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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. It is, of course Saturday, so we

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Speaker 1: have a vault episode for you. This is going to

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Speaker 1: be one of our holiday episodes from last year, titled

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Speaker 1: The Rat King, originally published twelve twelve, twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 1: Let's dive right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is.

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Speaker 3: Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And on today's

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Speaker 3: episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind, we are going

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Speaker 3: to be talking about the wonderful, the Glorious Rat King, which,

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Speaker 3: believe it or not, this is a Christmas episode, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: Rob? That's right? This is one of a pair of

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Speaker 1: Christmas Core episodes we're busting out this week. You can

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Speaker 1: probably guess what the next one's going to be. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the Holidays bring on an abundance of traditions, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, we have the Christian Nativity, we have Santa Claus,

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Speaker 1: we have other things like Crampus, we have Marley's Ghost,

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Speaker 1: we have the nineteen ninety sci fi action film I

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Speaker 1: Come in Peace, and of course we have The Nutcracker.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, here's the tie in.

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Speaker 1: So most of you are probably familiar with Tchaikovsky's ballet

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Speaker 1: The Nutcracker. If you haven't seen it, if you haven't

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Speaker 1: seen it many many times, this basically this is how

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Speaker 1: it plays out. The first half is a rather imaginative

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Speaker 1: tale of a nutcracker prince coming to life and with

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Speaker 1: the help of a little girl, waging a battle against

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Speaker 1: an evil mouse king, culminating in a cool sword fight.

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Speaker 1: And then the rest of the ballet, which feels about

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Speaker 1: usually about like three or four hours long. It is

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Speaker 1: just a victory lap of dancing, just one dance after

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Speaker 1: the other, no more stay, no more conflict, just dancing.

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Speaker 3: What do I remember about the Nutcracker. I remember like

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Speaker 3: a grandfather clock and like a sort of creepy, mysterious

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Speaker 3: grandfather figure. I remember a lady with a giant dress

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Speaker 3: that a bunch of children come out of. And I remember, yeah,

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Speaker 3: I guess the rat king.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, or I guess it's specifically it's a mouse king,

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Speaker 1: but it's very closely tied no pun intended with the

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Speaker 1: concept of the rat king. Now. The ballet was based

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Speaker 1: upon German romantic author Eta Hoffman's eighteen sixteen short story

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Speaker 1: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, in which the titular

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Speaker 1: mouse king is described as follows. This is the This

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Speaker 1: is from the LRC translation. Marie was not afraid of mice,

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Speaker 1: and she could not help being amused by this sight.

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Speaker 1: She stood watching the mice come from all directions, when

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Speaker 1: suddenly there came a sharp and terrible piping noise, and

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Speaker 1: seven mouse heads with seven shining crowns upon them, rose

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Speaker 1: through the floor. And behind them wriggled a mouse's body,

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Speaker 1: on which the seven heads had all grown. Then the

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Speaker 1: whole army of my shouted in full chorus, and went trot,

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Speaker 1: trot right up to the cupboard. In fact, to Marie,

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Speaker 1: who was standing beside it.

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Speaker 3: Wait a minute, I don't remember that this is a

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Speaker 3: single mouse's body, but it's got seven mouse heads.

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Speaker 1: Yes, this is commonly not depicted in performances of the ballet,

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Speaker 1: though sometimes it is. Sometimes ballets will decide to get creative,

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Speaker 1: get a little dark, and dive back into these roots.

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Speaker 1: But I have more passages to read here. There's more

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Speaker 1: of this. It's great, okay. Later on in the text,

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Speaker 1: Hoffman writes, but that moment two enemy marksmen took hold

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Speaker 1: of nutcrackers wooden cloak and held him fast. Squeaking in

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Speaker 1: triumph from seven throats, the mouse King sprang forward to

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Speaker 1: take his kill.

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Speaker 3: Whoa, oh, and.

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Speaker 1: Get this one, This one may be the best. She

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Speaker 1: could only watch as the mouse King squeezed himself out

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Speaker 1: through a hole in the wall. His fourteen eyes and

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Speaker 1: seven crowns glistened as he bounded through the room and

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Speaker 1: made a huge leap up to the top of Marie's nightstand.

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Speaker 3: Yikes, I'm getting flashes of Stephen King's cat's eye.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean this is a creature of horror.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, less cute than I recall from the ballet. So

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Speaker 3: this is a monster creature that is a mouse with

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Speaker 3: seven heads on a single body.

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Speaker 1: That's right, And there are other descriptions in the text

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Speaker 1: that emphasize the horror of multiplicity into a mouse. Cumig

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Speaker 1: Now Hoffman, who of seventeen seventy six through eighteen twenty two,

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Speaker 1: was a dark romantic. One of his early novels, eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifteen's The Devil's Elixirs, concerns a doppelganger. He didn't originate

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Speaker 1: the term or the concept but his work may have

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Speaker 1: helped popularize the concept. He is also well known for

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Speaker 1: his eighteen seventeen story The Sandman, which references a folkloric

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Speaker 1: entity and kind of a horror spin, and it also

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Speaker 1: features a female automaton. He's apparently noted for often employing

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Speaker 1: optical motifs, which include not only the doubling of one's

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Speaker 1: identity as with the Doppelganger, but also the multitude of

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Speaker 1: heads on The Mouse King. And I think he makes

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Speaker 1: use of other more direct uses of optical technology in

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Speaker 1: places as well, like telescopes and so forth.

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Speaker 3: You're saying optical motifs because like the doubling might be

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Speaker 3: like a kind of multiplicity of images you would see

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Speaker 3: through like a prism or some kind of thing a

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Speaker 3: lens or thing like that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like, for instance, in these passages from the

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Speaker 1: Nutcracker in the Mouse King, you get a sense of

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Speaker 1: like almost like that of a kaleidoscope. You know, there's

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Speaker 1: something just optically out of line with this thing that

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Speaker 1: is moving towards you the reader, or towards Marie, the character.

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Speaker 3: I understand now.

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Speaker 1: Of course, Hoffman would have been acquainted with folklore, which

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Speaker 1: we also see in his referencing of the sandman. The sandman,

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Speaker 1: of course, typically sprinkles sand or dust upon a sleeper's eyes.

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Speaker 1: I think we all know that basic idea. But in

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Speaker 1: Hoffman's work, the sandman is said to steal the eyes

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Speaker 1: of children who refuse to go to bed. The sand

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Speaker 1: he puts on their eyes causes their eyeballs to fall out,

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Speaker 1: and then he collects set eyeballs and takes them to

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Speaker 1: the moon to feed his children.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course Hoffman would have definitely been familiar

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Speaker 1: with the concept of the rat king, which seemingly plays

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Speaker 1: into his invention here as well. Now, I was looking

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Speaker 1: at a couple of sources, both by an author by

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Speaker 1: the name of David Blameyer's. One of them is Telling

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Speaker 1: Tales the Impact of Germany on English Children's Books, seventeen

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Speaker 1: eighty through nineteen eighteen. This is a two thousand and

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Speaker 1: nine publication, and he points out that Hoffman's description of

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Speaker 1: the mouse king references both folkloric tales of multi headed

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Speaker 1: dragons as well as the dragon from the Book of Revelation.

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Speaker 1: Be clear, the author doesn't make any mention of rat kings,

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Speaker 1: as we'll be discussing them later As an inspiration here.

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Speaker 3: Right, Okay, but you can clearly see how knowledge of

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Speaker 3: the biological or alleged biological entity the rat king would

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Speaker 3: have would have or could have inspired the idea of

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Speaker 3: a mouse with seven heads.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Now there's another example. This is sort of

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Speaker 1: folk little bit more, I guess specifically literature. There's another

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Speaker 1: work by the same author, the Folklore Tradition in Germany,

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Speaker 1: where he mentions a rat king by the name of

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Speaker 1: Berlibby that pops up in what Longreads author Adrian Dobb

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Speaker 1: describes as a kunsmachen quote, an art fairy tale, a

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Speaker 1: narrative that a writer fashions to resemble something you might

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Speaker 1: hear from a farm hand at your father's estate. Okay, So,

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Speaker 1: according to Dobb, here again this excellent piece on Longreads.

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Speaker 1: I recommend it if you want some more rat king action.

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Speaker 1: Here he points out that the rat king in this

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Speaker 1: work is described as a king of all rodents. He's

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Speaker 1: like a literal ruler of the rodent world, but is

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Speaker 1: singular in body and in head, though it is implied

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Speaker 1: that his tale is nodded with that of his wife,

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Speaker 1: the rat Queen. Aw that's sweet, I guess, kind of sweet.

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Speaker 1: It was this particular work. In this particular creation, Berlibby

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Speaker 1: was the creation of Ernst mountst Arndt, who lives seventeen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine through eighteen sixty a German nationalist, historian, writer

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Speaker 1: and poet who in this tale seems to have been

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Speaker 1: largely commenting on the rise of Napoleon, critiquing the idea

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Speaker 1: that some might want to rise above their station within

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Speaker 1: their own nation via the interference of a foreign power.

