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

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Listener mail.

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Speaker 2: My name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert

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Speaker 2: Lamb is out today, so I'm going to be recording

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Speaker 2: this episode solo. Today's Monday, the day of each week

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Speaker 2: that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind email address. As always, if you would like

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Speaker 2: to get in touch with us to provide feedback to

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Speaker 2: a recent episode or add something interesting on a subject

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Speaker 2: we've covered, you can email us at contact at stuff

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Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com. A brief announcement before

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Speaker 2: I get to your messages. Rob and I both are

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Speaker 2: going to be out for the rest of this week

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Speaker 2: and also part of next week, so we've got some

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Speaker 2: vault episodes in the pipeline for you until we're back.

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Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to kick things off with an

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Speaker 2: excellent response to our episode on rakings by our listener Chad,

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Speaker 2: and for a refresher on the ratking episode. A ratking

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Speaker 2: is the common name for a group of rats joined

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Speaker 2: by the tail, usually with their tail tips tangled in

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Speaker 2: a large knotted ball, and dozens of ratking finds have

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Speaker 2: been reported from especially Central and Eastern Europe since the

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Speaker 2: sixteenth century, and a few have been preserved in museum collections,

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Speaker 2: though there is still some debate about whether ratkings occur

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Speaker 2: naturally or whether they are all the work of hoaxers

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Speaker 2: like the Fiji Mermaid or other manipulated biological remains. A

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Speaker 2: couple of the best sources we looked at concluded from

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Speaker 2: various lines of evidence and reasoning that ratkings probably do

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Speaker 2: occur naturally in the species Rattus ratus, the black rat,

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Speaker 2: if not in other rats, and it happens when the

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Speaker 2: rats tails become stuck or frozen together while the rats

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Speaker 2: are huddling in their nests during cold weather, and then

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Speaker 2: from the natural movement of the rats, the tails end

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Speaker 2: up tied in an inescapable knot. And I think I

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Speaker 2: said at the end of the episode that I am

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Speaker 2: basically persuaded that rat kings probably do occur naturally along

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Speaker 2: these lines, but that at the same time some questions

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Speaker 2: still remain, such as why do the reports of them

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Speaker 2: only go back to the sixteenth century. That is kind

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Speaker 2: of strange if they occur naturally, And so there are

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Speaker 2: also still some reasons to be skeptical. But anyway, onto

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Speaker 2: Chad's message. Chad says, in the rat king episode, y'all

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Speaker 2: suggested one particular sighting was unlikely to be fabricated because

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Speaker 2: the people probably hadn't heard of ratkings, had no obvious motive,

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Speaker 2: and let some of the tails loosen. Now I think

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Speaker 2: I need to pause in the message here and respond

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Speaker 2: to this part directly for a couple of reasons. One

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Speaker 2: is that in the case in question, and Chat is

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Speaker 2: talking about the rat king of saru Estonia. In the

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Speaker 2: case in question, these were not our original observations. They

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Speaker 2: were observations made by the author of a journal article

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Speaker 2: that we were talking about. And I'll mention the full

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Speaker 2: citation again in a minute. But the second clarification I

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Speaker 2: would make is that the way I understood it, the

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Speaker 2: author of the paper did not cite the things you

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Speaker 2: just mentioned as like the main reasons for thinking that

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Speaker 2: ratkings occur in nature and are not all man made. Instead,

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Speaker 2: these observations were meant to elaborate on the author's judgment

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Speaker 2: that there was no particular reason to suspect falsification in

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Speaker 2: this case, And I guess the distinction I'm making there

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Speaker 2: is that in addition to examining the physical evidence, the

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Speaker 2: author was also saying, there's nothing about the people who

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Speaker 2: found this rat king that would obviously suggest they're pulling

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Speaker 2: a hoax. Of course, they still could be pulling a hoax.

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Speaker 2: It's entirely possible. I think the author's stipulating that, you know,

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Speaker 2: there's no clear evidence pointing to that interpretation, the way

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Speaker 2: there would be if they were obviously seeking fame and money,

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Speaker 2: or caught tampering with the evidence or something like that.

