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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We are

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Speaker 2: going into the old Vault to get an episode from

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Speaker 2: April sixth, twenty twenty three. This is part two of

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Speaker 2: our series called Before You Could Remember.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert.

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Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part

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Speaker 2: two of our series on childhood amnesia, which is the

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Speaker 2: name for the fact that most adults and even most

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Speaker 2: older children don't really seem to have any memories from

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Speaker 2: before about the age of three or four, and that

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Speaker 2: number is slightly different depending on the culture you grow

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Speaker 2: up in and some other factors that we may continue

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Speaker 2: to explore in this series, but generally, on average, around

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Speaker 2: three or four is when the memories start kicking in,

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Speaker 2: and even then people don't seem to have as many

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Speaker 2: memories as they will for later years in life. That

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Speaker 2: the number of memories people seem to be able to

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Speaker 2: recall sort of goes up each year after that. More

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Speaker 2: from year five more from six. More from seven. Now,

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Speaker 2: if you haven't heard part one yet, you should probably

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Speaker 2: go back and check that one out first. It is

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Speaker 2: where it is where we learned that the rob here

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Speaker 2: was indeed once a very naughty boy and smashed a

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Speaker 2: jar of cherries on the floor or something.

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Speaker 1: What is it you did? Well, I mean, I guess

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Speaker 1: the naughty part was going into the refrigerator to get

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Speaker 1: them anyway, because I don't think I was supposed to

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Speaker 1: have them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, where you explicitly forbidden cherries or I guess it's

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Speaker 2: just a general understanding if you're a child you should

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Speaker 2: not climb into the fridge to serve yourself anything.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, I don't know. I guess looking back

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Speaker 1: on it it As a child, you're often sort of

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Speaker 1: testing the boundaries of your world, and part of the

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Speaker 1: a memory like that is when you realize you're not

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Speaker 1: supposed to Apparently I was not supposed to go back

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Speaker 1: and get cherries for a number of reasons, some practical, uh,

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Speaker 1: some may be you know, arguable from from my standpoint,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, that's that's kind of a There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of stuff going on in those early years, which I

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Speaker 1: think is something we we tried to get across in

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Speaker 1: all of this is that the brain of a of

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Speaker 1: an infant or a small child is not inert. It

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Speaker 1: is it is extremely busy, but the brain remembers what

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Speaker 1: it needs to remember. And and so we're going to

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Speaker 1: continue with that in mind in this episode.

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Speaker 2: That is a scary and kind of thrilling headspace to

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Speaker 2: get back into the moment when you're like a child

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Speaker 2: and you're doing something where you you really don't know

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Speaker 2: if you were allowed to do this or not, and

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Speaker 2: you suspect that you might not be, but you it's

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Speaker 2: never been said outright, you know.

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Speaker 1: Or you just suspect that you are.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so much that that comes up

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Speaker 1: and raise a child on this end where you're like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can't really be mad at him for thinking this

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Speaker 1: or acting in this way because we've never said don't

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Speaker 1: approach whatever the topic is this ways. This is the

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Speaker 1: learning experience.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So to start us off today, I just wanted

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Speaker 2: to share something that I got to thinking about after

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Speaker 2: the last episode. So this particular tangent is not something

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Speaker 2: I have like direct scientific evidence for. It's just something

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Speaker 2: I started wondering about after the last part in the series.

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Speaker 2: So I was thinking about childhood amnesia in the context

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Speaker 2: of another subject we covered, I guess sometime last year.

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Speaker 2: It was the Hot Cold Empathy Gap. Do you remember

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Speaker 2: this episode, Rob, I do, Yes. This is an observed

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Speaker 2: psychological phenomenon where we not only sometimes fail to understand,

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Speaker 2: accurately model and predict the thoughts and behaviors of other people.

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Speaker 2: We not only have interpersonal failures of empathy, we also

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Speaker 2: sometimes fail to accurately model ourselves in different affective states,

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Speaker 2: so we have intra personal failures of empathy. So a

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Speaker 2: simple way to put this is that people who are

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Speaker 2: not currently in an affective state, so not currently angry

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Speaker 2: or not currently hungry or not currently sad, are actually

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Speaker 2: somewhat bad at predicting how they themselves would react in

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Speaker 2: a situation if they were actually in one of those states,

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Speaker 2: and vice versa. If you are currently hungry, you're not

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Speaker 2: very good at predicting how you would behave and react

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Speaker 2: if you were not hungry.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like the fear area, for example, I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: easy to sort of rehearse what you're going to do

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Speaker 1: in a certain situation, but then when the frightening thing

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Speaker 1: occurs you're in a different frame of mind, and you

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Speaker 1: may behave entirely differently. I'm reminded of there's a great

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Speaker 1: thing in Congo with Ernie Hudson. Do you remember this

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Speaker 1: scene where he's he's a very cool cucumber his character

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Speaker 1: the whole movie, there's a part where he's he's putting

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Speaker 1: up a brave front. But then when the scary thing

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Speaker 1: happens involving a gorilla like you, you turn back to

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Speaker 1: him and he's he's he's moved away and or he's

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Speaker 1: run away just a little bit, and ask him what happened.

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Speaker 1: He's like, I ran away. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: He had just given us a speech about how you

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Speaker 2: can't run away because that will show. Yeah, then the

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Speaker 2: gorilla will chase you, so you got to stand your ground.

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Speaker 2: But then I run away.

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Speaker 1: Yes, So when.