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Speaker 1: And this, according to Dobb, was two years after Hoffman's tale.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that there's any indication that like Hoffman's

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Speaker 1: tale inspired this one. I think it's more probably the

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Speaker 1: idea that like the rat King, was like a general

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Speaker 1: concept already that was established. And we see two different

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Speaker 1: authors exploring things with the idea, but for different purposes.

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Speaker 3: Ah okay. So even in these slightly altered or just

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Speaker 3: different forms, we see that the idea of the rat

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Speaker 3: king is often used to symbolize something. It means something

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Speaker 3: about religious life, or political life, or morality.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Doab, writing about the example in Arnt's work, writes, quote,

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Speaker 1: the rat King appears like an almost perfect parody of

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Speaker 1: the community building ambitions that dominated German public life during

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Speaker 1: and following the Napoleonic Wars. So he says, you know,

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Speaker 1: the community building we're talking about here. This would have

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Speaker 1: been things like community singing, community storytelling, various community minded

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Speaker 1: efforts that were present in the culture of the time period.

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Speaker 1: And the mouse king is presented perhaps as the unpleasant

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Speaker 1: under belly of social cohesion. Quote the rat represented the

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Speaker 1: dark side of community, the dark side of dependency, the

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Speaker 1: dark side of proximity, tied.

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Speaker 3: So closely to one another that you, in the end,

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Speaker 3: are all doomed, doomed to a common fate.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And so all of this would have been

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Speaker 1: during a century in which Germany was transitioning from a

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Speaker 1: largely rural society to a largely urban one. But of

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Speaker 1: course these literary treatments did not invent the concept. Rather,

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Speaker 1: again they find imaginative and or metaphorical uses of something

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Speaker 1: that was already present in the public mindset. So what

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Speaker 1: could that be? What could they have possibly been commenting

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Speaker 1: on what had been seen, what had been witnessed, what

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Speaker 1: was alive and the zeitgeist of the time.

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Speaker 3: Right, So I guess this brings us to the question

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Speaker 3: many listeners probably already know the basic idea. But what

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Speaker 3: is a rat king In the common modern understanding, it

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Speaker 3: is a group of rats who are joined at the tail,

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Speaker 3: usually described or represented with the tails entangled in a

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Speaker 3: huge not ball, and going all the way back to

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Speaker 3: the sixteenth century, there have been dozens of documented accounts

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Speaker 3: of rats discovered in this state, multiple rats three or

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Speaker 3: more joined by the tail, sometimes hiding underneath floorboards, inside walls,

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Speaker 3: protruding from earthen burrows, often with the rats still alive,

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Speaker 3: arranged like the spokes of a wheel. And there are

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Speaker 3: also physical specimens of alleged rat kings preserved and photographed

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Speaker 3: with their tails entwined in this way, though of course

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Speaker 3: in these cases the rats are generally already dead, so

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Speaker 3: it can be hard to rule out hoaxes in the

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Speaker 3: case of like a rat king that's actually kept in

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Speaker 3: a museum somewhere that we'll have some educated commentary on

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Speaker 3: the plausibility of hoaxes versus natural origin later on.

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Speaker 1: I will say that you can certainly do some image

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Speaker 1: searches and see some rat kings are like rat kings,

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Speaker 1: but these are not pleasant images to look at, like

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Speaker 1: a lot of like monstrous curiosities or alleged curiosities of

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Speaker 1: the natural world or even the unnatural world, are interesting

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Speaker 1: to look at or cool looking. The rat king not

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Speaker 1: so much. I feel like it kind of seems to

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Speaker 1: catch on as an idea more so than it is

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Speaker 1: an actual symbol. Like, I don't know there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of say, bands that use the rat king as

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Speaker 1: their logo or anything of that nature.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even consider that, but I bet there

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Speaker 3: are some.

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Speaker 1: I bet there are some, but they're probably kind of,

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Speaker 1: you know, going for something outrageous and gross.

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Speaker 3: So we wanted to look at the question what are

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Speaker 3: these masses of mutually doomed rodents? Are they something that

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Speaker 3: actually forms in nature or merely a legendary cryptid that

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Speaker 3: inspired some taxidermy hoaxes, And if they do occur in nature,

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Speaker 3: why and how so? First of all, I want to

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Speaker 3: mention a major source that I'm going to be using

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Speaker 3: in this exploration, one of the best things I came across,

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Speaker 3: which is a book called Rats by an author named

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Speaker 3: Martin Hart, published by Alison and Busby, Originally published in

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Speaker 3: Dutch in nineteen seventy three, but with an English translation

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Speaker 3: by Arnold Palmeranz in nineteen eighty two, and this book

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Speaker 3: has an entire chapter devoted to ratkings and is just

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Speaker 3: generally an excellent resource on this topic. So to get

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Speaker 3: a flavor of what an encounter in the wild with

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Speaker 3: a ratking looks like, I'm going to share an account

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Speaker 3: from the beginning of Hart's chapter. So the setting is

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Speaker 3: a cold day in February nineteen sixty three, and this

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Speaker 3: is actually the most recent discovery of a rat king

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Speaker 3: that Hart recounts in his book, though there have been

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Speaker 3: other ones since then. This took place at a farm

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Speaker 3: in the Dutch town of Rukfenn. A farmer named Peeve

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Speaker 3: van Ninatten was out in his yard and he noticed

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Speaker 3: a squealing sound coming from the direction of the barn.

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Speaker 3: The farmer followed the squealing to its source, and when

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Speaker 3: he got to it, he noticed a black rat peering

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Speaker 3: out from under a heap of bean poles. The farmer

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Speaker 3: killed the rat, but then when he tried to pull

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Speaker 3: it out from under the poles, it wouldn't budge. It

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Speaker 3: was stuck to something, and further uncovering revealed that the

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Speaker 3: rat he had killed was somehow tied by the tail

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Speaker 3: to six other rats. He killed the other rats as well,

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Speaker 3: and then was left with this wheel of rats, consisting

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Speaker 3: of seven apparently well fed adults, two males, and five females.

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Speaker 3: They were of the species Rattus ratus, the black rat.

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Speaker 3: They were not brown rats or the species Ratus norwegicus,

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Speaker 3: which was a bit strange because they were found in

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Speaker 3: the barn and chicken coop area of the farm, which,

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Speaker 3: according to the farmer, was normally inhabited by brown rats

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Speaker 3: and not black rats, though the farmer knew that he

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Speaker 3: had black rats living in the loft of his house

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Speaker 3: some distance away. On closer examination of the tail knot,

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Speaker 3: most of the rats were tied only by the tips

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Speaker 3: of their tails, though one rat had basically its entire

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Speaker 3: tail tangled up. The knot also contained external material, like

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Speaker 3: some straw. The flesh of the tails appeared compressed where

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Speaker 3: it had been tied against the others, and an X

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Speaker 3: ray revealed that there were some bone fractures in the

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Speaker 3: tails and in the rats of their vertebrae. Examination indicated

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Speaker 3: that the tails appear to have been joined like this

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Speaker 3: for a while, which is a little perplexing because the

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Speaker 3: rats did appear to have eaten well like they didn't

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Speaker 3: appear emaciated and rob I've attached some pictures for you

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Speaker 3: to look at of the rat King of Rukfinn. Here's

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Speaker 3: the whole rat king with the seven individuals, and then

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Speaker 3: there's a close up of the tail knot. It does

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Speaker 3: look very grizzly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Worth noting, of course that rats tails are

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Speaker 1: I belief, semi prehensile. But you can imagine in a

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Speaker 1: situation that's if they were to come intertwined and certainly broken,

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Speaker 1: there'd be very little that rats could do to free themselves.

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Speaker 3: That's right. There are some accounts of people witnessing or

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Speaker 3: claiming to witness a rat here or there breaking out

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Speaker 3: of the tangle, like actually getting out, either by detaching

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Speaker 3: like part of its tail coming off, injuring itself to escape,

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Speaker 3: or managing to untangle and get out, but this seems rare.

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Speaker 3: Mostly the rats appear stuck this way, and to summarize

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Speaker 3: a large later section of Heart's chapter, a lot of

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Speaker 3: the accounts of rat king discoveries from history take basically

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Speaker 3: the same form as the story I just told. Someone

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Speaker 3: is attracted to the sound of squealing, and then they

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Speaker 3: discover behind or underneath something a single rat and then

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Speaker 3: they attack it and then later discover that it is

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Speaker 3: joined to at least two others in extreme instances dozens

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Speaker 3: of others.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And in a lot of time, I've seen

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Speaker 1: multiple accounts where it's something you know, it's taking place at,

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Speaker 1: say a barn or perhaps an urban environment. I guess

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Speaker 1: you could point out that these would be you know,

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Speaker 1: human spaces, human places. Rats, of course, their populations growing

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Speaker 1: in the very places where human populations grow and living

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Speaker 1: alongside us in the shadows.

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Speaker 3: I think that is significant. And let's come back to

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Speaker 3: that when we talk about the conclusions of a paper

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Speaker 3: I'm going to get to later. So another section of

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Speaker 3: Heart's chapter here is an interesting diversion on the origin

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Speaker 3: of the name rat king. It is a kind of

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Speaker 3: weird thing to call a collection of rats tied together

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Speaker 3: by the tail, Like, what is especially kingly about this?

