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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the old Vault. Today we're doing

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Speaker 1: an episode on Lot's Wife and the idea of turning

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Speaker 1: an animal into a pillar of salt. This episode originally

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Speaker 1: published on August nineteen. All right, let's dive right in.

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

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. In today. You know, I didn't

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Speaker 1: think about this until just this moment. But this is

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Speaker 1: another geo mythology episode, isn't it It ultimately is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we are, of course talking about an often overlooked figure

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Speaker 1: from from the Old Testament and from from from from

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Speaker 1: Jewish smith and legend. We're going to be talking about

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Speaker 1: lots wife. That's right. The story of Lot's Wife is

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Speaker 1: a traditional Jewish story that comes from the Torah. It's

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Speaker 1: from the Book of Genesis, chapter nineteen. So I guess

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Speaker 1: we should explain the context of the story before we

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Speaker 1: read the relevant passage. All right, So We're in the

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Speaker 1: part of the Book of Genesis after God has revealed

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Speaker 1: himself to Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish religion, and

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Speaker 1: so Abraham now has a relationship with God, and we're

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Speaker 1: learning about Abraham and Uh and some of his relatives,

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Speaker 1: and one of his relatives is his nephew Lot. That's right.

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Speaker 1: So basically what happens is Abraham catches wind that three

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Speaker 1: angels are about to smite the cities of Sodom and gomor. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The reasoning is that these cities are very bad and

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Speaker 1: God doesn't like them, and they're full of wicked people.

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Speaker 1: But Abraham tries to reason with God. He says, now,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, are you going to destroy all the

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Speaker 1: good people in these cities along with all the wicked people?

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Speaker 1: So it begins to wade into theologically murky waters. It like,

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Speaker 1: if if bad things must happen to the bad people,

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Speaker 1: what about the good people in those cities? What should

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Speaker 1: we do about that? Right? And he actually is successful

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Speaker 1: in negotiating with God because he argues him down basically

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Speaker 1: because God, at first it's like, okay, what if they're

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Speaker 1: fifty people, fifty good people in the city, would that

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Speaker 1: be enough to spare the city, and God says, yes, sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's okay, you make a good point. He's like, but

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Speaker 1: the neighborhood starts hedging, right, He's like, I wait, I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I can find fifty good people, I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's that's a lot, right, But yeah, it begins talking

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Speaker 1: him down, Well what about forty five, what about forty, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: Ultimately brings it down to a mere ten righteous individuals

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Speaker 1: in the city, and and God agrees, Okay, if you

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Speaker 1: can find ten righteous people, I'll spare these cities, right.

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Speaker 1: And so then a couple of angels are sent to

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Speaker 1: the city, presumably I guess, to like do some recon

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Speaker 1: to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, we're dealing with you know,

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Speaker 1: this is the Old Testament God, whose powers are at

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Speaker 1: once like more like dramatic and cataclysmic, but also requires

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Speaker 1: like foot soldiers to literally go to the town to

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Speaker 1: conduct surveillance a little recon. Yeah, there's less of a

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Speaker 1: sense of sort of automatic omniscitions. It's more like, you know,

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Speaker 1: he gets information from beings that work for him, right,

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Speaker 1: And so he sends these two angels down to to

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Speaker 1: scope things out, to do the count and they visit

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Speaker 1: Abraham's nephew a lot. Now the angels are in disguise,

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Speaker 1: of course, and and this is ultimately a trope that

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Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of different myths and legends throughout history,

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Speaker 1: the idea that the people that are coming to to

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Speaker 1: pay you visit, whether you're having a chance encounter with

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Speaker 1: might actually be divine beings in disguise. Uh yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean this does show up a lot in the Bible.

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Speaker 1: In fact, it also shows up later in in Christian

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Speaker 1: mythology with like the Parables of Jesus where he talks

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Speaker 1: about like, you know, the person who you show a

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Speaker 1: kindness to or you shoot you do not show a

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Speaker 1: kindness too? Might have been me right, yeah. But but

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Speaker 1: then also there are other tales and other traditions that involved,

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Speaker 1: like this, a mysterious stranger who turns out to be

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Speaker 1: a powerful being of some sort of the other. And

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Speaker 1: as this tale makes clear, one of the most important

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Speaker 1: ways of being righteous in the ancient world was showing hospitality. Actually,

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Speaker 1: this is something that I think is under emphasized in

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Speaker 1: a lot of the like morality tales of today. You

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Speaker 1: see it hugely important in the mythology and religion of

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Speaker 1: the ancient world is like being a good host. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: especially with the story of Lot's wife. Like growing up,

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Speaker 1: I vaguely remember it being brought up in in church

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Speaker 1: from time to time, but more more to the point,

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Speaker 1: you would see it in like like chick tracks, like

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Speaker 1: some sort of you know, you know, cartoon that is

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Speaker 1: ultimately kind of like wallowing an awfulness and and trying

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Speaker 1: and using the story to spin off a really um

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Speaker 1: homophobic message. Oh yeah, that's weird, like I think, especially

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Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, for some reason, the Sodom and

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Speaker 1: Gomorrah story came to be associated with condemnations of homosexuality,

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Speaker 1: which is not really what what the story in the

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Speaker 1: Bible is focused on, right, Yeah, Ultimately there is a

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Speaker 1: story about hospitality, and as it turns out, you know, Lots,

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Speaker 1: a Lot and his wife are really the only people

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Speaker 1: that are the show any hospitality to these two angels

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Speaker 1: in disguise. Right, They take the angels in, hosts them

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Speaker 1: at their house, and then the story turns fairly horrific,

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Speaker 1: like a mob shows up outside the house demanding to

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Speaker 1: rape the angels that are staying there with him, and

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Speaker 1: Lot tries to offer up his daughters instead to the mob,

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Speaker 1: and the mob does not acquiesce to this, and then

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Speaker 1: the angels instruct a Lot to take his wife and

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Speaker 1: his children and flee the city because the city is

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Speaker 1: going to be destroyed. Yeah. Basically, they're like, look, we're

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Speaker 1: not gonna hit our ten righteous individual quota here, but

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Speaker 1: you two seem alright, so you should clear out. And

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Speaker 1: so they do. They attempt to clear out, to flee

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Speaker 1: the city right as it's about to be smited, and

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Speaker 1: uh and and but they warned them like, look, you

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Speaker 1: cannot turn around. You cannot look back at the city

