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

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 3: And Hey, it is no longer October. But is this

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Speaker 3: still a topic that we planned on doing in October

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Speaker 3: and never got to Possibly. We'll let you guess if

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Speaker 3: that is the case or not.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And you might be like, I don't know, Joe

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Speaker 2: and Robert, I don't know if I wont Halloween content

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Speaker 2: and the early part of November, shouldn't we be doing

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Speaker 2: Christmas content now? No, absolutely not. There will be Christmas

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Speaker 2: content in due time, but it will not be this month.

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Speaker 2: It'll barely be next month. So you're getting more Halloween

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Speaker 2: content whether you want it or not.

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Speaker 3: Are your Halloween decorations still up or do you get

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Speaker 3: them down yet?

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Speaker 2: We took them down over the weekend, but the jack

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Speaker 2: O Landin's are still out there. They haven't turn to

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Speaker 2: jelly yet, but I'm having to give them the tap

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Speaker 2: test every day. If they jiggle, then it's dangerously close

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Speaker 2: and I have to get them to the backyard and

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Speaker 2: spill them there.

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Speaker 3: I know exactly what you're saying. We have squirrels very

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Speaker 3: slowly eating our pumpkins. It's like they take one bite

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Speaker 3: out of them every day.

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Speaker 2: It's weird. We have plenty of squirrels around here, but

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Speaker 2: I don't think they ever messed with the pumpkins. But

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Speaker 2: it has been I feel like more people are chronicling

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Speaker 2: the decay and or consumption of their jack lanterns and

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Speaker 2: pumpkins this year, and it's been nice to watch.

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Speaker 3: I'm curious why just the like one bite and run away,

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Speaker 3: Like it can't be that delicious if they don't stay

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Speaker 3: to take a few more bites.

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Speaker 2: Unless it's you know, just gnawing. It's gnawing action. I'm

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Speaker 2: not sure.

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Speaker 3: But Okay, what was this Halloween related topic that we

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Speaker 3: didn't get to in October and they're covering now.

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Speaker 2: It's headlessness, Yeah, which ties in nicely with the idea

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Speaker 2: of jackal lanterns. I mean, these two concepts are are

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Speaker 2: connected in many ways. Yeah, we're going to discuss the

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Speaker 2: idea of headless entities, mostly in the human imagination, but

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Speaker 2: it probably makes sense to think about what's lacking in

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Speaker 2: these fantastic creatures and what we tend to take for granted.

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Speaker 2: It's we're going to get into just the concept of

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Speaker 2: why do creatures have heads? What is a head? Even

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Speaker 2: it's easy to just take that whole idea for granted,

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Speaker 2: because I mean, the basics I think are pretty obvious,

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Speaker 2: and you know, we have to stop and look them

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Speaker 2: in the mirror and realize. A head is the top

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Speaker 2: or front part of an organism, the upper or anterior

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Speaker 2: division of the animal body that contains the brain, most

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Speaker 2: of the sense organs, and the mouth. It is the

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Speaker 2: communication array as we've described it many times before. It's

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Speaker 2: the matter consumer, and it's also the nerve center of

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Speaker 2: the organism.

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Speaker 3: Now, most of the animals you can probably think of

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Speaker 3: off the top of your head do have heads, but

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Speaker 3: actually a head is not a necessary part of what

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Speaker 3: it means to be an animal. There are animals without heads,

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Speaker 3: So that raises the question of why do certain animals

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Speaker 3: have heads and not others? What causes this difference?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to realize that heads emerge in organisms

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Speaker 2: over the course of evolutionary time and a process referred

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Speaker 2: to as cephalization, during which the mouth, sense organs and

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Speaker 2: nerve ganglia moved toward the front or what would we

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Speaker 2: would come to think of at the front of the creatures,

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Speaker 2: resulting in head morphology and the emergence of complex brains

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Speaker 2: and arthropods, cephalopod mollus and invertebrates. So these organisms tend

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Speaker 2: to be cephalized or semi cephalized. And would that mean

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Speaker 2: that a creature in fantasy that has lost its head

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Speaker 2: and continues to move around and act and behave is decephalized.

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Speaker 3: Well, I think that would be the term. The head

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Speaker 3: is removed, a thing is decephalized. But whether or not

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Speaker 3: a thing can continue to act without its head, it

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Speaker 3: probably depends on the degree to which it was originally

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Speaker 3: cephalized as a matter of its innate anatomy. I'll get

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Speaker 3: back to that in a few minutes. Actually, So I

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Speaker 3: was thinking about this, and it probably helps to put

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Speaker 3: cephalization within the broader evolutionary history of bilateral animals or bilatarians.

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Speaker 3: These are animals that have a left side and a

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Speaker 3: right side of the body that are roughly symmetrical, that

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Speaker 3: are mirror images of each other. So we are bilatarians,

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Speaker 3: and again, most of the animals you can think of off

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Speaker 3: the top of your head are bilatarians. The symmetry does

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Speaker 3: not have to be exact. It refers to the overall

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Speaker 3: body plan and how the animal develops in its earliest

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Speaker 3: phases of growth. So even in the case of animals

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Speaker 3: that happen to have evolved wildly asymmetrical features. One example

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Speaker 3: we've talked about on the show before is male fiddler crabs,

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Speaker 3: which have one claw that's much bigger than the other,

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Speaker 3: in some cases half of the crab's body weight, So

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Speaker 3: you know, roughly on the scale of a human with

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Speaker 3: one regular sized hand and then another hand that's four

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Speaker 3: feet in diameter and weighs eighty pounds, even that animal

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Speaker 3: is a bilatarian because the animal's body plan has bilateral

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Speaker 3: symmetry overall, with the exception of the claw, And it's

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Speaker 3: also a question of its evolutionary clade. It is descended

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Speaker 3: from the evolutionary clade of bilateral animals. So bilateral symmetry

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Speaker 3: is not just a feature of an animal body, but

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Speaker 3: a particular branch on the evolutionary tree, going back to

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Speaker 3: a common ancestor. As I was saying a minute ago,

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Speaker 3: though most of the animals you can think of are bilateral,

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Speaker 3: not all animals are. There are lots of sea creatures

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Speaker 3: like sponges, jellyfish, hydri and corals, that are animals but

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Speaker 3: are not Bilatarians. We don't know for sure when exactly

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Speaker 3: this split took place, when the last common ancestor of

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Speaker 3: all bilatarians split off from the ancestors of other animals,

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Speaker 3: but based on what I've been reading, I think it's

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Speaker 3: probably sometime between roughly five hundred and fifty and six

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Speaker 3: hundred million years ago. Is clearly it pre dates the

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Speaker 3: Cambrian Explosion, because in the Cambrian era, starting around five

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Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million years ago, you see a great

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Speaker 3: diffusion or profusion of different animal body plans that exhibit

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Speaker 3: bilateral symmetry. So clearly their last common ancestor was before that.

