Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it
Speaker 1: is Saturday. Time to go into the vault for a
Speaker 1: classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: an old episode from an October maybe last October, right,
Speaker 1: it's October of last year. Okay, Well this was our
Speaker 1: episode about the monster Slayer. Yeah. Yeah, So this one's
Speaker 1: full of monsters and the heroes who slay them, and
Speaker 1: we kind of tease apart what this means, what we
Speaker 1: can take home from this, like what are the ultimately
Speaker 1: like what are some of the religious um uh, you know,
Speaker 1: aspects of even the modern slasher story. I remember feeling
Speaker 1: very very fondly about this one when we first did it.
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoy this classic episode of Halloween
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind from how stopworks dot Com. Hey you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and I want to tell
Speaker 1: you a story about a monster slayer. Robert, are you game? Okay? So,
Speaker 1: once upon a time in medieval Japan, there was a
Speaker 1: warrior named Minamoto no Raiko, who was a daring swordsman,
Speaker 1: and he was famous everywhere for his bravery and his resolve.
Speaker 1: And Raiko had in his service a companion named Watanabe
Speaker 1: note Suna, who was also courageous, and he was a
Speaker 1: formidable fighter in his own right, and he wielded a
Speaker 1: bow and arrow and wore a suit of armor. And
Speaker 1: one day, Raiko and Suna were traveling on the road
Speaker 1: to kita Yama when they saw a skull floating in
Speaker 1: the sky, flying in and out of the clouds above.
Speaker 1: Now Ricco and Sooner were curious how such a thing
Speaker 1: could be, so they decided let's follow the skull, and
Speaker 1: they followed the flying skull all the way to Kagaroka,
Speaker 1: where it led the to a crumbling old mansion from
Speaker 1: ancient times. The decaying manner was surrounded by wild, overgrown
Speaker 1: weeds and an old gate choked by vines. So Rico
Speaker 1: ordered Souna to wait for him outside, and Rico entered
Speaker 1: the mansion alone. As he approached the threshold, he started
Speaker 1: to become aware of her presence. There was an old
Speaker 1: woman lurking behind the door, and he called out, who
Speaker 1: are you? She replied I've been living here for a
Speaker 1: good long time. I am two hundred and ninety years old,
Speaker 1: and have served in their turn nine lords of this house.
Speaker 1: And then Rico saw her. She was a horrible sight
Speaker 1: to behold before the warrior's eyes. The old woman grasped
Speaker 1: her own eyelids with a tool, and she flipped her
Speaker 1: eyelids back over the top of her head like a hat.
Speaker 1: Then she pushed her mouth open with a large hairpin,
Speaker 1: and her lips became gigantic, and she took her lips
Speaker 1: and she tied them around her own neck, and her
Speaker 1: breasts began to sag down into her lap like rags.
Speaker 1: The old woman began to speak again. She said, Spring
Speaker 1: comes and autumn goes, but my sad thoughts remained the same.
Speaker 1: Years begin an end, but my misery is eternal. This
Speaker 1: place is a demon's den. No human dares passed through
Speaker 1: our gates. My sorrowful youth has gone, but my old
Speaker 1: self sadly remains. I lament that bush warbler's depart, and
Speaker 1: swallows on the beam fly off. In her sorrow, the
Speaker 1: wretched old woman begged Rycho to kill her with his
Speaker 1: sword and put her out of her misery. Raiko could
Speaker 1: see that the old woman was out of her mind,
Speaker 1: so he left her alone, and he instead decided to
Speaker 1: go into the house to see what had happened and
Speaker 1: solve the mystery of the flying skull and what was
Speaker 1: afflicting this woman and making her think she lived in
Speaker 1: a demon's den. So he went inside the house, and
Speaker 1: outside the sky grew dark and fierce, and winds began
Speaker 1: to blow. But Sooner waited loyally for his master, and
Speaker 1: inside the house, Rycho began to hear the sounds of
Speaker 1: footsteps echoing like the beat of a hand drum. Then
Speaker 1: he saw a coterie of spirits and goblins coming into
Speaker 1: the room with him, but the creatures didn't attack. Instead,
Speaker 1: they only danced around and then laughed at his fear
Speaker 1: before passing out through another door. In their place, there
Speaker 1: came into the room a tiny woman, no more than
Speaker 1: three ft tall, but with a gigantic face more than
Speaker 1: two thirds of her whole height, and she had thick,
Speaker 1: heavy eyebrows, and when she opened her mouth, Rycho could
Speaker 1: see that her front teeth were black. She wore a
Speaker 1: purple hat and a red hakama with nothing underneath. Her
Speaker 1: arms were so thin they were like strings, and her
Speaker 1: skin was as pale as snowfall. Then that woman disappeared,
Speaker 1: and Raiko realized dawn was nearing. Almost as soon as
Speaker 1: the strange woman had left, another woman came into the room.
Speaker 1: This time the woman was graceful and calm, and so
Speaker 1: beautiful that Reicho could barely believe his eyes. He thought
Speaker 1: that this woman must be the true mistress of the
Speaker 1: old house, finally coming out to welcome him, and her
Speaker 1: eyes shone as bright as the reflection of a bonfire
Speaker 1: and black lacquer. But when Rico was distracted by the
Speaker 1: woman's beauty, she got the better of him. She lifted
Speaker 1: up the hymn of her hakama, and from underneath it
Speaker 1: she heaved at the swordsman some kind of material what
Speaker 1: looks like balls of white cloud, and the balls of
Speaker 1: white cloud blinded him. They got in his eyes, and
Speaker 1: in a rage, Raiko drew his sword and he slashed
Speaker 1: at the woman, but she evaporated into thin air. He
Speaker 1: slashed so mightily that his sword passed through the floorboards
Speaker 1: and cut a foundation stone, and the tip of the
Speaker 1: blade broke off where the woman had been. There was
Speaker 1: now nothing but a pool of white blood. On the floor,
Speaker 1: with a trail of more white blood leading off somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Riicho and soon had joined together again, and they followed
Speaker 1: the trail of white blood out of the house and
Speaker 1: up into the mountains, and finally to the mouth of
Speaker 1: a dark cave out of which white blood was flowing
Speaker 1: like a river. As soon as suggestion, the two of
Speaker 1: them made an figi of ratan and vines in the
Speaker 1: shape of a man, and they carried it before them
Speaker 1: as they entered the cave. Inside the cave, they found
Speaker 1: a gigantic monster in the form of a mountain spider,
Speaker 1: but nearly two hundred feet tall, and it wore a
Speaker 1: brocade on its head. Its eyes were as bright as
Speaker 1: the sun and the moon. The giant monster bellowed, what
Speaker 1: has happened to my body? It is so painful. Then
Speaker 1: the monster hurled something at them in the dark, and
Speaker 1: the projectile hit the effigy that they carried in front
Speaker 1: of them and knocked it down. Rico and Sona examined
Speaker 1: the object that the monster had shot at them, and
Speaker 1: they discovered that it was the broken tip of Rico's sword.
Speaker 1: Together they took hold of the creature and they began
Speaker 1: to drag it out of the cave, and the monster
Speaker 1: put up a good fight, and it was a terrible monster, indeed,
Speaker 1: strong enough to move boulders with its legs. So Rico
Speaker 1: said a prayer to the sun goddess Amaterasu and asked
Speaker 1: her for aid with the fight. Rico and Sona pulled
Speaker 1: and pulled, an Eventually the monster collapsed and fell belly
Speaker 1: up on the earth without hesitation. Rycho drew his sword
Speaker 1: and chopped off the monster's head. Sooner ran to slash
Speaker 1: open the monster's belly, but found when he got there
Speaker 1: that it had already been opened by a deep gash.
Speaker 1: This was the wound Riicho had given it inside the
Speaker 1: house when it was in the form of the woman,
Speaker 1: and this proved that the giant spider truly was the
Speaker 1: beautiful woman that he had seen. From the gash in
Speaker 1: the giant Spider's belly, one thousand, nine hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: heads tumbled out onto the ground. The warriors cut open
Speaker 1: another part of the spider's body, and many smaller spider
Speaker 1: monsters swarmed out, each about the size of a seven
Speaker 1: or eight year old child. When the warriors looked further
Speaker 1: in the stomach of the spider beast, they found twenty
Speaker 1: human skulls. Knowing what had to be done, Riicho and
Speaker 1: soon A dug a grave in the ground and buried
Speaker 1: the twenty skulls and then burned the Giant Spider's din.
Speaker 1: When the Emperor heard what Rycho and Soona had done
Speaker 1: in the eliminating this heinous monster that had been plaguing
Speaker 1: the country, he gave them promotions and appointed them governors
Speaker 1: of their own provinces. And this is the story of
Speaker 1: Minamoto no Raiko and the Giant Spider. That is a
Speaker 1: fabulous story. I love it, just like the the the
Speaker 1: layers of the adventure and then just the the revelations
Speaker 1: about the horrific monstrosity that they're faced with. I like
Speaker 1: how it's weird and rambling, like it takes a long
Speaker 1: time to get to the final form of the monster.
Speaker 1: You don't really know where it's gonna go. It takes
Speaker 1: you to a haunted house first. Uh. Something about that
Speaker 1: feels both unusual and intuitive. Um so that they start
Speaker 1: off seeing the skull, and I have to assume that
Speaker 1: I guess the skull was some form of the monster.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But but also I like how in
Speaker 1: a lot of the monster slayer stories you come across,
Speaker 1: there's a more specific reason that the that the hero
Speaker 1: must undergo the quest to slay the monster, they have
Speaker 1: to like rescue a princess or something. This time, they're
Speaker 1: just detectives investigating something weird that they saw, and it
Speaker 1: eventually leads them into the monster's cave to kill it,
Speaker 1: which also ultimately kind of makes you feel bad for
Speaker 1: the monster, Like it didn't even kidnap anybody they knew.
Speaker 1: They just like made their way to it. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was it seems to be entirely recreational on their part. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it kind of makes them like
Speaker 1: some kind of roving police force almost in a way.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they just needed the experience points. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's true. So this giant spider story comes from
Speaker 1: an early fourteenth century Japanese picture scroll called the Sushi
Speaker 1: Gumo Sushi, and the version of the story that I
Speaker 1: read is as translated by the scholar Dr Nariko t
Speaker 1: writer who we've referenced on the show before, I think
Speaker 1: in our episode about cuteness and monstrosity sense. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that so my version of the story I just told
Speaker 1: was based on her translation of this fourteenth century scroll.
Speaker 1: And this is not the only legend about giant spiders
Speaker 1: in early modern Japan. The sushi gumo or earth spider
Speaker 1: was a common monster found in no plays and in
Speaker 1: supernatural narratives in the following centuries. But there are also
Speaker 1: other spider monsters, like the ushi on e, which was
Speaker 1: sometimes described as like a giant spider with the head
Speaker 1: of a bull, and it attacks fishermen at the water's edge.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the juro gumo, which is the
Speaker 1: literally the prostitute spider, and it's another sort of ghost
Speaker 1: like creature that appears in the literature of the Ato period,
Speaker 1: shape shifting like the sushi gumo, between the forms of
Speaker 1: a beautiful woman and a voracious arachneid, luring men to
Speaker 1: their deaths. So a classic trope of of monsters appearing
Speaker 1: as is desirable humans or even non human entities, of course,
Speaker 1: and you see that too in in the Sushi Gumo
Speaker 1: in the story where the spider monster appears as this
Speaker 1: beautiful woman in the house and distracts the swordsman with
Speaker 1: her beauty just long enough to throw clouds of white
Speaker 1: matter in his eyes, who knows what that's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I guess it's the silk, right, Oh? Maybe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know it's supposed to be said. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's described as literally like clouds, so it's hard
Speaker 1: to know exactly what it's referring to. It seems to
Speaker 1: be some kind of magical substance. But yeah, So we're
Speaker 1: doing something a little bit different today than we usually
Speaker 1: do in our October episodes, where we love to focus
Speaker 1: on monsters. Today we wanted to take a look at
Speaker 1: the immortal enemy of our beloved monsters, the monster slayer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's often an essential part of the story and
Speaker 1: sometimes the thing sometimes they define define each other, right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes the monster is really the thing that defines the hero.
