Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three
Speaker 3: in our series on Ninja. Now, if you haven't heard
Speaker 3: the first two parts of this series, this is a
Speaker 3: case where you really should go back and listen to
Speaker 3: those before you listen to today's episode, because we lay
Speaker 3: a lot of groundwork, especially about the tricky historical questions
Speaker 3: about the sort of accuracy of a lot of the
Speaker 3: received knowledge about the ninja. And so if you are
Speaker 3: wondering about like how the ninja fit into real history
Speaker 3: versus pop culture and then sort of subsequent lore and legend,
Speaker 3: we talk more about that in the previous episodes. Today
Speaker 3: we're going to be focusing more on just some of
Speaker 3: the great bits of tech mixture and the anecdotes from
Speaker 3: that historical lore and legend, the stories of individual ninjas,
Speaker 3: the stories of the stories of tools and techniques and
Speaker 3: equipment and so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you basically can think of it this way.
Speaker 2: The ninja existed, true statement, the ninja are a myth
Speaker 2: and never existed. True statement depends on how you tease
Speaker 2: it apart, you know, and likewise a lot of this too,
Speaker 2: Like we'll get into specific examples of ninja tools or weapons,
Speaker 2: and you can say this never existed, and then you
Speaker 2: can also say, but I can buy one at the
Speaker 2: mall today, and so it's like, well it exists now, right,
Speaker 2: So it's it gets complicated.
Speaker 3: This is a great time, I think, to discuss some
Speaker 3: of the various ninjutsu manuals that were published beginning in
Speaker 3: the Edo period, beginning under the Tokugawa Shogunate, that are
Speaker 3: the source of a lot of the ninja lore that
Speaker 3: we have today. So you can think about sort of
Speaker 3: like multiple stages of development of the ninja lore over
Speaker 3: the centuries. This is going way back. It's questionable whether
Speaker 3: some of the things reported in these manuals were actually
Speaker 3: used in the earlier periods, But these seventeenth eighteenth century
Speaker 3: texts have lots of great stuff in them that I
Speaker 3: think later gets picked up by authors, say in the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, and reprocessed and turned into the pop culture
Speaker 3: idea of the ninja. So there are multiple ninjitsu manuals,
Speaker 3: and I'm just going to list some common characteristics of them.
Speaker 3: So they will teach techniques of espionage, stealth, and intelligence gathering,
Speaker 3: including everything from how to infiltrate a building using different
Speaker 3: kinds of ladders to how to gag a prisoner. So
Speaker 3: they're full of descriptions of techniques. They pass along practical
Speaker 3: knowledge about real subjects, such as pharmacology like using herbs
Speaker 3: to achieve an effect in the body, and how to
Speaker 3: use gunpowders, so there is some amount of chemistry knowledge,
Speaker 3: at least as it was understood in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3: In some of these books, they describe and illustrate tools
Speaker 3: and equipment such as cow drops. You know, these spiked
Speaker 3: spiked objects that would be used. You know, you'd throw
Speaker 3: them on the ground to slow the advance of an
Speaker 3: enemy or to deny them access to an area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, makabishi, I believe, is the term for these. And
Speaker 2: these are interesting on their own terms because if you've
Speaker 2: played Dungeons and Dragons, you may have used these. You know,
Speaker 2: these are pretty common way to slow down an enemy.
Speaker 2: But apparently when you get into the history of their
Speaker 2: use in shnobi activities, like some examples of them may
Speaker 2: have been essentially organic or found items like essentially like
Speaker 2: throwing nuts, you know, or today's version would be like
Speaker 2: spreading legos all over the floor. That's not quite like
Speaker 2: a nature fact or a found item, but you know,
Speaker 2: you get the idea and then that you could progress
Speaker 2: from them into potentially like metal objects that are spiked
Speaker 2: and so forth. And speaking of those ladders, yes, ladders
Speaker 2: are absolutely a tool of the ninja. And if you
Speaker 2: are in the Dungeons and Dragons campaign and you're playing
Speaker 2: a rogue, go ahead and equip that ladder, bring that
Speaker 2: ladder with you, and dare your dungeon master to make
Speaker 2: you roll a dexterity check whilst climbing it. Ladders are great,
Speaker 2: trust the ninja on this.
Speaker 3: My current rogue has a real affinity for climbing. He's
Speaker 3: got the I don't know it's level three or level
Speaker 3: four or wherever it is. You get to pick one
Speaker 3: of the feats, and he's got second story work where
Speaker 3: you know, you can climb at the same rate you
Speaker 3: can you can run.
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, but I feel like we've been kind
Speaker 2: of just like a modern Ninja batmanification of our understanding
Speaker 2: of what rogues should have. Batman never carried a ladder
Speaker 2: but he probably should have carried a ladder. I think
Speaker 2: that would be great.
Speaker 3: The bat ladder, I mean, the rope ladder, will you
Speaker 3: gets you a lot of places. I guess batman doesn't
Speaker 3: need a ladder because he has the unrealistic, the back
Speaker 3: claw thing that you can just shoot and will zip
Speaker 3: him up anywhere.
Speaker 2: Absolute trust in the masonry the buildings he's interacting with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, all the stuff I've mentioned so far,
Speaker 3: that's the stuff you would imagine a ninjitsu manual to include. Right,
Speaker 3: you know, techniques about stealth tools. You could use, knowledge
Speaker 3: about pharmacology and gunpowder and things like that. But there
Speaker 3: are also things you might expect less. These manuals often
Speaker 3: emphasize spiritual and philosophical elements of the shnobi lifestyle, like
Speaker 3: some during the Edo period promote Confucianism with a strong
Speaker 3: emphasis on loyalty, which of course was favored by the
Speaker 3: Tokugawa shoguns. They sometimes also include moral discourses that serve
Speaker 3: as justification for shnobi activities, like it's okay to use
Speaker 3: lies and deception and trickery because they will help you win.
Speaker 3: They're what you have to do to win, and what's
Speaker 3: ultimately right is to be loyal to your masters and
Speaker 3: to help win in the conflict. And so so you know,
Speaker 3: you got to deliver that intelligence. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 3: you have to lie to do it. They sometimes also
Speaker 3: include more esoteric guidance, like the use of astrology or divination.