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Speaker 3: There's still debate about exactly what that animal was like,

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Speaker 3: but whatever its exact features were, it is mind boggling

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Speaker 3: to imagine the common ancestor of all of the world's fish, crabs, cats, squid, slugs,

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Speaker 3: barnacles and worms all in one body.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't just combine all those things in your

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Speaker 2: head and say, like, all right, a little bit of

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Speaker 2: the cat, a little bit of the squid. It's a

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Speaker 2: different sort of arithmetic in play.

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Speaker 3: But one of the things, apart from bilateral symmetry that

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Speaker 3: makes Bilatarians unique is their degree of cephalization. That they

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Speaker 3: these animals really started to develop heads in ways that

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Speaker 3: non biletarian animals did not. And the authors of a

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Speaker 3: paper I was looking at, they they define cephalization as

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Speaker 3: quote anterior concentration, and remember anterior means front, so front

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Speaker 3: facing concentration of nervous tissue, sensory organs, and the appearance

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Speaker 3: of dedicated feeding structures surrounding the mouth. Now, one question

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Speaker 3: I was wondering about was how to even decide which

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Speaker 3: is the anterior part of an animal that doesn't already

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Speaker 3: have a head. I think the answer is it's where

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Speaker 3: the mouth is. Makes sense. Yeah, Now to get some

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Speaker 3: more perspective on why and how a head developed in Bilatarians,

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Speaker 3: I was reading a few chapters from a book. It

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Speaker 3: was a book called Creatures of acxis The Rise of

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Speaker 3: the Animal Kingdom, published by Hill and Wang two thousand

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Speaker 3: and seven by an author named Wallace Arthur.

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Speaker 2: So.

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Speaker 3: The author of this book, Wallace Arthur is an evolutionary

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Speaker 3: biologist who was a professor at the University of Galway

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Speaker 3: in Ireland. I looked him up and it seems like

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Speaker 3: his work focused a lot on the interplay between evolution

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Speaker 3: and development and the emergence of animal body plans, which

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Speaker 3: is what we're talking about here, And in a couple

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Speaker 3: of chapters of this book he has a very nice,

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Speaker 3: plain language summary of the likely pressures leading early by

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Speaker 3: leetarians to acquire ahead. So one interesting thing to think

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Speaker 3: about here is that the early evolution of the animal

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Speaker 3: lineage found different types of symmetries. So the first animals

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Speaker 3: were not symmetrical, and there are animals today that are

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Speaker 3: not symmetrical in their bodies, like sponges. You know, you

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Speaker 3: can't cut them down the middle and get a mirror

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Speaker 3: image in any direction. Then there came animals with radial symmetry,

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Speaker 3: where the body is symmetrically reproduced around an axis in

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Speaker 3: the middle. And a great example here would be a jellyfish. Jellyfish,

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Speaker 3: they're not bilaterally symmetrical, but they're radially symmetrical. Finally, there

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Speaker 3: came animals with bilateral symmetry, tracing back to a common

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Speaker 3: ancestor that is known in the literature as the ur bileatarian,

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Speaker 3: so biletarian with the letters you are in front of it,

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Speaker 3: you are meaning like original or first. And again we

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Speaker 3: don't know exactly what this animal was like, but Arthur

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Speaker 3: thinks the best guess is that it was somewhat similar

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Speaker 3: to modern flatworms. This, he acknowledges this is debatable, and

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Speaker 3: I was reading a bit about the modern debate here

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Speaker 3: it seems like this is still one of the one

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Speaker 3: of the possible pictures of what this creature was like.

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Speaker 3: So Arthur asks a question, if you compare a bilaterally

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Speaker 3: symmetrical flatworm with a radially symmetrical animal like a jellyfish,

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Speaker 3: can we really say that one is more complex than

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Speaker 3: the other? He writes, quote, does a flatworm have more

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Speaker 3: different types of parts than a jellyfish? Well, not really. Yes,

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Speaker 3: it has left and right sides, which a jellyfish does not,

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Speaker 3: but that's about it. Although the flatworm has head and

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Speaker 3: tail ends while the jellyfish does not, The jellyfish has

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Speaker 3: a top side and an underside, the latter having the mouth,

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Speaker 3: which pretty much amount to the same thing. And the

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Speaker 3: jellyfish has tentacles while the flatworm does not. And yet

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Speaker 3: despite this basic parity, or maybe you might even say

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Speaker 3: that the jellyfish seems more complex, we do tend to

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Speaker 3: think of bilaterally symmetrical animals as more complex than animals

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Speaker 3: with radial symmetry. Why do we think of them that way. Well,

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Speaker 3: Arthur says that there could be a good reason for this,

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Speaker 3: and it's that bilateral symmetry led to subsequent steps of

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Speaker 3: increasing complexity. Bilateral symmetry was not itself necessarily more complex,

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Speaker 3: but it became a platform for future complexity to emerge,

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Speaker 3: making the point that some changes in evolution can seem

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Speaker 3: really important to us because they are necessary precursors to

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Speaker 3: other developments, maybe millions of years down the line, and

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Speaker 3: you couldn't always necessarily predict what those future developments would

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Speaker 3: be at the time. Like if we were standing there

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Speaker 3: in the pre Cambrian era looking at the orbilatarian, you

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Speaker 3: wouldn't necessarily be able to look at this little flatworm

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Speaker 3: like creature or whatever it was that it looked like

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Speaker 3: some kind of little little organism that has left and

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Speaker 3: right sides that roughly mirror each other and think, well, yes,

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Speaker 3: this is going to be big, This will turn into

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Speaker 3: spiders and cats and octopuses.

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Speaker 2: But that is.

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Speaker 3: Exactly what happened. It became this sort of platform for

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Speaker 3: future development. But to come back to the question, what

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Speaker 3: is it about these early Bilatarians that favors the evolution

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Speaker 3: of a head. Well, Arthur argues that it is the

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Speaker 3: peculiarities of pre cam animal movement. It had to do

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Speaker 3: with how animals move. So he says, you know, jellyfish,

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Speaker 3: this animal with radial symmetry swims around in the open sea.

