature of the horse and the virtues of iron,
Speaker 2: as Hoggart did. He points to examples from various cultures
Speaker 2: and traditions, including the ancient Romans, Arabic traditions, Chinese, and
Speaker 2: Scottish traditions. So again, it's one of these things when
Speaker 2: you start, it's just it's spread all over. Some other
Speaker 2: ideas that he mentions include the horseshoe is a thing
Speaker 2: that captures traps or transmits bad luck. The position is
Speaker 2: sometimes important here, and like it could be a situation
Speaker 2: where it's like, Okay, here's the horseshoe. You got all
Speaker 2: your bad luck in that. Now leave it on the
Speaker 2: ground and see if someone picks it up and catches
Speaker 2: all that bad luck you just put into it. Then
Speaker 2: there's an idea of numerology coming into it, particularly concerning
Speaker 2: the number of nails in a horseshoe versus the number
Speaker 2: of nail holes. He writes, quote, in Northumberland, the holes
Speaker 2: free of nails are counted as these indicate, presumably in years,
Speaker 2: how soon the finder of the shoe may expect to
Speaker 2: be married. And I guess in this case they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, you're out in the field, you find a horseshoe.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, I found a horseshoe, let's find out
Speaker 2: how long I'm going to be single. Which and again,
Speaker 2: you know we're not familiar with this tradition, and we
Speaker 2: can kind of snicker at it. But I guess there
Speaker 2: are a lot of things like this. I mean it's
Speaker 2: kind of on a very very like slender level. It's
Speaker 2: almost like, you know, not stepping on a crack, right,
Speaker 2: you know, like we know that's not there's not accurate,
Speaker 2: but we can't help but think about it when we
Speaker 2: do it. And so I can imagine it could be
Speaker 2: this tradition whereas, oh I found a horseshoe exciting for me,
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm going to take this home and put it
Speaker 2: up over my over my doorway for good luck. But
Speaker 2: also what if it's right? What if I am three
Speaker 2: years from finding my wife that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, also, I mean things like this are done for fun,
Speaker 3: even if people don't necessarily believe it's literally predictive. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, she loves me, She loves me, not on
Speaker 3: flower pedals and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, catching the flowers at a wedding and so forth.
Speaker 2: The other thing you mentioned is that you could consider
Speaker 2: the horseshoe in its resemblance to a halo. M Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: so I don't remember that coming up at all in
Speaker 2: our episodes about the Halo. We did a series on
Speaker 2: the Halo, and it was a lot of fun. But
Speaker 2: I guess again, we might just think of it like,
Speaker 2: what are some major icons and symbols within any given
Speaker 2: culture that could then here comes this artifact, this, here
Speaker 2: comes this horseshoe. What does that horseshoe remind us of? Now,
Speaker 2: outside of all these superstitions and so forth and older traditions,
Speaker 2: the emblem of a horseshoe remains I think really potent.
Speaker 2: One example of this that came to mind is the
Speaker 2: various cartoon interpretations of this, as well as how it's
Speaker 2: presented sometimes in science textbooks. The horseshoe magnet has become
Speaker 2: a kind of fixed symbol for magnetism, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that horse shoe magnets are technically obsolete, since like the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, you don't you don't need a horseshoe shaped magnet.
Speaker 2: All the magnets on your fridge are likely not horseshoe shaped.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about the horseshoe magnet, and especially when
Speaker 3: you were talking about the various magical powers associated with them,
Speaker 3: because of the way horseshoe magnets are represented in cartoons
Speaker 3: as like emitting beams of magic power or with like
Speaker 3: zigzagging lightning of magnetic I don't know what, you know,
Speaker 3: the like zappiness coming out of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it might be a scenario where
Speaker 2: you stopped to think and maybe you're like, hey, do
Speaker 2: I know how magnets work? And then instantly you're struck
Speaker 2: with that cartoon image or that or that little icon
Speaker 2: from your science textbook growing up, where oh yeah, there
Speaker 2: is horseshoe lightning bolts. Now I got it, Now I
Speaker 2: can move on. Now. Another concept to me that some
Speaker 2: people may be thinking of. There's also this horseshoe theory
Speaker 2: of politics, which I'm to understand. I don't. I didn't
Speaker 2: know a lot about it previously, but it's my understanding.
Speaker 2: It's all so it's not something that's really that much
Speaker 2: of a thing within actual political science, but you sometimes
Speaker 2: see it in a lot of popular discourse about people's
Speaker 2: political leanings and their ideologies. This idea that instead of
Speaker 2: it being like a sliding linear scale between on one
Speaker 2: on one end, like leftist extremism and on the other
Speaker 2: end right wing extremism, and then in the middle, you know,
Speaker 2: just just you know, middle of the road, you know,
Speaker 2: neutrality and so forth, then instead of it being shaped
Speaker 2: like that, we should really curve it, and then it's
Speaker 2: more of a horseshoe, and that by virtue of this
Speaker 2: horseshoe shape, it's illustrated that the extremes of either side
Speaker 2: are actually closer than you might think. And this is
Speaker 2: generally generally it's employed to talk about like either like
Speaker 2: an overarching theme, like perhaps that in the extremes there's
Speaker 2: more of a draw towards like a strong leader type
Speaker 2: or totalitarianism or something, or that you might find particular sentiments,
Speaker 2: say like an at anti vac scene sentiment in both
Speaker 2: the far left and the far right, despite these groups
Speaker 2: having little else in common in terms of their ideology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard people using this analogy in different ways.