Speaker 3: They are often falsely attributed to a great hero or
Speaker 3: legend from history. They do not depict shnobi in black
Speaker 3: costumes and masks. They are not generally concerned with assassination,
Speaker 3: nor do they usually describe hand to hand combat or
Speaker 3: sword fighting techniques, as would come to be the calling
Speaker 3: card of Ninja in later movies. Once again, they are
Speaker 3: most often concerned with intelligence gathering, psychological warfare, and sabotage.
Speaker 3: And to this point, one of the manuals I'll mention
Speaker 3: in a minute actually specifies that your shinobi your spies
Speaker 3: should be selected based on intelligence and not physical strength,
Speaker 3: because these people were not primarily thought of as fighters,
Speaker 3: but as tricksters and observers gatherers of information.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, like your shnobi,
Speaker 2: are they going to be able to throw down with
Speaker 2: a samurai, an armed samurai like you know, one to
Speaker 2: one in some sort of a battle. I think there's
Speaker 2: a strong case to be made. No, the trickery if that,
Speaker 2: if that's sort of violent encounter where to occur, the
Speaker 2: trickery is going to make the difference, not the martial arts.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that's right.
Speaker 3: As we talked about in the last episode, the idea
Speaker 3: of shanoby as instigators of daring individual violence and hand
Speaker 3: to hand combat, that is more of the later movie
Speaker 3: ninja thing. The earlier emphasis is though there all there
Speaker 3: are lots of sort of shinobi warfare activities in shnobi attacks,
Speaker 3: sneak attacks by night. Most of the time, these manuals
Speaker 3: and early ideas of shinobi are are more focused on spying.
Speaker 3: For just one example of how these older military manuals
Speaker 3: might focus more on espionage strategy than on the type
Speaker 3: of combat focused ninja behavior we think of today, there
Speaker 3: was a sixteenth century military manual called the Kinetsushu, and
Speaker 3: this text was from earlier than the major ninjutsu manual.
Speaker 3: So this is not I want to be clear, this
Speaker 3: is not one of the ninjutsu manuals I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: This is a general warfare manual from a little bit earlier,
Speaker 3: and its focus is broadly on strategy and warfare, but
Speaker 3: it contains a sub section on espionage techniques, and it
Speaker 3: recommends things like the following. It says, before you go
Speaker 3: on a military campaign, send spies into the area that
Speaker 3: you're targeting to pose as merchants and craftsmen. And these
Speaker 3: spies should make maps of local topography and try to
Speaker 3: figure out the morale of locals, for example, by listening
Speaker 3: to whether people sing sad songs or happy songs. And
Speaker 3: you can also try to split loyalties within the region
Speaker 3: by doing things like have your spies make donations to
Speaker 3: local temples and shrines to win over the approval of
Speaker 3: the priests class.
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing you had to be kind of selective
Speaker 2: about how you do it, Like, don't immediately set up
Speaker 2: shop and be like, hey, what do you think of
Speaker 2: the latest Lena del Rey album. You know, tease it
Speaker 2: out a little bit, make sure you have enough lead
Speaker 2: time to really immerse yourself in the local community.
Speaker 3: Exactly right. Oh, and I should say, by the way,
Speaker 3: I mentioned it in the last couple of episodes, but
Speaker 3: just to flag again one of my major sources here.
Speaker 3: Also on the general facts about these ninjasu manuals is
Speaker 3: a book by a British historian named Stephen Turnbull called
Speaker 3: Ninja Unmasking the Myth from twenty seventeen, and so he
Speaker 3: highlights several important ninjasu manuals that I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about for a moment here. These later manuals in the
Speaker 3: seventeenth century onward were more directly focused on ninjitsu, and
Speaker 3: they include texts such as the Gunpo Geoshu, which was
Speaker 3: published in the sixteen fifties, and the famous mansen shu
Speaker 3: Kai or benson Shukai from around sixteen seventy six, the
Speaker 3: latter of which has in some instances been referred to
Speaker 3: as the Ninja Bible, though this is probably a misleading
Speaker 3: way to characterize it. Mens In Chuki or bens in Chukai.
Speaker 3: The title means ten thousand rivers flowing together into an ocean,
Speaker 3: and in particular this one is the source of a
Speaker 3: lot of modern ninja lore. It contains details about ingenious
Speaker 3: ninja gadgets and equipment. It also contains different philosophies about
Speaker 3: spying and infiltration. It makes an interesting distinction between what
Speaker 3: it calls yonin and enin yonin meaning open infiltration, So
Speaker 3: this would be sneaking into somewhere by wearing a disguise,
Speaker 3: or being accepted by the target community, so you are
Speaker 3: within view, but you are disguising your intentions in some way. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: en means invisibility or hiding, so this would be infiltration
Speaker 3: by sneaking by night or hiding under floorboards.
Speaker 2: And that's where we get into some of these the
Speaker 2: elements of patients and endurance that we mentioned in the
Speaker 2: last episode. I believe like if you're going to have
Speaker 2: to hide under the floorboards for let's say forty eight hours,
Speaker 2: you know you're going to have to use some schanobi patients.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And that's one reason that there may not be as
Speaker 3: much difference between the idea of practicing endurance or patients
Speaker 3: and practicing stealth as you might originally think, like a
Speaker 3: lot of stealth is patience. In fact, you could even
Speaker 3: argue that the patience is very important when you are
Speaker 3: just being accepted within a target community or in disguise. Right,
Speaker 3: you've got to play the part for a long time
Speaker 3: to sort of make people comfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you got to actually run that business, Like,
Speaker 2: don't offer like really deep discounts. They're going to be suspicious.
Speaker 2: Don't act like you're not interested in making a profit
Speaker 2: one way or the other. Yeah, become a part of
Speaker 2: the community and then betray them.
Speaker 3: Another interesting thing about these ninjitsu manuals is the thing
Speaker 3: that makes them really tempting to interpret is that sometimes
Speaker 3: they might include explanations and references that seem kind of circumspect,
Speaker 3: like they don't give all the details of what they're
Speaker 3: talking about. And then sometimes they'll have a note like
Speaker 3: additional information is only to be passed on by word
Speaker 3: of mouth.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, that sounds very shanobi.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One random detail that I love, by the way,
Speaker 3: just came across this in the book. This is about
Speaker 3: the gun pogoshu. It's the claim that in the ancient past,
Speaker 3: men of the regions Ega and Coca, which are places
Speaker 3: in Japan that are they have long been claimed as
Speaker 3: national headquarters of shnobi training. So the claim is that
Speaker 3: these these ninja from Ega and Coca would travel as
Speaker 3: secret agents, and while doing so, they would pose as yamabushi,
Speaker 3: which means street performers such as monkey tamers. So like
Speaker 3: the next time you see a busker playing a Goo
Speaker 3: Goo Dolls song on the sidewalk, or you see a
Speaker 3: guy dressed up as Superman in Times Square, you might
Speaker 3: wonder is this a ninja? Is this person gathering intelligence?