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Speaker 2: But I want to continue with Chad's message here because

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Speaker 2: I think it makes some really great points. Chad goes

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Speaker 2: on that made me think of James the Amazing Randy,

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Speaker 2: who spent a lifetime disproving supernatural claims. In his book Flimflam,

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Speaker 2: he listed quote twenty hallmarks of paranormal chicanery. These seem relevant. One,

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Speaker 2: it is claimed that the subject does not seek money

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Speaker 2: or fame, and thus no motive to deceive exists. The

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Speaker 2: assumption made is that only money and notoriety are plausible motives.

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Speaker 2: Ego and just plain fun are not thought to be sufficient. Two,

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Speaker 2: the subject parentheses a child peasant or a sweet little

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Speaker 2: old Lady is said to be incapable of the techniques required,

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Speaker 2: lack of sophistication precludes deception, and three faults discovered in

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Speaker 2: the story or performance tend to prove the phenomenon is real.

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Speaker 2: It is agreed, since a clever trickster would not make

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Speaker 2: such basic errors. And then in summary, Chad says, I

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Speaker 2: don't know if rat kings are natural or man made,

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Speaker 2: but humans can be ingenious when it comes to fraud.

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Speaker 2: So thank you for the message, Chad. And yes, I

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Speaker 2: strongly agree with all of these points, though I think

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Speaker 2: they apply to the rat king in question to different extents.

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Speaker 2: So one thing to point out is that ratkings are

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Speaker 2: different from most of the types of claims of like

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Speaker 2: supernatural or paranormal phenomena that Randy investigated. You know, he

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Speaker 2: would look into people who claim to have powers of

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Speaker 2: telekinesis or remote viewing and things like that. In ratkings,

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Speaker 2: even though they are rare and bizarre, they do not

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Speaker 2: seem incompatible with any known laws of nature, and whether

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Speaker 2: or not they occur naturally, it seems perfectly plausible in

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Speaker 2: principle that they could be created by ordinary physical mechanisms.

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Speaker 2: So you don't have to posit like another layer of

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Speaker 2: reality in order for rat kings to exist. You know

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Speaker 2: that they could totally be created by just like rats

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Speaker 2: huddling in their nest and then maybe urinating, and then

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Speaker 2: the urine freezes and their tails stick together, and then

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Speaker 2: they move around a lot, and this ties their tails

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Speaker 2: in a knot. That's a normal, ordinary mechanism. It's still

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Speaker 2: a good question whether this does in fact happen in nature,

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Speaker 2: but nothing seems all that implausible about it. And because

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Speaker 2: of that, I'd say, for me personally, like before we

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Speaker 2: look at any of the specific evidence for or against them,

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Speaker 2: the baseline probability of rat kings occurring in nature is

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Speaker 2: a lot higher than that of other things Randy was investigating,

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Speaker 2: like people being able to see through sheets of solid

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Speaker 2: lead or levitate objects with their minds. So anyway to

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Speaker 2: come to the case in question, these considerations that Chad

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Speaker 2: mentions came up when we were talking about the rat

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Speaker 2: king of Saoru, Estonia. This was an alleged find from

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Speaker 2: a village and I think southwestern Estonia in two thousand

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Speaker 2: and five, which was discussed in a paper by an

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Speaker 2: author named Andre Miluton published in two thousand and seven

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Speaker 2: in the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Biology

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Speaker 2: and Ecology. And after investigating the remains of the animals

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Speaker 2: and the history of this find, which was found on

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Speaker 2: a farm in this village of Saru, the author of

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Speaker 2: the paper concluded for a number of reasons that the

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Speaker 2: rat king was most likely a genuine natural biofact and

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Speaker 2: not a hoax constructed by the farmer who found it.