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Speaker 1: Right? Right? I mean, a king, by its very nature

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Speaker 1: is an individual room over the mini. We tend not

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Speaker 1: to think of a king as being a composite.

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Speaker 3: Of multiples exactly, But the way Heart lays it out,

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Speaker 3: I think you can kind of see the way the

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00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:13,919
Speaker 3: the meaning applied to this term has has sort of

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Speaker 3: crept and morphed over time. So, according to Hart, the

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Speaker 3: term rat king is a direct translation of the medieval

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Speaker 3: German ratten koenig, though in this usage it originally had

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Speaker 3: nothing to do with tailknots. It meant quote, one who

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Speaker 3: lives well on the backs of others, So you can

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Speaker 3: think of a sort of opulent parasite, or in a

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Speaker 3: way one might argue any king somebody who you know,

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Speaker 3: lives off the labor of others. They live well, they're

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Speaker 3: you know, they're they're well fed, they get all the

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Speaker 3: luxury they desire with other people doing the work. And

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Speaker 3: that sort of social human association with the term rat

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Speaker 3: king is explained somewhat by its usage in the sixteenth

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Speaker 3: century text by an author named Conrad Gesner called Historia Animalium.

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Speaker 3: From what I can tell, this scene to be a

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Speaker 3: kind of a kind of great source document of like cryptozoologists.

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Speaker 3: They'll love looking back to Conrad Gessner's entries in this

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Speaker 3: But the point Gessner makes in this book, as summarized

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Speaker 3: by Heart, is quote, some would have it that the

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Speaker 3: rat wax is mighty in its old age and is

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Speaker 3: fed by its young. This is what's called the rat king. Okay,

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Speaker 3: So the idea is that like, some rats get like

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Speaker 3: old and venerable as rats go, and then the other

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Speaker 3: rats will start to serve it as a king. They'll

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Speaker 3: bring it food, they'll bring it little baubles and like

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Speaker 3: pieces of velvet or luxury items. You know, they're coming

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Speaker 3: to serve their rat king. So that rat king is

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Speaker 3: living well by doing nothing off of the labor of

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Speaker 3: the other rats in its nest.

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Speaker 1: Of course, you could easily tell the same fancy old

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Speaker 1: story and point out that, hey, rats look after their elders,

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Speaker 1: how honorable.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you could exactly say that. Though to be clear, I,

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Speaker 3: in featuring this story, I do not mean to endorse

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Speaker 3: the idea that there's biological evidence for this. This seems

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Speaker 3: to be more like a you know, an early modern

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Speaker 3: story about how rats work, not anything that's backed up

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Speaker 3: by research. Another early usage of the term rat king,

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Speaker 3: though apparently having nothing to do with the the you know,

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Speaker 3: the the wheel of rats tied together by the tail,

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Speaker 3: is a quote from the founder of the Protestant Reformation,

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Speaker 3: Martin Luther, in a passage attacking the Catholic Church. Luther says, quote,

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Speaker 3: the archbishops have a primate above them the primate's a patriarch,

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Speaker 3: and finally there is the pope, the king of the

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Speaker 3: rats right at the top.

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Speaker 1: Kind of kind of complicated here we have primates and rats.

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Speaker 3: Well, the primate's that's like a position in the Catholic Church.

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Speaker 1: Oh okay, sorry, I'm just picturing an actual primate. So

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Speaker 1: he's like Martin Luther is talking about apes, he's talking

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Speaker 1: about rats. He might be if flinging something at a devil.

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Speaker 1: He's just sees his.

359
00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:04,120
Speaker 3: That usage of primate can be confusing and has confused

360
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Speaker 3: me in the past. Yeah, but no, he's just talking

361
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Speaker 3: about like the positions and like, yeah, the worst one

362
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Speaker 3: who's like sort of the the evil king at the

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Speaker 3: top of this institution that Luther hated, that's the rat

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Speaker 3: king the pope, And that Luther quote would have been

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Speaker 3: sixteenth century as well. Heart writes that after this the

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00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:25,880
Speaker 3: term ratt and Koenig came to refer to a king

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Speaker 3: rat who sat on a throne made of knotted tails.

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Speaker 3: So this seems like there's some morphing now where you're

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Speaker 3: getting halfway to the rat king idea we have today.

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Speaker 3: And I guess in this formulation, if I'm picturing picturing

371
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Speaker 3: it right. It's not just that there are multiple rats

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Speaker 3: with their tails nodded, but there's a king rat riding

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Speaker 3: that knot of tails, like a palanquin or a litter.

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Speaker 3: You know, it's like sitting upon the throne of tails.

375
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Speaker 1: I'm a little hazy on where I saw this, but

376
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Speaker 1: there was an old bit. I think Robert Snegel had

377
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Speaker 1: something to do with this, the comedian behind Triumph the

378
00:22:02,840 --> 00:22:06,920
Speaker 1: insult comic dog. But oh ok, the sketch. Perhaps listeners

379
00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:09,720
Speaker 1: can write in about where I'm remembering this from, but

380
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:12,399
Speaker 1: the sketch was always the same. Here's a snake and

381
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Speaker 1: it has a sizeable lump in its body. It's like

382
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:17,280
Speaker 1: an anaconda or something. And you have to guess what

383
00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:19,600
Speaker 1: the lump is based on the shape of it, And

384
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Speaker 1: so looking at the snake, the lump appears to be

385
00:22:22,560 --> 00:22:26,000
Speaker 1: an old woman in a rocking chair. And then they reveal,

386
00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:28,199
Speaker 1: after everyone's had a chance to guess, they reveal what

387
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Speaker 1: the contents of the rat stomach happens to be, and

388
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Speaker 1: it is a pile of dead rats in the shape

389
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Speaker 1: of a woman in a rocking chair.

390
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Speaker 3: That's good, But to come back to this image, it

391
00:22:40,160 --> 00:22:42,359
Speaker 3: is a striking image, though Heart says it is not

392
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Speaker 3: known where this idea first came from. But okay, so

393
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Speaker 3: that's like a rat king on a throne of knotted tails.

394
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Speaker 3: You take away the king and then what you've got

395
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:56,240
Speaker 3: left is just rats with knotted tails. And according to Heart,

396
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Speaker 3: the first source to visually depict a rat king in

397
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Speaker 3: any form and this is I think, in the form

398
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Speaker 3: that we now understand it as just a group of

399
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:09,679
Speaker 3: rats with noted tails. The first publication to contain this

400
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:14,159
Speaker 3: was an edition of a sixteenth century book called the

401
00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:19,679
Speaker 3: Emblemata by a Hungarian author named Johannes Sambucus or I

402
00:23:19,720 --> 00:23:24,320
Speaker 3: think in his original language, janosh Zamboki. And this was

403
00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:27,800
Speaker 3: an emblem book, which was a genre of literature that

404
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:31,440
Speaker 3: used to be quite popular, which would be essentially a

405
00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:38,359
Speaker 3: catalog of allegorical illustrations or images. So in one common format,

406
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:41,760
Speaker 3: each page of this book would have a picture like

407
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:44,280
Speaker 3: a drawing that has some weird stuff going on in it,

408
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 3: and then a Latin motto, and then some text, often poetry,

409
00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:52,600
Speaker 3: explaining or interpreting the image. So for a modern example

410
00:23:53,920 --> 00:23:57,160
Speaker 3: that people can understand, I'm just making this up, imagine

411
00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:59,919
Speaker 3: a book that's got a page that has an illustration

412
00:24:00,240 --> 00:24:05,040
Speaker 3: of Lady Justice blindfold blindfolded holding a sword in scales

413
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 3: and a Latin motto that means to give everyone their due.

414
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:11,920
Speaker 3: Then there would be some texts describing what the image means,

415
00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:14,400
Speaker 3: and that the scales mean the weighing of the evidence,

416
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 3: and the blindfold means impartiality, and so forth. In the

417
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 3: case of the Rat King in the Emblemata by Johanna Sambucus,

418
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:26,800
Speaker 3: the book depicts a scene with seven rats in a street,

419
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 3: tied together by the tail, though none of them appears

420
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:32,920
Speaker 3: to be particularly elevated or king like. It just looks

421
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 3: like seven common rats tied together. And in fact, they

422
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:38,119
Speaker 3: don't even look like rats. They look more like a

423
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Speaker 3: cross between ferrets and wiener dogs. And there is a

424
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Speaker 3: man looming over all of them, raising a baton, presumably

425
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Speaker 3: to beat them to death.

426
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Speaker 1: But then there's another man raising a baton or something

427
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Speaker 1: that's facing away from them, like, yeah, I guess almost

428
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:56,160
Speaker 1: like he's leading them, or maybe he's saying, hey, come

429
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:57,040
Speaker 1: beat these rats.

430
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 3: I don't know that's a good point. I don't understand

431
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 3: what the other guy's doing. Yeah, his backs to them.