Speaker 3: Another interesting fact about the gun Pogoshu in particular is
Speaker 3: that some of its espionage advice is given in the
Speaker 3: form of a collection of poems, poems about spying.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, that's fascinating that. Yeah, this goes hand in
Speaker 2: hand with some of the things we've been talking about
Speaker 2: about disguising yourself blending in. But I guess sometimes like
Speaker 2: being the obnoxiously obvious person is also a way of
Speaker 2: blending into the background, Like nobody suspects the like the
Speaker 2: Time Square Elmo of Well, you may suspect the Times
Speaker 2: Square Elmo of things, but probably not espionage, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly anyway, So, with all the caveats we've previously established
Speaker 3: about the historicity of what's in these manuals that, you know,
Speaker 3: we might regard them with some historical skepticism. Nevertheless, they
Speaker 3: do describe a lot of fascinating alleged tricks and tools
Speaker 3: of ninjasu. So I think we should just dive right
Speaker 3: in and talk about some alleged ninja techniques.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to pick up talking a little a
Speaker 2: bit about the female shanobi or the kuno ichi, which
Speaker 2: I believe we mentioned in passing in the first episode.
Speaker 2: You know, the idea that we could have have both
Speaker 2: male and female ninja, and this does really stress the
Speaker 2: the reality that that that shinobi activities would have covered
Speaker 2: a lot of ground that isn't just concerned with assassination
Speaker 2: or military and military and you know, direct military adjacent
Speaker 2: combat adjacent activities, but get into all these areas of spycraft.
Speaker 2: And there is apparently, according to Yoda and Alt in
Speaker 2: their book on Ninja's that I that I cited in
Speaker 2: the previous episodes, there's no evidence that female shanobi ever
Speaker 2: engaged in combat, though of course there are historic examples
Speaker 2: of Japanese women serving as warriors, such as tome Gozen
Speaker 2: of the late twelfth century. So again not saying they
Speaker 2: weren't female warriors in Japanese history, and even that there
Speaker 2: weren't female shannoby operatives who engaged in combat, but there's
Speaker 2: no evidence of such, but there are writings about female
Speaker 2: shinobi operatives, and this makes sense for reasons we already
Speaker 2: stress like if you were going to engage in spycraft,
Speaker 2: you're you're going to take advantage of whatever tools are
Speaker 2: at your disposal. And there are going to be certain
Speaker 2: segments of society through which females are going to be
Speaker 2: able to travel with a little more ease or a
Speaker 2: little less notice and there, and as we mentioned last time,
Speaker 2: there is at least one named female ninja Mochizuki chi Yojo,
Speaker 2: and this individual is still somewhat of a mystery. There
Speaker 2: are some arguments that she didn't exist at all, but
Speaker 2: to an all lister existence as confirmed, so I guess
Speaker 2: there is a certain amount of evidence on one side
Speaker 2: of the argument to say that this person did exist
Speaker 2: in some form. Assuming she did exist, however, she would
Speaker 2: have been like a poet, a noble woman, and it's
Speaker 2: said that she was affiliated with the Takata samurai clan
Speaker 2: and to have presided over a team of the uruki
Speaker 2: miko or walking maidens, so she would have kind of
Speaker 2: like been a spymaster of female shanobi and so on
Speaker 2: the realistic end of things. If there's truth to any
Speaker 2: of this, whether we were dealing with the specifics of
Speaker 2: this individual or just the general idea that there were
Speaker 2: female spy operatives in Japan during the Warring States period,
Speaker 2: just as there have been female spy operatives in pretty
Speaker 2: much every culture. I think every culture, I think we're
Speaker 2: going to be a safe assumption these would have been
Speaker 2: female operatives who could travel around, often as Shinto holy women,
Speaker 2: as entertainers, or perhaps prostitutots. Now on the legendary end
Speaker 2: of the spectrum, however, female shenobi were often imbued with
Speaker 2: various powers that were linked to female sexuality and reproduction,
Speaker 2: and a lot of this has much in common with
Speaker 2: various witchlike belief systems from around the world, you know,
Speaker 2: even getting into ideas of like the monstrous feminine, you know,
Speaker 2: the the other ing of of the female and taking
Speaker 2: aspects of reproduction and sexuality and tweaking them into the
Speaker 2: you know, the demonic realm and so forth. But this
Speaker 2: also put me very much in mind of the benajesrit
Speaker 2: from Frank Herbert's done as well as their later series counterparts,
Speaker 2: the Honored Matre, were kind of like a splinter of
Speaker 2: the benajestert who are their opposition. So I wanted to
Speaker 2: run through some of the powers and abilities attributed to them, again,
Speaker 2: we're dealing very much with the legendary supernatural end of
Speaker 2: the of the the ninja pop cultural world here and
Speaker 2: not his reality. Though perhaps you know, if you read
Speaker 2: between the lines, you can sort of see like realistic spycraft,
Speaker 2: you know, at the heart of some of these legends.
Speaker 2: So according to Joda and All, there were several abilities
Speaker 2: that were said to be linked to conception, such as
Speaker 2: the power to remove an unborn child from the womb,
Speaker 2: change its features, and then return it to the womb.
Speaker 2: Also the transfer of an unborn child from one woman
Speaker 2: to another, and the ability for female shinobi to choose
Speaker 2: to have a baby with any partner they've slept with
Speaker 2: over the last ten months. This last one I found
Speaker 2: pretty interesting because some organisms actually do engage in female
Speaker 2: sperm storage, a form of sexual selection by which sperm
Speaker 2: cells are retained by the receiving female for a period,
Speaker 2: sometimes a prolong period of time before using said sperm.
Speaker 2: Human beings do not do this, but you do find
Speaker 2: some organisms that do.