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Speaker 2: And I guess I'll go through some of the claims

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Speaker 2: raised by the author that were singled out by Chad

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Speaker 2: and then compare those to the points raised by James Randy. So,

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Speaker 2: first of all, the author mentions that the farmer claimed

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Speaker 2: to have never heard of ratkings before, and that the

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Speaker 2: farmer did not seek or receive any financial reward for

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Speaker 2: the find. But James Randy, he says, you know, believers

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Speaker 2: often say this about people who claim they have psychic powers,

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Speaker 2: or that they communicated with Bigfoot, or any number of

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Speaker 2: other weird and unlikely claims, and it doesn't actually prove

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Speaker 2: all that much because even if it's true that the

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Speaker 2: person is not profiting from their claim in terms of

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Speaker 2: fame or money, sometimes that's not even true to begin with.

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Speaker 2: But even if that is true, people have obscure motives.

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Speaker 2: People do things to amuse themselves, to see if they

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Speaker 2: can get away with it, to get attention on a

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Speaker 2: very small scale, or maybe just because they truly believe

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Speaker 2: in the underlying phenomena they're trying to provide evidence of

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Speaker 2: and they want others to believe it as well, and

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Speaker 2: they think that perpetrating a hoax will further that belief

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Speaker 2: in something that they ultimately do think is real. You know,

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Speaker 2: you've got to do a hoax to show people the truth.

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Speaker 2: There are all kinds of motives people can have for deception,

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Speaker 2: and we should be humble in accepting that it might

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Speaker 2: not be obvious to us what a person's most inovation

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Speaker 2: would be. So in the case of the Saru rat king,

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Speaker 2: I think that it would be relevant information if we

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Speaker 2: saw that the farmer who found this ratking was clearly

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Speaker 2: trying to leverage their find into money or fame. But

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Speaker 2: the fact that they're not trying to do that provides

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Speaker 2: only minimal information about whether the rat king is natural.

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Speaker 2: The second issue Chad raises is that quote the subject

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Speaker 2: is said to be incapable of the techniques required, lack

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Speaker 2: of sophistication precludes deception. I guess the way I would

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Speaker 2: see this applying to ratkings is the author of the

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Speaker 2: paper pointing out that it is impossible to tie up

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Speaker 2: the tails of living rats without anesthesia without making them

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Speaker 2: go to sleep with the help of drugs which most

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Speaker 2: people would not be able to pull off. Most people

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Speaker 2: would not be able to esthetize all these rats and

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Speaker 2: glue their tails together. I think this is a more

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Speaker 2: solid point, especially since, as far as I'm aware, for

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Speaker 2: the first f few hundred years during which rat kings

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Speaker 2: were originally reported, there were no widely known and reliable

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Speaker 2: methods of veterinary anesthesia. I looked into this a little bit,

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Speaker 2: and I think that's the case. Though if you have

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Speaker 2: evidence to the contrary, please write in with it. I'd

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Speaker 2: be interested in that. But anyway, also remember the conclusion

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Speaker 2: I mentioned in the rat king episode from those very sad,

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Speaker 2: unfortunate experimental rat king studies, and that conclusion was that

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Speaker 2: tying the tales of dead rats together does not work.

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Speaker 2: It does not create the kind of not ball in

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Speaker 2: the tail that rat kings are reported to have. And

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Speaker 2: also many rat kings are reported to contain animals still

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Speaker 2: alive when they're found, So these would have to be

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Speaker 2: created by people who are tying together the tales of

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Speaker 2: living rats, and to do that you pretty much would

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Speaker 2: just have to put the rats to sleep somehow, and

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Speaker 2: that would take modern techniques in pharmacology. So while I

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Speaker 2: do take Randy's general point that we shouldn't be too

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Speaker 2: quick to judge a superficially unsophisticated person as being incapable

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Speaker 2: of pulling off a clever fraud, in this case, I

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Speaker 2: think the physical and pharmaceutical requirements for creating a rat

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Speaker 2: king are a kind of big hurdle to get over,

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Speaker 2: especially historically, I guess, less so in the modern day,

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Speaker 2: and while it wouldn't be impossible to do today, it

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Speaker 2: would be difficult under what the author calls farm conditions.

