Speaker 1: Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know
Speaker 1: what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let
Speaker 1: people know about your favorite podcasts, just to share the
Speaker 1: sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right, it's t r
Speaker 1: y pod still in nascent industry. A lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know what podcasts are and helps everybody out if
Speaker 1: you would go out and just say, hey, family member,
Speaker 1: who I see it? Thanksgiving once a year? Right, you
Speaker 1: should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what
Speaker 1: they are. Here's a cool show you should try, and
Speaker 1: here's how to get it. Yeah, and it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be our show, just any podcast you like in
Speaker 1: general that you think someone else would like to share it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Sitting across
Speaker 1: from me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant look so sharp today, dude,
Speaker 1: wrapped in wrapped in my herring bone linen. I thought
Speaker 1: that was an Infinity scarf. You're wearing it like an
Speaker 1: Infinity scarf. That's the second Infinity scarf joke you've made,
Speaker 1: although one was live on stage where you, uh, well,
Speaker 1: immediate at you accidentally made fun of the lady there
Speaker 1: on the first Yeah, some lady was like, well, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with the infinity scarves? And I looked over and
Speaker 1: lo and behold she was wearing an infinity scarf. Backpedal
Speaker 1: from that pretty fast. I don't get why what is
Speaker 1: it called an infinity scarf because it looks as if
Speaker 1: it never ends. I think it's a scarf that is
Speaker 1: sewn together. It's like a ring. Okay, that's all. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not a good name for it for not a
Speaker 1: great invention, like an infinity pool that never ends, like
Speaker 1: you can swim and swim forever. It looks as if
Speaker 1: I just call him rich person. Pools. Yeah, not like
Speaker 1: my above ground pool in the back the rust nator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hick right next to the trampoline. Yeah, alright, I
Speaker 1: think we've insulted enough people. Well that was a Simpsons reference.
Speaker 1: Technically they insult and the hick um, Yes we did anyway,
Speaker 1: So let's talk Shroud of turin Chuck, are you familiar?
Speaker 1: What made you pick this the easter? No, it's just timing.
Speaker 1: Although heck, that's great timing. Huh. Seriously, it wasn't it was.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I was listening to an episode of
Speaker 1: w TF with Mark Marin and he it's an older episode.
Speaker 1: All of our ideas from Mark man I'm growing in
Speaker 1: a stache. Well I've grown it. I'm just gonna shave
Speaker 1: the beard. Uh. He was interviewing William Friedkin, the director,
Speaker 1: and uh who. As it turns out, it's quite chatty.
Speaker 1: Did he not stop talking the whole time? He talked
Speaker 1: a lot. It was a really good interview. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you want out of an interviewee, yeah, sure, um.
Speaker 1: But he saw all the shroud of turn in person,
Speaker 1: and he described the experience and I thought, why haven't
Speaker 1: we done one on that? That's pretty important. What was
Speaker 1: his reaction to it? He he wept. So that's that's
Speaker 1: actually something that's called Jerusalem syndrome. Yeah. He he was
Speaker 1: incredibly move and he's not especially well. He talked a
Speaker 1: lot about Jesus specifically, but said that he's not religious,
Speaker 1: but he really has a thing for Jesus. But but
Speaker 1: he doesn't identify as a Christian, but he really he
Speaker 1: just is a big fan of Jesus. Jesus file Sure,
Speaker 1: which is you know a lot of people like that.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, there's even um Messianic Jews Jews for
Speaker 1: Jesus uh and apparently William Freed Kent I mean bio
Speaker 1: because of the two categories Bill accounts Jesus the historical figure.
Speaker 1: It's pretty stand up guy. Sure, you know, sure? And
Speaker 1: I think, well, let's just stop dancing around this. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not a really just podcast. We're not. Every time
Speaker 1: we've ever done in religious episode, we've gotten so much
Speaker 1: blowback from every single thing we've gotten wrong that we're like,
Speaker 1: our structure is not really set up to two podcasts
Speaker 1: on religion very much. The Shroud of Turn is such
Speaker 1: an interesting and contentious flash point where science and religion
Speaker 1: meet and butt heads that we just couldn't possibly pretend
Speaker 1: like it doesn't exist. It's too interesting. And I can
Speaker 1: imagine that William Freakin wept when he saw the Shroud
Speaker 1: of Turn. I would love to see the Shout of
Speaker 1: Turn myself. Um, I don't. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: my reaction would be, but I wouldn't be all that
Speaker 1: surprised if I did weep when I saw it. Whatever
Speaker 1: the Shout of Turn is, it is probably the most
Speaker 1: venerated object in the world. Yeah, perhaps it's at least
Speaker 1: among the top two or three. Take of me that, um,
Speaker 1: and the idea that so many people look at this
Speaker 1: thing with love and awe and amazement, that it's somehow
Speaker 1: abuse it with the very stuff that they that it's
Speaker 1: venerated for in some weird way. And I can imagine
Speaker 1: that even as an atheist you would get hit by that. Well,
Speaker 1: be to me like looking at a at a great
Speaker 1: painting or something. Um, not to say that it is
Speaker 1: a painting, even though some people say it is a painting,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to. But you know what I'm saying, like, uh,
Speaker 1: just moved by seeing the Mona Lisa, Yeah, or being
Speaker 1: like I thought I was bigger than that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was a little underwhelmed. Well, but that's the same thing
Speaker 1: that Jerusalem syndrome. Typically happens when you go to a
Speaker 1: very holy site in your overcome, but it can also
Speaker 1: happen when you're looking at art as well. All Right,
Speaker 1: it is a fifty if you don't know what it
Speaker 1: is and you're hearing's go on and on about crying
Speaker 1: t out of Turin, it is a fifty three square
Speaker 1: foot piece of linen rectangle. I think it's about three
Speaker 1: ft by four ft. Yeah, and it is, like I said,
Speaker 1: herring bone twill uh, faint brownish image that uh when
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of the more interesting finer points.