Speaker 3: I recall reading about sharks.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, sharks are a great example, and yeah, sometimes
Speaker 2: this involves post copulatory cryptic female choice. I believes the
Speaker 2: terminology via various methods. So it is interesting that, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a supposed ability of legendary mythic female ninja,
Speaker 2: but you have to go into the animal world to
Speaker 2: find examples of it in reality. Now, it should also
Speaker 2: come as no surprise, given the sort of fem fatale
Speaker 2: nature of female ninja and pop culture, that some of
Speaker 2: their weapons are related to seduction and sex. If go
Speaker 2: ahead and maybe skip fifteen seconds of this if you
Speaker 2: just want to skip the very mild details here, but
Speaker 2: here they are. They include death by orgasm, death by
Speaker 2: reversing the male's reproductive ejection, shall we say, back into
Speaker 2: his body, killing him in the process. And then there's
Speaker 2: the technique where they seduce a man so hard that
Speaker 2: he's mentally turned into an infant. Hmmm, great trick if
Speaker 2: you can put it off.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm not sure that Frank Herbert was directly inspired
Speaker 2: by any of this, and if I had to guess,
Speaker 2: I would say he was probably not. But I have
Speaker 2: read that he did study Japanese and Chinese culture, among
Speaker 2: you know, so many other things, so it's not impossible
Speaker 2: that he got some inspiration from all of this, and
Speaker 2: certainly like some of these the detailed classifications of spycraft.
Speaker 2: We do see these reflected in the Dune series. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just thinking earlier about the Hearkenans hiding somebody away
Speaker 2: in the walls in Araken as as an assassination attempt
Speaker 2: on the royal household. You know, there's somebody who was
Speaker 2: like locked up for days or whatnot. You know, so
Speaker 2: who knows, maybe he was inspired by it, maybe not.
Speaker 2: Now for other magical arts attributed to the ninja, well
Speaker 2: we've already mentioned the fictional phantom toad summoning of Juriah,
Speaker 2: but there are some other interesting ones as well, and
Speaker 2: Yoda and all mentions these, and again not all of
Speaker 2: these are definitely classified as ninja or shnoby, but a
Speaker 2: lot of them are kind of shinnobi adjacent. And then
Speaker 2: again you have to think about the fact that as
Speaker 2: ninja myths in the popular culture kind of coalesce, they're
Speaker 2: going to draw in multiple things. So one figure worth
Speaker 2: looking at is sixteenth century sage Kashin Kogi. Not a ninja,
Speaker 2: more of a wizard attributed with various acts of illusion
Speaker 2: and shape shifting, so he would do things like allegedly
Speaker 2: throw leaves into the water and make them turn into fish.
Speaker 2: Various other entertaining illusions that are maybe not that far
Speaker 2: removed from the idea of somebody doing little illusionary tricks
Speaker 2: on the sidewalk or in a subway station.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, he was according to legend, he was
Speaker 2: something of a trickster for sure. For instance, there's this
Speaker 2: story that he painted a detailed illustration of the torments
Speaker 2: of Hell that when you looked at it, it seemed
Speaker 2: animated to the naked eye, So you know, do with
Speaker 2: that way you will. Maybe it was just like really detailed.
Speaker 2: Maybe there was some sort of effect involved, or it
Speaker 2: was magic. You know, he's a magical painter, and it
Speaker 2: looks like it moves like, you know, Harry Potter style
Speaker 2: or something, and everybody was really impressed by it, and
Speaker 2: in fact, the powerful daimyo some called him the demon
Speaker 2: Daimyo Nabunaga, insisted on buying it, and the negotiations apparently
Speaker 2: included at least one assassination attempt on the artist, and
Speaker 2: you know, but Cogie stuck to his guns and finally
Speaker 2: agreed to sell it for just a crazy sum, just
Speaker 2: I don't know how much, but a lot, at which
Speaker 2: point the art suddenly lost its animated magic, and Nabonica
Speaker 2: is like, what happened? Why is it not moving anymore?
Speaker 2: Why is it not you knows as amazing as was previously,
Speaker 2: And He's like, well, it used to be priceless, but
Speaker 2: then we agreed on a price, and so the quality
Speaker 2: of the piece adjusted to that sounds like a great
Speaker 2: way to get beheaded. But I don't know. You know,
Speaker 2: that's the thing about being a trickster, daring, trickster wizard.
Speaker 2: You can pull these things off.
Speaker 3: I guess artists in the audience remember this negotiating.
Speaker 2: Technique again, Yeah, yeah, try and pull that one off.
Speaker 2: So Koji again not a ninja, but a figure that
Speaker 2: crosses over with some of the attributed magics of the ninja,
Speaker 2: and as a pop culture figure, he does pop up
Speaker 2: in a lot of ninja media, such as nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: two's Ninja Wars aka Death of a Ninja starring hero
Speaker 2: Yuki Sonata, a major actor who would go on to
Speaker 2: of course have a starring role in the recent Showgun
Speaker 2: series on FX, but also he played Scorpion in the
Speaker 2: Ninja in one of those in that recent Mortal Kombat film,
Speaker 2: so definitely a figure that has immersed in the Ninja lore,
Speaker 2: and I think he's popped up in a film or
Speaker 2: two for Weird House Cinema, great actor. I have not
Speaker 2: seen Ninja Wars, though, so I can't really vouch for it.
Speaker 2: All right, Shall we get into some more alleged ninja
Speaker 2: technology of note?
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: As we previously discussed, the modern trope of the ninja
Speaker 2: typically involves their use of a traditional martial art that
Speaker 2: prioritizes medieval weaponry. Right, so these ninjas will use a
Speaker 2: schuriken to bypass a security panel. They will kill a
Speaker 2: robot with a sword, right, you know exactly what I'm
Speaker 2: getting at here? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah.
Speaker 2: In reality, though, as we've been stressing, the Shanobi would
Speaker 2: have used whatever tools were necessary and available to them,
Speaker 2: including what was essentially cutting edge technology, like the latest
Speaker 2: in explosives, the latest in chemistry, the latest in firearms.
