Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we are back with part three of our series on
Speaker 1: the Goat and the Devil, where we are exploring reasons
Speaker 1: for the some would say unfair association in especially Christian cultures,
Speaker 1: between the ordinary domestic goat, a wonderful animal, and the
Speaker 1: demonic realm of sin and flames. Now, in previous episodes,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the basic biology of the goat is
Speaker 1: a browsing bovid that was once adapted to harsher environments
Speaker 1: like mountains and forests, but sometime many thousands of years ago,
Speaker 1: was domesticated by the humans who used to hunt it.
Speaker 1: We talked about mythical inspirations for later goatman devil's paly,
Speaker 1: lying in the figure of the Greek god Pan and
Speaker 1: in the satyrs and fawns that bore his image. We
Speaker 1: talked about goat reproduction and goat voices. How it's possible
Speaker 1: that goats could be interpreted as sinful by judgmental human
Speaker 1: eyes because because of the he goat's reputation for being
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic about mating and the idea that it's possible
Speaker 1: people have seen goats as uncanny because sometimes some goats,
Speaker 1: when they kind of moan and scream, they sound freakishly human. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the second episode, we talked about the role of
Speaker 1: goats in the Hebrew Bible, where they could be associated
Speaker 1: with demonic forces because of the ritual of the Day
Speaker 1: of Atonement, where it is said that one goat is
Speaker 1: sent off into the wilderness to carry the sins of
Speaker 1: the people off for as a zel, and that that
Speaker 1: name is sometimes interpreted as some kind of demonic power.
Speaker 1: We also talked about goats in the Christian New Testament,
Speaker 1: where Jesus is said to have given apocalyptic preaching that
Speaker 1: when the Son of Man comes to bring the of
Speaker 1: the age, he will separate the righteous from the unrighteous.
Speaker 1: And what's the image use there. It's as the shepherd
Speaker 1: separates the sheep from the goats. The goats are the
Speaker 1: bad ones. And finally, we also talked about goat lore
Speaker 1: from around the world to point out that the association
Speaker 1: between goats and evil is by no means universal. There
Speaker 1: are some very interesting counter examples in Chinese mythology in
Speaker 1: Basque mythology with this figure of the black billy goat
Speaker 1: deity who protects livestock and so forth. So it's been
Speaker 1: a wild ride so far, a wild goat ride. But
Speaker 1: to kick things off today, I wanted to come back
Speaker 1: to our discussion about the particular uh features of goat
Speaker 1: biology that people of centuries past might possibly have interpreted
Speaker 1: as devilish or sinful in one way uh in someone
Speaker 1: in one way or another. And the example I wanted
Speaker 1: to look at here is goat eyes. One might argue
Speaker 1: that you haven't really been stared at until you've been
Speaker 1: stared at by a goat, And part of the reason
Speaker 1: for that is when you're being stared at by a goat,
Speaker 1: you're not quite sure if you're being stared at by
Speaker 1: a goat. That's right. It comes down to the the
Speaker 1: the inhuman shape of the goat pupils. Yeah yeah uh.
Speaker 1: And before I get there, I want to say that
Speaker 1: the goats stare does not have to be imbued with
Speaker 1: any kind of menace. I came across a a very sweet,
Speaker 1: whimsical little poem. I wanted to read a bit from
Speaker 1: this is by the British Canadian poet Robert Service, who
Speaker 1: wrote a poem called the Goat and I and uh
Speaker 1: it goes each sunny day upon my way a goat
Speaker 1: I pass. He has a beard of silver gray and
Speaker 1: a bell of brass, And all the while I am
Speaker 1: in sight, he seems to muse and stares at me
Speaker 1: with all his might, and choose, and choose upon the hill,
Speaker 1: so timy, sweet with joy of spring, he hails me
Speaker 1: with a tiny bleat of welcoming. Though half the globe
Speaker 1: is drenched with blood and cities flare contentedly, he choose
Speaker 1: the cud and does not care. Oh gentle friend, I
Speaker 1: know not what your age maybe, but of my years
Speaker 1: I'd give the lot yet left to me to chew
Speaker 1: a thistle and not choke, but bright of eye gaze
Speaker 1: at the old world, weary bloke who hobbles by. This
Speaker 1: is great. I love how this drives some like an
Speaker 1: overall interpretation of goat physiology that that I think we
Speaker 1: can often fall into, and that is of the goat
Speaker 1: as the old goat, Like there's even if a goat.
Speaker 1: You do see some goats that look, you know, very
Speaker 1: virile and young, and in a goatish fashion, but oftentimes
Speaker 1: you'll encounter goats who do kind of hobble about there.
Speaker 1: They have all these likenesses that we attribute to elderly
Speaker 1: human individuals. You know, you'll have the beard and so forth.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, this is a neat little poem summing
Speaker 1: up the uh, the independent and relatable spirit of the goat. Oh.
Speaker 1: I also I left off a final stanza where essentially
Speaker 1: the last stance is just like, why am I writing
Speaker 1: a poem about a goat? It's not great? Um so,
Speaker 1: but yeah, anyway, the gaze of the goat has often
Speaker 1: been observed to have a strange character in one way
Speaker 1: or another. Sometimes it's it's more like what services saying here,
Speaker 1: almost narcotically placid and unmoved. And yet other times people
Speaker 1: notice that the gaze of the goat is kind of
Speaker 1: thrillingly alien, because, unlike with a dog or a cat,
Speaker 1: it can be hard to tell if a goat is
Speaker 1: actually looking at you, or at least for me, it can.
Speaker 1: Despite the efforts of Robert's service, the the eye of
Speaker 1: the goat has often been characterized as creepy, and I
Speaker 1: think there could be a couple of reasons for that.