432
00:25:02,880 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 3: He almost looks like they're both raising the sticks, and

433
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 3: this other guy looks like he's going to like whack

434
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:12,120
Speaker 3: a big flower bush with it. I don't know. I've

435
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 3: got more on this page in a second, but I

436
00:25:14,119 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 3: just briefly did want to say that in early symbolic usage,

437
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:22,160
Speaker 3: the idea of rats tied together by the tails seems

438
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:27,680
Speaker 3: to be symbolically loaded significant to people. The image meant

439
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 3: something about the structures or causes that bound people inextricably

440
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 3: to one another. Now in the Emblemata, Johanna Simbucus explains

441
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 3: that there's like a poem underneath the illustration, saying that

442
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:43,919
Speaker 3: there was once a man who was plagued by rats

443
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:46,200
Speaker 3: for many years, and then one day a servant came

444
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:50,360
Speaker 3: across a group of seven rats stuck together by the tail. Now,

445
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:53,719
Speaker 3: at this point Hart didn't say anything else about the emblemata,

446
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 3: but I got really interested. I wanted to know what

447
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 3: the book said about this illustration, so I did some

448
00:25:58,640 --> 00:26:02,240
Speaker 3: real digging. I found on a full scan and transcription

449
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 3: of the Latin text of the Emblemata. I have no

450
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 3: idea what most of the text in this book is about,

451
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 3: but searching through the pages, I found some really good

452
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:13,640
Speaker 3: pictures I just wanted to share with you. Rob One

453
00:26:13,760 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 3: is like a guy who's going out to I think,

454
00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 3: pick some berries off of a bush, but he looks

455
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:22,359
Speaker 3: like Exeter from this island Earth, and there's some storm

456
00:26:22,400 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 3: clouds in the background. Another one is I don't even

457
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:29,440
Speaker 3: know how to describe this. There's like a giant baby

458
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 3: holding up these horns underneath his arms, but they're also

459
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 3: kind of snakes and they've got fruit coming out of them,

460
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:38,160
Speaker 3: and he has a giant, I don't know, thread spool

461
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 3: on his head, and then there's some other guys looking

462
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 3: at him, like get a load of this guy. A

463
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:45,919
Speaker 3: lot of the images in this book have the energy

464
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:49,160
Speaker 3: of like my bird is better than your bird, or

465
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:52,040
Speaker 3: this guy with a dog head is bothering my dog.

466
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like there's something going on, there's some sort

467
00:26:56,160 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: of drama or or interaction, but it's all trapped in

468
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: some sort of cryptic imagery.

469
00:27:04,840 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 3: There's one I really like of a guy who's got

470
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:09,439
Speaker 3: like a fishing net and he's kneeling beside the water's

471
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:12,160
Speaker 3: edge and he's like, yes, I'm going to touch this squid.

472
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 3: There's like a dead looking squid in the water.

473
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the sheep are watching on kind of I

474
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 1: guess with disapproval or approval. It depends if he's about

475
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 1: to grab that squid or if he's letting the squid go.

476
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 1: It does remind me of something that came up in

477
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:29,399
Speaker 1: a past episode, like different ideas about whether it is

478
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 1: right to eat squid or if they should not be eaten.

479
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:37,160
Speaker 1: So maybe this concerns that, but it could concern various things.

480
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 3: I guess that may well be the subject matter. Another

481
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 3: one I liked is there's a dude in a very

482
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 3: wide brimmed hat approaching a man who appears to be sick,

483
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:49,160
Speaker 3: laying on like a cot on the floor, and he's

484
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,159
Speaker 3: coming at him with severed heads in each hand. Is like,

485
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 3: which of these heads is yours?

486
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: Oh? This one is frightening.

487
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:58,920
Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to the Ratking, Okay, I found

488
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 3: the page that it's on, and God help me, I

489
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 3: tried to manually translate this passage from the Latin via

490
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:10,680
Speaker 3: Google Translate, at extremely rough results somewhat funny. I'm sure

491
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,159
Speaker 3: I'm doing a horrible job getting the meaning here, but

492
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 3: here's the best I could come up with. So the

493
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 3: motto at the top of this image says capput seditionies tolendum,

494
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 3: which means to remove the head of the rebellion. And

495
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:27,920
Speaker 3: here's the translation that I was able to come up with.

496
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:31,639
Speaker 3: It is not a fictional story that the shrew mice

497
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 3: harassed the patrons and dug up the house too much,

498
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 3: don't a safe battle? That many had hid for years

499
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 3: being treated badly by the enemy. While the servant beholds

500
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 3: the seven hidden, their tails firmly tied. The lord tried

501
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 3: to torture all these with poison, but the labor was

502
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 3: long in vain. While the plan was slaughtering something behind

503
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:56,360
Speaker 3: the treachery, not a single one appeared from it. In

504
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,520
Speaker 3: this way, also the connections of the wild animals, these

505
00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 3: traps must first be removed, for peace is a result

506
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 3: of the gods. When the author of the evil is slain,

507
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 3: so the good flows now. Notice it's interesting that this

508
00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 3: is the first visual depiction of a rat king in

509
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 3: the way we understand it. But it doesn't use the

510
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 3: term rat king or any equivalent term. It just says,

511
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:21,720
Speaker 3: you know, the rats, and then shows them tied together

512
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,040
Speaker 3: this way and explains that they're tied by the tail.

513
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 3: As far as interpreting this text, I'm fumbling in the

514
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 3: dark because you know, bad translation. But the moral allegory

515
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 3: might be something about how the conjoined rats cannot be

516
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 3: defeated until like the author of the evil is undone

517
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 3: or the thing from which the evil flows is undone,

518
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 3: which maybe means, I guess, could refer to a so

519
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 3: called king of these rats, though there doesn't appear to

520
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 3: be one pictured, Or maybe it means just by maybe

521
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 3: it means like the nodding of the tale is the

522
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 3: author of the evil here, though in that case it

523
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,239
Speaker 3: would seem kind of counterproductive to untie their tails if

524
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 3: you wanted to fight the rats. But honestly, I do

525
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:08,840
Speaker 3: not know. I admit failure in discovering the meaning of this, because.

526
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 1: One of the things about alleged real life encounters with

527
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 1: ratkings is that their tangled tales make them significantly easier

528
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: to kill. Yeah, because that is almost always what happens next,

529
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:25,840
Speaker 1: or has happened to some degree as they are discovered.

530
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 3: That's yeah, exactly right. So there is an interesting thing

531
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 3: I uncovered by this translate exercise, which is the line

532
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 3: about how this is not a fictional story. That's the

533
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 3: first thing it says, and I guess this means that

534
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 3: it is supposed to refer to a specific sighting of

535
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 3: a real rat king known to the author, but it

536
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 3: doesn't specify who, where or when.

537
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: Hmm. You know. This also touches on something that I'll

538
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 1: mention in tomorrow's Monster Fact episode. The tying of a

539
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:58,200
Speaker 1: knot has been a part of human magic since prehistoric times.

540
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: We see it in some of the most ancient records rituals.

541
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: We see it in the magics of the ancient Egyptians,

542
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 1: for instance. It seems to be pretty common to tie

543
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: a knot is to bind something, and in the case

544
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 1: of the rat king, perhaps to transform something. There seems

545
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: to be something inherently magical about knots.

546
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And that so maybe the knot

547
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 3: in the tails is the thing from which the evil

548
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 3: flows in this poem, I'm not sure.

549
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, Or it's the person who tied the knot, or

550
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: or you know, there's so many ways to interpret it,

551
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 1: you know, certainly when you get into these other treatments

552
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: as well. If the not something that just occurs via proximity,

553
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 1: via overcrowding, via the complexities of urban living, or whatever

554
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:44,880
Speaker 1: the you know, however one ends up interpreting it. I

555
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 1: also like how the image, the specific image, kind of

556
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 1: implies that the rats, all of them are running away

557
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 1: from each other, like all of them have a totally

558
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:54,719
Speaker 1: different idea about which direction they should go. Almost kind

559
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: of a cartoonish situation where they all are trying to

560
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: solve the problem but cannot because they're not actually addressing

561
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: the problem at the root, their tails being tied to

562
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: get interesting.

563
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, though, on the other hand, from what I

564
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 3: can tell, sources from this period do not really display

565
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 3: any propensity for understanding the plight of a rat from

566
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,640
Speaker 3: the rats perspective. They pretty much all view rats as

567
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 3: just like a disgusting evil that must be destroyed.

568
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 1: It's understandable, I mean, that is essentially the case, and

569
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 1: the tail of the rat is the most disgusting part.

570
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 1: I mean, I know we probably have some rat fans

571
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 1: out there. We're not talking about your pet rats. We're

572
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: talking about rats encountered in the wilds of human habitats

573
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:43,840
Speaker 1: and agriculture and cities and so forth.