Speaker 1: Other times there's not a lot to say about the
Speaker 1: monster itself except that a certain hero of note gave
Speaker 1: it a good slaying at some point. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: almost as deep and as old as the monster mythology itself, right,
Speaker 1: the oldest monster stories you can find when you go
Speaker 1: back in time. Very often our monster or slayers stories,
Speaker 1: there's a monster and there's a hero who must venture out,
Speaker 1: often alone or with a faithful companion uh to face
Speaker 1: the monster and destroy it. And the monster slayer archetype
Speaker 1: is actually classed as a particular type of like you know,
Speaker 1: myth archetype, the princess and the dragon type story, which
Speaker 1: appears all over the world in different cultures. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, and that's the very broad take. You know
Speaker 1: that there's like a princess who's being held captive or
Speaker 1: being threatened by some kind of monster, and a hero
Speaker 1: must venture out with courage and face the monster. Though
Speaker 1: of course, clearly not all the monsters in these types
Speaker 1: of stories are dragons. And then there's just the bigger
Speaker 1: myth architecture of whether or not there's a princess, there's
Speaker 1: very often a slayer who must face down the beast. Right,
Speaker 1: and and we're gonna we're gonna explore some different versions
Speaker 1: of this where the beast has you know, varying degrees
Speaker 1: of symbolic uh power. I guess you would say, uh
Speaker 1: in other times less so. Uh. Again, it often comes
Speaker 1: down to like why is why why is this hero
Speaker 1: killing this monster? That's often the question, like what is
Speaker 1: gained by this story? Uh? And in doing that you
Speaker 1: have to look at what the monster represents what the
Speaker 1: hero represents, and then there are certain complexities that seem
Speaker 1: to come along just as storytelling evolves. Yeah. So another
Speaker 1: one I wanted to focus on to go even much
Speaker 1: deeper into history is the story of mar Duke the
Speaker 1: Monster Slayer. Now mar Duke, of course, is an ancient
Speaker 1: Near Eastern god, uh, and I want to I want
Speaker 1: to focus on the story of mar Duke the Monster
Speaker 1: Slayer as told from the Enema a Leash the ancient
Speaker 1: Babylonian Epic of Creation, which of course is a great
Speaker 1: story We've explored on the podcast before and I'm excited
Speaker 1: to explore it again. So the general story, Robert, you
Speaker 1: remember the outlines. You've got the primordial creators in the
Speaker 1: Babylonian Epic, right, You've got Tiamat and Apsu, which represents
Speaker 1: salt water and freshwater respectively. They're these gods and also
Speaker 1: kind of monster creatures. They're sort of dragon gods that
Speaker 1: are also saltwater and freshwater, and they and they embody
Speaker 1: a lot of natural might, a lot of are also
Speaker 1: potentially chaotic might, right, Yeah. Yeah, they represent the sort
Speaker 1: of chaos before the creation of the order of the
Speaker 1: world today and what they do is uh the sweetwater
Speaker 1: in the saltwater. Together, they create a race of gods,
Speaker 1: but end up finding those gods they've created unpleasant and loud,
Speaker 1: and eventually um the gods turn on their creators and
Speaker 1: they slay Opsu, the sort of freshwater deity, and Tiamat,
Speaker 1: the saltwater deity. She is enraged, and she tries to
Speaker 1: make revenge on the gods for slaying Opsu, attacking them
Speaker 1: in the form of a giant sea monster, a saltwater dragon,
Speaker 1: and making a team of evil monsters to do wickedness
Speaker 1: on her behalf and the gods. Of course, because of
Speaker 1: her power, they're too afraid to go out and fight
Speaker 1: Tiamat themselves, but eventually they convinced the storm god mar
Speaker 1: Duke to go out himself and fight her on their behalf. So,
Speaker 1: in exchange for risking his life in this fight, mar
Speaker 1: Duke's what's in it for Marduke? Right? Mar Duke demands
Speaker 1: that the gods make him their king, so he that
Speaker 1: that's the deal, right, I'll go out and slay the
Speaker 1: monster if you guys make me the boss, which sounds
Speaker 1: like a good deal. You need a king, you want
Speaker 1: one that's going to actually slay your monsters, right, So
Speaker 1: mar Duke is armed with special weapons imbued with some
Speaker 1: kind of storm power, a bow and arrow, a mace
Speaker 1: and net. And then there are these powers of the
Speaker 1: winds that he commands, including the winds of the cardinal
Speaker 1: directions north, south, east, and west, but also these other
Speaker 1: kinds of wind magic. Like there's one wind weapon he
Speaker 1: has just called the Evil Wind. And I guess we're
Speaker 1: supposed to imagine some sort of like cosmic fart here um.
Speaker 1: The fart jokes do kind of present themselves at this point.
Speaker 1: So from here I think I will just read some
Speaker 1: lines from the enemy aliash as the as translated by E. A.
Speaker 1: Spicer Robert. Would you like to read with me, of course?
Speaker 1: Then the Lord raised up the Floodstorm, his mighty weapon.
Speaker 1: He mounted the storm chariot, irresistible and terrifying. He harnessed
Speaker 1: and yoked it to a team of four, the Killer,
Speaker 1: the Relentless, the trampler, the swift sharp, where their poison
Speaker 1: bearing teeth they were versed in ravage, skilled and destruction.
Speaker 1: On his right he posted the smider, fearsome in battle.
Speaker 1: On the left, the combat which repels all the zealous.
Speaker 1: His cloak was an armor of terror. His head was
Speaker 1: turbaned with his fearsome halo. The Lord went forth and
Speaker 1: followed his course. He set his face towards the raging Tiamat.
Speaker 1: He held a spell between his lips. A plant to
Speaker 1: put out poison was grasp in his hand. And then
Speaker 1: we'll skip a bit. Marduk approaches U and Tiamat's consort, Kingu.
Speaker 1: This monster Kingu and her allied gods and monsters become fearful,
Speaker 1: and then Tiamat taunts Marduke, and then Marduke gives a
Speaker 1: speech rebuking Tiamat and challenging her to single combat. And
Speaker 1: then we'll pick up with the lines again. When Tiamat
Speaker 1: heard this, she was like one possessed. She took leave
Speaker 1: of her senses. In fury. Tiamat cried aloud to the
Speaker 1: roots of her legs, shook both together. She recites a charm,
Speaker 1: keeps casting her spell while the gods of battle sharpen
Speaker 1: their weapons. Tiamat and Marduk, wisest of God's, then joined battle.
Speaker 1: They strove in single combat. Locked in conflict, the Lord
Speaker 1: spread out his net to unfold her. He let loosen
Speaker 1: her face the evil wind, which followed behind. When Tiamat
Speaker 1: opened her mouth to consume him, he drove in the
Speaker 1: evil wind, and she could not close her lips as
Speaker 1: the fierce winds encumbered her belly. Her body was distended
Speaker 1: and her mouth was wide open. He released an air.
Speaker 1: It tore her belly, It cut through her inside, splitting
Speaker 1: her heart. Having subdued her, he blotted out her life.
Speaker 1: He threw down her carcass and stood upon it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you gotta stand on it. That's that's just uh, that's
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary. Well, we've hit on this before, like the
Speaker 1: they see that trope in both the Western and Eastern
Speaker 1: art with a demon or devil or monster trampled beneath
Speaker 1: the feet or sat upon as if it were thrown.
Speaker 1: You know, it's still a thing when you see I mean,
Speaker 1: I almost hate to bring this up because it makes
Speaker 1: me mad whenever I see it. But like those like
Speaker 1: Safari hunting pictures where people like shoot a lion or
Speaker 1: something like that and then they're like standing there with
Speaker 1: their foot on it. Yes I am not crazy about
Speaker 1: that either, but they put their foot on it. It's
Speaker 1: still a thing. It's like you are now earth. It's
Speaker 1: it's like it's instinctive almost. I put my foot on
Speaker 1: this thing to show I have beaten it. And then,
Speaker 1: of course the next thing in this story, because it
Speaker 1: becomes of course the epic of creation, is that mar
Speaker 1: Duke makes the things in the earth out of Tiamat's
Speaker 1: dead body. Ah. This is another thing we see time
Speaker 1: and time again in different uh myths, the idea of
Speaker 1: some primordial being being overcome and then their body being
Speaker 1: repurposed in creation. Yeah, it is. It's an interesting repeating theme,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. I wonder what that says, Like,
Speaker 1: why do we have the the inherent suspicion that the
Speaker 1: ground on which we walk was once a living being?
Speaker 1: We should come back and doing a whole episode on
Speaker 1: dead gods at some point. Oh absolutely. Now Here's another
Speaker 1: thing I was thinking about, which is that in most
Speaker 1: of these pre modern stories, the monster slayers always a dude.
Speaker 1: It's always male, not always. I want to get to
Speaker 1: a counter example that I was able to find. And
Speaker 1: it's also not uncommon for the monster that is getting
Speaker 1: slain to be female. Think about the Sushi Gumo, the
Speaker 1: woman in the house and slayed by the swordsman tim
Speaker 1: At the female monster slayed by Marduke per Uh and
Speaker 1: the Medusa. Yeah we can. We can discuss more about
Speaker 1: what is meant by that in a bit. But I
Speaker 1: was on the hunt for some good pre modern ancient
Speaker 1: female monster slayers, and I think I found at least
Speaker 1: one good example that that I turned up sort of
Speaker 1: a pre Buffy Buffy if you will, right, Well, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the many great things about Buffy. Of course, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's she's one of the greatest vampire slayers, monster slayers
Speaker 1: of all time. But then she is a she has
Speaker 1: a female, which you, as you pointed out, you don't
Speaker 1: see a lot of in the ancient myth cycles. It's
Speaker 1: a nice change up on the gender dynamics of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But so another ancient Mesopotamian monster slayer would be in
Speaker 1: an A, the Glorious in an A crusher of heads.
Speaker 1: In Anna was a Sumerian goddess also known as the
Speaker 1: Accadian ishtar got us of many things. We we've mentioned
Speaker 1: her on the podcast before, but you know, got us
Speaker 1: of the storehouse and the products of agriculture, but also
Speaker 1: it seems of fertility, sex, war and slaughter, and in
Speaker 1: Anna is maybe my favorite ancient god or goddess due
Speaker 1: to those awesome hymns in her praise written by the
Speaker 1: priestess in Heduana. Perhaps the earliest known piece of writing
Speaker 1: with a named author in Heduana was a twenty third
Speaker 1: century b c. Mesopotamian high priestess and poet, the daughter
Speaker 1: of the Accadian king Sargon the Great. And so she
Speaker 1: wrote these hymns to Anna that are just spectacular to read. Um,
Speaker 1: But okay, what kind of monster slang does Innanna do? Well?
Speaker 1: The story here is more obscure, more complex, but it's
Speaker 1: also interesting. It comes down to this Sumerian concept called kor.