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Speaker 1: while it is a mid smite, or it's gonna be

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Speaker 1: very unpleasant for you. Uh. And so they they're heading out,

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Speaker 1: they're fleeing the instruction. But then Lot's wife either she

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Speaker 1: doesn't listen or she can't help herself, but she turns

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Speaker 1: around and looks backward at the city as it is

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Speaker 1: destroyed by the divine fire. And then this turns her

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Speaker 1: into a pillar of salt. Yeah, so I want to

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Speaker 1: read this passage from the King James translation. It goes,

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Speaker 1: the sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered

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Speaker 1: into Zoar. And that's like another village that they were

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Speaker 1: fleeing to a small place. Then the Lord reigned upon

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Speaker 1: Sodom and upon Gomor. A brimstone and fire from the

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Speaker 1: Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities and

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Speaker 1: all the plane, and all the inhabitants of the cities,

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Speaker 1: and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife

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Speaker 1: looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar

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Speaker 1: of salt, A pillar of salt. This always, uh, this,

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Speaker 1: this is the detail that always captivated me the most.

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Speaker 1: It's a strange It's like an intriguing, sad, tragic story.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't, you know, it doesn't really explain her motives. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And that's thing that a lot of people have been

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Speaker 1: able to read back into with like literature about this story.

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Speaker 1: The one main thing that comes to mind for me

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Speaker 1: is the poem by the Russian poet and Chamadeva called

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Speaker 1: Lot's Wife. Do you mind if I read this here?

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Speaker 1: This is the translation by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward.

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Speaker 1: It goes, and the just man trailed God's shining agent

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Speaker 1: over a black mountain in his giant track, while a

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Speaker 1: restless voice kept harrying his woman. It's not too late.

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Speaker 1: You can still look back at the red towers of

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Speaker 1: your native Sodom, the square where once you sang the

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Speaker 1: spinning shed, at the empty windows set in the tall

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Speaker 1: house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage bed. A

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Speaker 1: single glance, a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes

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Speaker 1: before she made a sound, her body flaked into transparent salt,

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Speaker 1: and her swift legs rooted to the ground. Who will

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Speaker 1: grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant

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Speaker 1: for our concern? Yet in my heart I'll never deny

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Speaker 1: her who suffered death because she chose to turn. Oh

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Speaker 1: that's beautiful and sad, and it captures, you know, ultimately

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Speaker 1: a lot of the feelings one has when you encounter this,

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Speaker 1: this passage where yes, she seems to to perish um,

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Speaker 1: you know, for the smallest shite. You know, all she

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Speaker 1: did is glance backwards. Well yeah, And the what I

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Speaker 1: love about this poem is it emphasizes not the external

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Speaker 1: view of the city as this place of wickedness that

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Speaker 1: must be destroyed, but the view of it as her home.

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Speaker 1: You know, she's looking back to the place where her home,

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Speaker 1: the way that she loved all, you know, all her

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Speaker 1: good memories are there. Yeah, because one of the things

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Speaker 1: it kind of comes back to our discussions about um,

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Speaker 1: you know, identity and like what makes a person who

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Speaker 1: they are? Is it internal or is it external? And

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Speaker 1: you know, if if a righteous person was able to

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Speaker 1: live in this city, it stands to reason that the

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Speaker 1: place was not like otherwise completely um you know, exotically evil.

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Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean that that gives it obviously the

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Speaker 1: character of myth like this doesn't need like a historical

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Speaker 1: account because you cannot plausibly imagine a city in which

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Speaker 1: everybody except one family is just evil to the core. Right. Uh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's pure mythspinning. Even though that kind of myth spinning

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Speaker 1: still goes on today, um as we consider other places

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Speaker 1: and and and then and people from other places, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: But of course this hasn't stopped numerous You see a

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Speaker 1: lot of efforts, especially if you're just searching around online,

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Speaker 1: people looking for the historical accuracy of of Sodom and

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Speaker 1: gomorrah um and you know, in in similar cases from

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Speaker 1: the Old Testament. Well, yeah, I think that's a good

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Speaker 1: thing to note because we're gonna be talking about some

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Speaker 1: geomethology in today's episode. Possible connections between between mythology and

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Speaker 1: geological facts about the world. But those those connections are

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Speaker 1: always hypothetical. We can just discuss possible ways that they

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Speaker 1: line up. But I just want to say is a

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Speaker 1: note that when you're reading articles about this kind of thing,

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Speaker 1: you always have to be wary and try to separate out,

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Speaker 1: like what are the facts that are being reported versus

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Speaker 1: what are the conclusions you're being invited or even explicitly

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Speaker 1: told to draw from them, because they're just all kinds

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Speaker 1: of reports about archaeological or geological findings from the ancient

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Speaker 1: levant with headlines like Bible story confirmed, you know. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And then actually when you read, okay, well, what are

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Speaker 1: the facts they're talking about? It might be something like,

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Speaker 1: for example, there was a settlement in the Dead Sea

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Speaker 1: region that was depopulated at some point, and therefore this

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Speaker 1: settlement must be the Sodom from the Bible, and it

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Speaker 1: confirms the Bible story is true about the Brimstone and

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Speaker 1: the angels and all that. Yeah. I feel like reads

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Speaker 1: like this they tend to, you know, can completely discredit

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Speaker 1: the power of mythology, like it's it's he, it's everything

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Speaker 1: has to be considered as as as a potential historical reality,

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Speaker 1: whereas mythology is this thing that you know, resides between

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Speaker 1: objective reality and our perception. It is this I mean,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's not just mirror, you know, made up

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Speaker 1: stuff like mythology. You know, it is essentially the skeletal

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Speaker 1: system on which we we build ourselves in our culture. Well,

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Speaker 1: an important part of culture, I think is is conceiving

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Speaker 1: of mythology is perhaps true without being factual, maybe meaning

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Speaker 1: it somehow contains wisdom, but it is not like an

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Speaker 1: accurate description of things that happened. Uh and and the

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Speaker 1: emphasis on like people this must be an accurate description

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Speaker 1: of things that happened. First of all, it's such a

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Speaker 1: confused way of looking at archaeology. I don't think we

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Speaker 1: can even be confident that the people originally telling stories

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Speaker 1: like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's Wife

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Speaker 1: and the Pillar of Salt meant for the stories to

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Speaker 1: be taken as literal fact. Maybe they did, but I'm

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Speaker 1: not so sure they meant that right, Because, as we've

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Speaker 1: said plenty of times before, we don't want it to

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Speaker 1: discredit the creative abilities of ancient people's and we also

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Speaker 1: don't want to discredit, like things like dreams or certainly

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Speaker 1: um in cultures where there was some sort of a

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Speaker 1: tradition of you know, hallucinatory or psychedelic substance use, like

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Speaker 1: that could have been a factor as well. Like there

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Speaker 1: there are there are various ways that one can acquire

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Speaker 1: the elements of these stories, and then of course they're

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Speaker 1: build upon them through uh, the oral tradition. Yeah exactly.