574
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:46,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, these were people who part of their

575
00:32:46,280 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 3: daily life was battling rat infestation. Coming back to Heart's

576
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,920
Speaker 3: history here, so he describes a few other things in

577
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:06,680
Speaker 3: the development of this idea of the rat king. The

578
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 3: term rat king in its modern usage, referring to rats

579
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 3: joined together by a knot of the tales, appeared more

580
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 3: and more in print after this. Hart mentions a seventeen

581
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 3: fifty seven dictionary by nol Gommel that included the term ratking,

582
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 3: defining it as a number of rats joined together by

583
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 3: their tails. There are also equivalent terms in French which

584
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 3: are usually thought to be related to the German rat

585
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 3: and koenig, though some have offered competing etymologies there. But

586
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 3: beyond the evidence of people using the term and evincing

587
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:44,480
Speaker 3: knowledge of the concept going back to the sixteenth century,

588
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 3: there are also allegedly factual accounts of rat king finds,

589
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 3: so not just people saying, hey, here's what a rat

590
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:55,440
Speaker 3: king is, but actual like I saw ratking. There was

591
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 3: one here at this time. So Hart says that from

592
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 3: fifteen sixty four to nineteen sixty three he was able

593
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 3: to turn up a total of fifty seven accounts of

594
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,080
Speaker 3: distinct rat kings, though he says that some of these

595
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 3: cases are clearly deliberate forgeries or otherwise less than fully authentic.

596
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 3: So This certainly doesn't mean fifty seven instances where yes,

597
00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 3: there was a real rat king the fifty seven claims,

598
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:26,760
Speaker 3: with some subset of those being seemingly credible. The majority

599
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 3: of the accounts come from Germany. To name a few

600
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:33,200
Speaker 3: early ones, there was a rat king of Donzig allegedly

601
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 3: made of nine rats found alive in sixteen twelve in

602
00:34:36,840 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 3: the loft of a house, mentioned in a letter from

603
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 3: a professor to a colleague. There was a rat king

604
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:47,560
Speaker 3: of Strasbourg consisting of six live rats, which was reported

605
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:51,400
Speaker 3: and depicted in illustration in the French gazette Mercury Galant

606
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 3: in sixteen eighty three. Apparently some of these reports came

607
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:59,200
Speaker 3: with helpful explanations, for example, the knowledge that God sends

608
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 3: rat kings to me mankind to remind us of our wickedness,

609
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 3: and then like listing out the sins that the rat

610
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 3: king might be useful in calling to your attention, Like

611
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 3: remember when you did this, Yeah, here's a rat king

612
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 3: to remind you. And so heart goes on to chronicle

613
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 3: a bunch more of these fifty something odd accounts of

614
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:21,759
Speaker 3: people stumbling upon ratkings. I'm not gonna go into all

615
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:25,360
Speaker 3: these stories here because most of them have details that

616
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 3: are or at least in most cases where details of

617
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 3: the discovery are available, the details are pretty similar to

618
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:36,720
Speaker 3: anecdotes we've already discussed, though often with additional just sad

619
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 3: grizzly details about the ways the rats were killed, often

620
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 3: involving boiling water. People just like pour boiling water into

621
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 3: a hole that they thought rats were in, and then

622
00:35:47,160 --> 00:35:50,879
Speaker 3: also religious explication of the various finds relating to sin

623
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 3: or deliverance from evil. Some of these rat kings were preserved,

624
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,799
Speaker 3: often pickled in alcohol, and a few can actually still

625
00:35:57,840 --> 00:35:59,880
Speaker 3: be seen in museum collections today.

626
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:04,399
Speaker 1: And we're still finding rat kings apparently or allegedly. There

627
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:07,399
Speaker 1: was one as recently as twenty twenty one in Estonia,

628
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,280
Speaker 1: as reported by the rat King Desk at the Daily Mail,

629
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:14,799
Speaker 1: of course, allegedly found in a chicken coop. There was

630
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 1: a I've got a paper about that one late, you've

631
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 1: got a story, okay, good about this one. Yeah. So

632
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,920
Speaker 1: they are still allegedly occurring, and the details of their

633
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 1: discovery are still basically the same as they've always been.

634
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 3: Now this brings us back to the question of where

635
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 3: do these things come from? Are these really things that

636
00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 3: occur in nature. Does this just happen to rats sometimes?

637
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 3: Or are these hoaxes? Are these like the Ginny hannovers

638
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 3: that people would make out of the remains of like

639
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:47,800
Speaker 3: rays and sea animals? Is this like the Fiji mermaid?

640
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 3: Some investigators have claimed that all rat kings are artificial,

641
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:55,800
Speaker 3: practical jokes. They're all just like people taking dead rats

642
00:36:55,800 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 3: and tying the tails together. Heart However, after his instigation

643
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:03,319
Speaker 3: does not agree with this. He does think that rat

644
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 3: kings occur naturally and are not all hoaxes. Though obviously

645
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 3: some of the ones that have been attested are hoaxes,

646
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 3: and we'll come back to arguments for that. But one

647
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 3: argument in favor of this is something that really is

648
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 3: kind of sad to relate but does inform our knowledge

649
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:26,400
Speaker 3: on this, which is experimental rat kings. Hart said he

650
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 3: would not reproduce these experiments because he considers them cruel

651
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:32,759
Speaker 3: and unethical, but he recounts attempts by a couple of

652
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 3: other researchers to create rat kings in the lab. And

653
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 3: I'm not going to describe the experiments in detail, but

654
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 3: the gist of the findings is that, first of all,

655
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 3: if you tie up the tales of already dead rats,

656
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,319
Speaker 3: they do not look like the tail knots of allegedly

657
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:52,759
Speaker 3: natural rat kings. So you just compare the rat kings

658
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:55,839
Speaker 3: that are preserved or people have taken pictures of with

659
00:37:56,080 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 3: like you take dead rats and tie their tails together,

660
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:01,640
Speaker 3: it doesn't look the same. They need to be alive

661
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 3: when their tails are joined together in order to create

662
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 3: the rat king knot ball. However, these rat king experiments

663
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:13,360
Speaker 3: did find that if you anesthetize rats, put them to sleep,

664
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:18,160
Speaker 3: and then glue their tail tips together, then you allow

665
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 3: them to wake up and run around and do their

666
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 3: thing for a period of time, their tails end up

667
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 3: tangled in a ball that does pretty much exactly resemble

668
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 3: the tails of ratkings.

669
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: So kind of the difference to some extent between being

670
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,840
Speaker 1: given the assignment of hey, go get your computer cable,

671
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 1: go get your mouse cable, and just go ahead and

672
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: tangle all that up, versus just leave it alone in

673
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: your backpack for a while, see what happens, you know,

674
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe just tug at it loosely. You know,

675
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 1: it's like you're going to have a different sort of

676
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:54,439
Speaker 1: not than the one that you might intentionally.

677
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 3: Tie that's right. And in these these experiments, once the

678
00:38:57,239 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 3: glue was removed, after the rat king table not had

679
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 3: been created by live rats, mostly the tails stayed stuck together.

680
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:08,279
Speaker 3: They had become tangled enough that they could not get

681
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 3: free even though the glue was dissolved.

682
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 1: Again, horrifying that this was someone's choice in experimentation. There's like, well,

683
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: we've got to We've got to create these rat kings

684
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: in order to fully test this. Like, it doesn't seem

685
00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:26,280
Speaker 1: like this was necessary. It's nice to have this information,

686
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:31,320
Speaker 1: I guess, but it was certainly not ethically created.

687
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, our heart discusses these experiments with what feels like

688
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 3: some degree of scorn, and again he says he won't

689
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 3: reproduce them to check the results for himself. But if

690
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:45,239
Speaker 3: these results are in fact accurate, this does give us

691
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 3: some information that we can use. It does make it

692
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:52,280
Speaker 3: seem like ratkings could be created in nature if rats

693
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 3: tails were somehow initially stuck together while the rats were

694
00:39:56,120 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 3: still alive. And Heart goes on to offer another argument

695
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,920
Speaker 3: and in favor of the idea of ratkings being a

696
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 3: real natural phenomenon, which is that with one exception, all

697
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:12,640
Speaker 3: discovered rat kings are of one species, the black rat

698
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 3: Ratus ratus, in places where rats of other species exist,

699
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 3: So you might have brown rats and black rats occupying

700
00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 3: the same farm, but if you find a rat king,

701
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 3: it's always the black rat. So if they were all hoaxes,

702
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:31,320
Speaker 3: why wouldn't people be equally making them out of brown rats.

703
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: That's a good point.

704
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 3: And the black rat, of course has a longer and

705
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:39,320
Speaker 3: more flexible tail than the brown rat, which seems again

706
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:41,319
Speaker 3: like it would make a lot of sense that it

707
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 3: could become more likely entangled under the right or wrong circumstances. Also,

708
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:51,719
Speaker 3: there are examples of so called kings being observed in

709
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 3: other animals, for example, squirrel kings that have been reported.