Speaker 1: It might be because it's a bit harder to tell
Speaker 1: where the goat is focusing than it is with some
Speaker 1: other kind of animals, like our predatory companion animals um
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's just because the eye of a goat
Speaker 1: sort of looks weird. It looks unusual if you're not
Speaker 1: used to it, because laws instead of around pupil as
Speaker 1: you alluded to earlier, Rob, the goat has a horizontal
Speaker 1: pupil sometimes described as rectangular in shape I think sometimes
Speaker 1: kind of described as like elongated capsule shape, so it's
Speaker 1: like a rectangle with kind of rounded edges. I've also
Speaker 1: found some photos where it looks like a horizontal capital
Speaker 1: I with a hint of those cross beams or slight
Speaker 1: bulges at the ends of the rectangle. And the question
Speaker 1: is why do goat pupils look that way? Well, funny enough,
Speaker 1: we actually did an episode just a while back which
Speaker 1: contained a segment about the evolutionary reasoning behind different pupil
Speaker 1: shapes in the Animal Kingdom. The episode was The Three
Speaker 1: Pupil Die, and I think the study we talked about
Speaker 1: in that show is still a good one to inform
Speaker 1: us on the question I've just raised. So to to
Speaker 1: bring up the same paper again. This was by Martins
Speaker 1: Banks at All published in the journal Science Advances in
Speaker 1: and it's called why do Animal eyes have pupils of
Speaker 1: different shapes? Basic conclusion is that an animal's pupil shape
Speaker 1: is usually determined by what its ecological niches, what its
Speaker 1: role in the food chain is. So animals like humans, tigers,
Speaker 1: and wolves have round pupils. Round pupils appear to be
Speaker 1: common a common shape for active hunters who chase down
Speaker 1: their prey. Meanwhile, predators that are lower to the ground
Speaker 1: or hunt by way of ambush, so a predator that
Speaker 1: might lie in wait and then pound suddenly on a
Speaker 1: prey animal, these tend to have vertical pupils vertically oriented
Speaker 1: slit pupils, and the vertical slits seem to be adaptive
Speaker 1: for low down ambush predators because they're helpful in using
Speaker 1: tricks called stereopsis and defocus blur to very precisely judge
Speaker 1: the distance needed for a single uh exact medium range pounds.
Speaker 1: But herbivores prey animals are more likely to have horizontal
Speaker 1: pupils like the goat UH. To quote from the study,
Speaker 1: horizontally elongated pupils creates sharp images of horizontal contours ahead
Speaker 1: and behind, creating a horizontally panoramic view that facilitates detection
Speaker 1: of predators from various directions and forward locomotion across uneven terrain.
Speaker 1: So these horizontal pupils are good for scanning the whole
Speaker 1: panorama of the environment, seeing at all angles of all
Speaker 1: the time to watch out for any approaching predators, which
Speaker 1: might be one of the reasons you can get that
Speaker 1: creepy feeling where you can't tell if the goat is
Speaker 1: actually looking at you. The goat is sort of designed
Speaker 1: by nature to be looking everywhere rather than to be
Speaker 1: looking at you. But I also thought it's an interesting
Speaker 1: note about the forward locomotion across uneven terrain given the
Speaker 1: the evolutionary history of goats occupying mountains and craggy landscape.
Speaker 1: Though again, less craggy creatures like horses also have horizontal pupils.
Speaker 1: So that made me wonder about the question why do
Speaker 1: we tend to notice the horizontal orientation of goat pupils
Speaker 1: more than we notice it in horses and other herbivores.
Speaker 1: I think this must be a common thing. It's at
Speaker 1: least true for me, and so I was looking into this.
Speaker 1: Uh And I want to make two non expert observations
Speaker 1: just by looking at a lot of photos on Google.
Speaker 1: One is that the horse pupil seems less noticeably elongated
Speaker 1: in the horizontal dimension than the goat pupil. So they're
Speaker 1: both horizontal, but the horse pupil seems a little bit
Speaker 1: shorter usually or the goat went off and looks visibly
Speaker 1: stretched out. Second, and I think this might be even
Speaker 1: more important, there seems to be, on average, a stronger
Speaker 1: color contrast within the goat's eye. If you just look
Speaker 1: at a bunch of pictures of the eyes of horses
Speaker 1: and the eyes of goats, it seems goats on average
Speaker 1: have lighter colored irises, which really makes the pupil pop.
Speaker 1: That makes the people stand out, which makes it look
Speaker 1: more noticeably alien, at least to me. Interesting. I remember
Speaker 1: in that episode on The Three People that I we
Speaker 1: talked about pupil changes in the shape of the pupil
Speaker 1: with predators tended to vary as well depending on height. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, But I don't remember any such distinction being
Speaker 1: made in the materials we were looking at then regarding herbivores,
Speaker 1: like if goat versus cow versus horse, etcetera. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't recall any distinction like that either, but definitely there
Speaker 1: was a change in height, uh in in predators, because again,
Speaker 1: the taller predators have round pupils and the shorter predators
Speaker 1: have vertical slip pupils. Uh. And so part of that
Speaker 1: has to do with a difference in hunting strategy, like
Speaker 1: chasing versus ambushing, But part of it has to do
Speaker 1: also with just I think, managing the angles at which
Speaker 1: you would be observing your prey. Now, this instantly makes
Speaker 1: me think of something that I guess we got into
Speaker 1: a little bit in the three people that Eyes. What
Speaker 1: sort of eyes do we expect? Knowing all of this
Speaker 1: of divine beings and divine emissaries, Uh, certainly in the
Speaker 1: like the Irish and uh in some Chinese traditions that
Speaker 1: we discussed in that episode, we talked about the idea
Speaker 1: of someone with three pupils or three irises being uh
Speaker 1: in some way enlightened and having superior vision and perhaps
Speaker 1: wisdom as well. UH. But but taking all that we've
Speaker 1: discussed here into the scenario, it's like, Okay, if we
Speaker 1: have some sort of god or godlike being or anti
Speaker 1: god taking on the head and eyes of a goat. Well,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's it seems more fitting. It's like,
Speaker 1: uh that this is a being that can look in
Speaker 1: many directions at once and doesn't need to focus its
Speaker 1: attention and maybe doesn't focus its attention all that much.
