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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today I want to start off by telling a short story.

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Speaker 1: So in the second or third century CE in Roman Britain,

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Speaker 1: in the settlement that is now the English city of Leicester,

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Speaker 1: there was a Roman named Servandas, and Servanda's discovered that

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Speaker 1: his cloak was missing. Not just missing, he knew it

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Speaker 1: had to have been stolen, but who stole it? Well,

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Speaker 1: he'd have to draw up a list of suspects. He

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Speaker 1: didn't know for sure. Now, Servandas was not plenty of

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Speaker 1: the younger. He was not an elite. He was not

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Speaker 1: some rich big shot with diarrhea of the pen. Hey,

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Speaker 1: we love plenty of this show, we do. But he

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Speaker 1: he was originally who had diary of the pen Uh,

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Speaker 1: not one of these people, one of these power people

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Speaker 1: who had their memoirs preserved for us. So how do

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Speaker 1: we know about the stolen cloak of this common person, Servanda's.

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Speaker 1: Well we know about it because in the mid two thousand's,

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Speaker 1: researchers from the University of Lester working at a site

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Speaker 1: within Lester dug up a rectangular sheet of lead about

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Speaker 1: seven inches by three inches, carved with an inscription a curse.

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Speaker 1: It was an entreaty to a god to smite his

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Speaker 1: enemy for stealing from him, and it reads quote to

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Speaker 1: the god Maglus, I give the wrong doer who stole

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Speaker 1: the cloak of Servandas that he destroy him before the

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Speaker 1: ninth day, the person who stole the cloak of Servandas.

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Speaker 1: So you got a nine day timeline basically nine days

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Speaker 1: to get me back the cloak, or may you be

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Speaker 1: destroyed by Maglus. And then Servanda's helpfully supplies Maglus, which may,

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Speaker 1: I think it's been speculated be a Celtic word meaning prints,

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Speaker 1: often names of gods or things that are just a

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Speaker 1: word for prince or king, like bay All or moluk Um.

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Speaker 1: But there there's a list of eighteen or nineteen possible subjects,

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Speaker 1: including people like and we don't know who these people are,

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Speaker 1: but people like Sylvester and Germanis, and Riomandus and Regulus.

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Speaker 1: So who are these guys? No idea, but Servandas was

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Speaker 1: comfortable condemning them to the talents of Maglus with this curse.

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Speaker 1: Now I know some of you are probably wondering, well,

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Speaker 1: who stole the cloak? Who you know? Who is the thief? Here?

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Speaker 1: My question is was this a nice cloak? Was it

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Speaker 1: just was? Is that the thing? Was it just really nice?

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Speaker 1: Or is he just very spiteful over it's it's lost? Well,

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Speaker 1: it could be those things, or it could be that

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Speaker 1: Servandas was very poor and could only afford one cloak,

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Speaker 1: and you know that that a cloak was a significant

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Speaker 1: possession to him, and so stealing a cloak from Servandas

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Speaker 1: in second or third century Roman Britain might be like

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Speaker 1: stealing your car. Now he has time and energy to

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Speaker 1: put into this whole curse business, though I'm I'm assuming

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Speaker 1: there's a fee associated with that. Well that's a good point,

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Speaker 1: and we'll come back to that in a minute. Yes,

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Speaker 1: you raise good questions. So today, obviously we're going to

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Speaker 1: be talking about curses, and Robert, I don't know about you,

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Speaker 1: but I love curse movies. I think like which is,

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Speaker 1: curse movies are really fun. They're one of my favorite

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Speaker 1: genres of horror. Like a witch puts a curse on

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Speaker 1: somebody and you've got to figure out what to do.

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Speaker 1: So in this case, you're talking about films where where

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Speaker 1: the protagonist is cursed and has to work their way

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Speaker 1: out of the curse. Yeah. Now there's a variation on

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Speaker 1: this that I don't like at all, which is like

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Speaker 1: the Thinner model, which I don't even want to get

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Speaker 1: into the details of. But that is just like an

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Speaker 1: unusually reprehensible movie or story in general, putting that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing aside, where like the person cursed really deserved it. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's a film that that explores a very common trope,

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Speaker 1: right where the making and the spitting of curses is

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Speaker 1: the domain of an outsider people or a people of

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Speaker 1: like a lower cast within a given society. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: a very common trope. I I don't I don't really

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Speaker 1: like that kind as much. I like the Witch curses.