710
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 3: One example of this was in a zoo in South

711
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 3: Carolina in nineteen fifty one. Now, there have been a

712
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 3: number of hypotheses offered throughout history to explain rat kings

713
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 3: if they are natural phenomena. One idea is that they're

714
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 3: simply born that way. Heart does not think that's very likely,

715
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:17,760
Speaker 3: because they're born with shorter tails, the tails grow longer

716
00:41:18,200 --> 00:41:21,319
Speaker 3: over the course of the lifespan, and also it's hard

717
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,360
Speaker 3: to imagine how the rats would survive and do so

718
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 3: well until they get older. With their tails all tied

719
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 3: together in that way. Another idea is that the tails

720
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 3: might entwine as part of a fear response. As rats

721
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 3: huddle together, maybe when they're terrified by something, they have

722
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:41,560
Speaker 3: a reaction that causes their tails to entwine, and then

723
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 3: they get tangled and stuck together. Another example. Another hypothesis

724
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 3: is the idea of rats huddling for warmth and somehow

725
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 3: allowing their tail tips to become frozen or stuck together

726
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:59,799
Speaker 3: by a substance, perhaps frozen urine or some other kind

727
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 3: of liquid that freezes the tales together, or a sticky

728
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 3: substance that sticks the tales together, and then being initially

729
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 3: stuck together by that external adhesive material or frozen material,

730
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 3: they could entwine them crawling around, as we saw in

731
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:18,760
Speaker 3: one of those experiments, crawling around and creating a natural

732
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:22,000
Speaker 3: not just with their own activity and movement. But I

733
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 3: mentioned I was going to get to an actual scientific

734
00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 3: paper about rat kings, and I want to talk about

735
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:30,720
Speaker 3: that now. So this one was published in the Proceedings

736
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 3: of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Biology and Ecology in

737
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:39,240
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven by Andre Miluton, called rat kings

738
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 3: in Estonia. I looked up the author of this paper

739
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,520
Speaker 3: and he's a zoologist and curator at the University of

740
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:49,920
Speaker 3: Tartu National History Museum in Estonia. So the author begins

741
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,800
Speaker 3: this paper by looking at the literary record of evidence

742
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 3: for the rat king and he cites Hart actually is

743
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:57,880
Speaker 3: a major resource and notes that at the time of

744
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:00,399
Speaker 3: this paper in two thousand and seven, there was still

745
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:04,280
Speaker 3: significant question over whether rat kings are ever created naturally,

746
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:07,839
Speaker 3: or they are they all hoaxes, and if they are

747
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 3: created naturally, what the cause is. By Miluton's count as

748
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:14,760
Speaker 3: of the year two thousand and five, there were fifty

749
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 3: eight reliable accounts of rat kings, six of which were

750
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:22,120
Speaker 3: physically preserved in some way, and across these accounts, the

751
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,320
Speaker 3: number of animals joined within a rat king varies from

752
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 3: three to thirty two. The greatest number of rat king

753
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 3: claims come from Germany, followed by France, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium,

754
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:38,720
Speaker 3: and then finally one account from Indonesia, and with one exception,

755
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 3: all of the rat kings the author was able to study.

756
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 3: Rat king accounts the author was able to study consisted

757
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 3: of a single species, again, Ratus ratus the black rat.

758
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 3: The one rat species exception is the report from Indonesia,

759
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:58,439
Speaker 3: which was allegedly made of the species Radus argentivanter, which

760
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 3: is commonly known as the rice field rat. Miliwton also acknowledges,

761
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 3: as Heart did, that outside of rats, there are a

762
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 3: few claimed observations of similar quote kings made of animals

763
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:13,280
Speaker 3: like mice and squirrels, but the vast majority of alleged

764
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 3: rodent kings are agglomerations, specifically of Rattus ratus, the black rat.

765
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:21,800
Speaker 3: But the recent discovery of a rat king at Saaru,

766
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 3: which is a small village in Estonia, in January two

767
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:28,440
Speaker 3: thousand and five, seems to have prompted this new investigation,

768
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 3: and the author believes this rat king may shed some

769
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:35,280
Speaker 3: light on how these masses of creatures are formed. Warning,

770
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:37,960
Speaker 3: of course, about this story there will be some moderately

771
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:42,480
Speaker 3: gruesome details about rat corpses and rat injuries to read

772
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:46,560
Speaker 3: from the author's report about this Estonian incident quote. On

773
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 3: sixteen January two thousand and five, farmer Ray and Kuieve

774
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:53,520
Speaker 3: discovered a huddle of squeaking rats on the sandy floor

775
00:44:53,560 --> 00:44:58,280
Speaker 3: of his shed in Saaru village, mon East Parish Voru County, Estonia.

776
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:01,399
Speaker 3: The animals were unable to escape, and the farmer's son

777
00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 3: killed them with a stick. After that, a cluster of

778
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:08,760
Speaker 3: sixteen rats were excavated from the frozen sand. Their tails

779
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 3: were tangled in a knot that contained frozen sand. At

780
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 3: the time of discovery, only about nine of the rats

781
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:19,840
Speaker 3: were alive. Obviously, the animals tried to dig themselves out

782
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:22,719
Speaker 3: of the narrow tunnel, and the first rats buried the

783
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 3: last ones under the sand. The crater in the sandy

784
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 3: floor could still be seen even two months later.

785
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:31,880
Speaker 1: I do want to note that the article that I

786
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 1: referred to earlier about an Estonian rat king is actually

787
00:45:35,239 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: from years later.

788
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 3: Oh, but the.

789
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:41,759
Speaker 1: Same individual is commenting on it. This is so it's

790
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:43,080
Speaker 1: no uton in both cases.

791
00:45:43,920 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 3: Okay, so there was another Estonian rat king after this,

792
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 3: I see. Yeah, So to pick up on this story,

793
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:53,200
Speaker 3: So the farmer had no idea what he was looking

794
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:56,160
Speaker 3: at here, didn't know anything about ratking legends, or so

795
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:58,920
Speaker 3: he says, but no reason to doubt him, really, but

796
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:01,400
Speaker 3: he thought it was weird. So he put this tangle

797
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:03,920
Speaker 3: of rats out on a pile of planks so the

798
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 3: neighbors could come by and gawk at it, and then

799
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:10,720
Speaker 3: about two months later a relative of the farmer's wife,

800
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 3: who was a journalist, was like, hey, what's up with this?

801
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:16,840
Speaker 3: You know, maybe you should contact some experts. So this

802
00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 3: relative guid in contact with some zoologists to see if

803
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:23,759
Speaker 3: the find was significant, and this led to a bunch

804
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 3: of reports in local media and investigation in Estonian academic journals.

805
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:32,319
Speaker 3: On March tenth of that year, the rat King was

806
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:35,640
Speaker 3: taken to the Natural History Museum at the University of Tartu,

807
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 3: where it was submerged in alcohol for preservation and put

808
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:44,280
Speaker 3: on display. And it consisted of thirteen adult black rats,

809
00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 3: seven males and six females. There were originally sixteen, but

810
00:46:48,239 --> 00:46:51,359
Speaker 3: one was removed and discarded by the farmer, and then

811
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 3: two more were removed by a scavenger. The paper says

812
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:59,279
Speaker 3: probably a pole cat, this, I guess. Seemingly while the

813
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 3: rat king was, you know, on neighborhood display on the

814
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 3: pile of planks.

815
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:06,600
Speaker 1: It is kind of humorous that his first inclination was like, oh,

816
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:07,920
Speaker 1: I better put this out on the plank for the

817
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:10,759
Speaker 1: neighbors to see. When, of course, we have these other

818
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,400
Speaker 1: traditions and interpretations of the rat king as like a

819
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:17,839
Speaker 1: dire omen or as a punishment from God. But you know,

820
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: as he said, he wasn't really familiar with any of

821
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:24,759
Speaker 1: these traditions. He's just like, it's kind of neat. I

822
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 1: guess I'll put it out on the plank.

823
00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a low key spirit of curiosity. I appreciate it. So,

824
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:35,880
Speaker 3: of the two rats that were scavenged taken away by

825
00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 3: some kind of predator or animal, one of the tails

826
00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 3: remained attached to the not so I guess by the

827
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 3: time the museum got the rat king there were thirteen rats,

828
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:51,960
Speaker 3: but fourteen tails left. The remaining thirteen bodies have undergone

829
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 3: various types of damage and decay. Two of the rats

830
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:59,400
Speaker 3: had their brains eaten by what no speculation here in

831
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 3: the paper, and it just says brains eaten. Another one

832
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 3: seems to have had its hind legs nod on, and

833
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:09,400
Speaker 3: as the rat king dried out, the knot appears to

834
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:13,000
Speaker 3: have loosened. So at the museum during examination, some of

835
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:16,560
Speaker 3: the rats separated from the rest. But if you look

836
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 3: at the flesh in the parts of the tail that

837
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:22,839
Speaker 3: were trapped in the knot, that flesh is highly compressed.

838
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,560
Speaker 3: So the author concludes that the tail knot was originally

839
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 3: very tight when the animals were alive and the flesh

840
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 3: was higher pressure in it, I guess the rat was

841
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:37,759
Speaker 3: more hydrated. The author compares this to two other rat

842
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 3: king reports from Estonia, both of which lack physical evidence.