Speaker 1: But when photographed the negative images is a very clear
Speaker 1: image of a man, naked man with his arms folded
Speaker 1: over his groin area, tastefully beard, mustache, shoulder length hair
Speaker 1: parted in the middle um. And you know, looks like
Speaker 1: that if you grew up in the Southern Baptist church.
Speaker 1: Looks like that picture of Jesus hanging on the wall
Speaker 1: that I grew up with, or your friend that you
Speaker 1: went to that three eleven show back in Uh. And
Speaker 1: there are stains in areas on the linen consistent with
Speaker 1: crucifixion wounds. Yes, well, which we'll get to because it's
Speaker 1: very important. All of this is I feel like we're
Speaker 1: gonna be teasing this out throughout. Well, let's stop. Let's
Speaker 1: start at the very beginning of all this. Okay, if
Speaker 1: you're a believer and that the shot of turn is
Speaker 1: a legitimate religious artifact, that is to say that Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ was wrapped in it after his Christ buried in
Speaker 1: it in Jurus, and that is indeed his image when
Speaker 1: he died. He and this is Jesus we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Still not William freaking right, He's still alive, right, is he? Yeah?
Speaker 1: When Jesus died and was interred or in tombed, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: after three days, his apostles went and checked on him
Speaker 1: and they found he wasn't there. He had ascended into heaven.
Speaker 1: This just happened to be what we now celebrate as Easter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a boy, really, this is going to come out
Speaker 1: right around then, isn't it. Yeah? And Easter celebrates the
Speaker 1: among Christians, the resurrection of Christ. After his death, he
Speaker 1: dives Christified on Good Friday. He is found to be
Speaker 1: have been resurrected up into Heaven on Easter Sunday. Jesus
Speaker 1: wasn't there. His body was gone, but according to legend,
Speaker 1: they found shrouds still there, his burial shroud. So the
Speaker 1: idea is is that his burial shroud was taken out
Speaker 1: of his tomb um and venerated from the get go
Speaker 1: basically held on to so and moved from uh I
Speaker 1: guess the from Jerusalem out to where did make its
Speaker 1: second trip to believe. From there it went straight to
Speaker 1: Turkey Constantinople and it was there for several hundred years. Right.
Speaker 1: It was in the possession of some of the sultan's there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the Crusaders came along and said, we'll be
Speaker 1: taking that and whatever else we want, and we're going
Speaker 1: to move it to Athens, Greece. And it was there
Speaker 1: um or actually I don't know if the Crusaders took it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll smuggle out, but crusaders sacked the town. I
Speaker 1: saw both. Well, the history is a bit murky until
Speaker 1: the mid fourteenth century, right, it is so. And you
Speaker 1: would think that if the Crusaders had taken it, they
Speaker 1: would have taken it back to Europe because that's where
Speaker 1: they hailed from. They wouldn't have taken it down to Athens, Greece.
Speaker 1: But supposedly it's spent several centuries between the Crusades and
Speaker 1: about the thirteenth century in Greece, and somehow, some way
Speaker 1: it made its way to France, right, Yeah, a French night,
Speaker 1: and I think this is where it gets a little
Speaker 1: more solid and it's travels. Uh. Jeffroy de Charny de
Speaker 1: Charny Um took it to France about thirty miles outside
Speaker 1: of Paris, and um eventually it mounted it made his
Speaker 1: way to its final home in Turin, Italy and where
Speaker 1: it's been there ever since. Yeah, the cathedral of St.
Speaker 1: John the Baptist is when it landed there, and it's
Speaker 1: still there and you can go look at I think
Speaker 1: it went on tour for a little while within the
Speaker 1: last few years, right with van Halen. Uh. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was on display as a part of a traveling exhibit.
Speaker 1: Was it traveling or was it just on display? In turn? Now,
Speaker 1: I think it traveled but sprised. But here's what I'm
Speaker 1: going on is William Friedkin's account. So I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but I do know that um more people saw it
Speaker 1: in the last like few years than ever before, ever before,
Speaker 1: very very recent times, because apparently, um, for many centuries
Speaker 1: it was on public display. Yeah, you just have to
Speaker 1: go to Turin, go into that church. Uh, and they would,
Speaker 1: you know, probably ask you a serious questions before you entered,
Speaker 1: right and as you exited, like what kind of fish
Speaker 1: is this? That Jesus fish? Come on back? Uh. The
Speaker 1: Catholic Church does not have an official stand on the
Speaker 1: authenticity of this shroud. But um, chump, uh Chope, Pope
Speaker 1: John Paul the Chopster said, you know, we trust science
Speaker 1: basically to keep studying this thing. Yeah. The church, um,
Speaker 1: I think, used to have an official position on it
Speaker 1: until I think around and they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, we still believe that you Catholics or
Speaker 1: Christians should venerate this thing because at the very least
Speaker 1: it's symbolic of Christ suffering on the cross. Um. But
Speaker 1: we're not gonna say either way. We're the Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: thank you, good night. I think it's how and transmission.