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Speaker 3: You know, it floats in the water column. It kind

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Speaker 3: of pulses to swim where it wants. And then you

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Speaker 3: might have other animals that have radial symmetry, like the

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Speaker 3: sea anemone. This lives it's a sessile organism, so it

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Speaker 3: lives most of its life by sticking itself to a

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Speaker 3: surface and staying there, you know, grabbing things from the water. Flatworms, however,

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Speaker 3: creep across the two dimensional surfaces of solid objects like

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Speaker 3: rocks in the water. So you can imagine what he

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Speaker 3: thinks is likely the form of the orbiletarian traversing the

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Speaker 3: face of a flat boulder in an archaic lagoon. And

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Speaker 3: so he zeros in on the different ways that these

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Speaker 3: creatures move. For the jellyfish with radial symmetry floating in

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Speaker 3: the water, Arthur says, there is little reason to think

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Speaker 3: of any direction as forward or backward. All directions are

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Speaker 3: basically the same. The sessile sea an enemy doesn't generally

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Speaker 3: travel around, so travel isn't a big issue for it.

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Speaker 3: But for the flatworm like or biltarian, there is a

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Speaker 3: very definite forward and backward regime in the way that

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Speaker 3: this animal moves. You can think of the difference between

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Speaker 3: a car and an aerial drone. You know, the jellyfish

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Speaker 3: might be more like the aerial drone. It can kind

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Speaker 3: of go in whatever direction a car has to like

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Speaker 3: aim its movement. It crawls, it creeps along on a

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Speaker 3: forward path.

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Speaker 2: That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, drones

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Speaker 2: versus cars.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, now, no, there's absolutely nothing wrong with moving like

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Speaker 3: a drone, you know, the jellyfish, and there's nothing wrong

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Speaker 3: with these other lineages. Jellyfish can be highly successful without

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Speaker 3: a brain and with limited range of behaviors. They're doing

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Speaker 3: just find how they are, and this leads to what

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Speaker 3: Arthur calls an evolutionary cul de sac. You know, they're

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Speaker 3: just successful in the way they already are. But for

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Speaker 3: the orbiletarian, with a definite bias for forward movement, there

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Speaker 3: is a lot of reason to differentiate the front of

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Speaker 3: the body from the back. There are reasons this animal

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Speaker 3: needs to change based on the way it moves. Arthur writes, quote,

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Speaker 3: it is more important to be able to detect the

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Speaker 3: features of the area you are moving into than the

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Speaker 3: one you're leaving behind. So it is to be expected

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Speaker 3: that natural selection will favor variants that have more of

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Speaker 3: their nerve net upfront. As part of this concentration of

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Speaker 3: perceptive powers at the front of the animal, in the

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Speaker 3: region that will one day merit the term head, there

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Speaker 3: may be rudimentary forward pointing outgrowths densely populated with sensory

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Speaker 3: nerves primitive antennae. And I was thinking about this. Maybe

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Speaker 3: this is getting a little too philosophical about it, but

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Speaker 3: you could argue that the evolution of the head in

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Speaker 3: animals is related to the nature of time. For an

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Speaker 3: organism that specializes in moving in one direction, moving like

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Speaker 3: a car, or like a flatworm moving forward along varied terrain,

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Speaker 3: the gathering of nerve cells and sensory organs in the

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Speaker 3: front reflects the fact of reality that it is more

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Speaker 3: important to sense and react to the future where you

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Speaker 3: are headed than to the past where you've just been.

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Speaker 3: The past can't hurt you anymore, but the future can no.

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Speaker 2: I think that's a good way of looking at it.

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Speaker 2: And it reminds me of some accounts. Off the top

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Speaker 2: of my head. I can't recall how accurate these are

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Speaker 2: held up to be, but there was at least an

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Speaker 2: idea that was put forward in Western writing that certain

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Speaker 2: members of Native Arctic groups kind of referred linguistically to

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Speaker 2: something in the distance as being tomorrow, like this relationship

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Speaker 2: between where you will be and how you think about

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Speaker 2: what is ahead of you. And yeah, I can sort

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Speaker 2: of see that reflected in what we're talking about here.

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Speaker 3: Oh, this came up when we were talking about the

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Speaker 3: cultural spatialization of time. Yeah, how people represent time in

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Speaker 3: as a type of physical space or the metaphor of

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Speaker 3: the space around them. And I don't remember if that

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Speaker 3: example in particular was thought to be valid, but that

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Speaker 3: there are cultural differences in the spatial metaphors people used

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Speaker 3: to describe, like the future in the past and so forth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but even today, you know, we can easily

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Speaker 2: think about everything that's coming into us is like our future.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's the future of our body in that

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Speaker 2: in what we are consuming the you know, the future

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Speaker 2: of our thoughts based on the sense data that's entering

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Speaker 2: entering our body and our mind and so forth. So

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Speaker 2: uh yeah, I can see this this holding up. Whereas

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Speaker 2: what is it like? I mean, to the limited extent

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Speaker 2: you can even ask this question, what is it like then?

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Speaker 2: For the creature that is not farward loaded, that is,

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Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of like an a nowness. It's

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Speaker 2: kind of perhaps something at least distantly comparable to that

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Speaker 2: state of calmness and serenity that we aspire to, you know,

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Speaker 2: or so many of us aspire to to try and

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Speaker 2: get out of that forward headlong you know, sprint into

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Speaker 2: the future.

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Speaker 3: Assume the mind of a jellyfish. Yeah yeah, okay. Next

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Speaker 3: ecological consideration pressure on the creation of a head in

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Speaker 3: the early piletarians. Arthur says that forward movement also favors

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Speaker 3: the evolution of a front facing mouth. If you think

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Speaker 3: about this, this will make sense. It's kind of obvious.

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Speaker 3: Like if you feed by taking things into an orifice

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Speaker 3: in your body, it's best to be able to aim

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Speaker 3: your body movement to engulf food matter with that orifice.

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Speaker 3: So like, in the same way that it wouldn't make

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Speaker 3: sense to build a combine harvester with its intake on

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Speaker 3: the side. Right, you'd want it in the front of

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Speaker 3: the vehicle so you can aim it at the thing

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Speaker 3: you're trying to harvest.

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Speaker 2: Essentially an eat the future approach. Basically we've covered so.