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Speaker 1: But we should specify for the purposes of the episode

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Speaker 1: what a curse is. So, a curse is an invocation

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Speaker 1: of magic power to cause injury or misfortune to someone

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Speaker 1: or something. It is essentially the inversion of a blessing.

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Speaker 1: A blessing is a benediction, it's a wish of good

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Speaker 1: will towards someone, and a curse is a malediction, a

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Speaker 1: wish invoking magic to cause ill will, to to convey

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Speaker 1: ill will and cause ill fortune on somebody else. Other

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Speaker 1: names would be like schaden zob or black magic, binding,

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Speaker 1: cutting off. It's using supernatural power to hurt someone. An

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Speaker 1: invocation aspect here is key because it's not a mere prophecy.

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Speaker 1: It's not someone uh, you know, casting bones and saying, oh,

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Speaker 1: this will transpire, even saying this will transpire because of

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Speaker 1: this transgression. No, it's a it's it's an appeal to uh,

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Speaker 1: to a god or some divine force to to punish,

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Speaker 1: or just simply a magical punishment that essentially emerges from

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Speaker 1: the lips or from writing and then works its its

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Speaker 1: will on its own. Yeah, curses are not just predictions.

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Speaker 1: They are spoken into existence. Now. Curses are often unleashed

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Speaker 1: by the gods in our our myth and our fiction,

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Speaker 1: cursed placed upon individuals or groups of individuals. One thinks of, say,

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Speaker 1: the curse of Eve, the mark of Cain uh, the

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Speaker 1: various individuals that have been cursed in other fictions, the

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Speaker 1: curse of Innocus uh, dire words becoming dire realities uh,

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Speaker 1: and is one would expect right when the words are

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Speaker 1: rolling off the lips of a god. All a god

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Speaker 1: needs to do is speak right and things start happening.

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Speaker 1: You also have various monsters that are born from curses,

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Speaker 1: ghosts that are born from curses, even animals too that

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Speaker 1: are the prod up of curses. I'm thinking about, Uh,

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Speaker 1: some of the Greek myths concerning spiders and the curse

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Speaker 1: placed on a rackney. Um, Pumpkinheads a curse. Pumpkin Heads.

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Speaker 1: The werewolf is often a curse as well. Uh, So

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Speaker 1: we have a number of different pots. But I kind

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Speaker 1: of forgotten about Pumpkinhead. Of exactly how Pumpkinhead worked in

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Speaker 1: the horror movie was a witches curse. Yeah, guy, He

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Speaker 1: he wants revenge on some teenage motor bikers, so he

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Speaker 1: goes to a witch to cast a curse on them.

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Speaker 1: Not a great film, but it does have some great

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Speaker 1: monster effects. And there are any number of cursed villains

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Speaker 1: in fiction, right, I mean, everybody loves a good good

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Speaker 1: villain was some sort of significant curse placed upon them.

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Speaker 1: For instance, in Big Trouble and Little China, we're told

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Speaker 1: that Lo Pon is cursed by China's first sovereign emperor,

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Speaker 1: uh quinn s Long, and he has the curse of

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Speaker 1: no flesh. Interestingly enough, will return to lo Pan in

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Speaker 1: a bit. Oh well, I look forward to that now.

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Speaker 1: We also would be remnist if we didn't mention our

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Speaker 1: old fend for uh Connor McCloud, Connie mack. The is

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Speaker 1: essentially of a version of the wandering immortal character, a

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Speaker 1: character that is, that is, to some extent cursed with immortality.

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Speaker 1: This is always a lovely a trope in fiction and

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Speaker 1: mythology folklore as well, the thing that might seem a

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Speaker 1: blessing but is actually a curse. Oh yeah, like the

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Speaker 1: idea that when Jesus prophesied that there was at least

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Speaker 1: someone standing there who was watching him preach, who would

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Speaker 1: not pass away before the Kingdom of God came with power.

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Speaker 1: Um that you know that that has led to the

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Speaker 1: idea of the wandering Jew, that someone standing there that

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Speaker 1: day is actually immortal and still walking around. Right. There's

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Speaker 1: a there's another variation on this theme. There is I

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Speaker 1: believe it's a Russian tale um or at least East

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Speaker 1: Eastern European tale called the Soldier in Death. Anyone is

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Speaker 1: a frank fan of Jim Hinson's The Storyteller series, there's

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Speaker 1: a wonderful rendition of that little number. But it in

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Speaker 1: this story that the soldier eventually is cursed with a

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Speaker 1: form of immortality because he's basically um frightened. Everyone death

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Speaker 1: is afraid of him, the devils are afraid of him.