Speaker 1: And hey, being a god, maybe you don't want its
Speaker 1: attention focused too heavily. Well. Also, the thinking about the
Speaker 1: predator prey distinction, I mean, shouldn't the horizontal pupils make
Speaker 1: it less dangerous, Like wouldn't round pupils or really be
Speaker 1: the most dangerous. Yeah, But then I get it comes
Speaker 1: down to the human scenario, right. We want to we
Speaker 1: want to connect with the human in the superhuman, and
Speaker 1: therefore we want them to have pupils. Though I guess
Speaker 1: we see, especially in modern depictions, you know, we love
Speaker 1: to like black out the eyes of inhuman beings, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, often with those really cool contact lenses. So
Speaker 1: we'll have various there's so many treatments of this where
Speaker 1: various fallen angels and so forth, we'll have all black
Speaker 1: eyes or maybe all white eyes, and that tends to
Speaker 1: note some sort of strangeness of vision as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right about that. Like, sometimes otherworldly beings
Speaker 1: are just depicted as having eyes like that, sometimes their
Speaker 1: eyes change into all white or all black or something
Speaker 1: when they are exercising a type of second sight. Wait,
Speaker 1: it sometimes works quite well, though sometimes you're kind of
Speaker 1: I think you're kind of inconveniencing your actors by taking
Speaker 1: away their eyes, are taking away one of their tools. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should look at a little bit more goat
Speaker 1: mythology and goat symbolism in history. I think if we're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out why, especially a lot of say
Speaker 1: Continental European Christian cultures made an association between the devil
Speaker 1: and goats, I think we must talk about the figure
Speaker 1: known as Baha Met. Yeah, and this is this is
Speaker 1: a fascinating but also kind of convoluted UH situation because
Speaker 1: it involves multiple different cultures either appropriating or interpreting or
Speaker 1: misinterpreting or outlight rights slandering something that other culture, the
Speaker 1: previous cultures or or or different cultures believed in or
Speaker 1: believe in UH. And the end result is this um,
Speaker 1: this strange satanic goat creature that you're more likely to
Speaker 1: encounter now in a TV show or on a heavy
Speaker 1: metal T shirt, that sort of thing. So I covered
Speaker 1: some of this in a Monster Fact episode about the
Speaker 1: Goat of Mendis that came about UH shortly after we
Speaker 1: recorded a weird House cinema episode on the film The
Speaker 1: Devil Rides Out, which prominently features Uh the Satanic goatman
Speaker 1: appearing at a black mass. And so this this entity
Speaker 1: Bapha May or the Goat of Mendi's is essentially a
Speaker 1: Western occultists distortion of a Greek interpretation of the God
Speaker 1: of Egypt, the Egyptian god known as but neb Jadette
Speaker 1: Uh that was worshiped in Mendis, which is the Greek
Speaker 1: name for an ancient Egyptian city named Jadette, also known
Speaker 1: today as tell L Ruba. Fifth century Greek historian Herodotus
Speaker 1: wrote of this god and his practices and made veiled
Speaker 1: references to sexual aspects of the worship, and also compared
Speaker 1: the entity to Pan, of course, from from Western traditions.
Speaker 1: So all already, I know this. This sounds like some
Speaker 1: sort of You can imagine like the different pins on
Speaker 1: a board with the different bits of string colored string
Speaker 1: showing you where all this is going across a map
Speaker 1: of of Europe. And North Africa. So here's a quote
Speaker 1: from from Herodotus via S. Birch's translation. Quote. Now, the
Speaker 1: reason why those of the Egyptians whom I have mentioned
Speaker 1: do not sacrifice goats, female or male, is this The
Speaker 1: Mendians count Pan to be one of the eight gods. Now,
Speaker 1: these eight gods, they say, came into being before the
Speaker 1: twelve gods, and the painters and image makers represent in
Speaker 1: painting and in sculpture the figure of Pan, just as
Speaker 1: the Helenes do with goat's face and legs, not supposing
Speaker 1: him to be really like this, but to resemble the
Speaker 1: other gods. The cause, however, why they represent him in
Speaker 1: this form, I prefer not to say. The Mendesian's then
Speaker 1: reverence all goats, and the males more than the females,
Speaker 1: and the goatherds too have greater honor than other herdsman.
Speaker 1: But the goats one especially is reverenced, and when he
Speaker 1: dies there is great mourning in all the Mendisian district,
Speaker 1: and both the goat and Pan are called in the
Speaker 1: Egyptian tongue Mendies. Okay, So, not knowing exactly what's going
Speaker 1: on here, I would wonder if Herodotus is seriously misinterpreting
Speaker 1: reports he has heard about Egyptian worship in light of
Speaker 1: Greek religion. Yeah, yeah, there's a there's there's clearly a
Speaker 1: lot going on, like using Greek religion to try and
Speaker 1: understand what uh individuals in this region are worshiping going
Speaker 1: You know, there's so many ways that the information here
Speaker 1: can become skewed. We have this veiled um reference to
Speaker 1: uh I believe other critics have pointed out that he's
Speaker 1: he's referencing supposed beast reality uh in worship and so forth.
Speaker 1: So already we're engaging in uh In in various levels
Speaker 1: of misinterpretation and perhaps slander. Now, as Geraldine Pinch explains
Speaker 1: in her excellent book Egyptian Mythology, the word for ram
Speaker 1: bah and the word for soul or manifestation sound much
Speaker 1: the same in Egyptian uh to the ancient Egyptians, so
Speaker 1: they were often regarded as manifestations of other deities such
Speaker 1: as Osiris and Pinch rights quote. The sexual aspect of
Speaker 1: the culted Mendis made it particularly disliked by early Christians,
Speaker 1: but Nebjudet's form as a ram or goat headed man
Speaker 1: was reinterpreted as a devil figure who entered Western tradition
Speaker 1: as the Horned King of the Witches. A classic example
Speaker 1: of literal demonization, taking a god in in another mythology,
Speaker 1: in this case one having the head of a of
Speaker 1: a sheep or a goat, and saying that, well, actually,
Speaker 1: this is just a demon in our mythology, right right,
Speaker 1: But of course they gets more complicated than that. They are.
Speaker 1: All these are additional threads going on here, because as
Speaker 1: for the the actual name Goat of Mendis, this is
Speaker 1: the name given by French right or Elfeus Levi in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, most likely referencing the writings of Herodotus.