843
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,759
Speaker 3: One the so called rat King of Tartu, which allegedly

844
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,960
Speaker 3: consisted of three rats and was found sometime around nineteen

845
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:50,960
Speaker 3: fifteen to nineteen twenty. The other was found in a

846
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:54,759
Speaker 3: place called Roika in the early seventies in the winter time,

847
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 3: made of eighteen black rats. So coming to the conclusions

848
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,960
Speaker 3: the author draws from this examination and after reviewing the

849
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 3: literature and the others from history, including hearts observations, he's

850
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:11,800
Speaker 3: raising the question how are these things made? A few options.

851
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 3: Number one, it's a hoax. These are artificially manufactured by people.

852
00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 3: Number two, the knot is created naturally by chance due

853
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 3: to tail movements. Sometimes maybe you know, the rats are

854
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:26,440
Speaker 3: wiggling around each other, so they end up with their

855
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:29,279
Speaker 3: tails nodded. This could be related to the idea that

856
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:32,839
Speaker 3: rats become frightened, you know, like heart rays, they become

857
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:35,840
Speaker 3: frightened in their tails. In twine and then the third

858
00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 3: option is the knot is created naturally when tails are

859
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:42,799
Speaker 3: stuck together by some external binding process, such as by

860
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:48,080
Speaker 3: gluing or freezing, and after examining the Saru Village rat king,

861
00:49:48,200 --> 00:49:52,520
Speaker 3: the author suggests that this probably is a natural phenomenon,

862
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:55,959
Speaker 3: giving several reasons for doubting it was created artificially. First

863
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 3: of all, by all accounts, none of the family of

864
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:01,720
Speaker 3: farmers who found it had ever heard of rat kings,

865
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 3: and they received no tangible benefits for their find except

866
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:07,960
Speaker 3: I guess maybe the attention of neighbors who came by

867
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 3: to see the thing. And this doesn't rule it out,

868
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:14,640
Speaker 3: but it does make it seem less likely. The next

869
00:50:14,680 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 3: one is a good point, as was raised by Heart.

870
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:22,480
Speaker 3: It's impossible to tie the tails of living rats in

871
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 3: a knot without anesthesia, and it is not plausible that

872
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:31,040
Speaker 3: this kind of rat anesthetic surgical procedure was carried out

873
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 3: on a rural farm. It's also not plausible that anesthesia

874
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:37,279
Speaker 3: was used to create so many of these attested rat

875
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:40,920
Speaker 3: kings from long ago. Also, remember about how the rats

876
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 3: they dried out and the tail knot became loose. The

877
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:47,920
Speaker 3: author points out that the finder made no attempt to

878
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 3: tighten the knot of the dried tales, which you might

879
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 3: imagine someone would do if they were trying to carry

880
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:54,360
Speaker 3: out a hoax. You know, they might try to tighten

881
00:50:54,400 --> 00:50:55,560
Speaker 3: it make it look better.

882
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: Because they would have initially tightened the tails of perhaps

883
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:01,920
Speaker 1: dead rats, and would have needed to do so again

884
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:05,840
Speaker 1: to make sure that they're fined was still presentable.

885
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 3: Right, so, the author does not think it's very likely

886
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:11,799
Speaker 3: these rats were tied together artificially. Now, coming to that

887
00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:15,240
Speaker 3: second hypothesis, did the rats simply get their tails wrapped

888
00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 3: around one another until an formed? Under this hypothesis, rats

889
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 3: that are nervous will attempt to wrap their tails around

890
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:25,759
Speaker 3: one another, and maybe this happens until then forms. The

891
00:51:25,840 --> 00:51:29,360
Speaker 3: rat king at Tsaru, though, was discovered partially in its burrow,

892
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 3: where there's no reason to think the rats would be

893
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:35,719
Speaker 3: especially nervous, and the story of the rat king at

894
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 3: Roika was found inside a wall, also a sheltered place,

895
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:42,400
Speaker 3: And then the author in fact it doubts this could

896
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:46,200
Speaker 3: even happen in principle, He writes, quote, I've kept wild

897
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:49,920
Speaker 3: black rats in captivity for about eight years. Over this period,

898
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:53,439
Speaker 3: hundreds of animals were disturbed by people every day during

899
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:57,320
Speaker 3: the cleaning of cages, feeding, catching, or observing the animals.

900
00:51:57,480 --> 00:52:02,160
Speaker 3: But an entangling of tails has never been observed, So

901
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:04,879
Speaker 3: Milutin is saying, I don't even think this happens. Much

902
00:52:04,960 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 3: less would be the explanation of how the tails end

903
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 3: up knotted in a ball. But then, coming to the

904
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:16,080
Speaker 3: last hypothesis about the external binding process, Milutant writes, quote,

905
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 3: according to the third hypothesis for the formation of a

906
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:22,520
Speaker 3: rat king, rats should first huddle together, as they usually

907
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 3: do when sleeping in the nest chamber, especially when it

908
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 3: is cold. If their tails become glued or frozen together,

909
00:52:30,320 --> 00:52:33,560
Speaker 3: animals try to free themselves by moving in different directions.

910
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:37,600
Speaker 3: These chaotic movements may result in their tails becoming entangled

911
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 3: in a tight knot. Even after removal of the initial cause,

912
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 3: sticky substance or ice, they are no longer able to

913
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:48,560
Speaker 3: escape from the knot. The sticky substance may be blood,

914
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:52,719
Speaker 3: food items, nesting material, et cetera. And I would add

915
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:55,839
Speaker 3: to that that Heart mentioned the possibility of just frozen urine.

916
00:52:56,640 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: It's about to say, must we add to this list,

917
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:03,839
Speaker 1: but I guess we should for science now.

918
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:07,600
Speaker 3: Miliuton argues that this last hypothesis about the freezing or

919
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 3: sticking together and then that leading to the knot is

920
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:13,720
Speaker 3: the best explanation for the rat kings found in Estonia.

921
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 3: Reasons for this argument. First of all, ratkings in question

922
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 3: appear to have formed within the shelter, not outside of it,

923
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 3: so you know places where they would huddle together for warmth.

924
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:26,759
Speaker 3: In stories of rat kings in which details about the

925
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:30,359
Speaker 3: weather are known, it tended to be frosty weather. In fact,

926
00:53:30,440 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 3: the rat king of Soru was found right after the

927
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:37,040
Speaker 3: village had experienced sub zero temperatures. Adding to this, apart

928
00:53:37,120 --> 00:53:41,160
Speaker 3: from the story attributed to Indonesia, basically all the stories

929
00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:44,800
Speaker 3: of rat king sightings are traceable to colder climates, especially

930
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 3: in Central and Eastern Europe, where there are two things,

931
00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:52,200
Speaker 3: cold winters and Rattus ratus. Ratus ratus is more common

932
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 3: in southern Europe where the winters are more temperate, and

933
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:58,200
Speaker 3: in Northern Europe. In Canada, where the winters are colder,

934
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:02,640
Speaker 3: the brown rat ratus or vegicus is the more common species.

935
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:06,000
Speaker 3: So rat kings have and again to emphasize what I

936
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 3: said earlier, rat kings have really not been reported in

937
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:12,440
Speaker 3: the brown rat. They have shorter, thicker, and less flexible tails.

938
00:54:13,200 --> 00:54:16,279
Speaker 3: So the author argues that rat kings are in fact

939
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:19,480
Speaker 3: to genuine natural phenomena, though of course sometimes they may

940
00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:22,440
Speaker 3: be created by people, especially out of already dead rats.

941
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 3: They occur within the nest of the black rat during

942
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 3: cold weather via the gluing freezing process described earlier, and

943
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:35,399
Speaker 3: finally says, most of the time we will never find

944
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:36,080
Speaker 3: out about them.

945
00:54:36,239 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 1: Quote.

946
00:54:36,760 --> 00:54:39,480
Speaker 3: Not all rat kings that arise are found by people,

947
00:54:39,800 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 3: and not all finds are reflected in the press, much

948
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 3: less in scientific papers.

949
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is an idea that I saw discussed in

950
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: some other works as well, Like, not every rat king

951
00:54:50,880 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 1: that could assuming that rat kings do occur naturally, not

952
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:58,080
Speaker 1: everyone that occurs naturally is going to turn up. Because

953
00:54:59,080 --> 00:55:01,560
Speaker 1: even though there are accounts of them seeming to be

954
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:03,799
Speaker 1: well fed, and these tend to be, you know, the

955
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 1: ones that have been found, and they've been found in

956
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:09,840
Speaker 1: say agricultural or urban environments where there's perhaps an abundance

957
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 1: of food, for the most part, they're doomed. They're going

958
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:16,359
Speaker 1: to die, and in many cases they would die without

959
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:18,680
Speaker 1: humans ever laying eyes on them. And then you may

960
00:55:18,680 --> 00:55:22,280
Speaker 1: have other cases where they're not reported. You know, perhaps

961
00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:24,279
Speaker 1: they it is seen as a dire omen and they're like,

962
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: better cover this up. I'm not going to put this

963
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 1: on a plank for the neighbors to see. But I

964
00:55:29,560 --> 00:55:32,239
Speaker 1: kept coming back, and I guess we've partially answered this.