Speaker 1: That's how Pope Ball ended all of his speeches. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, let's let's take a little break here. You
Speaker 1: want to, yeah, and we'll talk a bit about the
Speaker 1: early science the shot turn. So Chuck, we were saying, um,
Speaker 1: the shroud. As far as the Catholics are concerned, the
Speaker 1: shroud didn't really exist until thirteen fifty three, when Geoffrey
Speaker 1: de Charnay came up with it. Right, So that's the
Speaker 1: beginning of its documented existence. That the Shroud of Turn
Speaker 1: at least goes back on the record to thirteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: which makes it pretty awesome in and of itself, right,
Speaker 1: And for centuries and centuries people saw it, people looked
Speaker 1: at it. I'm sure they kissed it and wept over
Speaker 1: it and everything. And then it wasn't until the I
Speaker 1: think the nineteenth century or at least the twentieth century
Speaker 1: that it was really started to move out of public
Speaker 1: display and started to be cared for and preserved a
Speaker 1: little more, I think. And that's when science kind of
Speaker 1: started to come around, specifically starting in right, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the first. Like if you if you look at
Speaker 1: just the regular image of the shroud of Turin, not
Speaker 1: the negative photographic image, you know, you sort of see
Speaker 1: an image of a person. But in like you said,
Speaker 1: there was an amateur photographer in Italy name uh Second.
Speaker 1: That means the second. He had an older sibling. He
Speaker 1: took a picture. He was first though, No Primo that right.
Speaker 1: If you're seeing Big Night, it's Stanley Tucci movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Secondo and Primo. Yeah yeah, man, I won't see that again.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it since it was out. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard um that fam key Jansen? You know, the actress.
Speaker 1: Does her name mean female or girl in Danish idea?
Speaker 1: I think it might because that means her name is girl.
Speaker 1: Jansen that's what her parents named her. If that's what
Speaker 1: that means, all right, Sorry, that's okay. Um. So Secundo
Speaker 1: took this photo. Um, when he was developing it, he
Speaker 1: saw the reverse negative and went, wow, Mama Mia. What
Speaker 1: he saw was that much more clear image of a man,
Speaker 1: of the likeness of a of a human being in
Speaker 1: much more detail. He was accused of forgery, of course,
Speaker 1: out of the gate. Uh, and I think wasn't fully
Speaker 1: clear to like the nineteen thirties when more photographers did
Speaker 1: the same thing, and they're like, it's just a negative image.
Speaker 1: Let the guy up, yeah right, like this round. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this negative image really kicked off like an even
Speaker 1: greater interest in the shroud of turn. I think up
Speaker 1: to that point, um, people of science had just been
Speaker 1: kind of like, yeah, yeah, sure, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: It looks definitely like a burial shroud. When they saw that,
Speaker 1: though that that negative, it's really difficult to avoid the
Speaker 1: fact that it is clearly the image of a man
Speaker 1: like you described at the beginning. It's not Jesus on toast, No,
Speaker 1: it's nott or on my the wall of the house
Speaker 1: I'm demoing from, you know, or this grilled cheese. I met. Yeah, Um, no,
Speaker 1: it's it is, and it's universally recognized as that. It's
Speaker 1: not like it kind of looks like this, it's that's
Speaker 1: that's what that is, so much so that um even
Speaker 1: skeptics say, well, then it was just a painting or
Speaker 1: something like that by some artists. But just like that
Speaker 1: photographed by Secondo pia Um, we've our new techniques and
Speaker 1: tricks and software that we use as far as photography
Speaker 1: goes and images goes, is starting to unlock even more
Speaker 1: weirdness of it too. Right, So if you take the
Speaker 1: um the lightness and darkness patterns and turn them into
Speaker 1: like three dimensions, it actually reveals very clearly the three
Speaker 1: dimensional shape of a face, which is kind of surprising
Speaker 1: because that would mean that if we're a painting, somebody
Speaker 1: had to have painted on a face with just the
Speaker 1: right amount of darkness in places where that would have
Speaker 1: been closest to the cloth, and lighter amounts in places
Speaker 1: that would have been further away from the cloth, so
Speaker 1: that when you did look at it in this light
Speaker 1: gradient map, it would appear in in perfect three To mention,
Speaker 1: it's a bizarre little thing, don't you think for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: As far as real study, UM, it took all the
Speaker 1: way until almost nineteen seventy nine, sixty nine, when scientists
Speaker 1: could finally I mean for decades people had done um
Speaker 1: what they call indirect analysis. So basically, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it, and I'm thinking about it and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about it. But as far as actually getting your
Speaker 1: hands on it, it was nineteen sixty nine when um,
Speaker 1: like you said that they needed to preserve this thing.