Speaker 2: And so we do have some examples of this sort
Speaker 2: of thing. Again, with the huge caveat that, we have
Speaker 2: a lot of crossing of history and legend here. But
Speaker 2: fifteenth century Shnobi commander mochiuki Izumo Nokami is said to
Speaker 2: have utilized smoke bombs, pyrotechnics, code signals, and some form
Speaker 2: of weather prediction. And I'm not sure to what extent
Speaker 2: we're talking about weather prediction that based on like acceptable
Speaker 2: models and methods or something that was maybe a little
Speaker 2: more supernatural in form, but you know, both are likely
Speaker 2: to some degree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, remember some of these Ninjasu manuals did involve like
Speaker 3: divination and astrology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so ninja throughout the centuries were said to
Speaker 2: use nouroshi no jutsu smoke bombs, though Yoda and All
Speaker 2: stress that these were likely quote carefully placed in ignited
Speaker 2: smoke pots, given the limited pyrotechnic abilities of the time,
Speaker 2: and that also they would use things that we would
Speaker 2: think of as just simple firecrackers to serve as distractions,
Speaker 2: you know, set off a little pop over here, just
Speaker 2: enough distraction to do whatever it is you need to do,
Speaker 2: be that something more pop culture ninja ish, as sneak
Speaker 2: from one point to another or you know, switch out
Speaker 2: a piece of paper in an office, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the smoke bombs, of course, are a huge
Speaker 2: part of the ninja myth, and they spill over into
Speaker 2: Batman as well. Like Batman's always throwing smoke bombs and
Speaker 2: disappearing right, and the reality is maybe less as instantly
Speaker 2: dramatic as that. It might have been more something that
Speaker 2: involved like placing something, lighting it and waiting for the
Speaker 2: smoke to build up. Right. Now, getting into the use
Speaker 2: of weaponry, we have the example of sixteenth century assassin
Speaker 2: of Sujatini Zunjuvo, and he is noted for his use
Speaker 2: of the Japanese matchlock rifle. So this is an individual
Speaker 2: that was definitely an assassin, definitely an attempted assassin, definitely
Speaker 2: a marksman. Was he a Shinobi, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 2: not as sure on that. I think you could say
Speaker 2: that he definitely engaged in a major Shnobi activity, though
Speaker 2: this was apparently a Kdo clan marksman task with the
Speaker 2: assassination of Oda Nobunaga himself, a local warlord was said
Speaker 2: to have hired him for the task and provided with
Speaker 2: key intel about Nabonaga's scheduled brands that through a particular
Speaker 2: pass in Omi. This would have been on May nineteenth,
Speaker 2: fifteen seventy, so you know, basic you know, sort of
Speaker 2: sniper operations here. He set up a position days in advance,
Speaker 2: using like the patience of the shnobe, if nothing else
Speaker 2: until okay, here it comes the retinue. Here comes Tobunuga
Speaker 2: in armor on his on his steed, accompanied by all
Speaker 2: of his men, and our would be assassin. Here Zenjubo
Speaker 2: knows that he really only has one shot. You know,
Speaker 2: this is this is a matchlock rifle. You know, he's
Speaker 2: not rapid fire. He's going to get one shot off
Speaker 2: and then it's going to be so loud and it's
Speaker 2: going to produce a discharge of smoke and he's not like,
Speaker 2: you know, miles away or anything. So he knows that
Speaker 2: the instant he fires this shot, they're going to mark
Speaker 2: his position, and so he needs to he needs to
Speaker 2: make sure that that shot lands home or he's going
Speaker 2: to have to like try and get off a second
Speaker 2: one if he can. So he fires the shot, knocks
Speaker 2: Innabunika from his horse, but as it turns out, does
Speaker 2: not kill him because the collar armor that he's wearing
Speaker 2: absorbs the shot. So Zenjubo flees. He hides that he
Speaker 2: is eventually caught and subjected to slow execution. I believe
Speaker 2: the story is that they buried him up to his
Speaker 2: neck in the sand and like sawed his head off.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now it was worth noting that snipers then and now
Speaker 2: sometimes utilized breathing techniques to steady one's aim in. Various
Speaker 2: breathing techniques and things that you could also think of
Speaker 2: as like self hypnosis have also been attributed to the
Speaker 2: shnobi in general to aid in stealth or patience. Now,
Speaker 2: at this point, let's come back to the idea of
Speaker 2: a ninja sword, something that is just inseparable from the
Speaker 2: modern myth of the ninja. In fact, we already in
Speaker 2: passing I think, talked about teenage mutant ninja turtles with katana.
Speaker 2: You know, like, if you're gonna make turtles into ninjas,
Speaker 2: you give one of them swords. Just what you do.
Speaker 2: And we actually heard from at least one listener who
Speaker 2: wrote in and was like, oh yeah, there's actually the
Speaker 2: whole thing about the ninja having a specific sword, the
Speaker 2: shoby katana. But as this listener pointed out, and as
Speaker 2: is discussed in the text we were working from, this
Speaker 2: sword's exact form is at least a matter of some controversy.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of strong arguments that this sword
Speaker 2: never existed at all. This is one of those examples
Speaker 2: where we don't see mention of it in the historic
Speaker 2: ninja guide books and instruction manuals. There's a very strong
Speaker 2: argument that these were created entirely in the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: though again, this is certainly something where then you can
Speaker 2: go around and buy one at a mall in like Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: So you can argue that while the shinobi katana exists,
Speaker 2: now you see it in movies and you can buy
Speaker 2: one at the mall. But let's get into the idea
Speaker 2: of it, at least the myth of it. The idea
Speaker 2: is that this would be a short straight blade with
Speaker 2: a pointed scabbard, So the scabbard has a point at
Speaker 2: the end and also a simple square guard you know,
Speaker 2: at the between the hilt and the blade, and the
Speaker 2: aspects of its design were said to be very practical
Speaker 2: for the ninja. So the pointed scabbard allowed it to
Speaker 2: be driven into the ground so it could be he
Speaker 2: could serve as a footstool to aid in climbing. I
Speaker 2: think there's some other stories about the scabbard being used
Speaker 2: as like a breathing tube if an engine needed to
Speaker 2: go into water. I'm not sure why that is would
Speaker 2: be more effective than having a breathing tube on you
Speaker 2: or using a reed or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trying to imagine now. I think the idea with
Speaker 3: the scabbard is that you wouldn't you could stab it
Speaker 3: into the ground within its scabbard and then stand on
Speaker 3: the hilt of the sword to like hop over a
Speaker 3: wall and then like pull it up by a rope.