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Speaker 1: But I mean even even if you think about sometimes

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Speaker 1: myths just being stories that people made up for a reason,

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Speaker 1: the reason might have been something like to convey a point,

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Speaker 1: to explain the origin of something, to emphasize some kind

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Speaker 1: of moral value that you wanted people to take away.

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Speaker 1: Now that this story is kind of a jumble of

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Speaker 1: things that are morally absolutely horrific to us today, but

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Speaker 1: also like in there there is some stuff about that

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Speaker 1: that's worth thinking about, about hospitality, about like taking people

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Speaker 1: in and protecting them under your roof. But yeah, so

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Speaker 1: it just gets so weird when we modern people look

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Speaker 1: at like scientific evidence and then we say, aha, it

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Speaker 1: confirms the story from mythology is true. Uh, It's like

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Speaker 1: it's an impulse that leads to bad reasoning and over

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Speaker 1: interpretation of little bits of physical evidence. But I think

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Speaker 1: it also most of the time just completely misses the

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Speaker 1: point of the story, right, and then you end up

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Speaker 1: kind of like busting your own myth, right, you're kind

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Speaker 1: of like like bye bye. So, you know, veheminently attempting

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Speaker 1: to connect mythology with objective reality, like it more often

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Speaker 1: than not, it just it feels fake. It feels like

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Speaker 1: you're trying too hard to make this magical unreality real

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Speaker 1: and in doing so, you just make it feel like

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Speaker 1: it's just made up stuff. Yeah, totally. Should we take

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Speaker 1: a break and then come back and talk about what

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Speaker 1: kind of myth this might be? Let's do it, all right,

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Speaker 1: we're back here on this episode of Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. We were talking about lots wife looking you know,

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Speaker 1: for looking at this as a story of geo mythology,

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Speaker 1: and later we'll even get into a little bit of chemistry.

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Speaker 1: All right. So there's the question of what kind of

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Speaker 1: myth this is? The idea that Lot's wife turned and

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Speaker 1: looked back at her home and then turned into a

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Speaker 1: pillar of salt. A lot of the myths from the

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Speaker 1: ancient Neis and actually from all over the world I

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Speaker 1: think can can be interpreted as origin myths, also known

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Speaker 1: as etiological myths. We've talked about this on the show before,

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Speaker 1: but this means that they explain the beginning or the

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Speaker 1: cause of something, and there are a lot of different

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Speaker 1: forms this can take. One of the most common kinds

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Speaker 1: of etiological myths is the myth that explains the name

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Speaker 1: used for something. Ancient people usually didn't have the tools

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Speaker 1: to study etymology and understand the origins of words and

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Speaker 1: names that passed down through the culture, so a lot

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Speaker 1: of ideological myths I think are built around false cognates

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Speaker 1: words that sound similar but aren't actually related. And this

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Speaker 1: would be like if I said, the capital, why is

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Speaker 1: the capital of the United States called Washington? Well, once

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Speaker 1: there was a man who lived there and he washed

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Speaker 1: himself in the Potomac River all the time. He washed

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Speaker 1: himself so much that he that they would walk by

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Speaker 1: and they would say, there's old Washington washing himself in

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Speaker 1: a way that never ceases, and that's where the town

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Speaker 1: gets its name. Obviously that would be untrue, but that's

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Speaker 1: that's kind of like a name based ideological myth. A

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Speaker 1: lot of other ideological myths I think explain the origins

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Speaker 1: of cultural practices or rituals. So why do we cut

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Speaker 1: a branch of mistletoe and bring two bulls on the

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Speaker 1: solstice to do this ritual? Well, it's because once the

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Speaker 1: god Thor was standing under some mistletoe and it felt,

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Speaker 1: you know, like, so they come up with something that

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Speaker 1: weaves together all of these practices or elements of a

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Speaker 1: ceremony that you don't remember the actual origins of because

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Speaker 1: it's been passed down for generations, right, And these are

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Speaker 1: the these would be the kind of stories that would

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Speaker 1: give your everyday rituals and even just every day you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of vaguely ritualized activities, meaning because you are embodying

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Speaker 1: some sort of mythic motif. Right, you're recreating the actions

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Speaker 1: of the gods when you do this thing now, and

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Speaker 1: so a similar thing happens natural phenomenon and natural objects.

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Speaker 1: Why do we have thunder and lightning? It's because of

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Speaker 1: a storm, god throwing angry bolts of lightning, or fighting

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Speaker 1: a war in the heavens. Why do we have four

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Speaker 1: seasons and we can't grow crops in the winter, Well,

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Speaker 1: because in the fall and winter, Persephone has to live

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Speaker 1: in Hades, and her mother Demeter, the goddess of the harvest.

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Speaker 1: She mourns her absence and won't allow crops to grow.

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Speaker 1: But then in the spring and summer persephony can come

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Speaker 1: up again and demeanter rejoices and nourishes or crops. And

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Speaker 1: there are also versions of these natural ideologies just for

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Speaker 1: objects in the world. When you know, there will sometimes

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Speaker 1: be a myth explaining the existence of a mountain or

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Speaker 1: of a giant crater or something like that. Yeah, we've

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Speaker 1: discussed some of these in the show before, like ideas

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Speaker 1: of basically topography being formed from the say, the bodies

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Speaker 1: of fallen gods, and like, yeah, and so could the

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Speaker 1: story of Lot's wife be a myth like this existing

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Speaker 1: to explain the origin of something we don't know? But

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Speaker 1: I do think it's possible, And so I want to

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Speaker 1: look at a passage from Josephus, the first century Jewish historian.