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Speaker 3: Far right, So aiming the mouth orifice at food and

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Speaker 3: making sure food gets inside also requires extra motor control

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Speaker 3: around this region of the body. And this also favors

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Speaker 3: nerve cells being concentrated at the anterior or the front

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Speaker 3: of the bileatarian body. So nerve cells want to gather

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Speaker 3: there not just to sense what is ahead in your

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Speaker 3: movement schema, but also to control the mouth to eat

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Speaker 3: what is ahead in the movement schema. And you can

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Speaker 3: see this, this direct connection between nerve cell density and

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Speaker 3: eating behavior in an example that Arthur sites, which are

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Speaker 3: modern snails and slugs, some of the simpler bileateian animals

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Speaker 3: extant today. These creatures, he writes quote, have a arrangement

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Speaker 3: of mouth and nerve cells such that the nerves form

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Speaker 3: a ring around the mouth or the esophagus, and at

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Speaker 3: various points around this ring are expanded groupings of nerve

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Speaker 3: cells called ganglia or mini brains if you like. So

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Speaker 3: I love that. Of course, what begins as ganglia for

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Speaker 3: control of just like a mouth, you know, the eating

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Speaker 3: orifice could well evolve over millions of years into denser

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Speaker 3: and more complex structures of neurons, and eventually could even

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Speaker 3: become a brain. And so I thought this was fascinating.

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Speaker 3: According to Arthur's argument here, so much of the strange

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Speaker 3: and complicated and unpredictable evolutionary potential of the bileatarian body

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Speaker 3: plan arises out of the simple circumstance that these animals,

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Speaker 3: the Orbileatarians, had specific limitations on their range of movement,

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Speaker 3: that their world was a world of moving forward. One

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Speaker 3: more thing from this book I wanted to mention before

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Speaker 3: I move on is something that he talks about in

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Speaker 3: the next chapter, which is sort of the idea that

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Speaker 3: cephalization is not a binary It's not like you are

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Speaker 3: cephalized or not, but a question of degree. Some creatures

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Speaker 3: are strongly cephalized, others are more weakly cephalized. And to

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Speaker 3: illustrate this, Arthur begins by telling a story about a

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Speaker 3: time he was collecting centipedes from an area along the

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Speaker 3: coast of northeast England. He says he collected a number

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Speaker 3: of centipedes. He brought him back to the lab for examination,

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Speaker 3: where they seem to be functioning fine. Some of them

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Speaker 3: had injuries, like they might be missing legs or parts

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Speaker 3: of legs, but he explains that these centipedes have an

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Speaker 3: adaptation where they cover the stumps of their missing appendages

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Speaker 3: with a thick black substance that looks like tar, presumably

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Speaker 3: to seal off the wound and prevent anything that's on

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Speaker 3: the outside from getting in or anything on the inside

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Speaker 3: from getting out.

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Speaker 2: Seems like a solid approach, some sort of weird black

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Speaker 2: centipede sealant.

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Speaker 3: Okay, yep, yeap, seal it up. But then he came

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Speaker 3: across something weird, he writes, quote to my surprise, I

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Speaker 3: found that one specimen had lost its head and had

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Speaker 3: used that same black tar technique to seal the wound. Strangely,

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Speaker 3: it was moving around in a normal fashion, just like

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Speaker 3: all its friends who had retained their heads. It walked

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Speaker 3: in the way centipedes do, usually in a forward direction,

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Speaker 3: but it was also able to retreat backward from threatening stimulis,

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Speaker 3: such as my giving it a tap on its anterior

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Speaker 3: end with a pair of tweezers. Not only did it

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Speaker 3: do so for a considerable period in the lab hours,

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Speaker 3: but it had probably done so for an even longer

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Speaker 3: one days in the wild before I found it, because

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Speaker 3: the wound looked old. Inasmuch as you can tell these things. Wow,

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Speaker 3: So he says that this headless centipede eventually died because

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Speaker 3: it probably starved to death. No mouth means it can't eat.

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Speaker 3: But that's amazing. It's hard for us, being extremely highly

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Speaker 3: cephalized organisms, to imagine that, Like the first problem to

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Speaker 3: reach the crisis point with a headless animal would be

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Speaker 3: that it starves to death. And the difference here is

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Speaker 3: the level of cephalization in each organism. The centipede and

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Speaker 3: the human are both cephalized. They both have heads, but

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Speaker 3: the human is strongly cephalized and the centipede only weakly so.

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Speaker 3: In humans, control of the body functions is strongly localized

381
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Speaker 3: in the brain, which is in the head, and the

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Speaker 3: body really can't do anything without the brain. Centipedes, on

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Speaker 3: the other hand, they do have a brain of sorts

384
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Speaker 3: in the head. There is a cluster of nervous tissue

385
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Speaker 3: up there, but they also have clusters of nerve cells

386
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Speaker 3: in each body segment that work as a distributed system

387
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Speaker 3: of many secondary brains throughout the body. Even without the

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Speaker 3: brain in the head, the body segments can keep on

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Speaker 3: living and acting individually. They can make the centipede walk around,

390
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Speaker 3: react to stimuli, and so forth, but not forever. But

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Speaker 3: to come back to headlessness in nature, I want to

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Speaker 3: emphasize again that not every animal naturally has a head. Jellyfish,

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Speaker 3: for example, there's some disagreement to the extent to which

394
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Speaker 3: you should say they are cephalized, but they really don't

395
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Speaker 3: have anything you would normally call ahead. In fact, jellyfish,

396
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Speaker 3: you don't even have brains or hearts, or even blood

397
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Speaker 3: for that matter. They do have a nervous system, but

398
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Speaker 3: it is distributed throughout the body tissues without a central

399
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Speaker 3: like a major command center like a biletarian brain.

400
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating and maybe a little treacherous right to

401
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 2: look at some of these organisms and ask questions like,

402
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Speaker 2: all right, where's the head? Where's the head at? Because

403
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Speaker 2: sometimes an animal that seems to be headless may just

404
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Speaker 2: be all head It's another way of sort of spinning it.

405
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Speaker 2: This was an argument I was reading about from some

406
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Speaker 2: researchers at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. This came out

407
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Speaker 2: I believed this earlier this month. In a paper published

408
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Speaker 2: in Nature, they found that ceased to once thought of

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Speaker 2: as headless, actually exhibit gene expressions associated with head development

410
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Speaker 2: all over their bodies. Meanwhile, genes related to torsos and

411
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:13,880
Speaker 2: tails were largely absent, so you could, I guess, think

412
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Speaker 2: of them more as disembodied or never bodied heads than

413
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Speaker 2: you would think of them as a body without a head.