Speaker 3: That's the idea, because I guess if you were to
Speaker 3: stab the blade of the sword into the ground that
Speaker 3: the ideas that would dull it. But I'd also seen
Speaker 3: something about just generally using the scabbard of this sword
Speaker 3: as a kind of like a feeler, like an untinnee
Speaker 3: in the dark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the idea that you would kind of like partially
Speaker 2: unsheathe your sword, hold it out in front of you,
Speaker 2: and if you like tapped into something, you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's a person there, and then you can pull your
Speaker 2: sword out and like slash them or something. I think
Speaker 2: it's been referred to as like a person detector or
Speaker 2: a people detector. And of course there's the other obvious
Speaker 2: idea that if you're doing some sneaking around and potentially
Speaker 2: using that weapon in a confined space, it pays for
Speaker 2: your sword to be short as opposed to being some
Speaker 2: sort of like a longer sword, So this would be
Speaker 2: in keeping with operations that require disguise and so forth
Speaker 2: easier to hide, easier to carry, and all that. So again,
Speaker 2: very strong argument to be made that these were just
Speaker 2: invented in the twentieth century as part of outright ninja
Speaker 2: fiction and myth making. But something that Yoda and All
Speaker 2: point out is that, Okay, if these swords did exist,
Speaker 2: which depending on where you land on this could be
Speaker 2: a huge if they would have been very simple, they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been ornate because they would not have been
Speaker 2: forged by a master swordsmith, one of these individuals responsible
Speaker 2: for the just the elegant superiority of the noble samurai sword.
Speaker 2: But or rather, these would have been made by blacksmiths
Speaker 2: in the country, probably who were willing to take a
Speaker 2: risk making an illegal sword. M because remember, your average
Speaker 2: shenobi here is not, if not an actual criminal, is
Speaker 2: at least a common born person, and it was illegal
Speaker 2: for commoners to own a weapon of any kind. So
Speaker 2: these would have been dirty weapons made for dirty practitioners
Speaker 2: of the sketchy arts. Yeah, and I think we also
Speaker 2: might want to consider it questions of necessity, Right, would
Speaker 2: is Shenoby operative need a sword, because even a small
Speaker 2: sword is fairly sizable, and especially if you consider, well,
Speaker 2: what are you going to use it for? Are you
Speaker 2: gonna are you gonna engage in a sword fight? Probably not.
Speaker 2: And if you do need some sort of a sharp
Speaker 2: object as a weapon or a tool, well, there are
Speaker 2: other choices you could make, such as a common field knife,
Speaker 2: some other kind of like sharpened tool that on one hand,
Speaker 2: maybe doesn't constitute a full weapon, and so for you're
Speaker 2: not like you're not going to be found out immediately
Speaker 2: just because you have it on your person, but the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that could be used as a weapon
Speaker 2: if things got dire, and in the cases where they
Speaker 2: did use swords, yeah, we're probably talking about the equivalent
Speaker 2: of some sort of like a black market sword. Now,
Speaker 2: these again are all like pretty standard pop culture ninja weapons,
Speaker 2: though I think it's even more fun to get into
Speaker 2: some of the perhaps weirder technologies that ninja are held
Speaker 2: to have utilized.
Speaker 3: Right, I think it's time to talk about misugumo. Misugumo
Speaker 3: is a device described in the sixth volume of the
Speaker 3: seventeenth century ninjitsu manual Mansen Chu Kai, which I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: and the sixth volume is sort of a It describes
Speaker 3: various pieces of ninjitsu equipment and gadget It's kind of
Speaker 3: a ce branch compendium. Now, when it comes to the misugumo,
Speaker 3: there is a way in which it has commonly been
Speaker 3: interpreted in twentieth century sources, and then there is a
Speaker 3: revisionist understanding of it, which I think seems much more
Speaker 3: likely what the original source is intended. I'm going to
Speaker 3: start off by talking about the more likely confused interpretation.
Speaker 3: So misugumo literally means water spider, and it's clear from
Speaker 3: the context in which this device is described that it's
Speaker 3: some kind of floatation device. So in some popular ninja
Speaker 3: literature of the twentyth century, it has been interpreted as
Speaker 3: a kind of footwear that allows the ninja to walk
Speaker 3: on top of the water, often said to be used
Speaker 3: for crossing the watery moat surrounding a castle. So imagine
Speaker 3: a kind of wooden sandal that is a little rectangular
Speaker 3: sandal in the middle bound with twine in the center
Speaker 3: of a large flat disk made out of wooden quarter
Speaker 3: circle pieces. So you imagine a round disc with a
Speaker 3: hollow center made out of wood cut into four different pieces,
Speaker 3: and they're bound together with twine. And then in the
Speaker 3: middle you've got this little flat sandal soul to stand on.
Speaker 3: You can look up illustrations of this if you want.
Speaker 3: But this idea, in the first interpretation, is that the
Speaker 3: ninja would stand on these and then use them to
Speaker 3: walk across the surface of the water, because hey, wood
Speaker 3: floats right now, Would this actually work? Would such a
Speaker 3: device allow you to walk on water? I think we
Speaker 3: can start by thinking about its namesake, which is the
Speaker 3: water spider. There are insects and spiders that are able
Speaker 3: to walk across the surface of the water without sinking in.