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Speaker 2: We're not in these affective states, we actually can't relate

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Speaker 2: very well to the person we are when we're in them,

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Speaker 2: and vice versa. When we're in them, we can't really

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Speaker 2: relate very well to the person we are when we're

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Speaker 2: not in them, And so the hot cold empathy gap

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Speaker 2: can be demonstrated over a span of only a few minutes,

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Speaker 2: but it got me thinking about a similar self reflective

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Speaker 2: empathy gap that applies not across different affective states, but

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Speaker 2: different stage of life. So what I'm talking about here

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Speaker 2: is when I think back on a memory of doing something,

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Speaker 2: or saying something, or dressing a certain way or liking

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Speaker 2: a certain thing when I was young, and especially if

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Speaker 2: I pick something embarrassing, but not just with embarrassing things,

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Speaker 2: with all kinds of things, I can often find myself

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Speaker 2: totally unable to relate to that person. I say that

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Speaker 2: thing that you've probably heard people say of similar reactions

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Speaker 2: to their own past. What was I thinking? And at

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Speaker 2: least when I say this, I truly often do not know.

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Speaker 2: It's like I cannot internally simulate the mindset that led

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Speaker 2: me to wear that T shirt, even though it was me.

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Speaker 2: I can't relate to that person, and I can't even

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Speaker 2: really remember or imagine what it was like to be them,

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Speaker 2: even though again it was me. From what I gathered,

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Speaker 2: this is a common experience. It's I'm not alone here, right.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like basically comes down

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Speaker 1: to the reality that we are not consistently the same

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Speaker 1: across small lengths of time, much less across the course

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Speaker 1: of a lifetime. And yeah, I mean it's a you know,

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Speaker 1: a turn of phrase, what was I thinking? Sometimes we

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Speaker 1: can piece together some of what our thought processes were.

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Speaker 1: You know, you'd be like, well, I was a teenager

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Speaker 1: and I thought this band was cool, so of course

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Speaker 1: I wore that T shirt, even if I would not

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Speaker 1: be into that band. And now as a as a

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Speaker 1: grown person or what have you, or with you know,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's a certain amount of clarity based on

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Speaker 1: where you are now in life. But other times, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you may genuinely look back and you're like, I just

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Speaker 1: don't know what was going through my mind. I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure what the thought process was. I seem to have

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Speaker 1: a different thought process going on now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And so obviously it's not this way with all

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Speaker 2: memories from different stages of life. Like I have a

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Speaker 2: feeling that I can re experience or relate to lots

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Speaker 2: of memory from childhood but not other ones. And so

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Speaker 2: I don't always know what makes the difference. But I

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Speaker 2: wonder if the proportion of memories for behaviors and experiences

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Speaker 2: we can no longer empathize with tends to increase the

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Speaker 2: farther back you go into childhood. I don't know this

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Speaker 2: is the case. I'm wondering if it does or if, say,

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Speaker 2: it actually doesn't go up in a linear fashion. You

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Speaker 2: could imagine it also like peaking in teenage years or

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Speaker 2: something like that. But so that's one question I was

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Speaker 2: wondering about. And then I was also wondering if there's

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Speaker 2: any kind of relationship between our current ability to empathize

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Speaker 2: with our feelings and behavior in a past event and

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Speaker 2: our tendency to actually remember that event in the first place. So,

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Speaker 2: in other words, are we more likely to remember doing

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Speaker 2: or feeling or saying something when we can empathize with it,

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Speaker 2: like when we can get back in that mind space,

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Speaker 2: and less likely to remember it when we can hand

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Speaker 2: no longer empathize with it. And I asked this specifically

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Speaker 2: because I, uh, Robi, I wonder if you have the

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Speaker 2: same experience. I feel like a lot of these what

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Speaker 2: was I thinking memories are prompted by external intrusions, like

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Speaker 2: seeing a photo of yourself that you didn't expect to see,

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Speaker 2: or having somebody say, hey, do you remember when we

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Speaker 2: did this or when you said that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it does make me I was thinking

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Speaker 1: about this in terms of like childhood versus say, like

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Speaker 1: junior high, teen years sort of reflections or even like

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Speaker 1: early or really all of one twenties. I guess, depending

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Speaker 1: on where you are in life how far removed you

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Speaker 1: are from particular time period. But like for very young children,

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Speaker 1: it seems like so much of what you end up

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Speaker 1: doing and wearing, et cetera is almost entirely shaped by

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Speaker 1: your parents. Anyway. Yeah, yeah, so like what was I

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Speaker 1: thinking is not really a question because it's like you

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Speaker 1: weren't thinking, you were just doing or you were just

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Speaker 1: you wore this because it was provided to you, and

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Speaker 1: everyone else in your family liked it, so it seemed

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Speaker 1: like you liked it that sort of thing. Not all

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Speaker 1: the time, but like I feel like maybe like eighty

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Speaker 1: percent of the time that may be the case. But

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Speaker 1: then it's when you're getting into that area where you

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Speaker 1: are willfully setting out on your own, choosing things for yourself,

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Speaker 1: that might be the area where I mean, you're legitimately

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Speaker 1: asking what was I thinking? What was my intention in

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Speaker 1: all of that?

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Speaker 2: That is a good point, like what role agency or

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Speaker 2: self control has in the event that you're remembering? So, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I don't know if our empathy gap with our past

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Speaker 2: self actually does just increase the farther back you go.

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Speaker 2: I wonder if that could be measured. But if it does,

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Speaker 2: I wonder how does that also relate to the relative

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Speaker 2: paucity of memories from early childhood and the for most people,

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Speaker 2: complete lack of memories from before ages three or four.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, now, I this is interesting to think about, and

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Speaker 1: one possible answer to this might be, well, the reason

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Speaker 1: that you have trouble knowing or understand what you were

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Speaker 1: thinking about in a particular time might be because you

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Speaker 1: have completely blocked it out because their thought process was

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Speaker 1: so traumatic that you just had to erase it from

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Speaker 1: easy access of the conscious mind.