Speaker 1: The most well known image of this particular monstrous humanoid
Speaker 1: is in the eighteen fifties sixth edition of Levi's book
Speaker 1: Dogma and Ritual of High Magic. And as with any
Speaker 1: many examples of divine and occult imagery, the image of
Speaker 1: Baha may here Is or the Goat of Mendes is
Speaker 1: highly symbolic, and it's been incorporated into various occult traditions, subcultures,
Speaker 1: new religious movements, and so forth. I think everyone's probably
Speaker 1: seen this. This is the like a a goat being
Speaker 1: with the the upper body of sometimes a female, but
Speaker 1: sometimes like half the chest is female half as male.
Speaker 1: They're like black angelic wings, the goat head, the pentagram
Speaker 1: on the forehead, a middle horn that is like a torch,
Speaker 1: various other symbols going on in the image as load
Speaker 1: it with stuff to look at. Yeah, yeah, so, I
Speaker 1: mean as far as images of the divine or the demonic,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty great one. There's lots to focus on,
Speaker 1: lots to try and figure out. And at the very least,
Speaker 1: you know, as we've discussed many times before, the basic
Speaker 1: symbolism involved here of combining beast with man or beast
Speaker 1: with woman, et cetera. Like, it instantly starts forming patterns
Speaker 1: in the mind. You can't look at it and not
Speaker 1: have some sort of reaction. Oh. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've noticed this before, but at least in Levi's depiction,
Speaker 1: it incorporates a symbol that is like the caduceus or
Speaker 1: like the rod of Asclepius. It has the rod and
Speaker 1: the snakes intertwined around it. Yeah. Yeah. Now, as for
Speaker 1: the name Baha may here this gets us into something
Speaker 1: that we've we've touched on a few times in the
Speaker 1: on the show before never devoted like full episode to it,
Speaker 1: but it it involves the Templars, the poor Knights of
Speaker 1: Christ and the Temple of Solomon's. Just to to get
Speaker 1: the basics out here again. This was a religious military
Speaker 1: order of the Catholic Church during the Crusades, which ran
Speaker 1: about roughly ten through twelve UH. They were This organization
Speaker 1: was intended to serve as a as a as a
Speaker 1: way to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Lands,
Speaker 1: but a sort of power creep occurred. They were given
Speaker 1: free rein to move across borders, They were made exempt
Speaker 1: from taxes and ended up playing key military roles in
Speaker 1: various battles of the Crusades, and even the non warriors
Speaker 1: became important, managing the movement of funds across vast distances
Speaker 1: UH that were involved in the Crusades and setting up
Speaker 1: a kind of proto banking system. They became powerful, and
Speaker 1: so they made powerful enemies, and as the Crusades failed,
Speaker 1: the Templars were blamed and finally Fillip the Fourth of France,
Speaker 1: with the aid of Pope Clement the Fifth, who was
Speaker 1: then based in France UM, they pressed the order and
Speaker 1: falsely accused them or generally everyone. I think most sources
Speaker 1: and historians agree that these are false or trumped up
Speaker 1: charges of blasphemy and heresy, saying that, among other things,
Speaker 1: they worshiped a severed head called Baha may Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a whole litany of charges against them. Some of them
Speaker 1: were burned at the stake, I think fifty six in total,
Speaker 1: and that included Grandmaster Jacques Delay and others. Other members
Speaker 1: of the order were absorbed into different militaries and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: the name Bappa may here is generally understood to be
Speaker 1: a French corruption of the name Muhammad, the most of
Speaker 1: the monstrous templar god. Bapha may is therefore a product
Speaker 1: of trumped up charges that the templars had converted to
Speaker 1: the Islamic faith of their enemies, and the French and
Speaker 1: Papal accusers invoked this fanciful and grotesque degradation of Islam
Speaker 1: to make their case, because, to be clear, nowhere in
Speaker 1: Islamic traditions do you find a creature like this. So
Speaker 1: it's essentially the monster at the heart of a xenophobic
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory Uh created to slander ones political enemies. In
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Yes, pretty much this, And there's a
Speaker 1: lot more to the to all of this as well,
Speaker 1: And certainly when you get into writings about the templars,
Speaker 1: there's they're added theories, some perhaps worth talking about, some
Speaker 1: worth skipping over unless you're engaging in just like pure entertainment,
Speaker 1: I suppose. But but yeah, this seems to be the
Speaker 1: most straightforward explanation. And it is kind of interesting how
Speaker 1: in this you have something that is put together as
Speaker 1: a corruption, as a slander, uh, and over time it
Speaker 1: kind of takes on life of its own. It becomes
Speaker 1: used as a symbol of liberation, becomes used as a
Speaker 1: symbol of rebellion against organized religion, it becomes used as
Speaker 1: a a part of new religious movements. Even so, it's
Speaker 1: always fascinating the life of symbols and the life of
Speaker 1: ideas like this. Well, speaking of rebellion, there is one
Speaker 1: more biological feature of goats that I wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1: If you're ready, Robert, or are you ready to get
Speaker 1: into goat intelligence, let's do it. I think this one
Speaker 1: is interesting because while I don't think this is a
Speaker 1: primary reason that the goats would be identified with devils
Speaker 1: or with the legions of Hell, I do I do
Speaker 1: think there is some interesting resonances here, and we can
Speaker 1: come back to that, But basically I was just thinking
Speaker 1: what is more readily identified with evil than intelligence? Right,
Speaker 1: because intelligence is often associated with a tendency toward rebellion,
Speaker 1: or a tendency maybe to think a little too critically
Speaker 1: about what somebody is telling you to do. And while
Speaker 1: goats are not generally a species known for how smart
Speaker 1: they are, there's some evidence that at least in some ways,
Speaker 1: they might be more clever than we give them credit for,
Speaker 1: but that it's also a kind of intelligence that is
Speaker 1: sort of alien to human primate intelligence. So I want
Speaker 1: to look at a paper by L. D. F. Briefer
Speaker 1: at All published in Frontiers in Zoology called Goats excel
Speaker 1: at Learning and Remembering, a highly novel cognitive task, published
Speaker 1: in ten to explain the context of what the authors
Speaker 1: were trying to figure out here, They begin by highlighting
Speaker 1: a couple of competing frameworks for explaining the evolution of
Speaker 1: higher intelligence. One you might call the social intelligence hypothesis,
Speaker 1: and the other you might call the ecological competence hypothesis.
