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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures,

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Speaker 1: ideas and monsters in time. The gleam of my scarlet

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Speaker 1: hair mingles with the reflection of the great sands. I

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Speaker 1: breathe through my nostrils. The terror of solitudes. I spit

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Speaker 1: forth plague. I devour armies when they venture into the desert.

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Speaker 1: My claws are twisted like screws, my teeth shaped like saws,

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Speaker 1: and my curving tail bristles with darts, which I cast

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Speaker 1: to right and left, before and behind. See see These

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Speaker 1: are the words of the Manticore, as related in Gustave

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Speaker 1: Flaubert's eighteen seventy four dramatic poem The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

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Speaker 1: The monster itself, however, is no mere French literary creation.

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Speaker 1: It emerges from the pages and dreamscapes of antiquity and beyond.

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Speaker 1: By virtue of its depictions and mythic riddles. The sphinx

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Speaker 1: tends to enjoy far greater fame among fantastic lion human hybrids,

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Speaker 1: but the manticore is even more fabulous in form. While

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Speaker 1: it does possess the body of a lion and the

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Speaker 1: head of a man, it also boasts a tale of

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Speaker 1: fans spikes that may be launched at its adversaries like

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Speaker 1: venomous missiles. The monster's face makes it even more chimerical,

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Speaker 1: not perfectly human, but colored a deep red and possessing

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Speaker 1: a cavernous maw full of interlocking teeth that Pliny the

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Speaker 1: Elder compared to those of a comb. The Roman plain

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Speaker 1: was fighting the work of earlier Greek physician Cetasius, who

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Speaker 1: would have lived in Anatolia now part of Turkey during

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Speaker 1: the fifth century b CE. He also states that the

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Speaker 1: creature's cry is like that of a flute and a

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Speaker 1: trumpet combined, and that above all else, it craves the

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Speaker 1: taste of human flesh. While the Manticor's popularity in Western

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Speaker 1: traditions and in the Christian Church would span centuries, the

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Speaker 1: creature's origins seemed to date back to ancient Mesopotamia, perhaps

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Speaker 1: as a distortion of the Persian mard cora, meaning man slayer.

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Speaker 1: Noted scholar Dorothea McEwen also pointed to some of the

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Speaker 1: similarities between the manticore and the Ethiopian Sebitat, a human

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Speaker 1: headed lion with serpents for tales. It lacks only the

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Speaker 1: teeth in its resemblance to the manticor, and to be sure,

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Speaker 1: plenty points to Ethiopian origins for the Manticor as well. However,

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Speaker 1: many sources speak of the manticore as a creature of

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Speaker 1: ultimate Persian origins, but the manticore itself seems rather unconcerned

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Speaker 1: with such distinctions. All human beings are equal in its eyes,

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Speaker 1: creatures worthy of mockery, hunting, and ravenous consumption. Thanks to

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Speaker 1: my son Sebastian for suggesting this episode as he was

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Speaker 1: reading through the Dungeons and Dragons fifth Edition Monster Manual

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Speaker 1: with me and had some questions about this fabulous creature.

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Speaker 1: Tune into additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week.

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Speaker 1: As always, you can email us at contact at stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

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Speaker 1: Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more

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Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.