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Speaker 2: Ah, speaking of what were we thinking? I guess, as

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Speaker 2: with many topics in psychology, unfortunately, if you want to

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Speaker 2: trace the history of how we understood this over the

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Speaker 2: past one hundred years, really you have to go back

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Speaker 2: to freud not because the Freudian explanations carry any scientific

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Speaker 2: currency today they almost never do. Instead, it's just because

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Speaker 2: you've got to understand how influential Freudian theories were in

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Speaker 2: the history of how people thought about this exactly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And of course you we're talking about Sigmund

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Speaker 1: Freud here Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, and he

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Speaker 1: too explored the topic of quote unquote infantile amnesia, postulating

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Speaker 1: that these lost memories constitute repressed memories repressed due to

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Speaker 1: their psychosexual nature. Here's a quote from Freud, obviously in

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Speaker 1: translation quote. I believe that the infantile amnesia, which causes

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Speaker 1: the individual to look upon his childhood as if it

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Speaker 1: were a prehistoric time and conceals from him the beginning

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Speaker 1: of his own sexual life. That this amnesia is responsible

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Speaker 1: for the fact that one does not usually attribute any

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Speaker 1: value to the infantile period in the development of the

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Speaker 1: sexual life.

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Speaker 2: Right, So, I think the common understanding of the Freudian

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Speaker 2: view is that early childhood is a time of strange

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Speaker 2: sexual fixations and realizations that we can't bear to think

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Speaker 2: back about as adults, so we repress those memories as

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Speaker 2: a type of trauma. I don't think there's any good

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Speaker 2: empirical evidence for the Freudian psychosexual view of development today.

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Speaker 1: It frankly doesn't gel with any of the science we've

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Speaker 1: we've looked at in our research for these episodes, and

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Speaker 1: it's mainly worth mentioning because of its place in the

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Speaker 1: history of the topic and so forth. But it's also

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Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about, like what's going on with

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Speaker 1: this approach to infantile amnesia, to the seeming lack of real,

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Speaker 1: congrete memories from early life, because you can think of

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Speaker 1: them as sort of like blank spots upon which you

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Speaker 1: can focus ideas like this. There's there's no possible memory

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Speaker 1: there to contradict the backward looking explanation. You know.

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Speaker 2: Well, Yet not only because it's a blank spot you

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Speaker 2: can fill in with your explanations, but because of the

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Speaker 2: particular characteristics of memory as a function of human brains,

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Speaker 2: it's also actually not only possible, but quite trivial to

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Speaker 2: place memories. There are things that feel like memories that

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Speaker 2: do not reflect events that actually happened.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it brings to mind that the use of you

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Speaker 1: so called repressed memories not only in psychotherapy, but in

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Speaker 1: the pursuit of paranormal experiences as well, such as alien

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Speaker 1: abductions and ritual satanic abuse.

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Speaker 2: Right, And this is a really dangerous area because, for

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Speaker 2: one thing, I think it's important to acknowledge that it's

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Speaker 2: impossible to rule out the idea that repressed memories exist, right,

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Speaker 2: it is possible that the brain somehow does retain memories

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Speaker 2: that are not easily retrieved with you know, just regular

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Speaker 2: conscious effort, but that could be retrieved by some other method.

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Speaker 2: But while it's possible, one thing that research makes very

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Speaker 2: clear is that it is incredibly easy to mistake false

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Speaker 2: recovered memories for real ones. And the false memories feel

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Speaker 2: completely convincing, just as real as actual memories. In fact,

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Speaker 2: they are often even stronger and more vivid than real memories.

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Speaker 2: And you can show this with experiments where you know,

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Speaker 2: people will say, like, we we consulted with your family

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Speaker 2: and they they told us a story about a time,

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Speaker 2: you know, that you got lost at the playground, but

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Speaker 2: then you met this person and whatever, and this will

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Speaker 2: be completely made up for the purpose of the experiment,

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Speaker 2: but many people will start to believe that is a

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Speaker 2: real memory they have in their head. Just vividly imagining

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Speaker 2: a scenario proposed by someone else is often enough to

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Speaker 2: make someone totally convinced of it as a memory.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, these alien abductions and ritual satanic abuses are both

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Speaker 1: the topics we've discussed on the show before. But like

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Speaker 1: very briefly, like just the the the idea is so

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Speaker 1: heartbreaking that you could be manipulated into creating a memory

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Speaker 1: of trauma and the memory would be traumatic like like

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Speaker 1: once it has been sort of created and or augmented

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Speaker 1: in your memory, like it's you know, it's it's a

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Speaker 1: thing that is that is real to you. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: but heartbreaking, is it is? It also just drives home

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Speaker 1: something that is possible in all of our memories and

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Speaker 1: really is going on on a less traumatic level with

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Speaker 1: so many everyday memories in our lives.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and while I would also point out that it

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Speaker 2: seems especially easy to do this with the idea of

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Speaker 2: early childhood memories, this also works for adults, like you

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Speaker 2: can get adults to remember events that did not take

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Speaker 2: place by causing them to vividly imagine the event or

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Speaker 2: something like that.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, well, getting away from from even the

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Speaker 1: idea of alien abductions, let's get back into what the

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Speaker 1: actual research seems to illuminate about this topic.