Speaker 1: The social hypothesis argues that the evolution of intelligence and
Speaker 1: higher cognition is primarily for managing relationships between individuals within
Speaker 1: a social species. So there are obvious huge survival benefits
Speaker 1: to being social and working together, and I think there's
Speaker 1: a very good case to be made that that is
Speaker 1: what primarily explains the success of humans as a species
Speaker 1: of animal. But there are also a lot of unique
Speaker 1: problems that arise when animals congregate in social groups and
Speaker 1: perform or try to perform any cooperative behaviors. The social
Speaker 1: hypothesis would say that animals need intelligence in order to
Speaker 1: get as many benefits as possible from social cooperation and
Speaker 1: to negate the possible downsides of social cooperation, so to
Speaker 1: do things like maintain group cohesion and reduce conflict between
Speaker 1: group members. Meanwhile, the competing ecological competence hypothesis would say
Speaker 1: that the evolution of intelligence is mainly for uh increasing
Speaker 1: survival advantage when faced with the problems posed by the environment.
Speaker 1: And in a sense, the world is a puzzle, and
Speaker 1: the better you are at solving that puzzle, the more
Speaker 1: likely you are to survive. So examples would be fine
Speaker 1: ending ways to extract difficult access nutrition during foraging, remembering
Speaker 1: the locations of important resources and threats and things like that.
Speaker 1: And these views would tend to also have implications for
Speaker 1: the type of learning that we see in different animals,
Speaker 1: because creatures with social intelligence tend to be capable of
Speaker 1: social learning. This is a very important concept. Social learning
Speaker 1: is the ability to learn not only by doing, but
Speaker 1: to learn by watching others. So when you learn how
Speaker 1: to do a task by observing someone else doing it,
Speaker 1: that's social learning, and it's a very important ability. That
Speaker 1: is arguably what makes it possible for human beings to
Speaker 1: have technology, civilization, and culture. Animals with the largest brains
Speaker 1: and the most advanced cognition tend to usually be social animals,
Speaker 1: and the authors right that quote. The prevalent view today
Speaker 1: is that intelligent species should excel at social learning. But
Speaker 1: the authors argue that a lot of this research is
Speaker 1: focused on primates, which we already know are very smart,
Speaker 1: they have relatively large brains, and we already know they're
Speaker 1: very social. But what would happen if we studied this
Speaker 1: on this question on relatively smaller brained mammals. What if
Speaker 1: we test this theory on the goat? Goats have a
Speaker 1: few interesting characteristics. They not only have relatively smaller brains,
Speaker 1: than primates. Also, the domestication process itself tends to lead
Speaker 1: to a decrease in brain size when compared to wild ancestors.
Speaker 1: I mean, domestic animals have fewer puzzles to solve. Let's say, uh,
Speaker 1: and this could also affect cognition and the author's right quote.
Speaker 1: Goats possess several features commonly associated with advanced cognition, such
Speaker 1: as successful colonization of new environments and complex fission fusion societies.
Speaker 1: To briefly explain both of those, I guess colonization of
Speaker 1: new environments is fairly self explanatory. You know, goats um
Speaker 1: they have a pretty adventurous relationship of the natural world,
Speaker 1: and they can they can spread into areas where it's
Speaker 1: harder for other animals to survive, but they thrive there,
Speaker 1: so that they're they're getting something out of the environment
Speaker 1: that some other animals can't quite get. But the other
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting is the complex fission fusion societies. This
Speaker 1: means animals that live together in groups, but they are
Speaker 1: able to uh, sort of alter those groups in a
Speaker 1: fluid way and then and then come back together. So
Speaker 1: an example would be humans live in fission fusion societies
Speaker 1: We live in groups, but those groups separate off into subgroups.
Speaker 1: They separate, and they come back together. The groups change sizes,
Speaker 1: People separate on their own and do different tasks and
Speaker 1: then rejoin. That's fission fusion. So the authors here tested
Speaker 1: out goat intelligence and memory on what they call a
Speaker 1: food box cognitive challenge, a much a puzzle box with
Speaker 1: a special lever that a goat had to learn how
Speaker 1: to operate in order to access food, and there were
Speaker 1: different conditions in this experiment. Wouldn't make a difference to
Speaker 1: a goat's ability to learn how to use this box
Speaker 1: if the goat were able to watch another goat opening
Speaker 1: the box successfully a k a. Social learning and the
Speaker 1: authors in in the results section right quote, the majority
Speaker 1: of trained goats nine out of twelve, successfully learned the
Speaker 1: task quickly, on average within twelve trials at intervals of
Speaker 1: up to ten months. They solved the task within two minutes,
Speaker 1: indicating excellent long term memory. The goats did not learn
Speaker 1: the task faster after observing a demonstrator than if they
Speaker 1: did not have that opportunity. This indicates that they learned
Speaker 1: through individual rather than social learning, so goats pretty smart.
Speaker 1: They learned the task pretty well. They can solve the
Speaker 1: puzzle most of the time, and they're able to remember
Speaker 1: that lution pretty well in the long term. Ten months later,
Speaker 1: you give them another puzzle box, they get into it
Speaker 1: pretty fast. But the goats did not seem to benefit
Speaker 1: from watching the struggles of other goats at all, So
Speaker 1: they did not display signs of social learning. And I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of interesting because goats are to some
Speaker 1: degree social they live in herds, but biologically they're not
Speaker 1: oriented to learn in a cooperative way. They can't learn,
Speaker 1: at least according to this finding, by watching other goats
Speaker 1: do the way we can. And the authors say that
Speaker 1: this would provide some evidence that the evolution of goat
Speaker 1: cognition is driven more by ecological competence pressure than by
Speaker 1: social intelligence pressure. So they think, you know, what's pushing
Speaker 1: goats to uh, to be able to think more efficiently
Speaker 1: is probably more the stuff about trying to extract solve
Speaker 1: puzzles in the environment. How do you extract the maximum
Speaker 1: amount of foraging resources from this area? How do you
Speaker 1: remember where cashes of food are? How do you remember
Speaker 1: where threats are? And things like that. Rather than using
Speaker 1: that intelligence to try to maintain relationships within the group
Speaker 1: like you might see in chimpanzees. Yeah, now that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Based on my limited experience with with goat mischief. It
Speaker 1: tends to be things like you're at a petting zoo
Speaker 1: and you have a you have a map of the
Speaker 1: zoo sticking out of your pocket. Somebody decides to sneak
Speaker 1: that out of your pocket and start eating it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, or I've I've spoken this problem solving problem.
