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

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact,

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Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. My

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Speaker 2: kid and I have been really enjoying the second season

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Speaker 2: of the excellent animated series X Men ninety seven, especially

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Speaker 2: it's time traveling two parter set partially in ancient Egypt.

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Speaker 2: Even if you're only casually acquainted with the X Men's storylines,

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Speaker 2: you can probably guess that most of the action here

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Speaker 2: centers around the origins of the first Mutant in Sabonur,

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Speaker 2: who of course becomes the near unstoppable and seemingly immortal

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Speaker 2: supervillain Apocalypse. But of course Marvel Comics doesn't just have

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Speaker 2: one character with ties to ancient Egypt. It has loads

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Speaker 2: of them, from some of the Mummy related characters that

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Speaker 2: I've discussed here on the show before, to the far

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Speaker 2: future time traveler who ventured back to ancient Egypt to

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Speaker 2: become the Pharaoh Rama Tut. This is all to be expected,

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Speaker 2: of course, given the just pervasive power of Egyptomania. The

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Speaker 2: culture of ancient Egypt has fascinated pretty much every culture

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Speaker 2: to come into contact with it, resulting in all manner

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Speaker 2: of cultural transformations, and that ultimately includes comic books. Now

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Speaker 2: you will find the occasional comic book about ancient Egypt

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Speaker 2: that's either steeped in actual history, such as eleven seventy

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Speaker 2: seven BCE, a graphic history of the year Civilization Collapsed

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Speaker 2: by Glennis Fox and Eric H. Klein, or mythology focused

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Speaker 2: approaches such as Myths, Mummies and Magic in Ancient Egypt

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Speaker 2: by Stephen Davies and Nuria Tamart. Look both of those up,

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Speaker 2: they look really interesting. But the Marvel Universe, of course,

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Speaker 2: is generally going to play a bit looser with the

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Speaker 2: reality here and is going to be more about the

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Speaker 2: superhero supervillain entertains, which brings us to a nice end,

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Speaker 2: in my opinion, ridiculous example, and that is Sphinx and

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Speaker 2: extremely beefy seven foot two ancient Egyptian mutant wizard with

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Speaker 2: a hat reminiscent of the god Annibus's jackal Ears. He

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Speaker 2: gains his powers from the cost Stone. This, I believe

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Speaker 2: is a reference to the ancient Egyptian concept of kaw

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Speaker 2: as one piece of the human soul. He has a

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Speaker 2: flying spacefaring pyramid, and in a nod to Abrahamic traditions,

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Speaker 2: he loses a test of wizarding power against none other

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Speaker 2: than the prophet Moses. Having lost to Moses, he goes

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Speaker 2: on to lose battles against Nova Thing and Galactus. I

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Speaker 2: am also somewhat delighted to learn that Sphinx also crosses

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Speaker 2: paths with the Quasi Motivational destruct Organism or Quasi Moto

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Speaker 2: in a late nineteen seventies Fantastic Four storyline, And don't worry,

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Speaker 2: ancient astronauts get shoehorned into the whole narrative as well. Now,

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Speaker 2: you could certainly make an argument that time travel and

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Speaker 2: time itself becomes meaningless in comic book narratives like these

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Speaker 2: Ancient Egypt, the present day, far future apocalyptic scenarios, these

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Speaker 2: all just become mere kingdoms that characters can travel back

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Speaker 2: and forth to willy nilly, and not just times, but

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Speaker 2: just timelines as well. Right above all, we should, of

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Speaker 2: course acknowledge that these worlds are meant to be fun

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Speaker 2: and entertaining, and they often very much are. But I

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Speaker 2: also can't help but think of them as accessible, imaginative

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Speaker 2: realms in the same way that superheroes and supervillains are

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Speaker 2: imaginative beings, much like a pantheon of gods. Many have

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Speaker 2: pointed this out before, and then, you know, it's interesting

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Speaker 2: to think about the fact that we may have You

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Speaker 2: may be looking at icons of these different superheroes and

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Speaker 2: supervillains right now on your shelf, on your table, almost

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Speaker 2: like a little altar to these ideas of different aspects

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Speaker 2: of human personalities and the larger reality that we all share.

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Speaker 2: That sort of thing. So the many worlds and beings

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Speaker 2: of these tales, you know, they constitute a modern pop

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Speaker 2: culture mythology and serve some of the same purposes as

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Speaker 2: deities and metaphysical realms in many of the ancient human faiths.

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Speaker 2: Popular historical imagination meets pop culture pantheon meets paracosm, all

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Speaker 2: of it serving as a way, at least in a

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Speaker 2: small manner, to understand and survive the real world all

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Speaker 2: around us. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster

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Speaker 2: Fact The Artifact or animally is Stupendium each week. As always,

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Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.

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

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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