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Speaker 1: He wrote about the story of Lot's wife in his

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Speaker 1: work known as the Antiquities of the Jews. And this

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Speaker 1: is from book one, chapter eleven, translated by William Wiston,

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Speaker 1: And it starts off talking about the wickedness of the

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Speaker 1: people who lived in Sodom, saying that Lot fled the

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Speaker 1: city with his wife and daughters. And then Josephus writes,

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Speaker 1: God then cast a thunderbolt upon the city and set

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Speaker 1: it on fire with its inhabitants, and laid waste the

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Speaker 1: country with the like burning, as I formerly said when

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Speaker 1: I wrote the Jewish War. But Lot's wife, continually turning

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Speaker 1: back to view the city as she went from it,

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Speaker 1: and being too nicely inquisitive what would become of it,

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Speaker 1: although God had forbidden her so to do, was changed

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Speaker 1: into a pillar of salt. For I have seen it,

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Speaker 1: and it remains at this day. Lot's wife confirmed. Yes, exactly,

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Speaker 1: Bible story confirmed. That's Josephus's headline. But I mean, WHOA,

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Speaker 1: that's interesting. So Josephas in the first century CE is

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Speaker 1: saying that he personally saw lots wife frozen in time

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Speaker 1: as a pillar of salt, hundreds of years after the

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Speaker 1: events of this myth allegedly took place. Now, I think

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Speaker 1: we can assume that joseph Has probably wasn't lying about

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Speaker 1: having seen something here. That's something that he thought was

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Speaker 1: Lot's wife. But at the same time, I think we

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Speaker 1: can probably safely assume that whatever he saw was not

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Speaker 1: actually a human woman who got turned into sodium chloride.

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Speaker 1: So what could he be talking about, Well, the obvious

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Speaker 1: answer would be, if not an actual woman that was

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Speaker 1: turned into salt, something that looks like a humanoid figure,

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Speaker 1: something that looks like it could be interpreted as such. Right,

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Speaker 1: we need to start by stipulating again that we don't know.

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Speaker 1: We don't know the answer to this, but if we

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Speaker 1: want to examine some possibilities, we can look at modern analogies. Now, today,

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Speaker 1: there are at least two different things I've found that

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Speaker 1: regularly get called Lot's wife, and these are strange geological

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Speaker 1: formations or pillars in the area of the Dead Sea.

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Speaker 1: One is an odd looking rock pillar standing on a

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Speaker 1: cliff top that overlooks the Dead Sea on the Jordan's side,

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Speaker 1: which is over on the eastern side, and it does

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Speaker 1: have an eerily human posture it. It looks like some

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Speaker 1: local tourism concerns advertised this as Lot's wife. And I

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Speaker 1: couldn't figure out how long people have been referring to

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Speaker 1: this particular formation as Lot's wife, but at least today

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Speaker 1: and for some years now, they've been calling it that,

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Speaker 1: and it does look creepy. Yeah, I'd love to hear

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Speaker 1: from some of our listeners who have visited the area

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Speaker 1: or reside in the area, you can weigh in on,

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Speaker 1: you know, just what was your experience looking at this

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Speaker 1: thing that is referred to as Lot's Wife. There is

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Speaker 1: a there's a kind of agony to the posture of

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Speaker 1: the mineral. I mean, uh, it does. It's got some

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Speaker 1: pathos to it. You can see it. I can see, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I like, I get the acumen of a poem almost

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Speaker 1: out of this rock pillar. Another thing that is often

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Speaker 1: called Lot's Wife is a geological formation on the opposite

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Speaker 1: side of the Dead Sea, on the west side, on

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Speaker 1: a hilltop now known as Mount Sodom. This formation, also

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Speaker 1: called Lot's Wife, is kind of funny when you actually

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Speaker 1: see people approach it, Like I watched a video of

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Speaker 1: some tourists just taking video of themselves going up to

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Speaker 1: see lots Wife. And this one is funny because it's

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Speaker 1: less suggestive of human posture and and shape than the

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Speaker 1: formation on the Jordan's side, and because it's gigantic. If

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Speaker 1: it were a Lot's wife, Lot's Wife was huge. And

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Speaker 1: I should also point out that, like sub subsequent geologic

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Speaker 1: formations in other parts of the world have been dubbed

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Speaker 1: lots wife merely because they sort of vaguely resemble a

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Speaker 1: humanoid form. And I think arguably that's I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: what's happening in all of these cases. It's like it

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Speaker 1: kind of looks like a person let and then we

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Speaker 1: have this myth of a person having turned to salt

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Speaker 1: or to some stone like substance, and that is like

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Speaker 1: the natural thing to call it. Right now. Mount Sodom

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Speaker 1: is interesting because it is actually almost entirely made of salt.

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Speaker 1: It's like more than salt, with a few layers of

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Speaker 1: other strata. It's got things like limestone, and it hosts

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Speaker 1: a gigantic salt cave that is miles long. But there

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Speaker 1: is no evidence whatsoever that either of these formations were

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Speaker 1: once a human. They appear to be fairly normal mineral columns.

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Speaker 1: But one could pretty easily imagine one of two scenarios.

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Speaker 1: You've either got the myth already existing independently, and somebody

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Speaker 1: who had both read the story and seen the geological

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Speaker 1: features put two and two together, and then people like

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Speaker 1: Josephas come along and hear from those people and say, look,

400
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Speaker 1: this is Lot's wife, and why would you question it? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like the whole mermaid scenario. DIDs you know,

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Speaker 1: to what extent to someone see a manatee and think, oh,

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Speaker 1: it's a mermaid, or associate with the mermaid's tail the

404
00:21:44,359 --> 00:21:47,600
Speaker 1: tale of the Mermaid, or is it the reverse right

405
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Speaker 1: where someone sees manatees and it makes sense of it,

406
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Speaker 1: they create a story of mermaids exactly. And that second

407
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Speaker 1: part is the other option. I was going to say

408
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Speaker 1: that the actual geo mythology inspiration, maybe some tribe in

409
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Speaker 1: the ancient Dead Sea Reden was aware of either one

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Speaker 1: of these geological formations or another one like it that

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Speaker 1: doesn't exist anymore, that is not identified the same way now,

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Speaker 1: maybe eroded, But anyway, they were aware of some kind

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Speaker 1: of geological formation that looks kind of like a human,

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Speaker 1: and then a great storyteller comes along to come up

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Speaker 1: with a tale of how that person was crystallized in

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Speaker 1: place there, And that's why you're always hospitable to visitors. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, mythologies are interesting that way because they're often

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Speaker 1: they're often a woven together tapestry of pre existing streams

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Speaker 1: of storytelling tradition. I can absolutely see the possibility of

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Speaker 1: how like a story that was once about you know,

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Speaker 1: showing hospitality to agents of the Lord, were just showing

422
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Speaker 1: hospitality in general, got woven together with like somebody just

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Speaker 1: stuck in ideological myth into part of it. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean we even see this, of course, with the

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Speaker 1: evolution of of modern tales that are told you know,

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Speaker 1: where there'll be one version of it. Like you just

427
00:22:54,840 --> 00:22:58,080
Speaker 1: look at our comic book characters, right, the evolution of

428
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:01,400
Speaker 1: some of them from the characters of pure exploitation two

429
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:04,080
Speaker 1: characters that are being used to you know, discuss some

430
00:23:04,119 --> 00:23:07,960
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, socially relevant topic. Uh So,

431
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:12,120
Speaker 1: I mean, stories evolve, That's that's essential to the human experience.