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Speaker 2: Well, one thing I think we should say at the

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Speaker 2: beginning is that it's still somewhat an open question why

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Speaker 2: childhood amnesia occurs, and there are competing theories that might

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Speaker 2: that are to some degree compete, but they might also

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Speaker 2: be complementary. There might be multiple factors contributing to this

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Speaker 2: overall pattern where most adults can not really remember much

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Speaker 2: of anything from before age about three or four, and

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Speaker 2: then have this gradual accumulation of more memories to about

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Speaker 2: seven or eight. We'll probably explore some hypotheses in this

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Speaker 2: part and then more in the next part in this series,

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Speaker 2: but there was one I wanted to talk about because

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Speaker 2: it seems like a pretty straightforward explanation based on neural development,

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Speaker 2: the development of regions of the brain, especially a region

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Speaker 2: known as the hippocampus, And so this was in a

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Speaker 2: paper I was reading by Christina m. Alberini and Alessio

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Speaker 2: Travaglia published in the Journal of Neuroscience in twenty seventeen

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Speaker 2: called infantile amnesia a critical period of learning to learn

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Speaker 2: and remember. And this paper highlights a seeming paradox. So

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Speaker 2: on one hand, there's this phenomenon we've talked about at

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Speaker 2: length now early speriences seem to be forgotten very rapidly,

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Speaker 2: and yet simultaneously, early experiences seem to be incredibly influential

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Speaker 2: on adult behavior and adult brain development, to the extent

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Speaker 2: that early childhood experience is a very well documented risk

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Speaker 2: factor for various adult psychopathologies and disorders. Just to cite

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Speaker 2: one example, there is extensive evidence that neglect during early

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Speaker 2: childhood development can lead to disorders including depression and anxiety,

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Speaker 2: as well as learning and cognitive disabilities in later life,

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Speaker 2: and there are similar findings about childhood poverty leading to

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Speaker 2: cognitive and learning deficits that persist into later life. A

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Speaker 2: lot of these effects are thought to be at least

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Speaker 2: in part related to chronic stress in early childhood, though

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Speaker 2: the authors of this paper propose that it might not

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Speaker 2: just be the effects of stress leading to these outcomes,

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Speaker 2: but also the absence of what they call enrichment in

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Speaker 2: episodic or declarative experiences in early development. So we know

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Speaker 2: that early childhood experiences have this profound impact on how

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Speaker 2: your brain works later in life, and yet much of

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Speaker 2: what we learn in this period cannot be recalled later

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Speaker 2: in narrative or episodic form. So the authors say, quote,

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Speaker 2: how then can memories that are rapidly forgotten and of

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Speaker 2: which there is virtually no recollection in adulthood exert a

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Speaker 2: lifelong effect on the brain and cognitive function. And the

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Speaker 2: answer that the authors of this paper propose lies in

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Speaker 2: the hippocampus. So the hippocampus is crucial for the formation

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Speaker 2: and maintenance of episodic memories. It's thought to be necessary

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Speaker 2: for certain kinds of learning, for the encoding of long

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Speaker 2: term memory, and related brain functions like spatial memory and

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Speaker 2: navigation of spaces. And an int intersting fact is that

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Speaker 2: this is not true just of humans, but it's true

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Speaker 2: of humans and non human mammals. The hippocampus is part

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Speaker 2: of the limbic system, so it is part of the

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Speaker 2: brain that we share with other mammals, and the authors

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Speaker 2: write that in both humans and non human mammals what

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Speaker 2: they call wwww memories, which I guess is more of

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Speaker 2: a shorthand when you type it than you say it

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Speaker 2: out loud, but that stands for who, what, when, and

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Speaker 2: where memories, So these are explicit memories that require conscious recollections.

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Speaker 2: This would have some overlap with the idea of like

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Speaker 2: episodic memories, memories of events that happened that you can

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Speaker 2: recall in detail. The authors say that these memories are

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Speaker 2: processed by the hippocampus dependent learning and memory system, also

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Speaker 2: known as the medial temporal lobe. Dependent learning and memory system.

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Speaker 2: So based on comparing what we know about hippocampal development

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Speaker 2: in humans with the results of studies based on learning

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Speaker 2: and early development in rats, the authors actually argue that quote,

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Speaker 2: the hippocampal memory system, like sensory functions and language, matures

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Speaker 2: through experience and undergoes what they call a developmental critical period. Now,

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Speaker 2: they deal with a couple of pre existing hypotheses about

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Speaker 2: what's going on here. One they identify as the developmental hypothesis,

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Speaker 2: which basically says that these wwww memories they are not

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Speaker 2: stored in the long term quote because the hippocampus is

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Speaker 2: immature and therefore unable to process, consolidate, and store contextual

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Speaker 2: and episodic representation. So it's just functionally not competent to

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Speaker 2: do this yet. And then on the other hand, there's

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Speaker 2: this hypothesis known as the retrieval hypothesis, which quote posits

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Speaker 2: that infantile memories are not gone, but are instead stored

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Speaker 2: in some form that cannot be expressed due to retrieval failure.

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Speaker 2: And they essentially thread the needle. They argue that both

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Speaker 2: of these kind of get something right, but neither one

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Speaker 2: is exactly right, and instead they end up arguing that

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Speaker 2: the hippocampus and the hippocampal learning system are very active

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Speaker 2: in early childhood, and they are very much processing experiences

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Speaker 2: during this early developmental period, but instead of storing memories

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Speaker 2: exactly the same way it will once it is a

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Speaker 2: mature organ it is learning how to learn.

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Speaker 1: I also have to mention here though, that it is

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Speaker 1: interesting that the developmental hypothesis and the retrieval hypothesis, both

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Speaker 1: of these in their own way reflect different former ideas

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Speaker 1: about the minds of young children. Developmental being, well, that's

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Speaker 1: not a full blown human yet, of course, it's not

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Speaker 1: gonna think the way we think or remember the way

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Speaker 1: we think. And in the retrieval hypothesis, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: in some you know, it's not exactly like Freud, but

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Speaker 1: you know, it gets into that similar like, oh, those

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Speaker 1: memories are there, they're just not in a way in

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Speaker 1: there in a place that we can easily get to them, right.