Speaker 3: I mean, in I think, in one sense it is
Speaker 3: often used to mean that people think that at the
Speaker 3: far extremes of the political spectrum people actually come to
Speaker 3: share some political ideas. And then I think the other
Speaker 3: ideas that is that at the furthest extremes of the
Speaker 3: political spectrum, people have more i don't know, sort of
Speaker 3: personality based or epistemic things in common apart from political positions.
Speaker 3: And I'm not sure which version of the of the
Speaker 3: model people are really talking about. When they invoke it often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I do. It kind of comes back comes
Speaker 2: back to our discussion earlier though about like how do we,
Speaker 2: you know, interpreting data and thinking about like the underlying
Speaker 2: truth of a given situation or a mystery like obviously
Speaker 2: the way people think about the world from ideologies and
Speaker 2: their political viewpoints. I mean, there's a lot of complexity
Speaker 2: going on here, and that complexity can be overwhelming. I mean,
Speaker 2: as we try to make sense of the world's around us,
Speaker 2: the larger world and perhaps even the closer world of
Speaker 2: our friend circles and our families and so forth, and
Speaker 2: it might be tempting to say, but hey, look at
Speaker 2: this horseshoe, Look at this, I think this explains it all.
Speaker 2: You know, it provides maybe a simple model that may
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it provides some insight, but also a
Speaker 2: level of insight that at least you can sort of
Speaker 2: nod your head at and think like, okay, well this
Speaker 2: kind of lines up with some of the things I'm observing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think Another twist, for example, is whether
Speaker 3: or not it is useful to think about political beliefs
Speaker 3: as a spectrum at all, meaning that they extend along
Speaker 3: a single dimension or whether it's more useful to decompose
Speaker 3: political beliefs into a number of different types of preferences
Speaker 3: and personality traits. And then in a say, a representative
Speaker 3: democracy with two major parties we represent, we discover that
Speaker 3: political behavior manifests in varying degrees of like or dislike
Speaker 3: for those main two parties. But you know that that
Speaker 3: doesn't fully explain people's the depths of people's beliefs and preferences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though in isolation it can at least seem to
Speaker 2: make some sense. I had a case of this over
Speaker 2: the weekend. I was in a I was in a
Speaker 2: city that has a lot of crystal stores, so I
Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily out to venture into a crystal store, but
Speaker 2: by virtue of where I was, I just was going
Speaker 2: to wind up in one eventually, and I was looking
Speaker 2: looking around at them. Crystals are beautiful, you know, I
Speaker 2: think they can. They can. They're nice to look at,
Speaker 2: and maybe they're a nice focus sometimes to take you
Speaker 2: out of the past in the future and put you
Speaker 2: into the present. But they have all these little notes
Speaker 2: on them about what they're good for and what focus
Speaker 2: in the crystal will allegedly do for were you, and
Speaker 2: on one table I found one that it was promised,
Speaker 2: would help me connect with quote Christ consciousness, and on
Speaker 2: the other it would help me communicate with extraterrestrials. And
Speaker 2: so generally speaking, I don't know. I would expect that
Speaker 2: people looking to connect with either would have rather different
Speaker 2: world views, you know, the person with the Christ crystal
Speaker 2: and the person with the extraterrestrial crystal, Like maybe they
Speaker 2: want different things out of life. But also they may
Speaker 2: have both wandered into this crystal store, which makes me
Speaker 2: think that think of the you know, the ends of
Speaker 2: the of the horseshoe, you know, arching towards each other.
Speaker 3: Every crystal store I go in, I ask for their
Speaker 3: Nixon consciousness, Christal, what will help me communicate with Nixon?
Speaker 3: He's out there somewhere.
Speaker 2: Oh man, there's got to be a crystal There's got
Speaker 2: to be one that will do it. Unrelated to Nixon, though,
Speaker 2: in discussing this, I am also thinking I don't think
Speaker 2: Lawrence mentioned horns or antlers, but this would seem at
Speaker 2: least just you know, off the the top of my head,
Speaker 2: this would seem to be like a potent symbol to
Speaker 2: jump to. We're interpreting like how people connected with this
Speaker 2: horseshoe with this, you know, for all intensive purposes, this
Speaker 2: new artifact that lines up with various symbols of potents,
Speaker 2: like the horns and antlers have long been and still
Speaker 2: are things of symbolic power.
Speaker 3: In a quite literal sense in their biological context, but
Speaker 3: then in a metaphorical sense to humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 2: ahead and close this episode out, but we'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts about
Speaker 2: the horse hoof the horseshoe, interpretations of the horseshoe, the
Speaker 2: use of hoof boots, be they equine hoof boots or
Speaker 2: human hoof boots. Everything is fair game, right in, we'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. In the meantime, you can
Speaker 2: find all of our core episodes, so Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow your Mind podcast feed. On Mondays, we do listener mail,
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form monster fact or Artifact,
Speaker 2: and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our
Speaker 2: time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact stuff to Blow your Mind
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