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Speaker 2: So this is not conclusive about the sorry rat king

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Speaker 2: doesn't prove its real, but I do think this is

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Speaker 2: a stronger piece of evidence that makes a fraud seem

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Speaker 2: less likely. And then third Chad says quote false discovered

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Speaker 2: in the story or performance tend to prove the phenomenon reel.

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Speaker 2: It is agreed since a clever trickster would not make

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Speaker 2: such basic errors, and I think this one is a

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Speaker 2: really good point. It goes to the observation that even

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Speaker 2: though the tail knot of the rat king loosened as

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Speaker 2: the rats dried out, no one made a sub sequent

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Speaker 2: attempt to tighten it, And I agree that does not

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Speaker 2: actually prove all that much, except that you know it's

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Speaker 2: worth flagging in the negative, as in, there was no

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Speaker 2: obvious attempt made to tamper with the evidence to make

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Speaker 2: it look more convincing, and it would be notable if

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Speaker 2: there had been such an attempt, but there wasn't. Though again,

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Speaker 2: this in itself is not strong evidence that the rat

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Speaker 2: king was natural. Now, the author of that paper we

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Speaker 2: were looking at did conclude, on the basis of examining

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Speaker 2: the physical evidence and relying on past where concluding the

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Speaker 2: reasoning of Martin Hart, whom we also cited in the episode,

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Speaker 2: that rat kings probably are genuine. And remember another piece

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Speaker 2: of reasoning that Heart offered is that they are essentially

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Speaker 2: always made up of the species Ratus ratus instead of

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Speaker 2: other species like Ratus Norwegicus, even in places where both

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Speaker 2: species are present, suggesting something about the behavior and biology

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Speaker 2: of Ratus ratus could be what allows the kings to

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Speaker 2: form anyway, Coming back to Chad's point about the wisdom

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Speaker 2: of the late James Randy, I agree with all these points,

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Speaker 2: and I would say, as a general rule, I think

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Speaker 2: we should be careful about trying to determine what really

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Speaker 2: happened in an unsolved situation or an ambiguous situation by

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Speaker 2: relying on what you might call theory of mind considerations,

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Speaker 2: like making internal inferences about the people involved. You know,

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Speaker 2: what they know, what their motivations are, how you think

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Speaker 2: they would behave in a given situation, and so forth.

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Speaker 2: In other words, if somebody tells a weird story and

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Speaker 2: you're trying to figure out if the story is true,

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Speaker 2: I just wouldn't place a lot of weight on evidence

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Speaker 2: such as my opinion about whether the person would have

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Speaker 2: a motive to lie or not, or my opinion about

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Speaker 2: how a person would have acted if they were lying

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Speaker 2: versus if they were telling the truth, and so forth,

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Speaker 2: so forth. That kind of stuff might provide a little

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Speaker 2: bit of information, but not a whole lot, And it

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Speaker 2: just it relies on unverifiable speculation about the mind states

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Speaker 2: of other people. And in a case where you actually

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Speaker 2: do have like physical and scientific evidence to refer to.

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Speaker 2: There's just not a lot of reason to rely on

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Speaker 2: those theory of mind considerations. So anyway, thank you chat okay,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to move on to some messages in response

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Speaker 2: to our series called the Sunken Lands, about areas that

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Speaker 2: within the last few thousand years were dry land but

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Speaker 2: are now submerged in water. This first message comes from Chris.

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Speaker 2: Chris says, Hi, Robert and Joe really enjoying the series

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Speaker 2: on sunken Lands. Your mention of the church tower and

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Speaker 2: submerged village in Italy prompted me to share the story

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Speaker 2: of vale House Reservoir in Derbyshire, UK. It was built

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Speaker 2: along with a series of adjoining reservoirs in the eighteen

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Speaker 2: sixties to provide drinking water to the the nearby city

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Speaker 2: of Manchester and surrounding towns. Once construction was completed, the

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Speaker 2: local village and its mill were flooded. I will let

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Speaker 2: Wikipedia take over from here quote. The chimney at the