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Speaker 2: And I think these authors think that there is an

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Speaker 2: element of truth to both of these views, but that

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Speaker 2: neither one is exactly correct. That instead, it's that the

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Speaker 2: hippocampus is working really hard to process experiences during this time,

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Speaker 2: but the main thing it's doing with those experiences is

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Speaker 2: learning how to learn. So the hippo campus does store

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Speaker 2: memories which can be maintained they say, through frequent recalls,

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Speaker 2: but they say without some form of ongoing recall or

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Speaker 2: subsequent activation or modulation, those memories can tend to decay

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Speaker 2: rather quickly. And so they say, quote the types of

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Speaker 2: experience to which an individual is exposed during development shape

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Speaker 2: learning abilities an important implication that highlights the fundamental roles

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Speaker 2: of developmental environments. So this period is very important, and

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Speaker 2: it does change the brain in a way that will

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Speaker 2: affect the the person throughout the rest of their life.

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Speaker 2: But a lot of that, they argue, is through affecting

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Speaker 2: how the hippocampus develops and thus how the brain learns

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Speaker 2: to learn. And I'm not going to go into great

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Speaker 2: granular detail on what the mechanisms are within this, but

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Speaker 2: basically they propose a process by which there's sort of

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Speaker 2: a sequence of different stages of development within critical periods

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Speaker 2: for development in the brain. And this is true of

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Speaker 2: not just learning and memory. It's true of sensory functions,

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Speaker 2: like certain sensory things come online and the development of

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Speaker 2: one seems to affect the development of the subsequent one,

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Speaker 2: and then the next one and so forth, and they

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Speaker 2: argue that the same thing may well be happening with

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Speaker 2: the maturation of hippocampus dependent learning. So they say, quote,

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Speaker 2: our hypothesis is supported by the observation that complex hippocampal

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Speaker 2: learning takes place only after simple learning has matured. For example,

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Speaker 2: the abilit to learn about a single queue or object

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Speaker 2: seems to mature earlier than episodic learning and memory, which

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Speaker 2: require the more complex function of binding together several objects,

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Speaker 2: sequences and time. Again, this is the four W learning.

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Speaker 2: And then finally they say, thus we speculate the different

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Speaker 2: types of hippocampal learning mature sequentially in order of increasing complexity.

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Speaker 2: So they have like a diagram where they speculate that

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Speaker 2: it might go sort of learning about objects, and then

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Speaker 2: learning about places, and then learning about space more generally,

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Speaker 2: and then finally the four W learning.

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Speaker 1: But once again kind of goetting back to what we

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Speaker 1: were talking about in the first episode, it's like childhood

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Speaker 1: and chadhood development as a series of gates that you

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Speaker 1: pass through, as a series of phases that you progress

437
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:55,000
Speaker 1: through towards full integration into society as an adult.

438
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, and under this model at least how and when

439
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:01,720
Speaker 2: you pass through the pre gate affects how and when

440
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:03,800
Speaker 2: you pass through the next gate and the next gate

441
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:06,920
Speaker 2: and the next gate. But also too, as I said earlier,

442
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 2: that this is one take within this sort of broader

443
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 2: genre of explanations of childhood amnesia. This is sort of

444
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:30,479
Speaker 2: the structural brain development type argument. Now, there are some

445
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:34,440
Speaker 2: other types of explanations, maybe some involving language, interestingly and

446
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:37,680
Speaker 2: other things, but maybe we will save that for the

447
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:41,160
Speaker 2: next episode. Because I know Rob you today in your

448
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 2: heart there's a burning icon on the surface of your

449
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 2: heart and it is in the shape of a super baby.

450
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, we mentioned the possibility of discussing mythic babies, babies

451
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 1: of religious significance, and actually we actually heard for at

452
00:26:57,359 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: least from a couple of people that were like, yes,

453
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 1: bring on the babies. So yeah, to whatever extent it

454
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: helps us understand this topic, we will give you mythic

455
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 1: babies that to some degree each exhibits superior abilities and

456
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 1: or cognition or or something else that's worth touching on.

457
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:17,199
Speaker 1: So in general, though I think in most, if not all,

458
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:18,760
Speaker 1: of these examples, we're going to be touching on a

459
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 1: very widespread religious archetype, that of the divine boy. And

460
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: you know, once you see it, you can recognize it

461
00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: in all its various forms and incarnations. And I suppose,

462
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:35,160
Speaker 1: especially in modern media, you also have to consider its

463
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: opposite in the form of various like damiens and various

464
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 1: health children.

465
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:43,120
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, the cursed boy.

466
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

467
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:46,879
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I almost think that in the modern

468
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 2: era we I'm about to say something I don't really

469
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:51,720
Speaker 2: know its true. Okay, well, go with it anyway. What

470
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 2: I was going to say is it seems like today

471
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:59,440
Speaker 2: we're more likely to interpret a child with like superabilities

472
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 2: or super intellect as creepy rather than as something really cool,

473
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 2: you know, like yeah, or we're more predisposed to the

474
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 2: Damien direction than the than the child uh, you know,

475
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 2: the child sage direction.

476
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:16,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's very well illustrated in a

477
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: couple of fictional examples I'll bring up here in a

478
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: bit too. Yeah, that it's even if you're going for

479
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:25,440
Speaker 1: the divine, you end up touching on the uncanny, because

480
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: it is there is an uncanny aspect to it, for sure.

481
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: If you're imagining like a baby that has or a

482
00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:34,919
Speaker 1: small child that has uh, like the rational demeanor of

483
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: a full blown adult. All right, well, let's let's start

484
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 1: with baby Jesus, who we've talked about on the show before.