432
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:14,000
Speaker 1: And of course we see that in mythology as well.

433
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:16,679
Speaker 1: Uh you know, we always have to remember that the myths,

434
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:21,240
Speaker 1: even though they are often encountered in some stationary form

435
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:23,639
Speaker 1: recorded in a book that is at least presented to

436
00:23:23,680 --> 00:23:25,639
Speaker 1: you as if it has not changed over the course

437
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 1: of millennia, it is still a thing that is The

438
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:31,320
Speaker 1: story itself is something that is fluid and will have

439
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:34,040
Speaker 1: changed through time and through tellings. Yes, and as for

440
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:37,760
Speaker 1: a single ideological element being inserted into a story that

441
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:40,640
Speaker 1: already exists, you can see that in storytelling today. Think

442
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:43,679
Speaker 1: about how common it is for there to be like

443
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:47,080
Speaker 1: a historical story. I think the Forrest Gump, okay, movie

444
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: Forrest Gump. How many things are there in that story

445
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:52,880
Speaker 1: where you could have the story be pretty much exactly

446
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: the same without it except they inserted a little thing

447
00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: where like Forrest Gump invented to have a nice day slogan,

448
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,439
Speaker 1: you know, the T shirt with smiley face, or there

449
00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 1: are a bunch of things like that in the movie

450
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:07,360
Speaker 1: where they just insert a little fake ideology to say, oh,

451
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 1: and by the way, I remember this thing from history

452
00:24:09,359 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: Forest Gump did that? Wow, I forgot about that, the

453
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:15,200
Speaker 1: myth making of Forest Gump. I don't know why people

454
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:17,320
Speaker 1: like things like that so much, but they clearly do,

455
00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:19,679
Speaker 1: because it's in a lot of stories and movies to

456
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: just have a little thing that people recognize from the

457
00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:25,919
Speaker 1: real world and say, hey, this fictional character there. Actually

458
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: the reason that's that way I feel like stuff is

459
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: that there have been films to do that with a

460
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:32,800
Speaker 1: leaning tower of of pizza. Oh yeah, yeah, where where

461
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:35,800
Speaker 1: a character bumps into it and makes it crooked, you know,

462
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:40,120
Speaker 1: or something that out to that effect. Yeah, totally Superman movie,

463
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 1: maybe Superman like fixes it. Oh he fixes it. That

464
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 1: makes people mad. Why is it always that in Superman

465
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:52,399
Speaker 1: movies Superman is protecting monuments from destruction? I remember that,

466
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: especially being the case in Superman four, where like great

467
00:24:55,880 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: monuments are under attack by the villains and Superman has

468
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: to prevent them from being destroys. Right, it should be

469
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,399
Speaker 1: there the people in that are right. Yeah, But anyway,

470
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: I wanted to say something else about possible geological explanations

471
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,919
Speaker 1: for mythology like this. Another thing has to do with

472
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 1: salt formations around high salinity bodies of water. And there,

473
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:15,879
Speaker 1: of course is a famously salty body of water in

474
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 1: the vicinity here. Yeah, that's right. That the Dead Sea,

475
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 1: of course, which is not which is not an ocean.

476
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:23,359
Speaker 1: By the way, the Dead Sea is a is a

477
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:27,560
Speaker 1: hyper saline lake. It is like a super salty locked

478
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,440
Speaker 1: up lake. The water of the Dead Sea is fascinating.

479
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:33,880
Speaker 1: It is so salty that no large life forms dwell there.

480
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 1: No fish, no, no, no insects live in there, No

481
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:42,159
Speaker 1: plants live in there. There are some micro organisms I

482
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,800
Speaker 1: think that live around vents and stuff near the bottom

483
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:47,439
Speaker 1: of it. Right, and then in certain areas you'll find

484
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 1: a human tourists floating in it, right, and that's rather easily. Yes,

485
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 1: that's one of the fascinating things about the water there,

486
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 1: because it's so saline. I guess the density of the

487
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:59,199
Speaker 1: water is so much higher than normal. They say, it's

488
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: almost like you can sit on the water. You know,

489
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:05,480
Speaker 1: it's really hard to sink. You float so easily. Most

490
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 1: ocean water is about three point five percent salt in solution.

491
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: The Dead Sea is something like five to ten times

492
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: as briny as normal ocean water. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking

493
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: super salty like, uh, you know, the kind of similar

494
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: salinity of course one encounters in saltwater um isolation tanks

495
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,159
Speaker 1: of float tanks, you know, where you're you're floating in

496
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: a highly salty water that almost takes on this like

497
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:35,359
Speaker 1: viscous consistent consistency. Yeah, but the first time he games,

498
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,840
Speaker 1: it takes getting used to. Well, you might wonder why

499
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:40,680
Speaker 1: is the Dead Sea so salty. The answer is that

500
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,560
Speaker 1: the Dead Sea does not having natural outlet. There's nowhere

501
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:48,160
Speaker 1: for the water of the Dead Sea to drain out to. Uh.

502
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 1: And part of the reason for this is that the

503
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:52,440
Speaker 1: bottom of the Dead Sea is more than fourteen hundred

504
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:55,359
Speaker 1: feet below sea level and the basin it sits in

505
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 1: is just generally one of the lowest elevations of any

506
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: land area on Earth, depending on where you're measuring. It

507
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:05,120
Speaker 1: is sometimes cited as the lowest land elevation on the planet.