965
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:35,160
Speaker 1: But I was thinking, well, Okay, if all we need

966
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:40,000
Speaker 1: are black rats, cold weather, and the presence of human

967
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:44,719
Speaker 1: agriculture and or urbanization, then why do we not have

968
00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 1: accounts of them from before around fifteen seventy six, Like,

969
00:55:49,719 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: certainly observations of a rat king would be novel, and

970
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:56,439
Speaker 1: it makes sense that you would maybe hear about them,

971
00:55:56,480 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 1: say during the Roman period. But maybe indeed it does

972
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:03,160
Speaker 1: have to do with it just not being like the

973
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 1: perfect combination of all these forces like again, cold weather,

974
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:11,080
Speaker 1: black rats, human agriculture, urbanization, Like you have to have

975
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:14,600
Speaker 1: everything clicking along just right, and then there's still going

976
00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:15,600
Speaker 1: to be a rare occurrence.

977
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, that all sounds right to me, though, I think

978
00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 3: it is actually a good question you raise. Yeah, why

979
00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:23,560
Speaker 3: do these accounts first pop up in the sixteenth century,

980
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:28,480
Speaker 3: especially when the term rat king with a different meaning

981
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:30,640
Speaker 3: was already in common parlance.

982
00:56:31,360 --> 00:56:35,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting, And again, knots have always been of interest

983
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:40,319
Speaker 1: to human beings, and rats have been with us a

984
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:44,360
Speaker 1: long time as well, you know, often seen in a

985
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:48,360
Speaker 1: more ominous light, but also sometimes celebrated for various aspects

986
00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:51,279
Speaker 1: of the organism. So it again, it's the kind of

987
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:54,480
Speaker 1: thing that, if observed, would surely be novel enough to

988
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:58,799
Speaker 1: bear repetition in the written record, which of course is

989
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:01,279
Speaker 1: inherently incomplete. We have to acknowledge that as well.

990
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I would say where I sit with this

991
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:07,680
Speaker 3: is I think Heart and Milluton make good arguments, and

992
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 3: I would say, if I had to guess one way

993
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:13,000
Speaker 3: or another, I would agree with them that rat kings

994
00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:17,800
Speaker 3: probably are naturally created, probably along the methods that the

995
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:20,320
Speaker 3: Milluton highlights. But on the other hand, I would admit

996
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 3: that questions still remain and there are some reasons to

997
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:24,320
Speaker 3: be skeptical.

998
00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:26,880
Speaker 1: Now, I want to come back briefly to rat kings

999
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 1: and pop culture, sort of get some of the realistic

1000
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:35,720
Speaker 1: horror perhaps off the palette. Here we've touched on a

1001
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:38,560
Speaker 1: couple of the major examples of rat kings and pop culture,

1002
00:57:38,560 --> 00:57:40,800
Speaker 1: at least the major one as far as the modern

1003
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: audiences are concerned, but a couple of other ones that

1004
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:49,160
Speaker 1: I thought are worth mentioning the idea of a rat king,

1005
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: particularly as possessing a collective intelligence, is one that has

1006
00:57:54,240 --> 00:57:57,720
Speaker 1: fascinated me for a while. This idea originates, as far

1007
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:00,160
Speaker 1: as I'm aware, in the pages of the Bridge Is

1008
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:03,320
Speaker 1: comic two thousand and a d, specifically in the Adventures

1009
00:58:03,360 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 1: of Halo Jones. These were written by the legendary comics

1010
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: author Alan Moore and illustrated by the legendary comics artist

1011
00:58:11,320 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 1: Ian Gibson, who sadly passed away earlier this week. One

1012
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:18,080
Speaker 1: of the greats. But in Halo Jones, the rat king

1013
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 1: is displayed as using its advanced intelligence to control all

1014
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:25,960
Speaker 1: the rats in the world and then take over the

1015
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: world in the process. I included an illustration from the

1016
00:58:30,040 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 1: comic book here for you, Joe in black and white.

1017
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 3: Is it typing on a computer?

1018
00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:38,160
Speaker 1: I believe so. Yeah. These are mass communicating rat kings

1019
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:38,640
Speaker 1: right here.

1020
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:41,720
Speaker 3: You never know when you're talking to somebody on the internet.

1021
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:42,760
Speaker 3: They could be a rat king.

1022
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 1: It could have no way. It absolutely could be. Now

1023
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 1: related but separate concept is that of the cranium rats

1024
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:54,160
Speaker 1: and dungeons and dragons. These are psionically enhanced rats. So

1025
00:58:54,200 --> 00:58:56,120
Speaker 1: these are rats that the e lithids or the mind

1026
00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 1: flares have toyed with and they've changed their brains in

1027
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:02,120
Speaker 1: order to use them as spies to go out and

1028
00:59:02,320 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 1: especially into like the human world and see what's up.

1029
00:59:05,800 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 1: But the thing I always liked about cranium rats is

1030
00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:10,960
Speaker 1: the idea that one of these is essentially just a rat.

1031
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:14,160
Speaker 1: If you encounter one cranium rat, you're just encountering a rat.

1032
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:17,280
Speaker 1: But if you have two cranium rats, well, they have

1033
00:59:17,360 --> 00:59:21,560
Speaker 1: the collective intelligence, the psionically connected brain of two rats together,

1034
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:25,400
Speaker 1: and it builds from there. So in great numbers, cranium

1035
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:28,919
Speaker 1: rats have a vast collective intelligence. And in the world

1036
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:32,000
Speaker 1: of dungeons and Dragons, they have enhanced psionic abilities, so

1037
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:34,640
Speaker 1: they'd be able to like basically like lash out at

1038
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 1: you with scanner powers.

1039
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:38,360
Speaker 3: WHOA, So you really don't want to let them get

1040
00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 3: on the computer less like Cameron Vail, they hack into

1041
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:45,440
Speaker 3: your mainframe mainframe via scanner powers through the phone lines.

1042
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:52,800
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another frequently cited use of of of rat kings

1043
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:55,440
Speaker 1: in pop culture. I believe Liz Lemon's old boyfriend Dennis

1044
00:59:55,520 --> 00:59:58,320
Speaker 1: Duffy on Thirty Rock claims in one episode to have

1045
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:00,400
Speaker 1: seen a rat king perhaps in the sub or what

1046
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: have you. That one definitely stuck in my mind, But

1047
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:06,760
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten about this one. It's been a long time

1048
01:00:06,800 --> 01:00:09,680
Speaker 1: since I've read Stephen King's nineteen eighty six novel It,

1049
01:00:10,560 --> 01:00:12,760
Speaker 1: but there is mention of a rat king, and it's

1050
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 1: vast pages. I had to look it up to see

1051
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 1: exactly what is said. But on page eight hundred and

1052
01:00:19,520 --> 01:00:23,440
Speaker 1: seventy two of the kindle edition, you have the kids

1053
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:26,840
Speaker 1: exploring the Nyebolt House. This is the you know, the

1054
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:28,480
Speaker 1: Haunted House. If you've seen the movie, you know what

1055
01:00:28,560 --> 01:00:31,200
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, the dark, decayed house that they go

1056
01:00:31,320 --> 01:00:35,320
Speaker 1: to and Ritchie opens up a cupboard, looks inside, and

1057
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:37,959
Speaker 1: then reports what he has seen. He says, quote, there's

1058
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:41,080
Speaker 1: hundreds of them in there, their tails, they were all

1059
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:44,400
Speaker 1: tangled up, bill nodded together like snakes.

1060
01:00:45,160 --> 01:00:48,560
Speaker 3: Creepy. So page eight seventy two is that near the

1061
01:00:48,640 --> 01:00:49,439
Speaker 3: end of chapter one.

1062
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:54,040
Speaker 1: Yes, I have a physical copy around here somewhere, but

1063
01:00:54,080 --> 01:00:55,840
Speaker 1: there's no way I was going to like scan through

1064
01:00:55,880 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 1: it and find one mention of a rat king. So

1065
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,640
Speaker 1: I had to pony up by the can edition, do

1066
01:01:00,720 --> 01:01:04,480
Speaker 1: a word search and find out exactly where King mentions

1067
01:01:04,520 --> 01:01:06,800
Speaker 1: rat Kings because there's a lot of horror, plenty of

1068
01:01:06,800 --> 01:01:08,080
Speaker 1: horror in that book to go around.

1069
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:09,320
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so.

1070
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:11,280
Speaker 1: That's just a taste of some uses of the rat

1071
01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:13,360
Speaker 1: king and pop culture. But there are others. So if

1072
01:01:13,360 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 1: there are any that are near and dear to your

1073
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,720
Speaker 1: heart do you think are particularly insightful, write in. We

1074
01:01:17,760 --> 01:01:19,960
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Do not send us

1075
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Speaker 1: your ratkings, though. If you find a rat king, please

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01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:27,840
Speaker 1: find an acceptable local authority to report this. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and close this episode out again,

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Speaker 1: look to the Monster Fact tomorrow from a little more

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Speaker 1: from me regarding rat king esque matters. But then we'll

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Speaker 1: be back on Thursday with an episode on you Guessed

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Speaker 1: It The Nutcracker.

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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

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Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,