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Speaker 2: Valehouse mill survived the construction of the reservoir and became

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Speaker 2: known as the Whispering Chimney as it produced ghostly noises

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Speaker 2: during strong winds. It was demolished in eighteen eighty seven

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Speaker 2: at the request of the Manchester to Sheffield Railway Company,

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Speaker 2: who feared for the stability of their trains when all

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Speaker 2: the passengers crowded over to one side of a carriage

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Speaker 2: to see the chimney protruding from the waters of the reservoir.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for all your hard work. Best wishes, Chris Well,

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Chris. You know I went to this is

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Speaker 2: a great story. So I went to the wiki to

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Speaker 2: check out the source of that story, and unfortunately the

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Speaker 2: citation goes to a dead link. I did a little

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Speaker 2: more digging. I didn't have a lot of time, but

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Speaker 2: some brief digging and didn't find much on this. So

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Speaker 2: if anybody listening has a good source on this chimney

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Speaker 2: from the Valehouse Reservoir, I send it our way. Please

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Speaker 2: contact that stuff to blow your mind dot com because

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Speaker 2: that's a great story about the railway company. I would

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Speaker 2: love to know more about that, all right. This message

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Speaker 2: comes from Harry. Harry says, Hey, Robert and Joe. Happy holidays,

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Speaker 2: longtime listener, first time writing in. I finally have a

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Speaker 2: relevant anecdote. I loved your inclusion of the Hoffiker paper

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Speaker 2: and the Beringian hypothesis in the third Sunken Lands episode.

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Speaker 2: This was the paper about the so called Berringian standstill hypothesis,

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Speaker 2: which argues for several reasons that the ancestors of the

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Speaker 2: people who eventually spread in to populate the Americas lived

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Speaker 2: in the area of Beringia, in the area sort of

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Speaker 2: between modern day Russia and Alaska for thousands of years, specifically,

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Speaker 2: stayed there isolated from the rest of the Asian population

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Speaker 2: for thousands of years before they spread down into the

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Speaker 2: rest of the American continents. So, anyway, picking up in

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Speaker 2: Harry's message, Harry says, my professor at Saint Andrew's University

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Speaker 2: in the Earth and Environmental Science department, told me a

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Speaker 2: story of how he met one of the authors of

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Speaker 2: the Hoff paper at a conference. They mentioned the hypothesis

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Speaker 2: to him, and it happened to be that he had

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Speaker 2: just conducted research on modeling and proxy data in the

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Speaker 2: North Pacific. He had found that during the last glacial maximum,

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Speaker 2: changes in the Couroshio Current, which makes Vancouver temperate at

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Speaker 2: high latitude today, drove warm water and mild climate to Beringia.

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Speaker 2: This supported the hypothesis and further explained a long time

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Speaker 2: gap in the DNA evidence, Beringia could have been a

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Speaker 2: haven with populations potentially blocked from moving elsewhere by continental

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Speaker 2: ice sheets for many thousands of years. Together, they managed

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Speaker 2: to book time on a Bearing Sea research cruise to

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Speaker 2: sonar for evidence of the civilization. In a devastating twist

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Speaker 2: that partially explains why evidence of Boringia is so scarce,

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Speaker 2: the notoriously bad weather of the Bearing Sea forced them

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Speaker 2: to cancel part of the cruise and the research couldn't

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Speaker 2: be completed. That would mean that it certainly was a

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Speaker 2: standstill of a kind, even to those living at the time.

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Speaker 2: As migration has been a constant for our species, few

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Speaker 2: of us could imagine living in such a constrained context.