508
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:08,160
Speaker 1: So if you're the lowest elevation, where could the water

509
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:12,120
Speaker 1: drain to if there's nothing downhill from it? Right, So,

510
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:14,879
Speaker 1: while it doesn't have a natural outlet, it does have

511
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: a natural source, which is the Jordan River. So the

512
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,920
Speaker 1: Jordan River feeds into the Dead Sea occasionally. Of course,

513
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: as you know, fresh water comes through, it has tiny

514
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:26,479
Speaker 1: amounts of dissolved salt and mineral stuff that it carries

515
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: with it. The water in the Dead Sea just stays there,

516
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: doesn't drain away. It stays there until it evaporates. But

517
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:36,920
Speaker 1: of course this is an extremely hot and dry desert climate,

518
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: so evaporation is extremely aggressive. But that evaporation removes water

519
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 1: without removing the salt. And then with anthropogenic changes to

520
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:48,160
Speaker 1: the flow of the Jordan River, the Dead Sea now

521
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 1: gets less water fed into it ever than ever before,

522
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:54,400
Speaker 1: and it's shrinking rapidly. I read that the water level

523
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: has been falling at a rate of something like three

524
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: feet or about a meter a year, which is fast.

525
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: But this much salt dissolved in the water, the water

526
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: can leave deposits of crystallized salt around its edges. In fact,

527
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 1: if you walk around the shores of the Dead Sea,

528
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: you will find strange sparkling domes and piles of salt

529
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 1: crystals collecting on rocks due to wave action and evaporation. Yeah,

530
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:22,200
Speaker 1: and any of these are just they are really alien

531
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: to behold the strange looking formations, which makes one think, well,

532
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 1: perhaps some formation like this could have caught the eye

533
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: of someone in the past, and either it would have

534
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 1: been exactly the sort of thing you would incorporate into

535
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,640
Speaker 1: a myth, or would serve to spin off a new

536
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: myth exactly. Yeah, So salt crystals like these, they can

537
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: take on extremely bizarre shape. Sometimes they crystallize over over

538
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 1: a vertical rock column, or maybe over an old tree

539
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: trunk or a post driven into the ground or something

540
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:51,959
Speaker 1: anything that has a sort of vertical form. You can

541
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: see how pretty easily heavy crystallization of salt on the

542
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 1: outside of it could start to take on human looking form.

543
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 1: And there's also I would just say something about the

544
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: the nature and shapes of salt crystals that naturally draws

545
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,479
Speaker 1: the eye like, it looks unusual in the landscape. It

546
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: looks kind of alive. Some of the salt crystals can

547
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 1: form these large cubes and stuff to take on angles

548
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: that don't look natural. Yeah, there's a there's a geometric

549
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,720
Speaker 1: quality to it. Yeah, that that is that generally seems

550
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 1: out of keeping with the surrounding environment. So what was

551
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: Josephus looking at when he said he saw a Lot's

552
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 1: wife in person? Well, we don't know for sure, and

553
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: we don't know if whatever he saw was actually the

554
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: inspiration for the story in the first place. But if

555
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,239
Speaker 1: it were, I think it would be in keeping with

556
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:40,840
Speaker 1: many other ideological tales in the Bible and in human mythology.

557
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: Absolutely well. On that note, I think we should take

558
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 1: one more break, and when we come back, let's talk

559
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 1: a little bit about salt salt in the human body

560
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: and a really fabulous paper that we ran across that

561
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: really breaks down how an Old Testament woman could be

562
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: transformed into a pillar of salt or a salt like substance.

563
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:07,920
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So one way that I would

564
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:10,720
Speaker 1: often that I would often think about this story as

565
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:13,920
Speaker 1: as I would think, okay, a person being turned into

566
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: just salt. That doesn't make a lot of sense, you know,

567
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: because salt salt is is of course, you know, is

568
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 1: the salt comes from somewhere, Like, how do you replace

569
00:30:23,560 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 1: all of us with salt? Certainly our bodies contain salt.

570
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: How much salt does our body? It does our body?

571
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: Do our bodies contain? Well, let's let's let's break down

572
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 1: this a little bit. So, first of all, salt is

573
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: obviously sodium and chlorine, and we need sodium for example,

574
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: as a it's a key extracellular electrolyte, and it's crucial

575
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: to a number of health functions. Now, for the for

576
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:48,479
Speaker 1: the most part, we consume way too much salt today.

577
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 1: Uh though the minimum consumption is roughly I've read uh

578
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:56,720
Speaker 1: D milligrams a day, while the American Heart Association says

579
00:30:56,720 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: the absolute minimum is more like five hundred milligrams a day,

580
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: and the average American consumes something like thirty four hundred

581
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 1: milligrams of sodium per day. Those are amateur numbers, um

582
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 1: And Now, also according to the Salt Association, chlorine is

583
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: also important preserving acid balance in the body, aiding potassium absorption.

584
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 1: It also contributes to the hydrochloric acid in our gut,

585
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: and it enhances the blood's ability to transport carbon dioxide. UM.

586
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: And so all of this breaks down to, like it

587
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: is a rough average, an adult human body contains two

588
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: fifty grams of salt, and any excess is naturally excreted

589
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: by the body. Now, we we've talked about excretion of

590
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: excess salt in a past episode of Stuff to Blow

591
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: your Mind, UM, where we discussed a drinking salt water.

592
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: So I recommend that one to to anyone who would

593
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 1: like even more salt after this episode. So if Lot's wife,

594
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: you know, wasn't so much turned into a pillar of salt,

595
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 1: and we're gonna say, okay, what if the magic rays

596
00:31:57,360 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: of the city smiting taking place, What if it just

597
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: reduced her to her body salt content, you know, like

598
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,959
Speaker 1: just you know, a holy ray that that destroys everything

599
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: except salt. How much salt would be left? It would

600
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: be you know, about of salt. That's roughly what one

601
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: point to four cups what we got our cup and

602
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: a quarter of salt in our bodies. Well, I mean

603
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 1: it's impressive when you think about it, you know, in

604
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: those terms, I guess, but in terms of like a

605
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:25,800
Speaker 1: person being reduced to that, uh, you know, it's not

606
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: it's not really a pillar of salt, they would have

607
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:31,200
Speaker 1: to say. And then she turned back and was reduced

608
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: to a small amount of salt. Man, I love thinking

609
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: about the stuff in human bodies in measuring quantities used

610
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: for cooking. Yeah, because according to Harvard Health that's less

611
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 1: than nine ounces and about the amount in three or

612
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 1: four salt shakers. Wait, do the salt shakers have a

613
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 1: little bits of dry rice in them? Um? I don't

614
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:53,719
Speaker 1: know if it's necessary in such an arid environment. So

615
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: that that's one place my mind went in terms of

616
00:32:56,360 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what's what's happening. Now. Obviously your

617
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: mind also turns to of course fossilization, Like fossilization is

618
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: a very real process by which a living body is

619
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 1: turned into a solid mineral form. But of course that's

620
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: not going to occur in an instant. It's something that

621
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: takes place over the course of geologic time. Uh. Likewise,

622
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, Okay, essentially what we're talking about is a

623
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: pair of nuclear blasts taking place that have been you know,

624
00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 1: unleashed by angelic forces. Okay, might might that's the might.