485
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 1: I think we did a whole episode one Christmas about

486
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 1: images of the Christ Child from Renaissance art that look

487
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 1: like tiny ugly men and why they look like tiny

488
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 1: ugly men. Go back and listen to that if you

489
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: need more weird baby action. But yeah, depictions of the

490
00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 1: Christ Child in the history of Western art, it varies

491
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: greatly from believable human infant to tiny mandlings that sometimes

492
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: exude a philosophic air other times look like vaguely grumpy

493
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: getting into that, you know what we've talked about in

494
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: the last episode about babies or like are like old people,

495
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: and we can't quite get that out of our heads.

496
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:25,239
Speaker 1: And we have accounts of the adventures that range from

497
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:29,360
Speaker 1: basically nothing, from just like Christ's early life being just

498
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 1: a just unrecorded, to other traditions such as the like

499
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: Christ's roll lowering the chur not just Christ but the

500
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:40,240
Speaker 1: Christ infant lowering Christmas gifts from Heaven on a golden string.

501
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: You know, that is a that is a tradition in

502
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:47,480
Speaker 1: parts of Europe. To other even wilder adventures.

503
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 2: Oh well, Rob, I think you're trying to set me

504
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:52,360
Speaker 2: up to talk about the the infancy Gospel of Thomas.

505
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 2: Is that right, Yes, Okay, this is an ancient text

506
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 2: that we have discussed off Mike here.

507
00:29:58,080 --> 00:29:58,160
Speaker 3: So.

508
00:29:58,840 --> 00:29:58,959
Speaker 1: Uh.

509
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 2: You know, if if you read the four gospels that

510
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 2: are canonical to most Christians, the ones that are in

511
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 2: the New Testament, there's very little about the baby Jesus.

512
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 2: We don't get really many stories of what Jesus did

513
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 2: before he was a full grown man. Two of the

514
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 2: gospels have a story of his birth, Matthew and Luke do,

515
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 2: but he doesn't do anything. He just gets born. There's

516
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 2: really only one story in the canonical gospels of the

517
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 2: baby Jesus or the boy Jesus, and that is the

518
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 2: so called finding at the Temple story in the Gospel

519
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 2: of Luke, which is essentially kind of a boy wonder story.

520
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 2: It is that Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the

521
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 2: temple and then they leave and then realize that he's

522
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 2: not with them anymore, so they go back to the

523
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 2: temple and he is there teaching the wise men about

524
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:54,560
Speaker 2: the law and about the scripture. So he's showing off

525
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 2: just his great learning and intellect even as a child.

526
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I definitely this one from Sunday School days

527
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:02,600
Speaker 1: of old.

528
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 2: But if you go outside of the New Testament canon,

529
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 2: there are gospels from the ancient world that do talk

530
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 2: about that tell other stories of Jesus as a child,

531
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 2: including the frankly hilarious Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This is

532
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 2: a text from I think it's generally believed to be

533
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 2: from the second century that you can find and read

534
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,479
Speaker 2: online in an English translation. The translation I found was

535
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 2: by M. R. James from Clarendon Press, Oxford, nineteen twenty four,

536
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 2: published in a collection called the Apocryphal New Testament. I

537
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 2: think the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is sometimes considered a

538
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 2: Gnostic text, but I know there are some texts that

539
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 2: were previously considered gnostic that now scholars don't so much

540
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 2: think of as gnostic, So I'm not sure where this

541
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 2: lands on the gnosticism scale of today. But the stories

542
00:31:55,840 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 2: in it are wild and consist of child jes running around,

543
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 2: actually Jesus basically in this is Damien from the Omen.

544
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:10,200
Speaker 2: He's just running around cursing and killing other children. So

545
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 2: there's like a scene where he is playing by a brook,

546
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 2: and he at one point he takes these he takes

547
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 2: clay and fashions that into twelve little birds made out

548
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 2: of clay. And then baby Jesus is accused of having

549
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 2: violated the Sabbath because he did this on the Sabbath day.

550
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 2: And then he gets mad and rebukes that, and he

551
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:38,120
Speaker 2: turns the clay sparrows into living sparrows and they fly away.

552
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: I have to say too, this version of it that

553
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 1: you shared with me, it's really hard not to read

554
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: it in your head in the voice of like an

555
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 1: ecclesiastical eric Idol from Monty Python and in the Holy Grail,

556
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: you know, reading about the Holy hand grenade.

557
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not going to do eric Idle voice, but

558
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 2: you can imagine eric Idol as I read from the following.

559
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: This is the m R.

560
00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 2: James translation. It says, but the son of Annas, the scribe,

561
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 2: was standing there with Joseph, and he took a branch

562
00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 2: of a willow and dispersed the waters which Jesus had

563
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 2: gathered together. Oh yeah, Jesus he gathered together waters from

564
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 2: the from the brook.

565
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: I guess.

566
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 2: So he does this. And when Jesus saw what was done.

567
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:19,240
Speaker 2: He was wroth and said unto him, Oh, evil, ungodly

568
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 2: and foolish one, what hurt did the pools and the waters?

569
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 2: Do thee behold?

570
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: Now?

571
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 2: Also, thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt

572
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 2: not bear leaves, neither root nor fruit. And straightway that

573
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 2: lad withered up Holy, But Jesus departed and went unto

574
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 2: Joseph's house. But the parents of him that was withered

575
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 2: took him up, bewailing his youth, and brought him to

576
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 2: Joseph and accused him for that, Thou hast such a child,

577
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 2: which doeth such deeds. And then I'm not going to

578
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 2: keep reading, but it goes. Jesus gets like mad at

579
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 2: the people who were accusing them, and further curses and

580
00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 2: kills people. It's intense.

581
00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: So Babe, the kid Jesus straight space vampire. This kid

582
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 1: essentially yes, withered him right there on the spot.