Speaker 1: It's curiosity is pure curiosity? Is it food? I shall investigate? Um?
Speaker 1: I know. Other situations that have come up of the
Speaker 1: from some goat farmers that i've I've spoken to in
Speaker 1: the past have been like the goat wants to find
Speaker 1: out how to get on top of something and doing
Speaker 1: that and may find well find its way out of
Speaker 1: an enclosure. So that sort of thing, right, So clever
Speaker 1: problem solving within the physical space, but less so within
Speaker 1: the social arena. So one might be tempted to say
Speaker 1: that crap, the antisocial goats cast long and sinister shadows. However,
Speaker 1: I wanted to put another weight on the scale, sort
Speaker 1: of on the other side of the scale, And this
Speaker 1: was a study I was looking at by Christian now
Speaker 1: roth at all published in Biology letters in called goats
Speaker 1: display audience dependent human directed gazing behavior in a problem
Speaker 1: solving task. In the background of this one is the
Speaker 1: observation that, okay, domestication, when you domesticate a wild animal,
Speaker 1: this clearly affects the animal's brain and its cognition. A
Speaker 1: domestic dog simply does not think and solve problems the
Speaker 1: same way its nearest wild relative would. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: dog dog thinking is way different than wolf thinking. But
Speaker 1: how much of this difference is a result of straight
Speaker 1: domestication and how much is the result of the fact
Speaker 1: that dogs are domesticated specifically as companions. Yeah? And this, yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly we get into the whole scenario where we often
Speaker 1: talk about dogs and cats and other close domesticated animals
Speaker 1: as we talk about how they look at humans, what
Speaker 1: do they think humans are? And I know they're they're
Speaker 1: different interpretations, but I know that it's often said, well,
Speaker 1: like a cat thinks you may think that you are
Speaker 1: another cat. I've I've heard, you know, they think you're
Speaker 1: another kitten, or they think you're its mom, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Dogs, I believe, tend to look at at
Speaker 1: their humans kind of like their dogs, right, Well, to
Speaker 1: some extent, I mean you can tell that there is
Speaker 1: a there's a very natural, inclusive kind of social relationship
Speaker 1: with dogs to humans, so they acclimatize easily to humans.
Speaker 1: On on the other hand, there seems to be a
Speaker 1: kind of special thing with humans, right where like you
Speaker 1: have these studies where you give a dog a puzzle
Speaker 1: that it cannot solve, like it can't get the treat
Speaker 1: out of the puzzle box, And is it going to
Speaker 1: look at the other dog in the room for help
Speaker 1: or look at the human for help? It's going to
Speaker 1: look at the human right, right, And and I don't
Speaker 1: have any studies to back this up, but I mean
Speaker 1: this seems to be the case with cats as well,
Speaker 1: Like the cats will come to the human, they will
Speaker 1: use their special meal that that is a way of
Speaker 1: communicating with the humans, as if they are like the
Speaker 1: mama cat that will fix things. Yeah, but with the goat, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where do we go with that? Because as we've we've
Speaker 1: already established like there's a different underlying social dynamic. Right,
Speaker 1: But what the authors here found, just to read from
Speaker 1: their abstract, they say, quote, we investigated human directed behavior
Speaker 1: in an unsolvable problem task in a domestic but non
Speaker 1: companion species goats. Okay, so they're giving goats sort of
Speaker 1: like a puzzle box that they can't solve. There, there's
Speaker 1: clearly an outcome they want, but they can't achieve it
Speaker 1: on their own. It's not like they, you know, the
Speaker 1: lever that they could figure out with a few tries
Speaker 1: in the other experiment. They can't win this game, so
Speaker 1: the author's right quote. During the test, goats experienced stay
Speaker 1: forward facing or an away face in person. They gazed
Speaker 1: toward the forward facing person earlier and for longer, and
Speaker 1: showed more gaze alterations and a lower latency until the
Speaker 1: first gaze alteration when the person was forward facing. Our
Speaker 1: results provide strong evidence for audience dependent, human directed visual
Speaker 1: orienting behavior in a species that was domesticated primarily for production.
Speaker 1: And they also say the results quote show similarities with
Speaker 1: the referential and intentional communicative behavior exhibited by domestic companion
Speaker 1: animals such as dogs and horses. This indicates the domestication
Speaker 1: has a much broader impact on hetero specific communication than
Speaker 1: previously believed. So the study is finding that even though
Speaker 1: goats were domesticated for production for agriculture, meat, milk, hide,
Speaker 1: and fur things like that, as opposed to dogs, which
Speaker 1: were domesticated as companions and helpers. Nevertheless, goats do this
Speaker 1: dog like thing when they have this unsolvable problem task.
Speaker 1: They are more likely to look up, for presumably for help,
Speaker 1: at a human who is looking at them, as opposed
Speaker 1: to the control of a human that is looking away
Speaker 1: from them. So this is that this is kind of
Speaker 1: the impact of the goatherd over over the goat. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what all this adds up to about,
Speaker 1: you know, how this would affect humans over the years
Speaker 1: looking at the goats they're familiar with, and whether they
Speaker 1: would imagine that this goat is having crafty, devilish designs
Speaker 1: on them or is thinking impure thoughts. But but I
Speaker 1: did find it interesting. Yeah, like maybe there is a
Speaker 1: long underlying realization that the goat thinks and behaves differently
Speaker 1: when we're looking at it as opposed to when we're
Speaker 1: not looking at it, which reminds me of that ridiculous
Speaker 1: idea that we folk with Tale that we've brought up
Speaker 1: in the last episode about how you can't keep tracking
Speaker 1: the goats not even there all the time. Sometimes it's there,
Speaker 1: but the rest of the time it's going to hell
Speaker 1: so that Satan can clean its beard for it. You
Speaker 1: know what you call that, It's a fission fusion society. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, what's your day look like, Carl. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat a bunch of a bunch of grass,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna climb some rocks and then oh, I've got
Speaker 1: I've got I've got a one PM with Satan. Gotta
Speaker 1: get this be taken care of, thank thank now. As
Speaker 1: previously mentioned, goats, of course, are really good at figuring
Speaker 1: out how to make use of new environments. And as
Speaker 1: a result, as a result of that reality and a
Speaker 1: result of human domestication of the animals, goats are a
Speaker 1: common sight all over the world. They're one of our
Speaker 1: oldest domesticated animals. As we discussed in the first episode,
Speaker 1: They've traveled a long and far with us. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the goat is especially good at sustaining itself even in
Speaker 1: places where nothing like the goat has ever lived. And
Speaker 1: I want to go to a particular place, and and
Speaker 1: part of this is because I I just physically returned
Speaker 1: from this place, and so it's it's on my mind
Speaker 1: a lot, but I want to go to the Galapagos Archipelago.