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Speaker 3: Another interesting fact about sea stars is that so they're

415
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Speaker 3: thought of as animals with radial symmetry, not bilateral symmetry,

416
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Speaker 3: but they are actually descended from Bileatrians, So these are

417
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Speaker 3: animals whose ancestors are part of that group. They did

418
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Speaker 3: have bilateral symmetry and they evolved to lose it.

419
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Speaker 2: The idea of something having a head in a body

420
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Speaker 2: and then becoming mostly head I was instantly reminded of

421
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Speaker 2: a character from Marvel comics named Modoc. Included a picture

422
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Speaker 2: for you here, Joe. You're not familiar with this guy,

423
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Speaker 2: but essentially I believe he was supposed to have been

424
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Speaker 2: a human at one point in the comics, and I

425
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Speaker 2: think definitely in the movies, and he has, through you know,

426
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Speaker 2: comic book events, become just this enormous head with much

427
00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 2: smaller arms and legs hanging off of him. You know,

428
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 2: there's a sense that like even these may go eventually

429
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 2: because he doesn't need them. It's all you know, cerebral

430
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 2: power in there.

431
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:23,760
Speaker 3: I notice a strange body feature here, which is that

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Speaker 3: Modoc's legs are not on the underside of his head body,

433
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 3: but the front of his head body, almost like little

434
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 3: tentacles or fe feeder jaws around the mouth.

435
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:40,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and this being, I guess, the first imagined

436
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 2: being that we've referenced here. It's something to keep in

437
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 2: mind with all of these is the question of like, okay, well,

438
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:50,399
Speaker 2: what was literally intended with this character, but also like

439
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 2: how did the imaginations behind them? How did the creators

440
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 2: behind them sort of channel some of these ideas we've

441
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:02,959
Speaker 2: already been discussed, either overtly or just sort of subconsciously,

442
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:05,280
Speaker 2: Like what do we think of when we have a head,

443
00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 2: what do we think of them when we imagine beings

444
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:11,760
Speaker 2: that have lost their head, that have a much larger

445
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:14,159
Speaker 2: head than a body, and so forth. Like there's a

446
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 2: lot of you know, overt and then sort of hidden

447
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 2: language in there.

448
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 3: I think, yes, in some ways, it's kind of hard

449
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 3: not to approach everything with a sort of vertebrate anatomical bias,

450
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 3: where you, you know, you are looking for the analogies

451
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 3: to the way your body is put together in everything

452
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,360
Speaker 3: in the world, even in even in you know, non

453
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 3: living inanimate objects. I mean you often, Rob, I'm sure

454
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 3: you have this experience. You look at some kind of

455
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 3: inanimate object and look for the head or the legs

456
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:43,160
Speaker 3: or whatever.

457
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And and on top of that, like the

458
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:51,000
Speaker 2: other wrinkle for a human's especially is that in the

459
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 2: head we see a centralization of the nervous system on

460
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:56,400
Speaker 2: the front and upper part of the creature amid its

461
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 2: sense organs in its mouth. It's the defining feature of

462
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:02,920
Speaker 2: both humans and when humans are looking at animals, and

463
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 2: certainly animals, it's you know, it's become it's come to

464
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:08,880
Speaker 2: be thought of as a center of personhood and self.

465
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:12,200
Speaker 2: It is the face, you know, at the front part

466
00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:15,880
Speaker 2: of the head, if you will. And of course that

467
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 2: that factors into a lot of our conceptions of not

468
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 2: only people, animals, but also just inanimate things. We're always

469
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 2: looking for the face. We're looking for that that front

470
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 2: facing communication array of micro and macro expressions, you know,

471
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 2: and we can also couple that with this idea of

472
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,879
Speaker 2: the head the face looking into the future, and what

473
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:46,600
Speaker 2: happens when these two future gazing facial arrays see each other. Then, Oh,

474
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 2: you have to have all the computation. What does it

475
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 2: mean that this person is in my immediate future? Am

476
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,720
Speaker 2: I going to eat them? Are we going to communicate

477
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 2: on seven level? Or are we going to turn our

478
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 2: eyes away and continue on our own forward core? Yeah?

479
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 3: I mean, for a second there, I was thinking about

480
00:28:04,040 --> 00:28:07,919
Speaker 3: the salients of faces. Why we notice faces everywhere? I mean,

481
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 3: we see faces in electrical outlets, and we see the

482
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 3: you know, the boxing octopus and the kadhook on the wall.

483
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 3: Everything is a face. Part of me wanted to interpret

484
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:19,639
Speaker 3: that as a result of our highly social brains. You know,

485
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 3: we're always looking at other people's faces to try to

486
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 3: understand what they're thinking, how they're feeling towards us, and

487
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:28,120
Speaker 3: all that. That is very important. But then it could

488
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 3: actually be even deeper than that in an ecological origin,

489
00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 3: because of course, understanding like looking for the face of

490
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 3: a predatory animal could help you understand like, am I

491
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 3: in the attentional zone of this this big looking animal

492
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 3: over there? So it could go even deeper than social factors.

493
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's a good point, and it goes back

494
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 2: to numerous things we've discussed, but most recently talking about

495
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 2: what happens when you meet eyes with just a household cat.

496
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 2: Yeah know, and how that is maybe an anxious experience

497
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 2: for the cat because again, it doesn't have all these

498
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 2: layers of human cognition. It gets down to the basic

499
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 2: interactions that a creature like a house cat that is

500
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 2: both predator and prey would have when it's locking eyes

501
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 2: with another organism. And so on top of all that,

502
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 2: as we begin to venture into the world of fantastic beings,

503
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 2: imagined beings, creatures of mythology, folklore, and much more. Yeah,

504
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 2: it's like to imagine something without a head is of

505
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 2: course also to imagine something without a face, And you

506
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 2: could just you can easily just you could focus on

507
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 2: the facial aspect of this, and there's plenty of ways

508
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 2: to cut that apart. But then on top of that

509
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 2: this idea of here is a thing that has no

510
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 2: head or separated from its head, and knowing like what

511
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 2: that would mean for a human being, Like you said,

512
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:52,240
Speaker 2: survival is not possible even for a very short period

513
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,440
Speaker 2: of time. I mean there, of course, studies and there've

514
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:58,560
Speaker 2: long been some fascination about to what degree a human

515
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 2: head can survive without its body. The answer still remains

516
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 2: not very long at all. So to take all of that,

517
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 2: these observations and knowledge about the importance of a human head,

518
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 2: the role that a head plays in a human's life

519
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 2: and personhood, what happens when that is cut away? What

520
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 2: happens when you have an imagine being that can live

521
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 2: without a head? And what does it mean? You know?