583
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, it's like the movie Life Force. So

584
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:11,399
Speaker 2: it's interesting. I don't know. One thing I don't fully

585
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:15,839
Speaker 2: understand is how this type of story would have been

586
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,879
Speaker 2: received by its intended audience. So, if you are one

587
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 2: of the people reading this story in the second century,

588
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 2: and you think this is an authentic story about the

589
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 2: child Jesus, Like what are you supposed to think about it? Like, wow,

590
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 2: he did you know? He really did show that kid

591
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:34,240
Speaker 2: or I'm not sure.

592
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like they're different. Way. You can sort of

593
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: read this and instantly go in the Damien direction like

594
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:42,160
Speaker 1: that's dangerous for a child to have those kind of powers,

595
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:44,919
Speaker 1: or I can easily imagine someone going in a more

596
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: sort of theological direction, like what does this say about

597
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 1: like the power and authority of Christ and so forth?

598
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:57,279
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's certainly a head scratcher for us.

599
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:00,479
Speaker 2: Anyway, I think later in the text he does sort

600
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 2: of take back or magically undo at least some maybe

601
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 2: all of his curses and killings.

602
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 1: So okay, well that would that would sound appropriate? Yeah,

603
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: all right, well let's move through some other examples from

604
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:17,800
Speaker 1: major world religions. First stop, the infant Muhammad, so according

605
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: to the Prophet Muhammad and Ritual by Marion Holmes Cats

606
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:25,359
Speaker 1: published in twenty tens, the Cambridge Companion to Muhammad. There

607
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:29,400
Speaker 1: are also miraculous accounts of Muhammad as a child quote

608
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 1: as depicted in the most widely circulated moulded texts the

609
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: infant prophet was a luminous figure whose radiance ignited his

610
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 1: mother's room and whose holiness blessed all who approached him.

611
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: So there are accounts of him as an infant causing

612
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:46,320
Speaker 1: the breast of his foster mother, who was also caring

613
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 1: for another child, to overflow with sustaining milk. This was

614
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: in a time of drought and famine, if I remember correctly.

615
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 1: And also it said that her emaciated donkey was invigorated

616
00:35:57,520 --> 00:35:59,760
Speaker 1: simply by being in the presence of the child.

617
00:36:00,160 --> 00:36:02,840
Speaker 2: Okay, so one could see this as a legend of

618
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 2: the prophets sort of prefiguring the future blessings he would

619
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 2: help facilitate bringing even in his childhood or even as

620
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 2: a baby.

621
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, his whole presence is just kind of brilliant and empowering,

622
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: all right. Up next, baby Krishna or Bala Krishna, which

623
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:20,000
Speaker 1: I think just means like the child Krishna or kid

624
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: Krishna or something to that effect. Is of course, Krishna

625
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 1: is the blue skinned avatar of Vishnu who plays a

626
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: major role in Hinduism. But he was also once a baby,

627
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 1: a little blue skinned baby, and there are a lot

628
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,840
Speaker 1: of tales of him and his exploits, and generally speaking,

629
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:38,359
Speaker 1: these tales tend to exhibit a very young child with

630
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:41,160
Speaker 1: abilities beyond his years, which is very much a part

631
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 1: of the whole divine boy archetype. But there's still also

632
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:47,000
Speaker 1: a trickster element to him as well, with the main

633
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 1: thing that he does being the stealing of butter, like

634
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 1: it's such a big deal. You'll find numerous images and

635
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: illustrations of this blue skinned Krishna stealing a little butter,

636
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: And so you have infant Krishna also doing things that

637
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:05,440
Speaker 1: are not necessarily or certainly not attributes of the adult Krishna.

638
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: Like adult Krishna is not going around stealing butter.

639
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:10,800
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, so you attached a picture of Bala

640
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:13,799
Speaker 2: Krishna here and does he have his hand in a

641
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:14,439
Speaker 2: butter jar?

642
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: I believe so, I believe that is what this image represents.

643
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,360
Speaker 1: And there are numerous images that have this basic this

644
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:24,319
Speaker 1: this basic theme going on.

645
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 2: This is his trying to get the Marischino cherries experience exactly.

646
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: There's also another tale that I ran across, and this

647
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: is one of another child accusing child Krishna of eating mud,

648
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 1: So basically saying, mom, Krishna is eating mud make him

649
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 1: stock right, and so his foster mother says, okay, Krishna,

650
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: open your mouth, let's see. And then he opens his mouth,

651
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: but within his mouth she sees herself and then has

652
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 1: a cosmic vision of all universal matter within. So that

653
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:02,399
Speaker 1: love because it starts out like seeming like a very

654
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:05,439
Speaker 1: childhood story, and then takes a sharp turn into more

655
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:08,280
Speaker 1: the sort of an ally and become death, the destroyer

656
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: of worlds, you know, that sort of aspect of the

657
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:12,360
Speaker 1: grown Krishna.

658
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 2: Because all of my references are low brow trash, what

659
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 2: I'm imagining with this inspiring myth is Tim Curry is

660
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 2: penny Wise opening his mouth to show the dead lights.

661
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:26,840
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean kind of a similar vibe,

662
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: except on the sacred end of the spectrum, as opposed

663
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: to the horrific. All right, next up, baby Buddha. Yes,

664
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: And I have to admit I hadn't really thought about

665
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 1: this as much of a possibility, because first of all,

666
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with any stories of the historical Buddha

667
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: as an infant am I sort of go to understanding

668
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 1: of Sidhartagatoma, the man who had become the Buddha, is

669
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: that of a prince who undergoes an existential crisis and

670
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,239
Speaker 1: turns his back on riches to instead pursue equanimity, right,

671
00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's kind of the standard. But they're all,

672
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,240
Speaker 1: of course, a lot of different interpretations of and writings

673
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:06,920
Speaker 1: about the Buddha, and some of them do discuss the

674
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: idea of the Buddha as a baby, and in fact,

675
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:15,399
Speaker 1: there are traditions depicting the newborn Buddha or Buddha as

676
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 1: a divine child in both Chinese and Japanese traditions.