Speaker 3: There are a number of different species that can do this,
Speaker 3: So how do they do it well? There are generally
Speaker 3: two physical forces that they can take advantage of. One
Speaker 3: is standard buoyancy. This works by displacing water with a
Speaker 3: lower density object, and this is how boats float. Boats
Speaker 3: float by having a hollow hull, thus displacing more weight
Speaker 3: in water than their own weight, so they get to
Speaker 3: sit on top of the water without sinking down. The
Speaker 3: other physical factor is surface tension. Insects and spiders are
Speaker 3: small enough that different forces play a major role in
Speaker 3: the way they move through the world, and the surface
Speaker 3: tension of water is one of those forces. Water is
Speaker 3: a polar molecule, so it likes to stick to itself,
Speaker 3: and when there's a mass of water, it forms a
Speaker 3: kind of skin on its surface, with the water molecules
Speaker 3: clinging very tightly to each other and to some extent
Speaker 3: resisting being split apart. So it takes some force actually
Speaker 3: to break through this surface layer of water. Now, given
Speaker 3: the mass of a human body, Earth's gravity pulling us
Speaker 3: downward into a pool of water quite easily overcomes the
Speaker 3: surface tension of water, and we plunge right in. But
Speaker 3: as you become smaller and smaller and your mass becomes smaller,
Speaker 3: gravity becomes less relevant and the surface tension of water
Speaker 3: becomes more relevant. So some insects and spiders are specially
Speaker 3: evolved to take advantage of the power of surface tension
Speaker 3: at their body size by having hydrophobic or water repelling
Speaker 3: surfaces and hairs on their bodies and especially on their feet,
Speaker 3: And these surfaces they from one thing. They spread out
Speaker 3: their weight over a larger surface area by having like
Speaker 3: specially shaped feed and these hairs that allow them to
Speaker 3: kind of spread out their footprint, so they distribute their
Speaker 3: weight over a larger surface of the water. But they
Speaker 3: also at the molecular level, tend to be made of
Speaker 3: hydrophobic substances that do not want to get wet. They
Speaker 3: chemically resist getting wet, and so they do not want
Speaker 3: to penetrate the surface level of the water. And so
Speaker 3: with the combination of these hydrophobic surfaces and distributing their
Speaker 3: weight over the larger space, the arthropod is able to
Speaker 3: walk or skate over the surface of the water by
Speaker 3: taking advantage of that surface tension. This is great for insects,
Speaker 3: but again it works because they are extremely small and
Speaker 3: have very small mass. Once you start getting bigger and
Speaker 3: having more mass to your body, you're just too big
Speaker 3: to take advantage of the surface tension of water in
Speaker 3: this way.
Speaker 2: So you're saying Ninja might have been just really small.
Speaker 3: If ninja were the size of insects. So yeah, you
Speaker 3: can quite well imagine coming up with technology for running
Speaker 3: over the surface of water. And that brings us back
Speaker 3: to the Misigumo device. So I was not able to
Speaker 3: find any rigorous testing of this device of recreations of
Speaker 3: this device published in a scientific or historical journal. But
Speaker 3: I've come across a few informal tests staged in things
Speaker 3: like documentaries and TV programs, And having reviewed this evidence
Speaker 3: and read what I could about it, my assessment is
Speaker 3: this device would probably not work as described, at least
Speaker 3: in the way it's interpreted here as footwear, unless the
Speaker 3: shoes were absurdly large, much larger than the specifications in
Speaker 3: the Ninjasu manual indicate, in which case I questioned the
Speaker 3: extent to which you could be said to walk on
Speaker 3: water as opposed to just floating upright on two small boats.
Speaker 3: And in that case, why is this method of crossing
Speaker 3: the water preferable to just piloting a small rat after canoe.
Speaker 2: Right, because a small rafter canoe works, wonders like, there's
Speaker 2: a reason we still use canoes and kayaks and so forth.
Speaker 2: They're great. Why would you wear a couple of like
Speaker 2: huge floaty clown shoes instead, especially if you're trying to
Speaker 2: be stealthy?
Speaker 3: That's right now, you might argue, well, you know, a
Speaker 3: rafter canoe is big, and you have to it would
Speaker 3: be hard to like carry it to the But in
Speaker 3: order for these shoes to work. They would also need
Speaker 3: to be big and hard to carry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I'm reminded of every time as a
Speaker 2: child or even as an adult, where I've attempted to
Speaker 2: stand on something floating and say a swimming pool, and
Speaker 2: you know, how long can you stay up unless it
Speaker 2: is like a large surfboard or a larger float, But
Speaker 2: even a fair sized float can prove difficult. You're not
Speaker 2: going to stay up there very long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another thing I want to get to in
Speaker 3: just a minute. Balance. Now, there is another consideration, which
Speaker 3: is the question of what exactly are you crossing? If
Speaker 3: it's actually water, these these you know, water walking shoes
Speaker 3: seem very implausible. But if it's some thicker substance like
Speaker 3: a muddy marsh, perhaps increasing the surface area over which
Speaker 3: your weight is distributed with these wooden disks actually would
Speaker 3: give you an advantage walking over a mud flat or
Speaker 3: a marsh, or some kind of thick, thicker substrate like that.
Speaker 3: It might help to have shoes like this because they
Speaker 3: would function more like snow shoes, you know, they just
Speaker 3: spread your weight out.
Speaker 2: This remind you know, remember we did some episodes on
Speaker 2: mud a while back, right, and I remember looking into
Speaker 2: like military experiments with mud and often with vehicles. But
Speaker 2: I believe there were also some accounts of boots, like
Speaker 2: trying to figure out like what kind of boots would
Speaker 2: enable soldiers to move through or across the mud easier.
Speaker 2: And I know there were at least some experiments involving
Speaker 2: like sort of wider shoes almost kind of like snowshoes
Speaker 2: for mud.
Speaker 3: Right, So if you're thinking about mud or some other
Speaker 3: kind of substrate different than just plain water, different footwear
Speaker 3: options could have advantages. But coming back to the water
Speaker 3: walking like literal water walking interpretation, that seems unlikely to me.
Speaker 3: One example of these informal tests that recreated a model
Speaker 3: of this device and tried it out was actually MythBusters
Speaker 3: that they did an episode where they tried it and
Speaker 3: it did not work at all. They sank right into
Speaker 3: the water or quickly lost upright balance and toppled over.
Speaker 3: And they even made like much more buoyant shoes, like
Speaker 3: more buoyant, larger shoes that were different than the original
Speaker 3: design in these Ninjasu manuals, and still had trouble staying upright.
Speaker 3: The issue is that an adult human is just way
Speaker 3: too heavy for reasonably sized shoe worn floatation devices to
Speaker 3: keep them afloat, So they're not going to work unless
Speaker 3: you make the shoes gigantic, but in doing so, you
Speaker 3: would probably lose the ability to quote walk in them
Speaker 3: with any kind of grace, So you're just trying to
Speaker 3: like stand up into little canoes. And this brings us
Speaker 3: back to the how generally floatation devices on the human
Speaker 3: scale and larger work by displacing more weight of water
Speaker 3: than the total amount of weight that is being kept afloat.
Speaker 3: So you can float a thousand ton boat on top
Speaker 3: of the water if the volume of the boat displaces
Speaker 3: more than a thousand tons of water. Right, So, you
Speaker 3: can have a boat made out of steel that has
Speaker 3: a hollow hull, and even though steel is very dense
Speaker 3: and would sink in water, it's displacing more water than
Speaker 3: the total weight of the boat and all its cargo.