522
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:26,719
Speaker 3: When I go back in my history of taking in

523
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 3: stories of headless beings, the main one that comes to mind,

524
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 3: of course, is probably not a big surprise, is the

525
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 3: headless Horseman story and Ichabod Crane and all that, which

526
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 3: has been realized in many you know, Halloween specials on

527
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 3: TV and stuff like that through all the years. And

528
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 3: one thing I always remember thinking about the headless horsemen

529
00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 3: that made them different than other kind of ghosts and

530
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 3: monsters is that the headless horseman seemed less like a

531
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,520
Speaker 3: personal entity and more like a machine or a robot

532
00:30:56,200 --> 00:30:59,640
Speaker 3: than most other types of monsters and ghosts. Do you

533
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 3: have this experience?

534
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think it's one of the reasons

535
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 2: that at times, I mean, there's also the effects level

536
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 2: of this, but it's one of one of the reasons

537
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 2: that at times filmmakers have struggled with portraying it. I

538
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 2: think of the Tim Burton film where you had Christopher

539
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 2: Walken playing the headless being, and sometimes you see his head,

540
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 2: you see his face, because that helps convey like the

541
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 2: intent and the horror of the thing. You take that away,

542
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, it's like a robot. It's like all action,

543
00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 2: but without cognition, all like physical It's certainly still a

544
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 2: physical threat, but there is no mind communication. Will like,

545
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:39,120
Speaker 2: you take this entire aspect of what it is to

546
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 2: be an entity in the physical world, and you remove

547
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 2: this huge slice of it. How do you reason with that?

548
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 2: How do you even comprehend it?

549
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 3: I guess part of it is that even with a

550
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 3: regular ghost, you know, this imagined entity that doesn't behave

551
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 3: by normal biological rules, we still make biological inferences about it.

552
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 3: So like with a ghost, a monster, you can tell

553
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 3: you're in danger if it looks at you. You know,

554
00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:08,000
Speaker 3: like you are still tracking its gaze to understand what

555
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 3: its state of mind and attention is doing. And with

556
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 3: a headless beast. You can't do that.

557
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're going to begin to go through some

558
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 2: various ideas that, you know, especially with with what we've

559
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 2: talked about so far, I think this will make for

560
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 2: a nice discussion. The various examples of beings and entities

561
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 2: that have lost their heads are separated from their heads

562
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 2: and so forth, and in doing so they often have

563
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:44,600
Speaker 2: lost a face, though, as we'll discuss, sometimes the face

564
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 2: finds a way. But let's start with roughly with the

565
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 2: realm of the divine headless. And I suppose the notion

566
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 2: of the divine headless is interesting to think of in

567
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 2: light of some of the popular modern religious views that

568
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 2: position a mon theistic God as being essentially bodyless. And

569
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 2: in this respect you might well argue that, well God

570
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 2: is headless, then if God has no body, then God

571
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 2: has no head, at least in the literal sense. But

572
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 2: of course it's hard to escape the head in virtually

573
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 2: any sort of anthropomorphism or any number of linguistic uses

574
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 2: of the word head. We even have the term godhead

575
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 2: used to sum up different theological concepts, particularly in the

576
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 2: Abrahamic and religions, and also in Hinduism, though.

577
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 3: That is a false cognate. You know. The head in

578
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:37,520
Speaker 3: godhead actually has nothing to do with the biological head.

579
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 3: I think it is derived from the term that essentially

580
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:44,880
Speaker 3: means like godhood. It is like the essence of godness.

581
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you throw that into a language system

582
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 2: where head means head. You can't help but think of

583
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 2: it as such. Right now. Another thing to look at is, Okay,

584
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 2: if your god or goddess of choice goes through different

585
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:01,560
Speaker 2: avatars or incarnations, then well, no matter what their pure

586
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 2: form is, they're going to wind up having a head

587
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 2: of some sort at some point, at least for a while.

588
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 2: I think a fantasy example we might turn to if

589
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 2: you think of a Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, right,

590
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:18,760
Speaker 2: he takes on a number of bipedal and headed being

591
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 2: of forms, but ultimately assumes the physical form of a

592
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 2: great disembodied eye, devoid of body and head in the

593
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 2: literal sense.

594
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 3: Though it is interesting that it's still the eyes at

595
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 3: the top of a tower, making it kind of like

596
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 3: a head.

597
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I guess the idea is that during

598
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 2: that incarnation, like it has, he has become all seeking

599
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:42,600
Speaker 2: all because there is only one thing that it wants.

600
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 2: It is not consumption. It is just to find the

601
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 2: one ring.

602
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:49,560
Speaker 3: It's kind of the opposite of the headless horseman issue,

603
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 3: where like you can't tell where it's looking, all Sauron

604
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 3: is is looking at something.

605
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, in actual religions, though, gods do sometimes lose

606
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:03,360
Speaker 2: their head heads, but unlike with human beings, this doesn't

607
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 2: spell the end of it, because here you're dealing with

608
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 2: again divine beings and magical powers and so forth. We've

609
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 2: discussed in the past. The Hindu god Rahu, this is

610
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 2: the entity that is associated with eclipses. He was once

611
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 2: a proud oserer, a demi god of immense power and

612
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:27,760
Speaker 2: hunger seeking immortality. For demi gods are just another realm

613
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 2: in the wheel of Samsara. Rahu drinks the divine nectar

614
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 2: known as Amrita, but before he can swallow it all

615
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:38,840
Speaker 2: the way, as it's passing down his throat, all powerful

616
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 2: Vishnu decapitates him for the transgression.

617
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 3: He wasn't supposed to drink the nectar.

618
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 2: He was not supposed to drink it and was stopped

619
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:48,360
Speaker 2: in the act of drinking it. So the power of

620
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 2: the nectar. In at least some tellings and understandings of

621
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:55,879
Speaker 2: the story makes his disembodied head immortal, and so this

622
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 2: cleaved and fallen god continually seeks his revenge on the

623
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:03,480
Speaker 2: two planets jerry deities who ratted him out to Vishnu. However,

624
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:06,359
Speaker 2: in a lot of these tellings, his headless body is

625
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 2: still in the mix under the new name of Ketu,

626
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:13,319
Speaker 2: so both Rahu and Katu take on the classification of

627
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 2: shadow planets in Indian astronomy. Katu is indeed sometimes depicted

628
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 2: in Hindu iconography as a body without a head. Interesting now,

629
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:26,719
Speaker 2: Hinduism also boasts a headless goddess of sorts by the

630
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 2: name of Chinnamasta. She is depicted as a nude, red fleshed,

631
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 2: self decapitating tantric goddess. She's generally depicted standing atop the

632
00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 2: bodies of a divine couple with a scimitar in one

633
00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 2: hand and her own head in the other, with three

634
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 2: jets of blood spurting out of her neck, which her

635
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 2: own severed head plus two attendants like gaze upward and

636
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:53,880
Speaker 2: open their mouths and drink like a fountain.