Speaker 1: So they brought in a team of of scientists us
Speaker 1: to say, hey, how do we preserve this thing. We'll
Speaker 1: let you touch it. And they all went, oh, that
Speaker 1: sounds good to me. Uh so they formed the shroud.
Speaker 1: We're always laughing about how the acronyms work out perfect.
Speaker 1: This is not this is not that the Shroud of
Speaker 1: Turn Research Project or stirp Uh. They had five days
Speaker 1: of continuous access in ninety eight hours a day for
Speaker 1: five days. Yeah, so this is nine years after the
Speaker 1: first scientists were allowed to touch it. I guess they
Speaker 1: formed this thing and they you know, of course, what
Speaker 1: they did was it and say like all right, well
Speaker 1: we'll work eight or nine hours a day, kick back
Speaker 1: half some dinner and then sleep, get up to start
Speaker 1: over eight course Italian meals. They split up into teams
Speaker 1: so they could work non stop around the clock. They
Speaker 1: had thirty three members from all over the spectrum of science,
Speaker 1: twenty major research institutions, along with a team of European
Speaker 1: scientists who observed. I guess they sat there with our
Speaker 1: arms folded and just like you know, every ten minutes.
Speaker 1: They were the ones that brought the good espresso. The
Speaker 1: US led team, We're like, we don't know where you
Speaker 1: get that around here, not the kind of espresso you
Speaker 1: spit out into a napkin. Like what was that? It
Speaker 1: was in Mulholland Drive when a great scene. Um so
Speaker 1: here's what their report said, we need like a bombshell
Speaker 1: effect here, okay, uh quote the shroud images that of
Speaker 1: a real human form of a scourged, scourged, crucified man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a whip with like, um, several flays on the end
Speaker 1: and and I think it has like um, like rocks
Speaker 1: or something tied onto the end of the flaz It's
Speaker 1: just terrible, very bad crucifixion. We we could do a
Speaker 1: podcast on that. Yeah. You know something that I came
Speaker 1: out of this research for me was do you have
Speaker 1: to be a real s ob to crucify human being,
Speaker 1: whether it's the son of God or some criminal criminal
Speaker 1: whatever you should The idea that the Romans used to
Speaker 1: do that is just it makes my ear blow. Torture
Speaker 1: until you die, but it's the worst kind. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So they continue to say it is not the product
Speaker 1: of an artist. Um. The blood stains are composed of
Speaker 1: hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albuman
Speaker 1: and um. Despite this, they said it is a mystery
Speaker 1: because no combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances
Speaker 1: can adequately adequately account for the image. Right. So that's
Speaker 1: their official report from that first scientific inquiry, Yeah, published
Speaker 1: and these definitely were men of science. But the Stirp
Speaker 1: team was also um and it's ill today has is
Speaker 1: criticized for. Uh. I guess the way it's put is
Speaker 1: there were a team of scientists believers, like they were
Speaker 1: all legitimate scientists, but they also legitimately believed the shrouded
Speaker 1: turn was the burial shroud of Christ that had been
Speaker 1: some way or another miraculously imbued with Christ's image upon
Speaker 1: his ascension to Heaven. Yeah, I get the feeling a
Speaker 1: lot of this research is like, well, let's get a
Speaker 1: team in here to debunk it. Let's get a team
Speaker 1: in here to verify it, you know, right, And and
Speaker 1: there were skeptics on the Stirp team, but they they
Speaker 1: apparently didn't have as full access as the believers did,
Speaker 1: and there there was a lot of like infighting and
Speaker 1: backbiting among the team. But one thing that's universally agreed
Speaker 1: on by the members of the team, skeptics and believers alike,
Speaker 1: is that the Vatican itself did not try to influence
Speaker 1: the outcome of these tests. At the very least back
Speaker 1: in ninete yate they were willing to just say, hey,
Speaker 1: whatever whatever you find is what you find. Um, we're
Speaker 1: still gonna love the shroud, no matter what right I thought.
Speaker 1: The thing you were going to say was. The one
Speaker 1: thing they all agreed on was that those sturt t
Speaker 1: shirts didn't really work out very well. They argued about
Speaker 1: the name a lot, but the sturb team is still
Speaker 1: their findings are still criticized, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that's very much criticized is the idea that there's no
Speaker 1: artificial pigments on the shroud and that the bloodstains are
Speaker 1: actually blood for an alternative hypothesis or an alternative um examination.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Walter mcclun did you did you
Speaker 1: run into him in the hallways? Very ironic. Well, he's
Speaker 1: also very dead, so that's odd, but that happened. Should
Speaker 1: have mentioned it was the ghost of Dr McCrone. McCrone,
Speaker 1: that's so, I'm sorry, that's it. So Walter McCrone was
Speaker 1: I was like, is this guy you know, is he legit?
Speaker 1: He's probably the most legitimate scientist of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Like he he published and edited a u a peer
Speaker 1: reviewed journal on microscopy and microscopic investigation. It's called scop
Speaker 1: this with an exclamation point. Um. He uh. It was
Speaker 1: just he's a legitimate scientist, so let me just say that.