Speaker 1: And my source here is a couple of pieces by
Speaker 1: the twentieth century ancient Neary scholar Samuel In Kramer. So
Speaker 1: everything I'm saying here comes from Kramer. Kramer writes that
Speaker 1: kur can be a really confusing word in ancient Sumerian
Speaker 1: literature because of its many different meanings. First of all,
Speaker 1: it seems to have a primary literal meaning of mountain, right,
Speaker 1: so got coor the mountain. It's also used to mean
Speaker 1: foreign land, presumably because the peoples of the mountains board
Speaker 1: Ring Summer were a constant threat. But then Core also
Speaker 1: appears to just mean land in general, like territory. Uh,
Speaker 1: but also it has cosmic and religious connotations. So the
Speaker 1: word Core is also used to signify the Great Below
Speaker 1: or the nether world quote the empty space between the
Speaker 1: Earth's crust and the prime evil Sea. And Kramer writes,
Speaker 1: quote Moreover, it is not improbable that the monstrous creature
Speaker 1: that lived at the bottom of the Great Below immediately
Speaker 1: over the primeval waters is also called Core. If so,
Speaker 1: this monster Core would correspond to a certain extent to
Speaker 1: the Babylonian Tiamat. So this is another version of the
Speaker 1: Tiamat sea monster legend. And Kramer writes about kind of
Speaker 1: in the tradition of Marduk, that there are multiple ancient
Speaker 1: stories and fragments of stories we have in which monster
Speaker 1: slayers attack the monster Core. In one the hero is
Speaker 1: the god Enki, in another one it's Ninerta. But in
Speaker 1: a third it appears to be in Anna. And so
Speaker 1: there's this passage where Anna threatens the Core who does
Speaker 1: who does not recognize her might? And an Anna says,
Speaker 1: the long spear I shall hurl upon it, the throwing
Speaker 1: stick the weapon I shall direct against it at its
Speaker 1: neighboring forests. I shall strike up fire at its And
Speaker 1: then there's an illusion. I shall set up the bronze
Speaker 1: axe all its waters like Jibil, the fire god, the purifier.
Speaker 1: I shall dry up, like the mountain Rata, which no
Speaker 1: hand can reach. I shall And then there's another illusion,
Speaker 1: like a city cursed by a new it will not
Speaker 1: be restored, like a city on which in lill frowns,
Speaker 1: it shall not rise up. And then the god Anu
Speaker 1: warns her how terrible the core monster is quote against
Speaker 1: the standing place of the gods. It has directed its
Speaker 1: terror in the sitting place of the Anu. KNOCKI it
Speaker 1: has led forth fearfulness. It's fearful terror. It has hurled
Speaker 1: upon Sumer, it's fearful glory. It has directed against all
Speaker 1: the lands. But of course, mighty and Anna is not discouraged.
Speaker 1: And she quote opens the house of battle against the
Speaker 1: cour and slays the monster, and stands upon it and
Speaker 1: speaks to him to her own magnificence, These ancient goddesses
Speaker 1: where serious business. Yeah, that's awesome, uh, and I love
Speaker 1: But she stands on it too. She's still doing putting
Speaker 1: her foot on It's got that's got to happen um.
Speaker 1: And so I think the issue that Kramer highlights with
Speaker 1: the different meanings of the word cour here is very illuminating.
Speaker 1: According to Kramer, again, it literally means mountain, also means
Speaker 1: enemy territory, also just means land or territory in general.
Speaker 1: Also means the nether world or the underworld. Also the
Speaker 1: name of the monster that inhabits the nether world and
Speaker 1: and brings destruction against sum Air. So when you hear
Speaker 1: the story of in Hona slaying the cour if you're
Speaker 1: hearing it in the original language, you would be directly
Speaker 1: receiving all of these connotations. She conquers the mountain, she
Speaker 1: conquers the enemy lands, she conquers the land itself, she
Speaker 1: conquers the realm of the dead and maybe death. Um.
Speaker 1: It's interesting the way that you know, we go later
Speaker 1: into monster slang legends, looking for the allegories and saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, what, does what does this monster represent? It
Speaker 1: usually does seem to represent something more than just a beast,
Speaker 1: either intentionally or accidentally. Yeah, But but here it's like
Speaker 1: you've got all these connotations of the same word, meaning
Speaker 1: that it's almost just completely baked into the story at
Speaker 1: the face value level. That is fascinating. It's like the
Speaker 1: idea of the monster has yet to like congeal, you know,
Speaker 1: it's still more free flowing well the monster. I mean,
Speaker 1: you usually think of ancient stories as being more concrete
Speaker 1: and modern storytelling is being more abstract, but I wonder
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's always the case. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: really flies in the face of those some of the
Speaker 1: ideas we've discussed where like, oh, the monster is inspired
Speaker 1: by a fossil, you know, or or something to that effect,
Speaker 1: Like like this is more the it's ideas, Uh that
Speaker 1: are you know, congealing into a symbolic Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say this might be inspired less by a fossil and
Speaker 1: more by a family of concepts, all of which cause
Speaker 1: discomfort and fear, and the fear is key. Fear will
Speaker 1: definitely come into play later in this episode. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will explore more monsters and monster
Speaker 1: slayers than Alright, we're back. So another famous monster and
Speaker 1: slayer combo that this is a combo that we could
Speaker 1: easily do the whole podcast on. You could do multiple
Speaker 1: podcast on because a lot of people have written about
Speaker 1: this duo. Yeah, I'm talking about Beowulf and Grendel, the
Speaker 1: Great romance of Anglo Saxon literature. Yes, I don't probably
Speaker 1: don't have to remind everyone about this too much. It's
Speaker 1: a the violent tale in which a brutish automaton of
Speaker 1: a human disrupts an ancient and terminally endangered creature in
Speaker 1: the process of its predation. Predation I should remind everyone
Speaker 1: that targets only the loudest, fittest in warlike human males
Speaker 1: for the most part. Uh. The brute ends up tearing
Speaker 1: the arm off of the creature and then follows it
Speaker 1: home as it retreats to its layer and then dies.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, our hero follows. The blood follows the
Speaker 1: you know, the howls of pain, dives down to the
Speaker 1: deep layer, and there kills the creature's mother as well.
Speaker 1: It's uh, I'm being a little cheeky in my description
Speaker 1: because it isn't. You're just accurately describing the story. Beowolf
Speaker 1: is a jerk. He's well, he is, he's kind of
Speaker 1: the mind kind of you know, partial, I guess to
Speaker 1: John Gardner's Grenville, who plays up these themes a lot
Speaker 1: by humanizing the monster well at the same time retaining
Speaker 1: its monstrous qualities, but portraying Beowulf is just this this
Speaker 1: holy wrath of a character. Yeah, I I guess it's
Speaker 1: a it's a modern thing for us to sympathize more
Speaker 1: with the monster. And why why is it like that now?
Speaker 1: Do we sympathize with the monster more these days? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure? I mean, well, part of it is that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: tales like this kind of speak to all of us
Speaker 1: and continue to resonate today, but it's it's still a
Speaker 1: tale that was speaking to a probably more specific audience
Speaker 1: as opposed to know humanity in general. Maybe the reason
Speaker 1: that we're more inclined to sympathize with Grendel and sympathize
Speaker 1: with monsters these days is that we more people now
Speaker 1: are sort of conditioned to the idea that history as
Speaker 1: written might not always be fair. You know, that it
Speaker 1: maybe is written to benefit the people who are writing
Speaker 1: it and make them look good. Unless you always kind
Speaker 1: of wonder when you get a heroic tale of a slaying,
Speaker 1: is it actually a tale of an unfair and undeserved slaughter? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or sometimes maybe a monster just doesn't need slaying. Anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: I was looking around, and again, there's a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of literature about Grendel, theo Wolf. Tons of people have
Speaker 1: written about a are Tolkien wrote about Beowulf and Grendel.
Speaker 1: I was looking at one particular author, though, English professor
Speaker 1: and also medieval dragon expert, Joyce Tally uh lion urns,
Speaker 1: I believe it is her last name, and she points
Speaker 1: out that there's a lot to be said in interpreting
Speaker 1: Grendel and his mother. Uh. And some of the earlier
Speaker 1: interpretations were certainly more seeing them as personifications of natural threats,
Speaker 1: very much in keeping with what we discussed in the
Speaker 1: mar Duke's story. Already there what's outside the firelight? They
Speaker 1: are the wilderness and body, yeah, they're the wilderness. They're
Speaker 1: the dark. They are perhaps more specifically the north Sea,
Speaker 1: of the Bog, the marsh, long winter nights. I mean,
Speaker 1: ultimately a cousin of Jenny green Teeth in many respects. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the monster dies and Spring emerges again. While
Speaker 1: Beowulf's eventual death battling a dragon is the tale of
Speaker 1: Autumn's descent, A lot of people don't, Uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess this is referenced in the most recent film adaptation.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people forget about the dragon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this second half of the story. But Beowolf
Speaker 1: grows old, and in the second half of the story,
Speaker 1: he a young young Wiggloff has to take up the
Speaker 1: mantle of the monster slayer because Beowulf can't hack it anymore. Literally,
Speaker 1: can't hack into those monster hides like he used to,
Speaker 1: can't tear those arms off like you used to. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. I can't help but be reminded and
Speaker 1: thinking about like these older monster stories, monster and slayer tales,
Speaker 1: and then trying to think about their their analogs and
Speaker 1: uh in modern uh popular culture. I can't help but
Speaker 1: think of a little story in which a band of
Speaker 1: professional warmakers and Central America are targeted by an alien
Speaker 1: hunter that that only praise on the fittest and warlike
Speaker 1: of its target species. But only through through trickery does
Speaker 1: the human a man named Dutch prevail. Oh he's Dutch.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what his name is Dutch? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Is he supposed to be Dutch? I thought? Maybe? Who
Speaker 1: don't I don't know, But that's sort of solidifies the
Speaker 1: Baowolf connection. Oh, well interesting, But anyway, Dutch ends up
Speaker 1: probably dying from radiation exposure, I think since the monster
Speaker 1: self deatoname. But I'm of course talking about the film Predator. Man,
Speaker 1: you have taken me to a sacred and surprising place today.
Speaker 1: I never expected to connect Predator and Beowulf, but but
Speaker 1: I see it. I mean there, I think there are
Speaker 1: certain connections you can make. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: the contrast is very interesting because Grindel is fearsome but
Speaker 1: is ultimately easily overcome by the hero. Right. Predator is
Speaker 1: fearsome and basically wins. I mean, he slays everybody except Dutch,
Speaker 1: and Dutch is really only able to barely achieve victory
Speaker 1: in the end. He tricks him trickery. Trickery, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is which is also something you see a lot of times,
Speaker 1: and generally speaking, and we're talking about like the masculinity
Speaker 1: of the hero. It's very hard to find examples, especially
Speaker 1: in the older stories, where the hero is something other
Speaker 1: than than first of all male, but also the warrior,
Speaker 1: the soldier, you know, and perhaps the soldier ends up
Speaker 1: using trickery or enchanted items, and both of those may
Speaker 1: be actually given to him by the gods. Or in
Speaker 1: some cases a gods. But in any effect, I feel
Speaker 1: like they tend to have tended to have an easier
Speaker 1: time of it, whereas nowadays, really I'm gonna I'm personally
Speaker 1: going to be disappointed if the hero uh really takes
Speaker 1: out the monster too soon. I mean, you want to
Speaker 1: see the struggle, right, Well, right, I mean maybe now
Speaker 1: people are more likely to want to see different values like, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe now you put more emphasis on, say, the courage
Speaker 1: and cleverness of a hero than on just like they're
Speaker 1: absolutely unbeatable strength, or certainly maybe just the the things
Speaker 1: that the monsters represent for us now are less severe,
Speaker 1: Like maybe it's like if grin Tho is representing just
Speaker 1: the harsh realities beyond the campfire. Maybe you want to
Speaker 1: hear you need a hero that just tears into it
Speaker 1: like a nightmare. You know, you don't want to you
Speaker 1: don't want a weak hero that's gonna, you know, take
Speaker 1: a beating for forty five minutes before building a proper
Speaker 1: bow and arrow out of twigs. Well, I say, I
Speaker 1: certainly appreciate vulnerable heroes. I mean I find stories where
Speaker 1: the hero is too powerful and too good and too
Speaker 1: strong very boring and then you run the risk of
Speaker 1: the monster being more relatable. Yeah, well you y'all out
Speaker 1: there no our monster sympathies, so we can't pretend to
Speaker 1: hide that. So of course in talking about slayers, we
Speaker 1: can't help but talk about dragon slayers. And there's one
Speaker 1: particular dragon slayer that it's probably, if not the definitely
Speaker 1: one of the most famous dragon slayers in Western traditions,
Speaker 1: of course, and this is St. George. Yes, the subject
Speaker 1: of many a painting and engraving often link to make
Speaker 1: the dragon fearsome. Yeah, the dragon that kill the slaying
Speaker 1: of the dragon I I find, and some of these
Speaker 1: paintings it often feels more like the execution of a
Speaker 1: pet salamander or something, you know, like there's a dog
Speaker 1: like quality to this small creature that is crushed under
Speaker 1: the heel of a of a giant horse and a
Speaker 1: top and there's a mounted night atop just you know,
Speaker 1: skewering it with a sword or a spear. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: one image I attached here or St. George's attacking. It
Speaker 1: is snarling, but it does look like a dog with wings.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar, maybe I should go ahead and
Speaker 1: tell the story of St. George. You ready for that, Robert, Okay,
Speaker 1: so this comes. So, now here's one thing actually about
Speaker 1: the legend of St. George as a Christian saint long
Speaker 1: predates any written version of this story of the dragon
Speaker 1: slaying we have, uh the as far as I know,
Speaker 1: the earliest written version of the dragon Slaying comes from
Speaker 1: the Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, compiled by
Speaker 1: Jacobus Devoregene, Archbishop of Genoa, in twelve seventy five, and
Speaker 1: the first edition in English was published in fourteen seventy,
Speaker 1: translated by William Caxton. But here's the story. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you got St. George, and St. George's a wandering knight.