625
00:33:31,160 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: The the flash of this, might the the radiation from

626
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: this have incinerated the body and reduced it to ash. Well,

627
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 1: you know, that's one way of looking at it. But

628
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: it wouldn't produce like a call, like a statue of ash.

629
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: It would just obliterate a body if it was turning

630
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:48,480
Speaker 1: it to ash. And then, of course so one thinks

631
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: to mummies, but of course mummies are you know, are

632
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: just examples of body that has been when which the

633
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: fluid has been removed. Uh. And likewise, there are a

634
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:01,920
Speaker 1: number of different you know, preservation uh models for the

635
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 1: human body where you're you know, you're adding something or

636
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 1: replacing something. But none of these are processes that are

637
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:09,879
Speaker 1: going to take place in an instant. And there there

638
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: are forms of natural mummification that take place. Uh. We

639
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: often think that natural mummification in some cultures preceded deliberate mummification.

640
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 1: But you wouldn't normally think of that as like something

641
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 1: that somebody would look at and see a mummy and

642
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:27,759
Speaker 1: say they turned to salt. Now you could, you could

643
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: play a kind of crazy jigsaw of different natural effects

644
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 1: if anything goes right, What if there was some kind

645
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: of natural mummy of a woman in the Dead Sea

646
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: region that suddenly, like, because I don't know, a storm

647
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 1: or something blew all this salt crystal on her and

648
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:44,240
Speaker 1: then it covered her body and salt and she glistened

649
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 1: all over, and people said, look, there's the salt woman. Yeah,

650
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it's one of those where it's also

651
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 1: a lot of steps are required to get to the

652
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 1: place you want to go, right. So I kept looking

653
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:56,799
Speaker 1: around about this. I'm like, somebody's out there. There has

654
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,800
Speaker 1: to have been a scientist, a pure scientist to to

655
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,280
Speaker 1: I had to tackle. This is kind of a thought experiment.

656
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 1: One of these great playful chemistry papers, like the like

657
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:08,879
Speaker 1: what are the thermodynamics of hell and all that? Right?

658
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 1: Or one of another favorite that I have more of

659
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: a biology paper is um like how a centaur's body

660
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: work of run across that one where the they the

661
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 1: authors argued that a centaur would require two hearts in

662
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:24,839
Speaker 1: order to power this you know, conjoined uh system. So

663
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to find just such a paper

664
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: on lots wife titled the Chemical Death of Lot's Wife

665
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: Discussion Paper. This was published in the Journal of the

666
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: Royal Society of Medicine in July of and it was

667
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:45,640
Speaker 1: by Irving m Clots, pH d. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University.

668
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:49,239
Speaker 1: And I want to note here that the Clots was

669
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: not some like weird quack right in a bunch of

670
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: like biblical papers. Uh you know, which I think should

671
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 1: be obvious given the details of not only you know,

672
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: his his employment, but also the location. But I should

673
00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:05,319
Speaker 1: stress that during his lifetime he authored more than two

674
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: hundred scientific articles and pure viewed journals. And he also

675
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: wrote numerous books, including one titled Diamond Dealers and Feather

676
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: Merchants Tales from the Sciences, which sounds sounds quite good.

677
00:36:15,680 --> 00:36:18,400
Speaker 1: I meant to hunt up a copy of it. So anyway,

678
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,360
Speaker 1: he's I feel like he's very much engaging on a

679
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:25,320
Speaker 1: thought experiment here, but his his science cred is ultimately

680
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 1: above reproach. Okay, But so he's going to take this

681
00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:30,600
Speaker 1: from a like biochemistry point of view and say, all right,

682
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:33,359
Speaker 1: if a person was turned into salt, how would that work?

683
00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 1: What would that mean exactly? So, first of all, he

684
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 1: reminds us that we shouldn't take salt too literally. Rather,

685
00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 1: he says, it's likely, you know, used in a generic

686
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: sense to refer to any solid with mineral characteristics to

687
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:49,799
Speaker 1: it and perhaps a salt like taste. So he's not

688
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:53,440
Speaker 1: necessarily talking about sodium chloride. But he says that in

689
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: the Bible, if they said salt, they probably meant just

690
00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: any kind of crystalline mineral. A lot of things taste

691
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,840
Speaker 1: vague salty. Uh. And he uses the point of comparison

692
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 1: to the way the Bible uses the word plague to

693
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,200
Speaker 1: refer to basically anything, you know, anything that's like an epidemic.

694
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: So he writes, quote, A particularly likely candidate for the

695
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 1: salt that caused the death of mislot is calcite. This

696
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:21,480
Speaker 1: mineral is very susceptible to a precipitation in the presence

697
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: of low concentrations of free calcium and carbonate, both of

698
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: which are present ubiquitously in all human tissues. And there

699
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:33,360
Speaker 1: he's talking about calcium ions and carbonate ions. So what

700
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: must have happened, he argues, is something something occurred to

701
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: overwhelm the homeostatic systems that maintain calcium and carbonate levels

702
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:49,399
Speaker 1: below critical values, thus leading to the onset of calcite formation. Uh.

703
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 1: And this would have been due to some sort of

704
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:54,560
Speaker 1: sort of you know catastrophic stress, and so what could

705
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:57,520
Speaker 1: have could have caused this to happen? Well, Clots looks

706
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 1: to the text and considers that they were running from

707
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:04,480
Speaker 1: a powerful firestorm radiating outward from this from this side

708
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:07,760
Speaker 1: of destruction, and that as she stops and looks back,

709
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,320
Speaker 1: perhaps she's then hit by a powerful blast of hot

710
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:15,400
Speaker 1: air with high CEO two content, along with heat and radiation.