Speaker 3: So when you think about it this way, it's relatively
Speaker 3: easy to create a personal floatation device that will keep
Speaker 3: you from sinking entirely under the water, because once your
Speaker 3: body is mostly submerged in the water, it's already displacing
Speaker 3: a lot of water. The average density of the human
Speaker 3: body is very close to the density of water. I've
Speaker 3: seen estimates that on average, a human adult with lungs
Speaker 3: full of air is slightly less dense than water and
Speaker 3: will float, and a human after exhaling with the lungs empty,
Speaker 3: is slightly more dense than water on average, or roughly
Speaker 3: neutrally buoyant, and will more likely sink. And this is
Speaker 3: going to vary somewhat due to tissue composition, clothing. Literally
Speaker 3: how much gas you have in your digestive system that
Speaker 3: plays a role in your natural buoyancy. But as animals,
Speaker 3: we're naturally right around on the line between sinking and floating.
Speaker 3: So if you just add a little bit of extra
Speaker 3: low mass volume, like a life vest, it pushes your
Speaker 3: volume to weight ratio over the line and makes you
Speaker 3: a little more buoyant enough that your head easily stays
Speaker 3: above the water with most of your body maybe neck
Speaker 3: down or shoulders down, displacing a lot of water below
Speaker 3: the water line. But walking on top of the water
Speaker 3: is a very different front physical goal than just keeping
Speaker 3: your head and its breathing holes above the water line.
Speaker 3: To walk on top of the water, you would need
Speaker 3: shoes that by themselves just the shoe part displace your
Speaker 3: entire body's weight in water, which again means that the
Speaker 3: shoes need to be both light or like boat shaped
Speaker 3: in a way with like a hollow hull and compared
Speaker 3: to normal shoes huge. So it is not impossible to
Speaker 3: have sort of shoes that will allow you to float
Speaker 3: on the top of the water. You can look up
Speaker 3: videos of people creating things like this, but again it's
Speaker 3: just like people standing on two small boats. They're like
Speaker 3: big things, they're not like shoes. The other issue is balance.
Speaker 3: You brought this up rob Because of the low friction
Speaker 3: at the interface between your water walking shoes and the
Speaker 3: water as compared to shoes and the ground, it is
Speaker 3: difficult to stay upright and propel yourself forward on a
Speaker 3: floatation device. In video, it was like the MythBusters test.
Speaker 3: When people try to do this, they quickly either sink
Speaker 3: or just tumble over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you end up falling one way, and say, like
Speaker 2: the boogie board you're trying to balance on, ends up
Speaker 2: like soaring off the other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the misogumo as shoes interpretation for walking on
Speaker 3: actual water seems totally not plausible. However, a lot of
Speaker 3: this gets cleared up with a reinterpretation of what this
Speaker 3: device was intended to be used for. So the original
Speaker 3: text that describes this device does not describe how it's used.
Speaker 3: It only sort of gives a give specifications of the
Speaker 3: device itself, and shows an illustration of a single one
Speaker 3: in isolation, notably not a pair of them. Also, the
Speaker 3: original illustration does not indicate any kind of sandal strap
Speaker 3: or other way of attaching the paddle in the middle
Speaker 3: of the disk to one's foot, So some modern scholars
Speaker 3: have come to think that this device was not actually
Speaker 3: intended to be used in pairs as footwear, but instead
Speaker 3: was a seat used for flotation in the water. So
Speaker 3: a ninja could, according to this interpretation, sit in this
Speaker 3: sort of ring and use it like an inner tube
Speaker 3: and then float across a water remote but they absolutely
Speaker 3: would get wet if they did this. They would be
Speaker 3: sitting in the water, but the upper part of their
Speaker 3: body would be sitting above the water, like sitting in
Speaker 3: an inner tube.
Speaker 2: So you might want to like take your pants off,
Speaker 2: pants in your pack until you get across, climb up
Speaker 2: half naked, and then put your pants back on.
Speaker 3: Right, And of course all of the caveats and uncertainties
Speaker 3: about hystericity remain. We don't know if this was ever
Speaker 3: like really used, or if it was exactly what it
Speaker 3: was used for. I've seen speculation that seems again just
Speaker 3: total speculation, that you could, like, oh, you could transport
Speaker 3: gunpowder across the water without getting it wet by using
Speaker 3: one of these. You know, you could hold it up
Speaker 3: in the air and float across the water. I guess
Speaker 3: you could do that, But then again, you could also
Speaker 3: probably just use like a small raft or boat. So
Speaker 3: I don't think it's fully understood what the alleged benefit
Speaker 3: of this device as described would be. But it does
Speaker 3: seem to me that the floating seat interpretation is more
Speaker 3: likely what the author intended than the footwear and interpretation.
Speaker 2: I mean, we mentioned that it's important for a shnobi
Speaker 2: operative to potentially become part of the community, open up
Speaker 2: a business. What if that business was essentially tubing, providing
Speaker 2: inflatable circular devices for tourists to float from point A
Speaker 2: to point B down a river, you know, at leisure,
Speaker 2: perhaps while enjoying a beverage. It might give you the
Speaker 2: cover you need.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, maybe we have to call it for part
Speaker 3: three here, But we've got more alleged ninja techniques and
Speaker 3: anecdotes to talk about in the next episode.
Speaker 2: That's right, we'll be back and we'll cover we'll cover
Speaker 2: some big ones. If you're wondering, well, why did they
Speaker 2: talk about X, Y or Z, we'll hold on for
Speaker 2: the next episode. But still in the meantime, go ahead
Speaker 2: right into us, because everything is fair at game here.
Speaker 2: If you have thoughts about ninja lore, ninja history, various
Speaker 2: shnobi activities, either in the history books or on the
Speaker 2: big screen. Yeah, it's all fair game right in. We'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. Just a reminder. Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast
Speaker 2: with core episodes and Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, and on Friday's Weird House Cinema. That time
Speaker 2: when we set aside most serious concerns just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird movie and hey, we'll remind you. If you're
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Speaker 2: some of the various places you can find us. A
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Speaker 2: Why not, It's one way to keep up with the
Speaker 2: episodes we're putting out. Then we also have some amusing
Speaker 2: videos going up as well, reels I guess reels. They
Speaker 2: call them reels Huge.
Speaker 3: Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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