Speaker 1: He's a he's a soldier, and he's a knight. He's
Speaker 1: born in a Cappadocia, which is a region of Turkey,
Speaker 1: which Robert, have you ever seen the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia,
Speaker 1: I believe so. Yes, they're beautiful looking. I mean it
Speaker 1: looks you just look up the landscape of this place
Speaker 1: and you can imagine it's the kind of place a
Speaker 1: magical hero would come from. So he comes from Cappadocia
Speaker 1: and as a traveling night. One day he wandered into
Speaker 1: the vicinity of a city called Silene, which was in
Speaker 1: the province of Libya. Now by the city of Silene
Speaker 1: was a great pond where there was a dragon that
Speaker 1: quote in venomed all the country, and it would attack
Speaker 1: the city mercilessly, breathing venom that sickened and killed the people.
Speaker 1: And the citizens of Silene had tried to slay the dragon.
Speaker 1: So terrible was the beast and so poisonous was its
Speaker 1: breath that the fighters all ran away before they could
Speaker 1: fight it, And so all that was left to do
Speaker 1: was to try to bribe the dragon to leave them alone.
Speaker 1: At first, they would feed it too sheep every day,
Speaker 1: but eventually this failed, so they started to feed the
Speaker 1: dragon a man into sheep each day, and eventually they
Speaker 1: decided that they had to offer their children, one at
Speaker 1: a time to keep the dragon at bay. So the
Speaker 1: king made an ordinance that each day there would be
Speaker 1: a lottery of the children in the town, and whichever
Speaker 1: child the lot fell to, whether rich or poor, would
Speaker 1: be offered up to the dragon. But then one day
Speaker 1: the lot fell to the princess, to the king's own daughter,
Speaker 1: and he begged the people saying, quote, for the love
Speaker 1: of the gods, take gold and silver and all that
Speaker 1: I have, but let me have my daughter. And the
Speaker 1: people answered, how sir, ye have made and ordained the law,
Speaker 1: and our children be now dead, and ye would do
Speaker 1: the contrary. Your daughter shall be given in or else
Speaker 1: we shall burn you and your house, I said, was
Speaker 1: a reasonable response to this policy? Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he can. He can set the policy, but then doesn't
Speaker 1: want it to apply to him. Uh so yeah. So
Speaker 1: then the king was very sad. He wept and begged
Speaker 1: for eight days respite. The people granted that to him,
Speaker 1: but in those eight days the dragon in venom to
Speaker 1: the city terribly. So when the time was up, the
Speaker 1: king dressed his daughter up as a bride, and he
Speaker 1: kissed her, and he gave her a benediction, and then
Speaker 1: led her out to the dragon's lair at the pond.
Speaker 1: So the princess is alone at the pond, dressed in
Speaker 1: a bridal gown, waiting to be eaten by the dragon.
Speaker 1: But then St. George happens to pass by, and he
Speaker 1: asked her what she's doing out there by herself in
Speaker 1: the wilderness, and she says, go ye your way, fair
Speaker 1: young man that ye perish not also, and he replies
Speaker 1: by asking why she's crying, and eventually she tells him
Speaker 1: the truth that she had been delivered as a tribute
Speaker 1: to the dragon. Uh. And then, to quote from the
Speaker 1: this version of the Golden Lives, UH, then said St. George,
Speaker 1: fair daughter, doubt ye no thing hereof for I shall
Speaker 1: help thee in the name of ya Zu Christ. She said,
Speaker 1: for God's sake, good night, go your way, and abide
Speaker 1: not with me, for ye may not deliver me. So
Speaker 1: she's doubting his power, but he's got to display it
Speaker 1: because he's already sworn in the name of yat Zu
Speaker 1: crease so that he can do it. So as they're speaking,
Speaker 1: the dragon suddenly appears and it begins to charge at them.
Speaker 1: And then so St. George draws his sword and he
Speaker 1: makes the sign of the cross, and then he quote
Speaker 1: rode heartily against the dragon, which came toward him and
Speaker 1: smote him with his spear and hurt him sore and
Speaker 1: threw him to the ground. So the dragon is mortally injured.
Speaker 1: And then George asks the princess to remove her girdle
Speaker 1: and tie it around the neck of the dragon. Quote
Speaker 1: when she had done so, the dragon followed her as
Speaker 1: it had been a meek beast and debonair. Then she
Speaker 1: led him into the city, and the people fled by
Speaker 1: mountains and valleys and alas, alas, we shall all be dead.
Speaker 1: Then St. George said to them, nay, doubt no thing
Speaker 1: without more, believe ye in God, YESU Christ, and do
Speaker 1: ye to be baptized, and I shall slay the dragon.
Speaker 1: So the king then and all his people got baptized
Speaker 1: as Christians, and quote St. George slew the dragon and
Speaker 1: smote off his head and commanded that he should be
Speaker 1: thrown in the fields. And they took four cards with
Speaker 1: oxen that drew him out of the city. And as
Speaker 1: a result of this, there's a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: get baptized become Christians, and then there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: like healings of the sick and stuff. And then of
Speaker 1: course the legend goes on and tells about the martyrdom
Speaker 1: of St. George after that. But that's the story of St. George,
Speaker 1: the Princess and the Dragon. It's pretty good. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: the build up more than the payoff. I think, you know.
Speaker 1: The lottery system was pretty engaging. Well, there's no I
Speaker 1: mean St. George doesn't have a trick up his sleeve
Speaker 1: except prayer. That seems to be the thing. He's just like, well,
Speaker 1: he praised and Yazu Creast comes through and it slays
Speaker 1: the dragon. He doesn't have a trick, you know, or
Speaker 1: maybe prayer is like a trick here. I'm not sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess prayer is the trick. I mean again, in
Speaker 1: a lot of these stories, you look at some of
Speaker 1: the Greek myths, to defeat the monster, one must use
Speaker 1: wisdom or weapons that are a gift of the gods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what is the difference I guess ultimately between that
Speaker 1: in prayer? Right, Well, I guess it would just make
Speaker 1: a better story. Like if Yezu Creast came down and
Speaker 1: gave him a magical weapon or something. Yeah, give him
Speaker 1: you know, the armor of Christ or something, or you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of fancy sword, and then we can get
Speaker 1: the idea. It's like, oh, yeah, if you're on God's side,
Speaker 1: you can slay dragons. I get the same message, but
Speaker 1: it's a little more entertaining at least, you know, from me. Right,
Speaker 1: But of course, as we mentioned earlier, this is sort
Speaker 1: of part of a genre of stories that proliferate around
Speaker 1: the world. They are all these dragon slaying stories, especially
Speaker 1: there of course, medieval dragon slaying stories. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mentioned Joyce tally land Rand's earlier. I mentioned that she
Speaker 1: was an expert on medieval dragon slangs and medieval dragons.
Speaker 1: I was reading on uh something she wrote titled the
Speaker 1: Sign of a Hero theodo Ic Saga of burn uh
Speaker 1: and Uh. In this she points out, and I'm a
Speaker 1: number of interesting things about some of the tales we've discussed,
Speaker 1: though more specifically Theodoric, Theodoric, the Great Beowulf and Siegfried.
Speaker 1: So she points out that in German literature, especially, dragon
Speaker 1: slain becomes something of a defining characteristic of any hero.
Speaker 1: But so like you're like, I'm a hero. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know to just lay a dragon? Well exactly,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the that's the problem, because then how
Speaker 1: do you draw the line between standard heroes and truly
Speaker 1: mighty heroes if they're all monster slangs, And in doing so,
Speaker 1: also that the act of slaying a dragon ends up
Speaker 1: serving perhaps less of a symbolic u uh purpose, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not defeating chaos or the devil or
Speaker 1: the the you know, the powers of the dark um or.
Speaker 1: It's not serving as a you know, mark of passage
Speaker 1: into adulthood. It's just like a necessary um upgrade in
Speaker 1: the arms race of storytelling. So, uh, in the particular
Speaker 1: old Norse saga that she's dealing with here in this paper,
Speaker 1: she points out, uh, that tackles the problems of including
Speaker 1: both Theodoric the Great and Sigfried in the same story.
Speaker 1: So what the what the story does is it makes
Speaker 1: Sigfried into Theodoric's vassal and makes them kind of the sidekick, right,
Speaker 1: kind of wiglof kind of kind yeah, but also gives
Speaker 1: Theodoric two dragons and three baby dragons to kill. So
Speaker 1: in doing this, you know, killing a dragon becomes less
Speaker 1: an impressive acting and of itself. A real hero has
Speaker 1: to kill like upwards of five dragons. This is how
Speaker 1: we get Blade, where you've got monster monster slayers that
Speaker 1: are like the vampire slayers, they gotta kill tons of vampires. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think also you're touching on something. You get like
Speaker 1: maybe you get specific types of monster slayers and specific
Speaker 1: types of monsters like oh, that's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I guess in the Marvel universe, I
Speaker 1: imagine Captain America could kill a vampire, but if you're
Speaker 1: dealing with multiple vampires, it's got to be blayed every time. Right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's specialized labor. You know, he's got all the
Speaker 1: tricks and the tools and the knowledge. So in this paper,
Speaker 1: she also points out there's a distinction in the types
Speaker 1: of dragons dealt with, some natural and other supernatural. Some
Speaker 1: flightless worms and other winged some and others are winged beasts. Uh.
Speaker 1: Demonica connotations, for example, are reserved in this tale for
Speaker 1: the oto Ys dragon foes. Well, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: when in the original version of the King George story
Speaker 1: that I was reading up there, did we receive any
Speaker 1: indication that the dragon could even fly? I mean, it
Speaker 1: might have just been like a big poison crocodile, for right.