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Speaker 2: Yet such people may be the ancestors of all North

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Speaker 2: American first peoples. Keep up the great work, Harry. That

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Speaker 2: is fascinating. Thank you, Harry. Okay. One last message, this

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Speaker 2: comes from Erin. Aaron says, gentlemen, I very much enjoyed

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Speaker 2: your recent episodes on sunken lands, and it brought to

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Speaker 2: mind a place not far from y'all, a Disto Island,

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Speaker 2: South Carolina. The history of the island connects with your

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Speaker 2: recent episodes in two ways. First, the coast of what

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Speaker 2: is now South Carolina extended far out into what is

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Speaker 2: now ocean during the Last Ice Age. See this article

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Speaker 2: for a map showing the approximate location of the old coastline,

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Speaker 2: and then Erin attaches a link to a US Geological

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Speaker 2: Survey article that does have a map that shows the

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Speaker 2: coastline going way out from where it is today. The

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Speaker 2: message goes on because of this, there is a particular

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Speaker 2: part of the beach in Edisto State Park where numerous

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Speaker 2: fossils from prehistoric land animals can be found, particularly after

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Speaker 2: a storm. I've attached a little map showing the location

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Speaker 2: in case y'all ever visit. I've also attached a picture

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Speaker 2: of some of our discoveries from our last visit. It

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Speaker 2: includes sharks, teeth, and other marine fossils. Occasionally, pottery, shards

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Speaker 2: and stone tools from prehistoric human inhabitants of the area

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Speaker 2: can also be found. I believe the red circled rock

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Speaker 2: in the picture is a bit of broken pottery with

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Speaker 2: some simple decoration, though please take my dilettantish identification with

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Speaker 2: a grain of salt. Second, a Disto has its own

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Speaker 2: Atlantis story prior to eighteen ninety three, there was an

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Speaker 2: island off the coast of a Disto called Eddingsville, and

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Speaker 2: it was very chic among local planters to have beach

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Speaker 2: houses there. There were even two churches on the island,

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Speaker 2: Episcopal and Presbyterian. A series of hurricanes over the course

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Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century washed the entire island away. The

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Speaker 2: churches were moved before the island's final destruction and are

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Speaker 2: now on Edisto Island. One of them is still being

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Speaker 2: used as a church, I believe, but some of the

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Speaker 2: houses were destroyed during the hurricanes, and because of this.

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Speaker 2: Nineteenth century brick fragments are also easy to find on

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Speaker 2: the beach in a Disto state park. They are usually

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Speaker 2: fairly small, but I found the big one in the

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Speaker 2: third picture on my second ever visit to the beach.

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Speaker 2: The golf ball is for scale. It makes a great bookend,

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Speaker 2: and of course Aaron has many pictures attached here. Finally,

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Speaker 2: on an unrelated note, the Omega Man has come up

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Speaker 2: a few times, including in the most recent episode. I

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Speaker 2: think it would be a great film to cover on

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Speaker 2: the show. The soundtrack by Ron Grainer, who did the

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Speaker 2: theme for Tales from the Unexpected, which featured in one

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Speaker 2: of your anthology of horror episodes is one of my favorites.

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Speaker 2: Somehow it manages to be groovy and thoughtful at the

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Speaker 2: same time. Keep up the great work, guys. The release

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Speaker 2: of Weird House Cinema in particular is always a highlight

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Speaker 2: of my week. Best erin Well, thank you so much,

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Speaker 2: erin great message. So that's going to do it for today.

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Speaker 2: But thanks again to everyone who wrote in. We don't

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Speaker 2: have time to feature or respond to all of the

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Speaker 2: messages we get, but we do read and appreciate everything

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Speaker 2: you send our way, so please keep it coming. It

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Speaker 2: really means a lot. Hey, if you're new here, Stuff

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Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a show about science

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Speaker 2: and culture, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mondays

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Speaker 2: we do listener mail episodes like this one, though usually

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Speaker 2: my co host Robert is on Mike with Me. Wednesdays

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Speaker 2: we release a short form episode called The Artifact or

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Speaker 2: the Monster Fact, and on Fridays we feature a special

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Speaker 2: series called Weird House Cinema, where all we do is watch,

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Speaker 2: recap and discuss weird movies, good bad, well known, obscure.

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Speaker 2: We take all comers as long as they are strange.

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Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

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Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

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Speaker 2: to give feedback on this episode or any other, to

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Speaker 2: suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi,

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Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuffed blow your

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Speaker 2: Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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