711
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: So it would be the hot air coming in with

712
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: the pressure and the CEO two, the chemical properties of

713
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 1: the CEO two content, and how that would affect the

714
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: pH of the blood and the body, and then the

715
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 1: heat and radiation. Now, I think I understand from his

716
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:32,760
Speaker 1: analysis that it doesn't actually matter that she's looking back

717
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 1: at the city. He's saying, like, maybe it's just that

718
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 1: she stopped running away, right, It's more that she stopped

719
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 1: and looked back, or perhaps kept stopping and looking back.

720
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 1: So you know, it's not about like your eyes beholding

721
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: the thing, right, So it's not the Josephus issue. Remember,

722
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:49,760
Speaker 1: Josephas says the problem is that she thought too kindly

723
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:52,879
Speaker 1: of of Sodom, right, and that she should have been

724
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: I guess colder in her in her condemnation of it right.

725
00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:59,479
Speaker 1: This is basically this Claus's argument is that she's still

726
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: in the dangers own from a terrific blast that's taking place.

727
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 1: So Clots goes on from here to do a lot

728
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 1: of chemical analysis on how all this would break down.

729
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:11,560
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to attempt to summarize that here. Uh.

730
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:14,880
Speaker 1: If you're if you're more of a chemistry whiz, I

731
00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:17,760
Speaker 1: suggest looking up. This paper is available for free online

732
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 1: and a PDF form, but I am going to skip

733
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: ahead to his final summary quote. Thus, by turning around

734
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:28,360
Speaker 1: in her direction of flight, Miss Latt exposed herself instantly

735
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:33,840
Speaker 1: to stresses that generated immediate enormous escalations in concentrations of

736
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: calcium and carbonate, so that the critical limits specified by

737
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:41,800
Speaker 1: equation six, which was something he uh uh he covered

738
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 1: earlier in the paper, were exceeded overwhelmingly and instantaneously. Internal

739
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:53,320
Speaker 1: massive pervasive crystallization of calcite followed. Immediately, Miss Latt died

740
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: instantly of rigor calcium carbonatus and turned into a rigid

741
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: block of calcite. Since the prevailing winds from the dead

742
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: Sea always carry along a spray of salt which is

743
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: accumulated on this pillar, succeeding generations to modern times have

744
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 1: testified that this column is a block of salt. Okay,

745
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: so he he lays out a process by which, in

746
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 1: the presence of of certain chemical pressures and you know,

747
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:23,880
Speaker 1: high pressure and temperature from this blast, the body could

748
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 1: conceivably undergo rapid crystallization of its calcium content, because, like

749
00:40:28,680 --> 00:40:32,760
Speaker 1: the some of the calcium containing compounds in the body,

750
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,960
Speaker 1: like the albumen he refers to, like those good d nature,

751
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: the calcium gets freed, it joins up with the carbonate,

752
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 1: you get rapid crystallization, and you get a calcite body.

753
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:46,480
Speaker 1: It's pretty creepy, Yeah, it is. It's tremendously creepy. I

754
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:48,960
Speaker 1: don't know if he makes the case really that this

755
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:52,360
Speaker 1: could happen in reality. One thing I wasn't quite clear

756
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: on is whether he's just saying, like, Okay, what's the

757
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:59,399
Speaker 1: most plausible possible like chain of of chemical things here

758
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:01,800
Speaker 1: leading to the crystallization of the body like this, or

759
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: if he's actually saying, oh, yeah, given the right circumstances,

760
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:07,479
Speaker 1: this could happen to a human body. Yeah. Yeah, it's

761
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,000
Speaker 1: um you know, it's it's a playful article, I feel,

762
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,760
Speaker 1: but it's not. It doesn't have an obvious like wink moment.

763
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,319
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's very um, you know, it's it's

764
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: very professional in this delivery. I feel like modern papers

765
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:21,880
Speaker 1: of this, uh, this variety would tend to have a

766
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 1: few more winks towards the fact that it is a

767
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,480
Speaker 1: thought experiment, if not outright saying, here's a thought experiment.

768
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: And he's a little more I guess in a since

769
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: he's a little more playful with how he's framing it.

770
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I love this, this idea of the

771
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,400
Speaker 1: chemical death of miss Loot and he always refers to

772
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 1: her as miss Loot instead of just lots wife in

773
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 1: the paper. Yeah, so you know, again, not not a

774
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: situation where where this paper is confirming a biblical account

775
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:55,280
Speaker 1: Bible story confirmed, but crystallization of calcite in the blood.

776
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 1: But but it is. It is another one of the

777
00:41:57,160 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: examples of like what's a what's a completely outrageous n

778
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 1: areo from you know, for from myth and then and

779
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: then trying to sort of recreate it to reverse engineering

780
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 1: using science, and it's it's fascinating how sometimes you can

781
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: you can just recreate how something like that could occur,

782
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:14,799
Speaker 1: And it makes me want to see more like calcite

783
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 1: death rays in our science fiction. This has been interesting, Robert, Yeah, yeah,

784
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:21,360
Speaker 1: I had. I had a lot of fun uh researching

785
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 1: and reading about Lot's wife. I'm also reminded how in

786
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:28,840
Speaker 1: um Our Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga, he has a

787
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 1: bit about wizards that come into contact with a particular

788
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,920
Speaker 1: uh substance, it causes their bodies to essentially turn into

789
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 1: a pillar of salt um and then it's uh, it's

790
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:43,360
Speaker 1: hinted that that salt can then be used for for

791
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:47,799
Speaker 1: other purposes. So I'll leave leave that out there for

792
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,040
Speaker 1: anyone who wants to explore those books on their own.

793
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

794
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:53,960
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head don't over

795
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:55,399
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where

796
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 1: you'll find them. Uh. And if you want to support

797
00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: our show, the best thing you can do is make

798
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:03,840
Speaker 1: sure you have subscribed. Also rate and review wherever you

799
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:05,840
Speaker 1: have the power to do so, and don't forget about Invention.

800
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 1: That's our other show comes out once a week. It

801
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:12,880
Speaker 1: is a continuous examination of human techno history. Huge thanks

802
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:16,399
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Maya Cole. If

803
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:17,920
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

804
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,400
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

805
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:22,759
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

806
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:26,319
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

807
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:37,640
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808
00:43:37,680 --> 00:43:40,440
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809
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,360
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810
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811
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