Speaker 1: I mean that makes would would certainly match up with
Speaker 1: these depictions in which it is very much on the
Speaker 1: ground beneath the horse. Yeah. By the way, in particular story, um, uh,
Speaker 1: these two heroes eventually dual, and of course, uh, Theodoric
Speaker 1: the Great wins, Theodoric kills Siegfried. Well, no, no, just
Speaker 1: defeats him. I would say to death they're not. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting that they're kind of dealing with some of
Speaker 1: the probably some of the problems that that the comic
Speaker 1: books have dealt with in modern times, like what happens
Speaker 1: when you when you have two heroes in the same story.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you balance their powers or
Speaker 1: how do you show clear? Um, how do you have
Speaker 1: positioned one above the other in a way that doesn't
Speaker 1: diminish the other one too much? Well, you gotta have
Speaker 1: what Captain America and Iron Man fight. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of the same deal, right, Yeah? Or is it Thor
Speaker 1: and Iron Man. I don't keep up with those, Um,
Speaker 1: I think may and I don't mean. I guess they've
Speaker 1: all fought each other. You can't help but have heroes
Speaker 1: fight each other. But I I believe Captain America and
Speaker 1: Iron Man they're the ones who who end up fighting
Speaker 1: each other in the movie. You know another thing I
Speaker 1: was thinking about when you mentioned how Lion Arn's highlighted
Speaker 1: that eventually they have to start killing more and more
Speaker 1: monsters to show how great they are, because it's just
Speaker 1: killing one monster, and yeah, it's not that impressive anymore.
Speaker 1: I obviously have to go to Hercules. Hercules had a
Speaker 1: bunch of what what percent of his twelve labors were
Speaker 1: monster slayings, A lot of them. Right, Well, we're about
Speaker 1: to go through them, so let's find out. Okay, everyone
Speaker 1: can keep track at home and uh and and do
Speaker 1: do the math, please show your work. Hercules or Heracles
Speaker 1: is of course one of the greatest monsters slayers in
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman traditions. Now, granted he didn't take out Medusa.
Speaker 1: That was Perseus, who of course used a goddess given
Speaker 1: tactics and weapons to overcome the Gorgon. But he eat
Speaker 1: did a hell of a lot during the labors of Hercules.
Speaker 1: And there's I should point out. There's a wonderful video
Speaker 1: game themed short about this from ted Ed. If you
Speaker 1: go to you know, YouTube or the ted ed website
Speaker 1: you will find it. It's absolutely delightful. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: so you say, video game themed, it's like pixel art.
Speaker 1: It looks like a classic Nintendo game. Yeah, they are
Speaker 1: some sort of sixteen bit thing. I'm not sure. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly which bit it would be, but it
Speaker 1: looks like a fabulous game. It makes me want to
Speaker 1: play it. So basically here's the rundown. You have Hercules
Speaker 1: this uh, this, you know, a semi divine hero. You know.
Speaker 1: I like to picture the classic uh cinema Hercules with
Speaker 1: the big beard and the big muscles. You know, he's
Speaker 1: very much in the you know, the class of of
Speaker 1: masculine warrior heroes. And so he ends up going on
Speaker 1: these labors. And these labors are an act of atonement
Speaker 1: after the goddess Hera drives him mad, resulting in the
Speaker 1: murder of his own children, and these labors were assigned
Speaker 1: to him by his nimus nemesis Eurystheus. So these are
Speaker 1: the labors. First labor, uh, he has to take out
Speaker 1: the Nimean Lion, which is a monstrous lion. Yeah. Second
Speaker 1: labor is the Learnaean hydra, and this is a classic
Speaker 1: monster that is sometimes described as a mere multi headed
Speaker 1: snake monster, but later it takes on regenerative features as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you cut off one head to grow back
Speaker 1: in its place. Big Hurk had to get hell from
Speaker 1: his nephew on this one belief, So yes, uh, And
Speaker 1: the solution here is is a fabulous work of team
Speaker 1: a bit of teamwork. Hirk slices off the head and
Speaker 1: then the nephew jumps in and burns the stump. Third
Speaker 1: labor Serenian hind. Not a monster really, but a very
Speaker 1: special deer. Fourth labor is the Aramathean boar, which is
Speaker 1: a monstrous boar, just another giant sized animal for him
Speaker 1: to deal with. Fifth labor he cleans out the Agean stables,
Speaker 1: so just lots of animal poop. Uh. Not a monster,
Speaker 1: but a monstrous task exactly. Uh. Sixth labor were the
Speaker 1: Stemfalian birds. Uh, these were pretty monsters. These were the
Speaker 1: sacred metal war birds of aries bronze of beak and feather,
Speaker 1: and they could launch their their metal feathers like flying daggers.
Speaker 1: Seventh labor was the Cretan bull. Which is there any
Speaker 1: connection with the minotaur there? I? I mean, I would
Speaker 1: assume we're talking about crete, right, yeah, and it's a bull. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's just a monstrous bull. It's not a minotaur. Um.
Speaker 1: Then the eighth labor was were the mayors of Diometes.
Speaker 1: And these were flesh eating horses. So they're pretty monsters
Speaker 1: down granted they were they were trained to eat flesh,
Speaker 1: they were encouraged to eat flesh. And uh, and he's
Speaker 1: able to overcome this one and essentially gets their their
Speaker 1: masters are eating instead. Ninth labor the belt of Hippolyta,
Speaker 1: monster the Amazon queen right. Tenth labor the cattle of Garyon,
Speaker 1: and Garon was a giant with three faces. Eleventh labor
Speaker 1: the golden apples of Hesperides, and then twelfth labor uh Serebus,
Speaker 1: the three headed hellhound. So here we have a good
Speaker 1: monster for him to to tackle and literally tackle and
Speaker 1: wrestle and overcome. So these are all these are all
Speaker 1: fun little adventures and uh, we would need a lot
Speaker 1: more time to really talk about all of them in
Speaker 1: depth and what they mean, etcetera. Um, you know, and heck,
Speaker 1: we have a full episode on Hydras in the vault.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that strikes me here is
Speaker 1: that that her Again, it's very much a male warrior hero,
Speaker 1: and he uses strength and cunning to overcome his enemies.
Speaker 1: But at the same time herc is a divine being.
Speaker 1: He's a demigod, a hybrid born of the god Zeus
Speaker 1: and immortal Mother. So he's touched by the otherworldly and
Speaker 1: therefore the perfect slayer of other worldly enemies. I mean
Speaker 1: this highlights a couple of different ways that monster slayers
Speaker 1: can be. One is the courageous type, and the other
Speaker 1: is the fearless type, which is a very different thing. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, does is there ever any indication that Herchiles
Speaker 1: feels fear when he goes to fight these monsters? Or
Speaker 1: does his godlike nature, the fact that he's half god
Speaker 1: sort of make him able to face these with a
Speaker 1: sense of invulnerability? Yeah? I feel like it's it's a
Speaker 1: fearless uh situation, fearless and largely invulnerable because he is
Speaker 1: half god. Um. You know, I can't help me reminded
Speaker 1: again of Blade? Uh, the specifically the Wesley Snipes blade. Uh?
Speaker 1: Is there another Blade? And there was like a TV
Speaker 1: Blade played by what sticky Fingers I think or fingers? Uh?
Speaker 1: The rapper played him? Uh? And I don't know, I
Speaker 1: never saw the show, but uh, as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: Wesley Snipes is the only Blade. Um, but in that
Speaker 1: he is half vampire, so he has I think it's
Speaker 1: said that he has um all of their strengths but
Speaker 1: none of their weaknesses. Right, so he's the day Walker? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: who who else but the DayWalker? The DayWalker is the
Speaker 1: perfect slayer of all of these vampires. Now, Robert, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you would love to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: monster slayers of Chinese myth and legend. Oh yeah, there
Speaker 1: there are some good ones. One of them is actually
Speaker 1: a character we've talked about on the show before, uh
Speaker 1: in our episode on the Great Flood, because we've talked
Speaker 1: about the Chinese mythic hero Uh You the Great or
Speaker 1: die You. Um. He's also you know, emperor and founded
Speaker 1: uh the Shiah dynasty, which was cea. We talked about
Speaker 1: him on the show before about in regards to his
Speaker 1: his his role in overcoming the ravages of the Great Flood,
Speaker 1: not by building a boat or anything like we see
Speaker 1: in Mesopotamian and Old Testament traditions, but by sort of
Speaker 1: tackling it with irrigation and engineering, uh, but also through
Speaker 1: like having his father having pilfered the secrets from the gods.
Speaker 1: So there's this Promethean vibe to it as well. But
Speaker 1: he was also something of a monster slayer. Uh. He
Speaker 1: said to have killed the nine headed serpent sheng Lu,
Speaker 1: who is a minister of the defeated chaotic water deity
Speaker 1: Gong Gong uh and who was defeated in a battle
Speaker 1: for divine in supremacy against the against Jean Zoo, the
Speaker 1: grandson of the mythical Yellow Emperor. As described by the
Speaker 1: authors Young and On in Handbook of Chinese Mythology, jiang Lu,
Speaker 1: the Great backs Black serpent here had nine human heads,
Speaker 1: and the nine heads eight food from the nine mountains,
Speaker 1: and everywhere it went it left impassable marshes in hostile
Speaker 1: gullies in its path. Now do you think that the
Speaker 1: the idea of like the nine heads but they're they're
Speaker 1: sort of snaking necks, has anything to do with rivers there,
Speaker 1: with river imagery, I assume, yeah, I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't go into into an even more extended detail
Speaker 1: on the possible symbolism of the of the of the
Speaker 1: nine heads, et cetera. But it does bring to mind
Speaker 1: this idea of like branching rivers, doesn't it. Now? Obviously,
Speaker 1: I think everyone can see where we're going here, Like you,
Speaker 1: the Great overcomes floods and the dangers of flood and
Speaker 1: here we have the monster personification of floods and flood hazards.
Speaker 1: So you end up slaying the monster, but the creature's
Speaker 1: blood is so poisonous, that it poisons the spot where
Speaker 1: it dies so that life can find no purchase there.
Speaker 1: And you wants to overcome this so so the crops
Speaker 1: can be grown there and and dug and so he
Speaker 1: digs out the poisoned earth not once, not twice, but
Speaker 1: three times. In each time the blood sinks down even deeper.
Speaker 1: And eventually he just has to build a terrace from
Speaker 1: the excavated soil. Uh and uh and atop this uh
Speaker 1: you know it is, it's like a temple that's uh
Speaker 1: devoted to the great gods. Now. Yang and On mentioned
Speaker 1: that this story is not really told that much in
Speaker 1: modern China, but it's Some versions of it still survive,
Speaker 1: such as one from Sichuan Province in which jan Zou
Speaker 1: survives battle with the fire god wrong and continues to
Speaker 1: bring flooding and death to the earth, forcing the mother
Speaker 1: goddess Nuah to slay it. So here we get to
Speaker 1: a godess getting involved in the slaying again. Um Now
Speaker 1: also more famously defeated the Black Dragon, also a being
Speaker 1: of chaotic water and flood energy. I'd also be remiss
Speaker 1: if I didn't mention Um the archer who ye who
Speaker 1: killed a number of different monsters, and of course shot
Speaker 1: down the nine surplus sons that were roasting the earth,
Speaker 1: and in some tellings he actually shot and killed nine
Speaker 1: great crows that carried these sons. Now, it's also interesting
Speaker 1: is that during this age of ten Sons, not only
Speaker 1: is it just really hot and difficult to grow crops,
Speaker 1: it's also said to be a time of cosmic imbalance.
Speaker 1: And during this time a lot of unnatural monsters rise up,
Speaker 1: and so the emperor ends up tasking uh ye the
Speaker 1: archer with their destruction. Uh And so just just a
Speaker 1: few of the monsters that he ends up killing include
Speaker 1: uh uh, there's a monster with the dragon's head and
Speaker 1: the leopard's body, a monster with teeth as sharp as
Speaker 1: chisels that are unbreakable. There is a nine headed monster.
Speaker 1: There's a giant bird, a giant bore, a giant snake.