Speaker 1: And he did some examination of the turn shroud and
Speaker 1: he found, no, there's actually no blood on this at all.
Speaker 1: And what you're what what looks to be blood is
Speaker 1: actually red ochre pigment for million and then a temper
Speaker 1: temper um binder. Yeah. And this was in the late seventies,
Speaker 1: early eighties. And he said, um, basically he could account
Speaker 1: for everything in there as something that would have been
Speaker 1: in a paint from the fifties, whereas other folks have said, no,
Speaker 1: actually that iron in there, that's old hemoglobin. That's from
Speaker 1: the hemoglobin, and he said, no, it's not. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: needn't bend. So the idea that that he did find
Speaker 1: red ochre and vermilion pigment, you think, okay, well case
Speaker 1: closed here, Like this is a great example of the
Speaker 1: shroud of turin. It is not case closed. It's never
Speaker 1: going to be case closed. Chemists, molecular biologists, geneticists, you
Speaker 1: could throw every single scientist that you can possibly think
Speaker 1: of at this thing, and they can find wherever they
Speaker 1: want to find, And you're gonna have another team who
Speaker 1: finds the other contrary findings. And neither group is going
Speaker 1: to read one another's publications except the most hardcore people
Speaker 1: carrying out these experience. But people like you and I
Speaker 1: have no idea whether wait, was there blood found on
Speaker 1: it um? What were the findings about the red ochre.
Speaker 1: Did he just surmise that it was red ochre pigment
Speaker 1: because he found all the stuff that makes up red
Speaker 1: ochre pigment, or did he actually find red ochre pigment?
Speaker 1: Like this is the kind of thing that keeps the
Speaker 1: shot of turin a mystery. Well, yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: have been He's not the only one to have studied
Speaker 1: whether or not it was blood. There have been other
Speaker 1: people that said, who's a Heller and Adler said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's blood, and it's it's a B blood type. Yes,
Speaker 1: we can even tell you that, and then someone else
Speaker 1: would come along and say it's not blood, or if
Speaker 1: it was, he certainly can't tell the blood type, or
Speaker 1: whether or not it's blood from the person who might
Speaker 1: have been wrapped in the shroud, or blood from someone
Speaker 1: handling it, or animal blood. Yeah, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: big criticism of that that it was contamination from somebody
Speaker 1: who was actually analyzing the samples, because well, as we'll
Speaker 1: see later on, a lot of people touch this thing
Speaker 1: over the years, right, and then other skeptics point to
Speaker 1: it and say, dude, you can see it's not blood.
Speaker 1: That's not blood. Blood turns black or at least such
Speaker 1: such a dark, deep brown over the years that it
Speaker 1: looks black to the human eye. This looks like blood.
Speaker 1: That's not what blood looks like once it dries and
Speaker 1: ages on cloth. So there's a lot of different arguments
Speaker 1: either side but neither one is compelling enough to convince
Speaker 1: the other side that they're correct, correct, And so it
Speaker 1: just goes on and on, And I read a I
Speaker 1: think a Skeptics Dictionary post on um the Shroud of Turn,
Speaker 1: and the the guy who wrote it just perfect skeptics
Speaker 1: fashion was basically said, you know, even if you do
Speaker 1: prove that this is Jesus's burial shroud, that Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: was buried in this burrel shroud, it doesn't prove that
Speaker 1: he's the son of God. So it will never be settled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not the point of the Shroud of Turn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think anyone's saying that this proves that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they're just trying to get Well, they're two
Speaker 1: big mysteries. One is is it authentic as a shroud?
Speaker 1: Who is it? Or if it's not, how how was
Speaker 1: this thing made? The second thing is called the question
Speaker 1: of questions? Yeah, so, uh, should we take another break?
Speaker 1: All right, we'll talk about that and some other carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen testing and DNA testing right for this? All right?
Speaker 1: Should we start with you? Let's start with carbon test.
Speaker 1: Let's go chronologically, Uh, late nineteen eighties. I'm a junior
Speaker 1: in high school, Sonny Crockett was coked to the gills,
Speaker 1: long bangs hanging in my face. I think I'm a skater,
Speaker 1: but I'm really not same here. I tried pretty hard,
Speaker 1: but I was never that great. I was okay. I
Speaker 1: was wearing jams. Sure, you're like a little version of me.
Speaker 1: Did you wear jams? Yeah? Did you ever wear skids
Speaker 1: or wear those? Like? Past your before? Yeah? Past your tone?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Kids. They were like pajama pants, clear
Speaker 1: and clear and simple. Definitely not foot but I mean
Speaker 1: like they were what you would think of his flannel
Speaker 1: pajama pants, but they were to be worn like pants.