637
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:57,359
Speaker 3: So she's understood to have cut her own head off

638
00:36:57,440 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 3: with the scimitar.

639
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 2: Right right, now I suppose she is still head in

640
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:05,839
Speaker 2: body as one, even in separation, or at least that's

641
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 2: my understanding. This might differ, you know, if one were

642
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 2: to dive more into the theology of this particular god

643
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:21,800
Speaker 2: and what these depictions mean. But it's my limited understanding

644
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 2: that you still think of them as as the same goddess,

645
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:29,480
Speaker 2: and she's associated with destruction and creation, but also apparently paradoxes,

646
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:34,320
Speaker 2: which I think is worth highlighting. Now, another headless divine

647
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 2: figure can be found in Chinese mythology, and this is

648
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:43,360
Speaker 2: Sing Ten. As Anne Beryl describes in Chinese Mythology and introduction,

649
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 2: Sing Ten is a failed hero in minor deity. His

650
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 2: plight is described in the Shanghaijing, the Classic of Mountains

651
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:53,880
Speaker 2: and Seas, which we've talked about on the show before.

652
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 2: This is a work from between five hundred and two

653
00:37:56,200 --> 00:38:01,359
Speaker 2: hundred BCE. Taking into account of variations of his name,

654
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 2: Beryl writes that we might very roughly translate his name

655
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 2: as punished by heavens or formed by heavens or And

656
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 2: I love this one because this one sounds like he

657
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:16,800
Speaker 2: could straight up be a death metal band. Is form

658
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 2: prematurely dying? Who you can just imagine that in that

659
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 2: nearly illegible script on a festival poster.

660
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:26,360
Speaker 3: Right right, yes, in the Batlord fond.

661
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:30,760
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Beryl points out that the story of Sing

662
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 2: Ten kind of stands out for its gruesomeness in the

663
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 2: in the classic, and this is partially thought to be

664
00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:41,399
Speaker 2: because many instances of sex and violence were like edited

665
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 2: a bit and cleaned up a bit over time in

666
00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 2: that work, and for one reason or another, this one

667
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:51,319
Speaker 2: was not. She describes Sington as an odentic warrior, and

668
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:52,880
Speaker 2: we might well think of him as kind of a

669
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:55,360
Speaker 2: Satanic figure as well, if you know, comparing him to

670
00:38:55,760 --> 00:39:02,400
Speaker 2: modern Christian and certainly Western literature depictions of Satan, because

671
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:05,200
Speaker 2: we know, for what little we know about him is

672
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 2: that he winds up in this position of having no

673
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 2: head due to his hubris, due to his violent opposition

674
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 2: to the supreme god Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor.

675
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 3: So what's the story, all right?

676
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,240
Speaker 2: So the story goes that sing Ten, who sometimes described

677
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 2: as a giant as well, challenges the Yellow Emperor on

678
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 2: a particular battleground for a divine rule. You know, He's like,

679
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:32,319
Speaker 2: you shouldn't be ruined everything, I should. Let's battle it. Out. Now,

680
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 2: the Yellow Emperor is victorious in the end, and he

681
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 2: beheads his challenger and buries the head on cheng Yang Mountain.

682
00:39:41,160 --> 00:39:45,440
Speaker 2: But Sing Ten is too proud to die. According to

683
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:49,120
Speaker 2: one translation, quote Ten made his nipples serve as eyes

684
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:52,720
Speaker 2: and his navel as his mouth, and brandishing his shield

685
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:56,280
Speaker 2: and battle axe, he danced. And we might well imagine

686
00:39:56,280 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 2: this dance is a proud kind of war dance, a

687
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 2: a vein dance, a spiteful dance. Again, he has been defeated,

688
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 2: his head has been removed from his giant body, and

689
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 2: yet he refuses to truly give up, to cease his

690
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:16,319
Speaker 2: opposition to the Yellow Wimperor, and continues to fight, though

691
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 2: in time the body dies as well and the body

692
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:22,319
Speaker 2: is buried as well. Now I included some illustrations of

693
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 2: this entity for you to look at here Joe, the

694
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 2: first of which is an older illustration from the Shanghaijiing

695
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,719
Speaker 2: which folks can can look up. Is found in a

696
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 2: lot of places, very very simple and kind of comical.

697
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:40,680
Speaker 2: But by doing image searches, especially using the Chinese characters

698
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:43,680
Speaker 2: for the entity, you can find a number of really

699
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 2: cool like modern illustrations. I don't know to what extent,

700
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 2: Like he's been utilized in Chinese comic books and video

701
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 2: games and whatnot. But it looks like a lot of

702
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 2: folks have done some very unique sketches of him that

703
00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:00,720
Speaker 2: look very horrifying, very demonic, with like the belly erupting

704
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 2: into a big fanged mouth and indeed the nipples becoming eyes,

705
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,279
Speaker 2: and you know, this is the ferocious form, you know,

706
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 2: still carrying and brandishing its battle axe.

707
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 3: At least one of these illustrations has a little bit

708
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 3: of Critter's energy.

709
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they have. Maybe there there's one thing to

710
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:21,919
Speaker 2: keep in mind, like ideas of like what happens when

711
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 2: like the head is fused with the body, or thought

712
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 2: to have fused with the body. We'll get back to

713
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 2: that in a bit. But yeah, it's like there's also

714
00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 2: this kind of spirit of, well, you can't be head

715
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 2: me again, Like my head is literally my torso. Now

716
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 2: what are you going to do? Cut my torso off?

717
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 3: I can't believe I didn't connect it to this earlier,

718
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 3: but I mean when you were talking about Modoc, I

719
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:43,479
Speaker 3: mean the critters, the crits really sort of are all head.

720
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,520
Speaker 3: They're like a head, an eating head with legs and arms.