Speaker 1: Uh So again, all manner of unnatural creatures who rose
Speaker 1: up during a time of cosmic imbalance. He also punishes
Speaker 1: a couple of damaging elemental gods with a well placed
Speaker 1: to arrow or two. For instance, he shot the damaging
Speaker 1: win god he bow in the eye, and he took
Speaker 1: out both knees of the damaging river god Fingbo and
Speaker 1: in other versions he kills Fingbo outright. So once again
Speaker 1: we have like river water elemental monsters that have to
Speaker 1: be dealt with by a hero. Yeah, and the idea
Speaker 1: of them coming out of a time of cosmic imbalance,
Speaker 1: um seems to somehow echoed, you know, the very ancient
Speaker 1: monster concepts of like the chaos monster, like like Tiamata Namsu.
Speaker 1: All right, well, on that note, let's take one more break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, let's talk about what the
Speaker 1: slayer means to us. Thank thank alright, we're back. Okay.
Speaker 1: So we've been looking at a lot of great examples
Speaker 1: of monsters and their slayers, the monster slayers stories from
Speaker 1: throughout human history, and now we wanted to take a
Speaker 1: look at what the what what the monster slayer means?
Speaker 1: Why do we keep telling stories like this? Why is
Speaker 1: this so common? And what purpose psychologically and culturally does
Speaker 1: it serve when we do? Uh So, one of the
Speaker 1: things I want to say at the outside, just as
Speaker 1: a kind of disclaimer, is that, um, I feel like
Speaker 1: when we try to explain what stories and myths mean
Speaker 1: from a kind of evolutionary psychology perspective, we always need
Speaker 1: to remember to understand the difference between like proving a
Speaker 1: theory with direct evidence and so sort of simply telling
Speaker 1: a plausible story and arguing it to be consistent with
Speaker 1: what we know now. I'm actually all for having arguments
Speaker 1: over plausible stories and evo psyche and all that, but
Speaker 1: it's imperative for us to remember that that's what they are.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes people get carried away with this project
Speaker 1: and they jump from I've told a plausible story about
Speaker 1: why we have this cultural thing or the psychological thing too.
Speaker 1: I have discovered the biological origin of this element of
Speaker 1: human psychology or culture, and we I think we just
Speaker 1: always need to be careful not to do that. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you see people taking like almost Joseph Campbelly kind of
Speaker 1: observations to the point of saying like this is just science,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, you know what I mean that said,
Speaker 1: all these kind of like Joseph Campbelly sort of observations
Speaker 1: can be a lot of fun, right and and he
Speaker 1: of course had lots to say and think about the
Speaker 1: role of monster slayers. Yeah, I mean, likewise, um, Julian
Speaker 1: James the bi cameral mind, which I'll actually touched on
Speaker 1: in a bit like if you if you go entirely
Speaker 1: down the Jane's well of interpreting everything, then yeah, it
Speaker 1: can be a lot of fun, but then you have
Speaker 1: cut off all other perspectives on what the thing is. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, so one thing that somebody I think, like
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell would say is that the role of the
Speaker 1: monster slayer in fiction is about like facing the ego.
Speaker 1: It's like this ego struggle and that you've got to
Speaker 1: face yourself and overcome your fears and and change something
Speaker 1: about yourself. You know, that that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: so I I do agree at least that it's totally
Speaker 1: plausible that monster slayer stories are very prominent and very
Speaker 1: common because stories about facing dangers and facing fears are
Speaker 1: psychologically very salient to us. You know, we're constantly in
Speaker 1: our lives faced with situations where we don't want to
Speaker 1: do something, but in order to get what we want,
Speaker 1: we have to do that thing we don't want to do.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got to face your fears and overcome
Speaker 1: your discomfort to I don't know, save the princess, or
Speaker 1: to do whatever. And I think that's a totally plausible
Speaker 1: basis for for starting a conversation about what monster slayer
Speaker 1: miths mean. So another way to get deeper on this subject,
Speaker 1: I guess would be to look a little bit more
Speaker 1: more at what the monsters in these stories mean. And
Speaker 1: I want to posit a place for us to start there.
Speaker 1: I would posit that the monsters in these stories, most often,
Speaker 1: I would say, UH, seem to come from a combination
Speaker 1: of two main psychological UH components, biological threats and category confusions.
Speaker 1: And we've we've talked about category confusion quite a bit
Speaker 1: on the show. The idea that it's so go back
Speaker 1: to Hercules, right, Yeah, it's like a snake but it
Speaker 1: has way too many heads, or it's like a boar
Speaker 1: but it's gigantic. What's going on? Right? And there are
Speaker 1: reasons I think that would be significant. I'll get to
Speaker 1: that in just a minute now. Obviously, the fear of
Speaker 1: biological threats is pretty straightforward. There's a natural fear of
Speaker 1: predatory or venomous animals and of human rivals. And this
Speaker 1: doesn't need much explaining. In the basic sense, predators are
Speaker 1: dangerous and thus a deeply ingrained archetype from the natural world.
Speaker 1: But there there are also some relevant questions like why
Speaker 1: are certain form such as snakes, which you've seen all
Speaker 1: throughout these monsters and spiders. Also, why are those things
Speaker 1: readily seen as monstrous or incorporated in parts into chimerical monsters.
Speaker 1: Why so easily a spider monster or a serpentine monster,
Speaker 1: Why not more often like a bear monster. You might
Speaker 1: have one of those every now and then. That's true because,
Speaker 1: of course, the argument with the snake or the or
Speaker 1: the spider is that if it bites you, you could die.
Speaker 1: Depending on the variety of snake or spider. If the
Speaker 1: bear bites you, there's also a very good chance you'll die, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is actually long been a question. There's
Speaker 1: been this big question about whether these common fears, especially
Speaker 1: if things like spiders and snakes, are are learned or
Speaker 1: in aid. And Robert, I know you've looked at research
Speaker 1: like this too. Obviously, some part of any widespread fear
Speaker 1: will be based on cultural conditioning, So I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty inarguable that some part of this fear is learned, right,
Speaker 1: But could there also be a biological factor. Could there
Speaker 1: also be some in built part of the brain that
Speaker 1: is prone to recognize the shapes of spiders and snakes
Speaker 1: and react fearfully without any prior knowledge or conditioning. And
Speaker 1: I'd say that the question still isn't totally settled, but
Speaker 1: there's been some interesting research suggesting, especially recently, the yes
Speaker 1: recognition could be an eight. One example is uh study
Speaker 1: from in Frontiers and Psychology called Etsy Bitsy Spider infants
Speaker 1: react with increased arousal spider and snakes, spiders and snakes.
Speaker 1: So of course, what they didn't study here was they
Speaker 1: threw babies into cribs full of spiders and snakes. They
Speaker 1: did not. The study showed six month old infants images
Speaker 1: with similar shapes and colors, so visually these images were
Speaker 1: very close to each other, but with different ontological content.
Speaker 1: Some of them were pictures of spiders versus flowers that
Speaker 1: looked very similar, and others were pictures of snakes versus
Speaker 1: fish that looked very similar. And the researchers measured the
Speaker 1: baby's differential pupillary response to these images, the dilation of
Speaker 1: the pupils, and that's accepted as a pretty good indicator
Speaker 1: of activation of the nero draenergenic system, which is a
Speaker 1: physiological fear response. You know, it commands your attention and
Speaker 1: your body responds physiologically uh and the author's right quote,
Speaker 1: infants reacted with increased pupillary dilation, indicating arousal to spiders
Speaker 1: and snakes compared with flowers and fish. Results support the
Speaker 1: notion of an evolved preparedness for developing fear of these
Speaker 1: ancestral threats. So if even six month old babies show
Speaker 1: a stress response to images of spiders and snakes, it
Speaker 1: would seem that those forms could in some way be
Speaker 1: hardwired into us. There's at least part of us that
Speaker 1: is naturally biologically afraid of those things, and it's not
Speaker 1: just cultural conditioning. Uh. And another question there is why
Speaker 1: spiders and snakes, Right, we brought this up a minute ago.
Speaker 1: There are much more dangerous animals. Uh. One possible answer
Speaker 1: offered in a CBC interview by study author Stephanie hull
Speaker 1: is quote, what's really interesting about spiders and snakes is
Speaker 1: that they have been posing a threat to our ancestors
Speaker 1: for an immensely long time. Spiders and snakes developed venomous
Speaker 1: bites forty to sixty million years ago. This is a
Speaker 1: really long long time of coevolution, and we think that
Speaker 1: this enables primates not only humans but other primates as well,
Speaker 1: to develop mechanisms that enable us to detect these animals
Speaker 1: very quickly, to respond to them, to put our bodies
Speaker 1: into fight or flight mode. This may really have posed
Speaker 1: an advantage. Nowadays, it doesn't make so much sense. So
Speaker 1: the idea there is that, well, maybe it's not that
Speaker 1: we naturally respond to spiders and snakes because they're the
Speaker 1: most dangerous animals, but because they're the dangerous forms we've
Speaker 1: been around the longest and have stayed looking the same
Speaker 1: the longest. Does that make sense. Yeah, the basic formula,
Speaker 1: the bay sick basic proposition of a snake or spider
Speaker 1: has not changed in human history or even in primate history. Yes,
Speaker 1: But I might just note. On the other hand, there's
Speaker 1: also some evidence pointing against the hard coded phylogenetic threat hypothesis.
Speaker 1: For example, I found a study from two thousand nine
Speaker 1: in which adults recognized images of guns just as efficiently
Speaker 1: as they recognized images of snakes. Now, of course, guns
Speaker 1: aren't part of our biological neurohistory, so they couldn't. There
Speaker 1: couldn't be like a hardwired gun response in the brain
Speaker 1: that has to be culturally learned. But then again, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it's just that are cognitively based or learned fears
Speaker 1: become every bit as efficient in the brain as the hardwired,
Speaker 1: evolved ones that could be. How about tulsa dooms bow
Speaker 1: that shoots snakes from common the barbarians that see that
Speaker 1: is the ultimate physiological threat arousal trigger. I mean, I
Speaker 1: couldn't react with anything but worship. There. You know, in
Speaker 1: that movie. We have another great example of monster slow
Speaker 1: because one of Conan's early UH trials is the sling
Speaker 1: of the giant snake that also Doom keeps as a
Speaker 1: pet in one of the temples. Yeah, what is he does?
Speaker 1: He strangle it? He eventually chops its head off. There's
Speaker 1: some wrestling there, for sure, there's some there's some wrestling,
Speaker 1: But of course it's a snake. I mean, dragons are
Speaker 1: essentially snakes. We always have these snake forms reappearing as
Speaker 1: monsters over and over. It's got a snake for a head,
Speaker 1: or the whole thing is a snake with wings or
Speaker 1: you know, well, now in Western traditions, but as we've mentioned,
Speaker 1: in Eastern traditions, there's I feel like there's enhanced UH,
Speaker 1: there's an enhanced hybrid nature to the dragons. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: the Eastern Dragon becomes, I would argue, an even more
Speaker 1: fascinating creature with more more valences, you know, more like
Speaker 1: it's more like the core maybe and having multiple significances
Speaker 1: at different levels. But I would also think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Eastern Dragon tends to be less of a monster,
Speaker 1: it's more of a I mean, it's it's very very often.
Speaker 1: You know, it is definitely an elemental force. It's tied
Speaker 1: two floods and storms and waters in the ocean, but
Speaker 1: it does have more of a divine presence than you
Speaker 1: find in uh in Western traditions. Yeah, uh so, So
Speaker 1: anyway back to the idea of the basis of these
Speaker 1: monster fears. So, one, you've got these elements that are
Speaker 1: so often taken from what appeared to be at least
Speaker 1: maybe hard coded form threats, phylogenetic threats that are you know,
Speaker 1: part of our evolutionary history, and they at least at
Speaker 1: some level maybe hard coded in the brain, if not
Speaker 1: hard coded in the brain, very well coded into culture.