Speaker 1: They were a weird chat. Not as weird as that
Speaker 1: is the cavaricis, but they were weird. I saw a
Speaker 1: guy I try not to judge people on their appearance,
Speaker 1: but I saw a guy getting on a Delta flight
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago wearing, uh, a pair of oversized
Speaker 1: baggy fleece batman pajama pants with these huge fuzzy animal
Speaker 1: slippers and like a Porsche or a Lamborghini T shirt
Speaker 1: and mirrored sunglasses. Oh, how cool. It's like a forty
Speaker 1: something in year old man. I couldn't figure it out,
Speaker 1: and that man was val Kilmer. That might have been
Speaker 1: all right, carbon fourteen dating. The Vaticans said, go forth
Speaker 1: and date this thing. Um. That's what I kind of
Speaker 1: love about how the Vaticans treated this over the years
Speaker 1: of They've always been like, you know, you've got some
Speaker 1: new scientific methods. Let's bring him in here and we'll
Speaker 1: talk science. Yea. So they sent it to three different
Speaker 1: labs University of Oxford Radio Carbon Accelerator Unit UH, University
Speaker 1: of Arizona Go Wildcats, and the Swiss Federal Institute of
Speaker 1: Technology probably so uh Yodlers UH. And this is an
Speaker 1: interesting case because they all three of them found that
Speaker 1: the shroud material that they were given dated between twelve
Speaker 1: sixty and long, long, long after the Jesus of history lived,
Speaker 1: and perhaps not coincidentally, right around the time when the
Speaker 1: shroud first shows up in the documented record. So that
Speaker 1: combined with the fact that it was much after Jesus time,
Speaker 1: led a lot of people in the late eighties to say,
Speaker 1: case closed. This thing is certainly not the burial cloth
Speaker 1: of Jesus. Now, when somebody comes out with um findings
Speaker 1: like this, the other side sets about trying to take
Speaker 1: it out as much as possible every way they can.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of really um interesting backwards twisting turning
Speaker 1: arabesques that that involved logic in a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of instances. But with this one of the first
Speaker 1: ones that came out was well you you guys, the
Speaker 1: sample was tainted somehow. That was a big one. And
Speaker 1: then the scientists have said, well, how how is the
Speaker 1: sample tainted? And this is where some of the stretching
Speaker 1: nous comes in sometimes, right, one of the one of
Speaker 1: them accusations is that the samples retained by contemporary carbon deposits,
Speaker 1: which threw off the readings of the carbon fourteen. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's a very famous thing that I think maybe
Speaker 1: um Walter McCrone came up with. But it shows it's
Speaker 1: a graph and it shows how much twentieth century carbon
Speaker 1: it would take to to taint the results from the
Speaker 1: fourth from the forties to the four fourteenth century CE.
Speaker 1: It would take an amount of carbon contamination that weighs
Speaker 1: more than the shroud itself weighs. So that was probably
Speaker 1: not the case. Yeah. Another thing that um, some people
Speaker 1: kind of poopooed about this study was they gave them
Speaker 1: three control fabrics to test alongside um all old stuff
Speaker 1: Egyptian mummy, a medieval Nubian to him in a medieval
Speaker 1: French investment, ecclesiastical siment, and all the data from those three,
Speaker 1: from the three different institutions came out the same, whereas
Speaker 1: there was a span of about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: years on the Shroud of turin between the three, and
Speaker 1: what they released was the mean of these three. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of people said, well, hey, you're your
Speaker 1: fancy science. Tests nailed these controls, all three of them,
Speaker 1: but there's a big variants in the Shroud of Turrance results,
Speaker 1: so they go back to the your stuff was tainted.
Speaker 1: Another criticism that was proposed was that they had taken
Speaker 1: a patch from the medieval era that had been used
Speaker 1: to patch up the shroud, because the shroud actually was
Speaker 1: in a fire once yea when it was in France,
Speaker 1: I believe still um. It was folded up in a
Speaker 1: box and the chapel that it was in caught fire,
Speaker 1: and the box caught fire and the shroud miraculously sorry
Speaker 1: didn't didn't burn. It just kind of got some scorch
Speaker 1: marks and melted a little bit. Still survived. Yeah they
Speaker 1: are um, but they survived this fire. So what the
Speaker 1: critics of the carbon fourteen test said was that, well,
Speaker 1: you guys chose a part that had been patched up
Speaker 1: around this time during the medieval age. It's so fact though,
Speaker 1: you got it wrong. And then they probably said, well,
Speaker 1: why did you give a SEP part? Well they didn't.
Speaker 1: The Carbon fourteen reports supposedly says that they specifically avoided
Speaker 1: any part that showed any stitching or patches or anything
Speaker 1: like that, that they did not take a sample from that.
Speaker 1: And these were very small samples too. It's not like
Speaker 1: they cut off the bottom third of it and out
Speaker 1: for testing. Um. Alright, so back to what you described, well,
Speaker 1: you quoted from the description of physicists as the question
Speaker 1: of questions. All right, forget the fact that this could
Speaker 1: be the shroud that Jesus was buried in. Forget all
Speaker 1: this stuff like how was this thing made? Because no
Speaker 1: one's been able to recreate this, like come up with
Speaker 1: the process that could recreate this thing, because it's got
Speaker 1: a weird color and it's just no one can replicate it, right,
Speaker 1: And the reason why they're having trouble replicating it is
Speaker 1: it's not just the color that's that's tough to replicate.