Speaker 1: This is a cluster of volcanic islands located five d
Speaker 1: sixty three miles or n kilometers off the coast of Ecuador.
Speaker 1: It's a place famous for its biodiversity and for the
Speaker 1: examples of evolution found there uh as in various species
Speaker 1: many found nowhere else in the world that have evolved
Speaker 1: to thrive in isolated environments. And while there is some
Speaker 1: dispute over whether the Inca ever reached the island, we
Speaker 1: can be certain that Europeans uh discovered the islands in
Speaker 1: fifteen thirty five, and outside of Charles Darwin's visit to
Speaker 1: the island three hundred years later, the history of human
Speaker 1: contact with the island is has frequently been a bloody one,
Speaker 1: in tailing at times penal colonies, utopian communities, whalers and pirates.
Speaker 1: Sailors infamously made off with many of the smaller female
Speaker 1: galapacost tortoises, which they used to restock their food supplies
Speaker 1: at these islands, and later these sailors that were visiting
Speaker 1: the Galapacos Islands would see the islands with food species
Speaker 1: like goats and pigs, so drop off some goats and pigs,
Speaker 1: knowing that these are hardy creatures that will find out
Speaker 1: how to survive, that will breed. And then when you
Speaker 1: drop back by, we just send some some of some
Speaker 1: sailors ashore and say, hey, go get me some goat meat.
Speaker 1: Go get me some pig meat. Can you bring back
Speaker 1: thirty to fifty feral hogs? Uh? And And given how
Speaker 1: good these creatures were at at thriving in new environments,
Speaker 1: and given that these islands had never seen goats or
Speaker 1: pigs before, yeah, they did quite well. And as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, this sort of willful introduction of invasive species
Speaker 1: had a huge negative packed on the environment. In addition
Speaker 1: to feral goats and pigs, also feral cats feral cattle
Speaker 1: have along been an issue along with of course rats uh.
Speaker 1: Cats are of course terrific killers of birds. Pigs will
Speaker 1: consume hidden eggs including a glob of coast tortoise eggs,
Speaker 1: I guana eggs, etcetera. Uh, and our problems and other
Speaker 1: parts of the world as well. But you might well
Speaker 1: wonder why feral donkeys and especially feral goats would be
Speaker 1: an issue, Like what ultimately is so destructive about the goat. Well,
Speaker 1: think back to the browsing dietary habits of the goat
Speaker 1: that we discussed in the first episode. Again, the goat
Speaker 1: excels at consuming vegetation and ultimately actually outperforms the giant
Speaker 1: galapagost tortoise, munching down parts of the plant they would
Speaker 1: ultimately be inaccessible to the tortoise, and in doing so
Speaker 1: they also end up loosening the underlying soil. They also,
Speaker 1: along with donkeys and cattle, can trample eggs uh you know,
Speaker 1: for the for the eggs as well as just young tortoises,
Speaker 1: feral pigs, dogs, cats, and black rats can serve as
Speaker 1: deadly predators and so for these reasons along with with
Speaker 1: human hunting, we saw the extinction of the Floridana Island
Speaker 1: subspecies of the Glava Coast tourtise during the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and of course all of the glab of coost tortoises
Speaker 1: have have kind of had an uphill battle uh to
Speaker 1: to regain successful numbers. Another important thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind here and this this reminds me of our discussions
Speaker 1: of the moa uh, the giant flightless bird in the past.
Speaker 1: We have to remember that Okay, glab of Coast tortoises
Speaker 1: are notoriously slow, but they do move around quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and aided by a slow digestion, they're able to spread
Speaker 1: seeds across the vast distances. So the glap of cost
Speaker 1: tortoise isn't just this amazing curiosity to be found on
Speaker 1: the Glap Coast islands. They're a crucial part of island ecology.
Speaker 1: They've evolved to thrive within these isolated ecosystems, and those
Speaker 1: ecosystems have evolved to depend upon them and to uh
Speaker 1: and to live alongside them. Uh. There are other examples
Speaker 1: of this as well, like one in particular, you see
Speaker 1: these very tall to cactus varieties that have evolved to
Speaker 1: to climb high enough to where they're above the tortoises reach.
Speaker 1: And then you'll see, you know, all the fruiting parts
Speaker 1: of the cactus up there, and they'll beat it more
Speaker 1: like this hard bark on the lower portions of it,
Speaker 1: very tall cacti. So anyway, we end up with this
Speaker 1: situation where on we have we have we have islands
Speaker 1: here that have lots of goats, and the goats are destructive.
Speaker 1: The goats are in competition with the animals that we
Speaker 1: want to help, that we want to see survive and
Speaker 1: have no other place in the world where they can survive,
Speaker 1: where they can call home. And so this lad to
Speaker 1: goat removal efforts, a war on goats. And there had
Speaker 1: been prior goat removal efforts on in other islands, but
Speaker 1: this was the but this was the largest at this
Speaker 1: point in history. We're getting into the nineteen nineties here.