677
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:21,759
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this image of Hercules. Sorry, yes, please do.

678
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 1: The Oh yeah, let's move things back in the mythic direction,

679
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: because of course we have to mention Hercules. Baby Hercules,

680
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 1: famous for strangling the snake that was placed by an

681
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 1: assassin in his cradle, and if memory serves, the Luferigno

682
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: Hercules movie that we watched on Weird House Cinema also

683
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:40,680
Speaker 1: has a scene with baby Hercules strangling snakes.

684
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 2: Bam and hold, I'm sorry you attached an image. It's like,

685
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 2: I don't know, a mosaic of baby Heracles that does

686
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:52,160
Speaker 2: look like it's from the ancient world in which the

687
00:39:52,280 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 2: artist has tried to simultaneously capture like muscles because it's Heracles,

688
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:02,920
Speaker 2: so he's muscily, but also give him the little like

689
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 2: chubstick legs of a baby.

690
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a strange image. It's some sort of like

691
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:10,960
Speaker 1: mosaic image. I don't know the exact origins of it.

692
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 1: But yeah, he has a serpent in each hand, like

693
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:18,279
Speaker 1: crushing their necks, strangling them. A very fierce looking baby here.

694
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 2: So he's just got a little like balloon legs like

695
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 2: a baby has. But then also some ripples indicating he's

696
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 2: ripped underneath that.

697
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's uncanny. Now, briefly skipping into

698
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,759
Speaker 1: more modern ideas of the divine child, I mean, I'd

699
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 1: be remiss if I didn't point out that in our

700
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,800
Speaker 1: modern myth making, Anakin Skywalker is a child with abilities

701
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: to surpass that of other children and even humans human adults.

702
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:46,720
Speaker 1: In his midst, at a very young age, he's already

703
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 1: a phenomenal pilot, and his ability as a pilot factor

704
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: into his earliest adventures.

705
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,920
Speaker 2: Is he not also a product of parthenogenesis?

706
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:58,800
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, so yeah, Anakin, that's a choice,

707
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:03,760
Speaker 1: good George Lucas. It was born out of the force

708
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: there are various theological treatments of this as well. Then,

709
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 1: of course, there are three main examples of exceptional children

710
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 1: in Frank Herbert's Dune saga. You have a Leah a

711
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: Treades who pops up in the second half of the

712
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:23,479
Speaker 1: book Dune. So she hasn't appeared in the new movies yet,

713
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:26,799
Speaker 1: and due to the exposure to her exposure to the

714
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:29,319
Speaker 1: water of life while still in the womb, she's born

715
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 1: with the full powers of an adult Benny jesterid reverend Mother.

716
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: I think people who've seen the David Lynch adaptation are

717
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: well familiar with this figure, and it certainly comes off.

718
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 1: I would say that the Dune saga in general embraces

719
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: the creepiness of the divine child as well as the

720
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 1: you know, the sacred aspects.

721
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 2: I was about to say, can we admit that this

722
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 2: character is creepy and maybe is supposed to be creepy?

723
00:41:55,280 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: Certainly Lynch plays. It'll be interesting to see what the

724
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 1: new film adaptation how it approaches it. But yeah, I mean,

725
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:03,440
Speaker 1: how can she not be because she's a small child

726
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 1: talking about like ruthless murder and so forth, and revenge,

727
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 1: and it is very unchildlike in the way that she

728
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: talks to people.

729
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:15,440
Speaker 2: You don't want a child telling you who is and

730
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:16,799
Speaker 2: is not the quisat's head.

731
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:22,280
Speaker 1: Rack. Yeah. Now, by the third book, in Children of Doune,

732
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:25,400
Speaker 1: we have two more super Dune babies. We have Leto

733
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: the second and Ganima Treades, who both possess adult consciousness

734
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 1: before birth due to their mother's spice consumption, and so

735
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of space in Children of

736
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 1: Dune and Children of Dune is a long book, or

737
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 1: at least in my experience, it was a long read.

738
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 1: There are a lot of scenes of these two like

739
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 1: talking to and out talking adults and like burning adults

740
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 1: with various insults and reminders that they are in fact

741
00:42:56,600 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 1: of brilliant minds, just sort of encased in the boi

742
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 1: of small children. Oh yeah, yeah, plenty of creepy content

743
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 1: going on in this book as well well.

744
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:09,360
Speaker 2: Rob, I think we need to wrap up today's episode there,

745
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,399
Speaker 2: but I'm loving your super baby sidebars, and I think

746
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:14,279
Speaker 2: we will have to continue this in the next part

747
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 2: of the series as well, So we'll be back next

748
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:20,759
Speaker 2: time to talk more about childhood amnesia, this gap in

749
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 2: the memory of children, what might cause it, and other

750
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 2: interesting facts about it, and yeah, we are certainly not

751
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 2: done with super babies and babies with super brains all right.

752
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

753
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find our

754
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to

755
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind podcast feed, which you can get wherever

756
00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:42,880
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and will remind you that Mondays

757
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: that's our listener mail episode. Wednesdays we do a short

758
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:48,719
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact episode, and on Fridays we

759
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: set aside most series concerns to just talk about a

760
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema.

761
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you

762
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:58,720
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

763
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

764
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

765
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

766
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 2: dot com.

767
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:18,000
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768
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:21,920
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769
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:38,000
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