721
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:51,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what does it mean sort of conceptionally if

722
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 2: we are imagining a creature that doesn't have a head

723
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 2: with a mouth, but its body is the mouth, where

724
00:41:56,640 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 2: like head and body are fused into one. You know,

725
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 2: on some level, does that kind of mess with our

726
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 2: concepts of head and body? Like one of the concepts

727
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:09,840
Speaker 2: we've discussed in the past is how arguably modern humans

728
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 2: tend to think of body and head as horse and rider.

729
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 2: You know, we're the head and there's the body. It's

730
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 2: doing its thing. But of course there's really more of

731
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 2: a centaur concept where horse and rider are one, and

732
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:26,880
Speaker 2: that breaks down in a number of different ways. But

733
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:29,680
Speaker 2: then what if we imagine, like the horse, human is

734
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:32,280
Speaker 2: just one entity, you know, Like, how are we supposed

735
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 2: to take take account of that? Like, here is this creature,

736
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:40,480
Speaker 2: like the critter like sington, who now has its belly

737
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 2: more or less in its body, its eyes or in

738
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 2: its body. What does that mean about its volition and

739
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:46,840
Speaker 2: its intent?

740
00:42:47,400 --> 00:42:48,840
Speaker 3: I don't have a good answer on this, but I

741
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 3: was just trying to think, how would your vision be

742
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 3: different if your eyes were in your nipples'd be farther

743
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 3: apart than human eyes usually are. And I don't know

744
00:42:58,400 --> 00:42:59,880
Speaker 3: exactly how that would change things.

745
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they would be wider apart, and certainly these

746
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:06,840
Speaker 2: depictions of like Singing ten. You know, he seems to

747
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 2: be have a very broad giant's body, so the nipples

748
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:14,720
Speaker 2: are pretty far apart. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how

749
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 2: to cut that. But in a way, it's like by

750
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:20,640
Speaker 2: having the belly be the mouth, it's like it does

751
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 2: tend to give us this idea that like the hunger

752
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 2: is even more all consuming, like the belly itself is

753
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 2: opening up and wishes to eat.

754
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 3: There will not be like an esophagus in between the

755
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 3: food and the stomach. You're just like chomping. It's like

756
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 3: the stomach itself has teeth.

757
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't imagine there's a lot of tasting.

758
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 2: This critter is not going for the tasting menu, is

759
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,520
Speaker 2: going for the buffet. That's right by the way. If

760
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 2: we dip back into Hindu epics for just a second,

761
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 2: there is a demon with these basic features that pops

762
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:55,600
Speaker 2: up there, known as Kabanda, and the story goes that

763
00:43:55,680 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 2: Indra stove this individual's head and thighs in stove them

764
00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:04,120
Speaker 2: into his body with the celestial thunderbolt weapon known as

765
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 2: the Vadra. But then Indra shows mercy and says, well,

766
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 2: he's still alive, he should be allowed to eat. So

767
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 2: Indra gives him long arms and a belly mouth. And

768
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 2: I included one depiction of this creature here for you, Joe.

769
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 3: On this drawing. He's kind of cute. He's like a

770
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:21,879
Speaker 3: blue Teddy bear.

771
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. But this one's interesting too because it's like

772
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 2: the head is not removed. The head is just kind

773
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:31,400
Speaker 2: of like apparently it's like driven down into the body

774
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 2: with something like it's easy to imagine like some gruesome

775
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:40,879
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat esque battle field fatality here, and then that

776
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 2: is rectified by divine magic to some extent. Now, if

777
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 2: we look to the world of Japanese jokai, there is

778
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 2: also a creature there that is described as headless but

779
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:56,880
Speaker 2: with nipple eyes and a belly mouth. This is a

780
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 2: donatsura or torso face, according to I couldn't find out

781
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 2: a lot about this one. I was looking at yokai

782
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:08,640
Speaker 2: dot com where Matthew Meyer describes this entity and says

783
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:12,040
Speaker 2: that the main connotation here is to shame and some

784
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:15,239
Speaker 2: sort of saying in Japanese about lowering the lowering of

785
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 2: one's face. I think the effectiveness of this is likely.

786
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 2: You know, something that's lost in translation. M okay. There's

787
00:45:23,120 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 2: another yokai that Meyer describes called Kuba kajiri, and this

788
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 2: one is also apparently sometimes described as headless. It's a

789
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:35,240
Speaker 2: kind of ghoul that consumes the heads of the dead,

790
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 2: though plenty of illustrations depict it as having a head,

791
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 2: as being a being with a head that is gnawing

792
00:45:42,560 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 2: on disembodied heads, and this may seem this seems to

793
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 2: be maybe connected to the idea of bodies buried without

794
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 2: heads coming back as vengeful spirits that seek out corpse

795
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,400
Speaker 2: heads to eat. It could also be linked to starvation,

796
00:45:56,640 --> 00:45:59,920
Speaker 2: according to Meyer. But at this point, obviously we're our

797
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:02,800
Speaker 2: beginning to talk about things that are maybe less divine

798
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:05,800
Speaker 2: and maybe a little more diabolical, a little lower down

799
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:10,360
Speaker 2: the ladder of power when it comes to supernatural entities.

800
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,839
Speaker 2: And so this is where we're going to leave off.

801
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:15,480
Speaker 2: But in the next episode we're going to come back

802
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 2: in and we're going to discuss other examples of more

803
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:23,600
Speaker 2: outright diabolical headless entities, and we'll also get into the

804
00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 2: works of antiquity and various descriptions of peoples in distant

805
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 2: parts of the world or distant from the writers and

806
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 2: observers here, that were said to have no heads, but

807
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 2: of course to have faces on their bodies. And so

808
00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:41,000
Speaker 2: we'll get into that and discuss like where these ideas

809
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:44,399
Speaker 2: came from and what they seem to mean. So we'll

810
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:48,360
Speaker 2: get into that on Thursday. In the meantime, we'll remind

811
00:46:48,400 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 2: everyone out there that, Yeah, Stuff to Blow Your Mind

812
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:53,480
Speaker 2: is a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

813
00:46:53,520 --> 00:46:56,479
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814
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 2: form artifact or monster fact episode, and on Fridays we

815
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a

816
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:05,319
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817
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:10,640
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818
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:13,160
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819
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:16,839
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820
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,719
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821
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:25,879
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822
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:27,799
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823
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:29,319
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824
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:34,279
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825
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:37,719
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826
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:39,799
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827
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:42,960
Speaker 2: content there, including a little bit of a video here

828
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:45,480
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829
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:46,880
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema episodes.

830
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:51,080
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831
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:52,960
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832
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

833
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

834
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,680
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835
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:09,520
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836
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:12,560
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837
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