Speaker 1: Uh And the other thing, of course, we feel we
Speaker 1: mentioned a minute ago, is the discomfort with category confusion.
Speaker 1: So let's say we're defending ourselves from a natural threat,
Speaker 1: whether that's a venomous snake or a leopard or a wolf.
Speaker 1: One of our greatest defense mechanisms is not our muscles
Speaker 1: but our brains, right awareness and recognition, the ability to
Speaker 1: cognitively pick out signs of threats and avoid them. And then,
Speaker 1: of course also if we must face a threat, correct
Speaker 1: like cleverness and strategic thinking to overcome the threat. But
Speaker 1: most of our defensive thinking is actually one form or
Speaker 1: another of category sorting. Right, you see a shape and
Speaker 1: you immediately start to sort what kind of thing is that?
Speaker 1: Is that a harmless bunny or a venomous snake? And
Speaker 1: so perhaps one reason we fear monsters so much is
Speaker 1: that they not only represent aspects of real biological threats
Speaker 1: and predators, but that they defy our normal categorical sorting
Speaker 1: mechanisms by blurring the lines between categories of things. So
Speaker 1: a spider a hundred times bigger than it should be,
Speaker 1: a snake with wings, a lion that can talk uh,
Speaker 1: and by the way, they defy intuitive sorting. These creatures
Speaker 1: resist easy cognitive understanding, and thus they cause discomfort and fear.
Speaker 1: Like a creature that has aspects of biological threats like
Speaker 1: predatory or venomous forms and also simultaneously uses with our
Speaker 1: cognitive defenses by violating category coherence. That's sort of the
Speaker 1: ultimate threat, right it. It beats your greatest defense, and
Speaker 1: it is the most threatening kind of thing. Thus, the
Speaker 1: monster slayer has to overcome more than the normal warrior.
Speaker 1: They have to face primordial fears and square off against
Speaker 1: an enemy that normally makes us feel weak and helpless
Speaker 1: and afraid at the deepest level. And in this respect,
Speaker 1: you can you can sort of look at it. Any
Speaker 1: myth is is simply a situation where you know, you
Speaker 1: sit around the fire and one guy's like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of afraid of the darkness. It seems, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of it seems kind of intense. I mean, who
Speaker 1: knows what's out there, and it's what all of us
Speaker 1: out there. It might try to eat me and one
Speaker 1: day I'm gonna die anyway. And then the other soldiers
Speaker 1: sit around the fire says, well, let me tell you
Speaker 1: a story, because this story has a hero in it,
Speaker 1: and all that stuff that you're afraid of, he just
Speaker 1: cuts its head off, it says. It's that simple, and
Speaker 1: so here's a hero that you can you can you
Speaker 1: can ruminate on. Do you think that inherently the monster
Speaker 1: slayer story is more often empowering to the audience, to
Speaker 1: the person listening, like you can be like that hero,
Speaker 1: or is it more often uh, commanding kind of submission
Speaker 1: and obedience, like look at what our heroes are, like
Speaker 1: you must bow down before them. I don't know, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Well, that it could be
Speaker 1: like chill out, we have it, there's a hero out
Speaker 1: there doing this for you, or chill out, like the
Speaker 1: power behind the behind the hero, the god or the
Speaker 1: gods or the goddess that if you're behind that god,
Speaker 1: then hey, that God's got to hero. You don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it. But then in later it's certainly
Speaker 1: more more modern understanding is like, yeah, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like Blade, right, I can you know, like at least
Speaker 1: on some level, like we're we're supposed to, uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're rooting for the hero. We're rooting for Blade or
Speaker 1: Dutch or whoever. Uh, and and we are kind of
Speaker 1: living the story through them. And yeah, you kind of
Speaker 1: leave those those pictures, those stories feeling I can slay
Speaker 1: the monsters in my life, the blood suckers in my life.
Speaker 1: I think they might have a steak coming. Quick note,
Speaker 1: I'm not encouraging anyone to stake anybody. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to create Martin's out there or wait no,
Speaker 1: not Martin's what it's Martin's uncle or whatever. Right, are
Speaker 1: you talking about the Romero film? Yeah, oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been a long time since I've seen that. Well, they
Speaker 1: don't be like anybody in that movie. Just don't don't
Speaker 1: imitate any part of it, all right. So in order
Speaker 1: to overcome the monster, though, the hero is probably gonna
Speaker 1: need a certain amount of courage. I mean, arguably, if
Speaker 1: you're getting into like, what are they do they have
Speaker 1: any fear to begin with? If they have any amount
Speaker 1: of fear, they're gonna have to summon courage or they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to exhibit courage that is beyond that which
Speaker 1: the normal person would seem to have, right because if
Speaker 1: you're Baio Wolf, otherwise, why would you go into the dark.
Speaker 1: Why would you dive down into the deep and find
Speaker 1: the layer? Well, so there there are a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways you can go in to face the monster, right,
Speaker 1: I guess one would be to to have courage to
Speaker 1: overcome your fear because I guess that's sort of the
Speaker 1: definition of courage, right. Courage is a cognitive overriding of
Speaker 1: anxiety that prevents the physiological fear response or or overcomes
Speaker 1: the physiological fear response and prevents you from running away.
Speaker 1: It makes you you know you've got control and you
Speaker 1: make yourself face the fear inducing thing like that. I
Speaker 1: think a great example of this is an Aliens where Ripley, uh, well,
Speaker 1: she certainly she's returning to the world of the Xeno
Speaker 1: more from the first half, but in the later half
Speaker 1: of the film, she is going back in to save Newts.
Speaker 1: She is descending into the monster's world in facing something
Speaker 1: that it has been well established she is terrified of.
Speaker 1: That is that is a great example. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I will say, while I have mixed feelings about a
Speaker 1: lot of monster slayers, you know, I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I like Beowulf, maybe I think Grendel, grind
Speaker 1: maybe Grindele. At of point, Ripley I think is A
Speaker 1: is a truly holy monster slayer. I am one hundred
Speaker 1: percent behind Ripley in her slaying quest, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really a straight up Beowolf story because she also
Speaker 1: ends up essentially fighting Grendel's mother. Yes, in aliens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if it were Terminator versus Alien, then that that
Speaker 1: would be the other half, right, that would be the
Speaker 1: the hero that doesn't feel fear to begin with. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you don't know, I mean sometimes you kind of
Speaker 1: feel that way. Is that what Beowolve's like? Is that
Speaker 1: what her Achilles are like? Are these heroes supposed to
Speaker 1: be people who just are incapable of feeling afraid in
Speaker 1: the face of this monster? Uh? You do think, you know,
Speaker 1: you wonder if is mar Duke. Is mar Duke courageous
Speaker 1: or is he just fearless? I wonder if mar Duke
Speaker 1: is actually courageous because mar Duke makes a bargain, right,
Speaker 1: He's like, look, if I'm going to put this all
Speaker 1: online and risk it, you at least got to make
Speaker 1: me king of the gods. Or he's just following operating procedure,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah maybe, or yeah, maybe he's a robot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah. So to think about this, you can think
Speaker 1: about it in a couple of ways. In the brain, So,
Speaker 1: like I want to start off by mentioning the amygdala,
Speaker 1: the you know, the little almond shaped subcortical brain network
Speaker 1: of the amygdalas sometimes referred to, I think not quite
Speaker 1: accurately as the brain's fear center or something like that.
Speaker 1: As usual with these kinds of appellations, that's a bit
Speaker 1: of an oversimplication. The brain's fear response is complex and
Speaker 1: it involves multiple brain regions, but there are multiple lines
Speaker 1: of evidence that indicate that the amygdala does appear to
Speaker 1: play some important role in fear. It's something it does
Speaker 1: something important in generating the physiological fear response in the body.
Speaker 1: For example, brain imaging studies show that fear inducing images
Speaker 1: like pictures of animals like spiders and snakes, trigger activation
Speaker 1: in the amygdala, but that the brain can also recruit
Speaker 1: other regions to inhibit amygdala response, which seems to be
Speaker 1: correlated with resistance to the fear response. Both animals and
Speaker 1: people with damage to amygdala's seemed to show a diminished
Speaker 1: sense of the fear response like One example is the
Speaker 1: classic case of patient s M I think we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show story um famous case of a
Speaker 1: woman who experienced bilateral amygdala damage during childhood and she
Speaker 1: shows very little, if any fear response in situations like
Speaker 1: haunted houses and stuff, and and in response to scary movies,
Speaker 1: she she just lacks a fear response that is very
Speaker 1: common among pretty much everybody else. Uh, and this seems
Speaker 1: to have something to do with the damage to her amygdala. Again,
Speaker 1: this does not necessarily mean that fear is quote in
Speaker 1: the amygdala, but it does indicate that the amigola plays
Speaker 1: this important role in generating the thread avoidance behavior we
Speaker 1: associate with fear. So, I mean, I wonder if you
Speaker 1: saw somebody who inspired you to tell a story of
Speaker 1: somebody like Hercules or Beowulf who was just fearless, not courageous,
Speaker 1: but fearless. Is this I wonder is this inspired by
Speaker 1: the idea of somebody with a damage to amigola, you know,
Speaker 1: people who just even flinch in the face of something scary.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, we do have the additional information about
Speaker 1: Hercules being driven mad and slaying his children. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That doesn't that perhaps speaks to the
Speaker 1: possibility of additional neurological damage. Yeah. I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that Hercules is based on a historical
Speaker 1: figure or something like that, But I mean, with all
Speaker 1: these kinds of stories, you wonder if somebody saw something
Speaker 1: that inspired the story or is it just pure creative imagination.
Speaker 1: It could be either one or you know, so you
Speaker 1: see something you or you're looking at somebody being courageous,
Speaker 1: and if all you see is the courageous act, you
Speaker 1: could well interpreted his fearlessness, like, look at that guy,
Speaker 1: he's never afraid in his life. You're just not privy
Speaker 1: to the part where after he defeats the enemy, he
Speaker 1: goes back and like vomits and weeps from his tent
Speaker 1: because he's just been through this horrific experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we often talk about the monster slaying is
Speaker 1: like this, this this pet rite of passage for the hero.
Speaker 1: You know that it makes them um. And this of
Speaker 1: course reminds me of the you know, the line that
Speaker 1: which does not kill you almost kills you and therefore
Speaker 1: inherently traumatic. Huh well, yeah, I mean that's the other model.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is that somebody saw somebody who was just
Speaker 1: being courageous and facing their fears, and they did it
Speaker 1: so well that people saw that and interpreted it as
Speaker 1: them being fearless, Like they couldn't even see through to
Speaker 1: what the person was feeling. Um. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I wonder like what's going on in the brain with courage.