Speaker 1: They're finding that if you look at the places where
Speaker 1: it is colored, Um, the thread itself is only just
Speaker 1: a little bit saturated with this color. Yeah, like it
Speaker 1: soaked in a very like thin amount. Right, This is
Speaker 1: what's throwing everybody off. Apparently to me, this is the
Speaker 1: whole key that the mystery swings on. If you were
Speaker 1: an artist and you were creating this using pigment, your
Speaker 1: your paint should just so right through at least one thread.
Speaker 1: This stuff is literally not deep enough to penetrate and
Speaker 1: individual fiber, let alone, all the way through like a
Speaker 1: paint wood point seven micrometers the diameter of an individual fiber.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a very shallow um pigmentation, right, So
Speaker 1: that this is where the big stumbling block is there, Like,
Speaker 1: how would you do this? One of the proposals is that, Um,
Speaker 1: there's this technique called bab relief. I always thought it
Speaker 1: was boss relief until yesterday. But it's like if you
Speaker 1: take an image and you carve it um and this
Speaker 1: is actually pretty well known in the medieval era. You
Speaker 1: can make it out of metal or um stone, and
Speaker 1: you heat it up and you can scorch an image
Speaker 1: on fabric. The thing is to make a scorch that's
Speaker 1: as shallow as the shroud of turns images. It would
Speaker 1: it would have to occur the shrouded have to lay
Speaker 1: on the bab relief bust for something like just a
Speaker 1: minute fraction of a second, And no one can figure
Speaker 1: how you would get a good image like you have
Speaker 1: on the shroud of Turin if you just if the
Speaker 1: the linen just dropped and was pulled off and less
Speaker 1: than a second. No one knows how that could possibly
Speaker 1: be done. Yeah, and that's just one like there have
Speaker 1: been many, many attempts to replicate this over the years,
Speaker 1: either through science or through people using arts and and
Speaker 1: uh materials available in the medieval times, UM something called
Speaker 1: acid pigmentation. There's actually a kind of photography, very very
Speaker 1: primitive photography. I saw that in medieval times. UM something
Speaker 1: called dust transfer the bar relief. And then some have
Speaker 1: contended it's a Malliard reaction taking place. Okay, well I
Speaker 1: don't really know fully how they explained that, and I
Speaker 1: don't think it held up. But I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: reaction in cooking, like when you're browning like a meat,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. Well, that actually deepens the mystery
Speaker 1: rather than rather than all of it. Other people say
Speaker 1: it could have been burial ointments, ultra violet radiation in
Speaker 1: the Bible, and Matthew says the earth shook, the rocks split,
Speaker 1: and the tombs broke open after the Crucifixion. So geologist said,
Speaker 1: it might have been an earthquake that happened, and maybe
Speaker 1: that threw off the radio carbon dating and maybe there
Speaker 1: was a blast of neutrons. So you say, turned this
Speaker 1: image into the fabric. And those are geologists, legitimate geologists,
Speaker 1: but there are also extraordinarily controversial and most people in
Speaker 1: their fields shunned them, wouldn't even talk to him at
Speaker 1: a cocktail party for Jesus. Basically, they're what they're talking
Speaker 1: about is something called piazzo nuclear fission. And the idea
Speaker 1: is is that, like if you crush a rock, the
Speaker 1: force of it can actually break the atoms apart, releasing
Speaker 1: a bunch of neutrons. And this Italian geologist's idea is
Speaker 1: that this earthquake that happened when Jesus died um released
Speaker 1: these neutrons and created this irradiated image of him on
Speaker 1: his burial shroud. And that's if you take that one
Speaker 1: line from the Bible completely literally and supposed that they
Speaker 1: didn't mean, like, you know, in a symbolic way, the
Speaker 1: earth shook. But even if it did, there's no evidence
Speaker 1: whatsoever that there is such thing as piezzo nuclear fission.
Speaker 1: And then secondly, it even says that it shook when
Speaker 1: he Um was crucified, so he wouldn't have even had
Speaker 1: the burial shroud around him at the time. Of holes
Speaker 1: in that one in particular Um, but it is, it's
Speaker 1: a theory. And that's another thing about the shrouded turn too.
Speaker 1: It's just learning about all the different hypotheses and all
Speaker 1: the different suggestions that people have come up with, and
Speaker 1: all the holes that they poke in those suggestions that
Speaker 1: in and of itself is fascinating to me. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: physicists a lots that I tried the ultra violet light
Speaker 1: experiment and he basically said, you know, the the amount
Speaker 1: of ultra violet light you need exceeds quote exceeds a
Speaker 1: maximum power release by all ultra violet light sources available today.
Speaker 1: So how in the world could someone have done this
Speaker 1: on purpose in medieval times? So chuck the um carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen and the fabric analysis. Those are huge, big landmark
Speaker 1: cases one, right, and then I think things just kind
Speaker 1: of everybody bickered for the next twelve five years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of bickering, and um, finally somebody's like, well,
Speaker 1: hey man, we've got this great DNA testing stuff we
Speaker 1: can do. Uh, let's do let's do something. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: To it to the shouted turn with the DNA tests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so what they found out, Um, they found out
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting things that didn't in the end
Speaker 1: lead to any sort of verification of fake or authentic
Speaker 1: at all, but interesting stuff. Nonetheless. One is that this
Speaker 1: thing got around um or at the very least, um
Speaker 1: was touched by a lot of people from all over
Speaker 1: the world, and in return, it touched a lot of
Speaker 1: people around the world. I would say, so, um, you
Speaker 1: know Europe, uh, Middle East, India, Africa had DNA from
Speaker 1: a lot of folks, and it had a lot of
Speaker 1: plant DNA too. They tested both. Yeah, and a lot
Speaker 1: of weird DNA plant DNA showed up on it. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got like black locust trees from Appalachia and
Speaker 1: North America. Yeah, that was a little surprising. It's weird.