Speaker 1: So according to the Galapa Coos Conservancy quote, prior to
Speaker 1: nineteen seven, the largest island with a successful goat eradication
Speaker 1: was Auckland Island in New Zealand, where only one five
Speaker 1: goats occupied a near four thousand hectares. The next two
Speaker 1: of the largest islands with successful go to eradications were
Speaker 1: Lanai in Hawaii and San Clemente Island in California. And
Speaker 1: uh this in in San Clemente Island they have removed
Speaker 1: apparently twenty nine thousand goats. So yeah. By the late
Speaker 1: twentieth century, some real mover movements were being made to
Speaker 1: eradicate feral populations from the Galapagos Islands. This included the
Speaker 1: N seven Project Isabella Plan, which aimed to eradicate goats
Speaker 1: and donkeys from northern Isabella Island, also pigs, goats and
Speaker 1: donkeys from Santiago Island and goats from Penta Island, And
Speaker 1: with international funding, they waged a war against the goats
Speaker 1: and their feral kin and the results are pretty staggering.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and four, eighteen thousand pigs were removed
Speaker 1: from Santiago Island. The same year, roughly fifty five thousand
Speaker 1: goats were eliminated on Isabella. And it's it's interesting when
Speaker 1: you start, when you start getting into this sort of problem,
Speaker 1: when you have thousands, tens of thousands of of goats,
Speaker 1: how do you get rid of them? How do you
Speaker 1: round them all up? You? Uh? I'm to understand that
Speaker 1: some of this was done via aerial hunting and some
Speaker 1: of the pig removal. I think it still goes on today.
Speaker 1: I'm to understand with with with hunting efforts, but with
Speaker 1: the goats. They use judas goats to help carry this out,
Speaker 1: some seven hundred and seventy of them. Now what is
Speaker 1: a judas goat, you might ask, Well, these are trained
Speaker 1: goats and in these efforts they are also sterilized goats.
Speaker 1: Because you don't you're not going to solve your goat
Speaker 1: problem by releasing seven hundred seven and debreedable goats into
Speaker 1: the population. But these are trained goats that in they
Speaker 1: were traditionally used in uh in previous times to lead
Speaker 1: sheep to slaughter, but they can also be used to
Speaker 1: lead feral goats to their destruction. So in the case
Speaker 1: of the galapagost efforts, sterilized goats were used, and uh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were used to help round up many of these
Speaker 1: goats so that they could be um eliminated. But I
Speaker 1: think this whole scenario is it's it's kind of a
Speaker 1: testament to so many of the properties of the goat
Speaker 1: that we've discussed, their tenacity, their uh, their great ability
Speaker 1: to thrive in an environment, and in this case, they're
Speaker 1: too good at it. Again, they just out outperform everything
Speaker 1: that's already there. Then you have to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: And how do you how do you wrangle them up? Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: you've got to use goat against goat. You've you've got
Speaker 1: to you've got to enlist trader goats or judas goats
Speaker 1: to go out there and help you lead them in
Speaker 1: to the kill. I had heard the phrase judas goat
Speaker 1: before but I don't think I ever knew what that meant.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a goat that it takes advantage
Speaker 1: of the the social hurting behaviors of goats by being
Speaker 1: trained by humans to lead goats where you want them
Speaker 1: to go, often too, a place that's not in the
Speaker 1: interest of the goats themselves, right right, so that they
Speaker 1: can be rounded up and in this case eliminated and uh.
Speaker 1: And I believe that they still keep Judas goats around
Speaker 1: on some of these islands for for monitoring purposes. I wonder,
Speaker 1: how do you train a goat that other goats really
Speaker 1: want to follow? Like what is the most followable type
Speaker 1: of goat? Yeah, I don't know. I didn't go in
Speaker 1: deep into like the making of a Judas goat, Like
Speaker 1: how does it come together? I think it since you're
Speaker 1: you're training an animal to betray it's its own species
Speaker 1: one instantly, you can't help an anthropomorphize the scenario when
Speaker 1: you start thinking of various episodes of the outer Limits
Speaker 1: and imagining like aliens brainwashing human captives so that they'll
Speaker 1: betray their uh, the human species or something. But I
Speaker 1: don't think it's quite that complicated. But thank goodness, we
Speaker 1: can do it. I mean, you think of other problems
Speaker 1: species like the like the rat. To my knowledge, there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as a Judas rat. The rats are
Speaker 1: too clever for that. I suppose You've We've got to
Speaker 1: resort to, in some cases more basic methods, but also
Speaker 1: methods that are perhaps just incapable of of solving a
Speaker 1: large scale rat problem. Al Right, Well, as we reached
Speaker 1: the end of these three episodes, how do we how
Speaker 1: has this change the way we feel about goats? It
Speaker 1: changes nothing for me my allegiances to the goat and
Speaker 1: to the goat alone as it has always been. Well, obviously,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there about all
Speaker 1: of this. H Yeah, did did Did these episodes change
Speaker 1: the way you think about goats? Yet? Perhaps? Perhaps not? Uh?
Speaker 1: And of course we I feel like we we do
Speaker 1: have listeners who raise goats, or have raised goats, who
Speaker 1: have been around goats. Um. I'm almost certain of it,
Speaker 1: if I'm thinking I'm remembering correctly. So if you out there,
Speaker 1: if you are a goatherd, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Let us know what your thoughts are about
Speaker 1: the way of the goat. Um. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: worked at a petting zoo, if you have any experience
Speaker 1: with with goats, uh that that lines up with anything
Speaker 1: we've discussed here right in, and we'll discuss them on
Speaker 1: future episodes of Listener Mail. It's also not impossible there'll
Speaker 1: be another episode concerning goats in the not too distant future,
Speaker 1: because we were just wrapping up our our work on
Speaker 1: this and I got a press release from somebody who
Speaker 1: had like a new study regarding the behavior of goats
Speaker 1: and rams, and I was like, yeah, I'm like, oh man,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll have to Maybe we'll have to have them
Speaker 1: on the show and chat with them. So this may
Speaker 1: not be the end of the goats in the long run,
Speaker 1: but it is the end of this three part series, Okay.
Speaker 1: Do As a reminder, you can find all the episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We are primarily a science
Speaker 1: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with Listener
Speaker 1: Mail episodes on Mondays. On Wednesday's we do a short
Speaker 1: form monster fact or artifact episode, and on Friday's we
Speaker 1: do a little something called Weird House Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk
Speaker 1: about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff
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