Speaker 1: There have actually been studies on this. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: one I was looking at by Uri Neely, Haggard Goldberg,
Speaker 1: Abraham Wiseman, and Yahdin to Die in neuron in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten called fear Thou not Activity of frontal and
Speaker 1: temporal circuits in moments of real life courage. So this
Speaker 1: is a snake on a trolley experiment. You know, you
Speaker 1: gotta love a good snake on a trolley experiment. You
Speaker 1: the trolley operator is the subject of the experiment. They're
Speaker 1: sitting down in an FMR I. So this is an
Speaker 1: fmr I study. You know, with all the caveats we
Speaker 1: know about some of these neuro imaging studies, assuming that
Speaker 1: their results are are are valid and useful. Here the
Speaker 1: subject's goal is the subject's goal is to lay in
Speaker 1: the f m R I get the brain imaged while
Speaker 1: they are attempting to move a trolley with a snake
Speaker 1: on it as close as possible to their head. So
Speaker 1: it's on a track and they can control it, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to get the snake close to them. And
Speaker 1: the researchers found that courage. Overcoming fear and moving the
Speaker 1: snake closer to the head was associated with activity in
Speaker 1: the sub genual anterior singulate cortex or the s G
Speaker 1: A c C, and also in the right temporal poll
Speaker 1: and the author's right quote. Further, activity in the s
Speaker 1: G A c C was positively correlated with the level
Speaker 1: of fear upon choosing to overcome fear, but not upon
Speaker 1: succumbing to it. So like you've got a lot of
Speaker 1: fear and you overcome it, you say like, I'm really
Speaker 1: afraid it. I'm terrified of snakes, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep moving the snake closer to my head. That was
Speaker 1: positively correlated with more activity in this region the subgenual
Speaker 1: anterior singulate cortex. And so they finally say that the
Speaker 1: courage behavior seems to attenuate activity in the amygdala and
Speaker 1: other regions associated with fear response, and it inhibits the
Speaker 1: autonomic physiological fear response in that we normally have in
Speaker 1: response to fear inducing stimuli promoting the courage behavior. It's
Speaker 1: like when you experience courage, that is a process in
Speaker 1: the brain, and it's one part of the brain apparently
Speaker 1: inhibiting what would normally be going on in another part
Speaker 1: of the brain saying shut that down. We're going to
Speaker 1: do it anyway. Now, another illuminating study. This, this is
Speaker 1: one that that that you found. Uh. This one comes
Speaker 1: from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from
Speaker 1: it's by Mobs at All titled Neural activity associated with
Speaker 1: monitoring the oscillating threat value of a tarantula. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we get another perhaps a phylogenetic threat here, right, And
Speaker 1: phylogenetic threats these are of course threats that are hardwired
Speaker 1: into his feo evolution, like we've been discussioning, discussing, especially
Speaker 1: the fear of spiders and snakes, assuming that's correct. So
Speaker 1: if I'm reading this study correctly, what the two thousand
Speaker 1: ten study is saying is that in their experiment, moving
Speaker 1: the object of fear, a tarantula closer to the subject
Speaker 1: produced a cascade of fear responses in the brain, including
Speaker 1: activity in the amygdala quote associated with under prediction of
Speaker 1: the tarantula's threat value. Um. Uh. And by the way,
Speaker 1: one of the authors in the study that the main
Speaker 1: author here, Dean Mobs, Assistant Professor of cognitive neuroscience at
Speaker 1: cal Tech. He has a two thousand eighteen paper titled
Speaker 1: how cognitive and reactive fear circuits optimize escape decisions in humans,
Speaker 1: and it drives home how the brain responds to fear
Speaker 1: via or seems to respond to fear via two distinct
Speaker 1: fear circuits uh studied in the in this study via
Speaker 1: FMR eye and a virtual predator video game. No connection
Speaker 1: to Dutch, This would be like a phylogenetic predator, right,
Speaker 1: So this is what what he lays out. We have
Speaker 1: the cognitive fear circuit. This is distant threats, front brain regions,
Speaker 1: asserting risk and making decisions. This is a conscious exercise.
Speaker 1: And then there's the reactive fear circuit. This is a
Speaker 1: related to central brain structures. This is fight flight or freeze.
Speaker 1: This is a subconscious respect response. So, in the words
Speaker 1: of Mobs quote, you don't think your way out of
Speaker 1: a tiger attack, all right, So yeah, if you stop
Speaker 1: to think when a tiger is assaulting you, you're debt
Speaker 1: You react instead via the reactive fear circuit, which is
Speaker 1: subconscious and unthinking. Yeah, I mean, that's why fear is
Speaker 1: often characterized as like a sort of involuntary physiological body response,
Speaker 1: not just like the thought I am afraid. Yeah, like this,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help them think about this. In terms of
Speaker 1: of flying, we one of our other episodes this month,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about the fear flying, and
Speaker 1: there is a distinct difference between the fear one will
Speaker 1: have on the plane and the fear one has um
Speaker 1: the day before the flight or a different day before,
Speaker 1: the day before the flighty um. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: wonder to what extent we might apply this model to
Speaker 1: our our monsters slang heroes, men or more mostly men
Speaker 1: of action and reaction. So sometimes they plan, uh, certainly.
Speaker 1: But but but the planning is again oftentimes the work
Speaker 1: of a god or goddess. And I can't imagine, I
Speaker 1: can't help but imagine what Julian Jane so I would
Speaker 1: have would have said about all this, the kind of
Speaker 1: funny would have would have had with this. I was
Speaker 1: looking around. I'm not sure that he ever really tackled
Speaker 1: monsters and monsters slang specifically, but he was very interested
Speaker 1: in the role between, of course, heroes and gods. Well, yeah, certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean what we're saying here, if we're assuming that
Speaker 1: Mobs is correct about this, that you've got the cognitive
Speaker 1: fear circuit and the reactive fear circuit. I'm sure James
Speaker 1: would have imagined that as like, you know, the automatic
Speaker 1: unconscious brain circuit and then the like the god fear circuit. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: did you give you an everyone an idea of like
Speaker 1: what he might have have said about this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: He did touch on fear and terror in his nine
Speaker 1: essay Remembrance of Things Far Past. He said, quote fear
Speaker 1: and terror, once easily dissipated, stretch out into anxiety that
Speaker 1: can last a lifetime, and all because men can now automatically,
Speaker 1: and even against their wishes, reconstruct and hold as if
Speaker 1: present in this new spatialized time, the unalterable experience of
Speaker 1: the past and its possibility in the future. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: that's James playing with the bicameral model. Obviously, you don't
Speaker 1: need to accept the bicameral model to see that there's
Speaker 1: something interesting going on with humans. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: get the sense that most animals experience anxiety in quite
Speaker 1: the same way humans do. The guy. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't know for sure, but you don't get the sense
Speaker 1: that they are like cognitively working over their fear scenarios.
Speaker 1: The way we do, right, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess there's something to be said for certainly cases
Speaker 1: say zukosis, where an animal is uh is behaving at
Speaker 1: normally because it is in captivity, where it's kind of
Speaker 1: undergoing a continuous challenge to its mental stability, I guess.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I think it's it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that that animals process things these things differently. There's definitely
Speaker 1: a human dimension to the way we deal with threats
Speaker 1: in the way we respond mentally too. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: the way so many of these stories we've talked about
Speaker 1: show different people reacting to the threat in different ways.
Speaker 1: Like the story of St. George and the Dragon. First,
Speaker 1: the villagers go out to fight the dragon, but then
Speaker 1: they can't overcome their fear and they're forced to run away.
Speaker 1: You know, they think they can fight it, but then
Speaker 1: their fear gets the better of them. We see who
Speaker 1: they really are, and they're they're driven back. But St.
Speaker 1: George has the courage and he has the you know,
Speaker 1: he has Christ on his side. A similar thing I
Speaker 1: think with mar Duke, right, you know, the other gods
Speaker 1: were too afraid to fight Tiamat, but Marduke overcame his fear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and did. To come back to to Mob's division of
Speaker 1: the two responses, I can't help but wonder of our
Speaker 1: monster slaying heroes are models of our ideal reactive fear
Speaker 1: network self. So as we engage with our cognitive fear
Speaker 1: network to anticipate threats in the natural world, we ruminate
Speaker 1: on the model and symbol of these embodiments of just
Speaker 1: like pure ideal subconscious reaction, you know, just pure monster
Speaker 1: not only monster slayers, but monster destroyers. Yeah, Like have
Speaker 1: you ever played with that scenario? Um, you know, what
Speaker 1: would I do if there was like somebody attacking me
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, you like to imagine like,
Speaker 1: oh I do this and that, you know, I'd I'd
Speaker 1: be strong, and I'd be smart and I'd be brave.
Speaker 1: But then like when that really happens to people, you know,
Speaker 1: they cower and fear, and like you, it's a thing
Speaker 1: that you can't even know what you would do. You
Speaker 1: can hope you would be one way, but you can't
Speaker 1: know until it happens because these involuntary processes take over.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you're saying like that, we're trying to
Speaker 1: imagine the way we hope we would be when those
Speaker 1: automatic processes take over and just guide your action without
Speaker 1: you thinking about it. Yeah, and maybe to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: were even actively saying, let me be Beayowolf when the
Speaker 1: time comes. Um, well, and I can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: if having fictional models makes it more likely. Yeah, that's possible.
Speaker 1: I don't know, let me be the Hulk when the
Speaker 1: time comes, you know. Yeah, like if you've if you've
Speaker 1: had a model that you can picture in your mind,
Speaker 1: does it make it more likely that you will actually
Speaker 1: act that way? I don't know, but it's uh, that's
Speaker 1: interesting food for thought. Uh. Either way, there there there
Speaker 1: is truth to the matter that that when when the
Speaker 1: terror comes, when the monster comes, we don't know unless
Speaker 1: we've rehearsed for it, like actively, not mentally, but like physically.
Speaker 1: You know, we probably don't have a clear idea of
Speaker 1: how we will respond. You know, we have our our
Speaker 1: our intentions and our hopes regarding our response, but maybe
Speaker 1: we haven't actually been tested yet. I'm reminded of a
Speaker 1: quote from Hunter S. Thompson, Uh, specifically the lyrics he
Speaker 1: wrote for a Warren Zevon song of the of the
Speaker 1: same name, where he said, quote, you're a whole different
Speaker 1: person when you're scared. It's true. Yeah, And so you're
Speaker 1: saying you want to know what that person is going
Speaker 1: to be, like maybe they can be like Hercules exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why. Yeah, I'm going to picture Hercules in my
Speaker 1: mind and hopefully maybe that is what the gods will
Speaker 1: make of me when the time comes. So I didn't
Speaker 1: find a study like this, but I would be kind
Speaker 1: of surprised if there isn't one somewhere out there, a
Speaker 1: study of like, does thinking about monster slayers or heroes
Speaker 1: of any kind make you more courageous? Do do the
Speaker 1: snake trolley test again, but just like see if there's
Speaker 1: any difference when you like prime people beforehand with the
Speaker 1: story of a monster slayer or something. BE got to
Speaker 1: watch season two of Buffy prior to uh handling the
Speaker 1: snake trolley. Yeah maybe, so so you're season two guy? Huh? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean season one is necessary. I love the Master um,
Speaker 1: but even as I was watching it, people were like,
Speaker 1: you just gotta press on three season one and get
Speaker 1: to season two and then yeah from from there, from
Speaker 1: from there on, it's it's gravy. I'd go season three. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where it really like, that's the Mayor season. Oh,
Speaker 1: the Mayor is good. I forgot about the Mayor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to rewatch some of them. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say all of them, but I do. I should
Speaker 1: go back and rewatch some of them. There's some great
Speaker 1: episodes in there. Yeah, alright, So there you have it,
Speaker 1: the monster slayer monsters and the fabulous slayers who slay them. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was a fun one to put together. Obviously, we
Speaker 1: couldn't look at every amazing monster slaying myth, their legend
Speaker 1: or honor and interpretation out there. There's just so much
Speaker 1: good stuff. Hey, send us, send us your favorite monster
Speaker 1: slayers stories, and I want to hear more of those,
Speaker 1: especially the ones you hear less often, especially ones with
Speaker 1: great female monster slayers. I want to know more of
Speaker 1: those stories for I should also point out there there
Speaker 1: were some There are some really good ones that I
Speaker 1: ran across in um Native American traditions that time will
Speaker 1: include here. But maybe that's something we can do again
Speaker 1: in the future if everyone really digs a good monster
Speaker 1: slayer tail. Yeah, there there's some good ones there all right.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, head on over to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find all the
Speaker 1: podcast episodes uh, as well as just a lot of
Speaker 1: extra monster content, a whole bunch of monster blogs that
Speaker 1: I wrote over the years, UH, some Monster Science videos.
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Speaker 1: UH go check that out. A great way to support
Speaker 1: the show is to buy some of that merchandise. We
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Speaker 1: the power to do so. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If
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