Speaker 1: Apparently a very rare Asian pear tree. Um stuff that's
Speaker 1: fun in India. Yeah, um, Mediterranean clover. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and so does with the human DNA. They
Speaker 1: found the the most the heaviest concentration of DNA was
Speaker 1: from people in the Middle East around where Jesus was buried,
Speaker 1: So that kind of makes sense. Um. But here's the
Speaker 1: one I don't get. They said that the oldest DNA
Speaker 1: was from India, which they say suggested it could have
Speaker 1: been manufactured in India because Indians and Europeans didn't like
Speaker 1: have a lot of contact back then. But then I
Speaker 1: saw someone trying to refute that in the same article,
Speaker 1: and this is from Life Science by the way, um,
Speaker 1: saying that it could have been uh when it was
Speaker 1: on public display. Is where the Indian DNA came from.
Speaker 1: That's where all this DNA could have come from. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but they said that the oldest DNA was from India.
Speaker 1: So again it's just like every time someone uncovers something
Speaker 1: that's just another little mystery to it. It It seems like
Speaker 1: unless you go back to the carbon dating and those
Speaker 1: scientists are like, now this has stood up to scrutiny
Speaker 1: over the years. Yeah. And I actually saw a BBC
Speaker 1: um little documentary on the uh, the shot of Turn,
Speaker 1: and they went in physic it did somebody who was
Speaker 1: there at at Oxford when they did the carbon dating,
Speaker 1: and they were like no, he was his mind seemed
Speaker 1: wide open at the very least, but he was definitely
Speaker 1: like no, it was all legitimate and I've never heard
Speaker 1: an objection to it that that panned out. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: you got anything else, Well, I think you can probably
Speaker 1: sit here for hours and hours, yeah, in hours, but
Speaker 1: we're not going if you if it has floated your boat.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of stuff for you to go read. You
Speaker 1: can start with a couple of great articles that we used,
Speaker 1: um one from nat GEO, Why is shoud of Turn?
Speaker 1: Secrets continue to elude science? That was great and live science,
Speaker 1: like you said, article called is it a fake DNA
Speaker 1: testing deepens mystery, shout of Turn and plenty of other stuff.
Speaker 1: Go check out um Walter mccrone's site as well. He's
Speaker 1: got his own site on the shutter Turn. Yeah. Oh
Speaker 1: it's by the way, I mentioned him and in this
Speaker 1: meant to mention this send anology. It's what it's called
Speaker 1: the Official Study of the Shroud. Really, it has its
Speaker 1: own ology s I N D O N i'll apology.
Speaker 1: We all know how to spell that O L O
Speaker 1: G I E r Uh. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about the shild, like we said, go start
Speaker 1: searching and welcome to the rabbit hole. So see the thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah in person? Why not? I totally would if I
Speaker 1: was in your turn. There's steamers that go to Italy.
Speaker 1: Still uh. And since we said Italy, it's time for listener.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this divorce upcoming. Hey, guys, my wife
Speaker 1: Jade and I are huge fans of the show and
Speaker 1: listen almost every night before bed. But we don't like
Speaker 1: each other. We have our favorite s Y s G moments.
Speaker 1: But when that made us both laugh like crazy was
Speaker 1: Chuck's nerd gasm towards the end of the Action Figures episode.
Speaker 1: We rewound the podcast and listen to that part so
Speaker 1: often I'd decided to take a clip. Uh, make a
Speaker 1: clip of it and said it as my alarm clock tone. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sound files attached. It's very short, but played on a
Speaker 1: loop fifteen to twenty times at seven thirty am, and
Speaker 1: you will get the full effect. Now we wake up
Speaker 1: to your voices as well as falling asleep to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Long and may you're a great show. Continued David. Uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't leave his wife's name, but David and oh
Speaker 1: yeah Jade uh in Newcastle, England. And let's just play
Speaker 1: this really quick. He's played like five times to get
Speaker 1: the full effect. Let's hear it, go go go go go. Wow.
Speaker 1: That would wake me up. I sit pulled up right
Speaker 1: and be like not a Cain. Yeah, that's a yeah.
Speaker 1: Good luck with the divorce. Thanks sorry Jade and David.
Speaker 1: Thanks Jade and David. You could also bring them together,
Speaker 1: you know, right in opposition against us. Okay, Uh, thanks
Speaker 1: Dad and David and Jade or Dade that's your couple
Speaker 1: name now and Javid? Um, yeah, either one's good. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this like
Speaker 1: Jade and David did, yeah, you can tweet to us
Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast or I'm also at
Speaker 1: Josh um Clark Chucks at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
Speaker 1: at stuff you Should Know on Facebook dot com. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email stuff podcast at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
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