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Speaker 1: Nobody will let him into heaven or hell. Oh that's

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Speaker 1: a good story. Uh. So I want to bring it

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Speaker 1: back to to the curse invoking Maglas against the person

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Speaker 1: who stole the cloak of servandas so, I mentioned that

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Speaker 1: this was inscribed on a lead tablet, right, And it

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Speaker 1: turns out that there are thousands of curse tablets like

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Speaker 1: this from the ancient world. Uh. This one, like most

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Speaker 1: of them, is a small lead or pewter sheet on

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Speaker 1: which a curse is inscribed with the stylus. And uh,

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Speaker 1: sometimes they'll be rolled up into kind of a scroll,

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Speaker 1: like the metal will be rolled up. And one thing

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Speaker 1: that you can discover by reading various curse tablets from

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Speaker 1: antiquity is that an extremely common genre of curses in

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Speaker 1: actual history appears to consist of curses against people who

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Speaker 1: stole things from you. And one quote I came across

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Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting. Richard Buckley, co director of

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Speaker 1: the University of Lesser Archaeological Services who is involved in

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Speaker 1: that discovery, uh said quote. It has been suggested, on

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Speaker 1: the basis of name forms and the value of items stolen,

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Speaker 1: that the curses relate to the lives of ordinary people

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Speaker 1: rather than the wealthy, and that they were perhaps commissioned

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Speaker 1: by the dedicator from a professional curse writer. So so

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Speaker 1: generally here we're not dealing with rich people coming to

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Speaker 1: do curses. We're dealing with common people dealing with common problems,

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Speaker 1: like the theft of an item from their from their

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Speaker 1: person or from their house. And when that gets stolen

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Speaker 1: and they don't know what to do, they can go

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Speaker 1: say to a scribe and pay that person, you know,

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Speaker 1: somebody who's literate, and pay that person to write out

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Speaker 1: a curse on a tablet for them. You know, I

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Speaker 1: think we can all understand and relate to this, uh,

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Speaker 1: this impulse. If you've ever been a victim of a

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Speaker 1: crime like this and in a theft for instance, and

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Speaker 1: the police are like, yeah, there's nothing we can do, sorry,

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Speaker 1: you're just out however much money you lost on that

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Speaker 1: iPhone charger or whatever it was stolen out of your car. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And then you uh, you know, what what what's left

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Speaker 1: to do? Maybe spend a few dollars and and curse

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Speaker 1: the individual, right, I mean what percentage of small thefts

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Speaker 1: are actually solved and you get your stuff returned? I

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Speaker 1: would have to guess almost none. Yeah. Absolutely. Now. Now

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Speaker 1: this does make me think though, that if I were

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Speaker 1: a professional um cursed tablet manufacturer in olden times, it

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Speaker 1: sounds like the best thing you could do to to

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Speaker 1: drum up business is to go around stealing random things

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Speaker 1: from people and just like burying them somewhere. Uh, because

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Speaker 1: then people are gonna get piste off and they're gonna say,

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Speaker 1: who stole my cloak? And then they're gonna go buy

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Speaker 1: another tablet from you. Well, I would guess that would

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Speaker 1: depend on you not believing that the curses are efficacious,

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Speaker 1: Otherwise you'd just be accumulating curses that would actually harm you.

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Speaker 1: Well I would I guess. Yeah. In this model, the

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Speaker 1: the individual making the curses is in on a game.

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Speaker 1: You know, they can't be a true believer. They have

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Speaker 1: to be uh, you know, the the con artist in

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Speaker 1: the scenario. Well, that is something that we could definitely

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Speaker 1: talk about, because there are obviously differences in belief in

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Speaker 1: the power of curses in witchcraft all throughout history. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, we we find these curse tablets all throughout

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Speaker 1: the ancient Mediterranean. They're these wonderful artifacts of evil magic

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Speaker 1: or you know, you could think of it as evil,

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Speaker 1: because we usually think of curses as evil. But really

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Speaker 1: the people who were who were commissioning these, in many

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Speaker 1: cases we're seeking justice. You know, that they were trying

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Speaker 1: to get back something that had been unfairly taken from them.

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Speaker 1: But there are other varieties of curse tablets that are

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Speaker 1: more just kind of a a desire to get power

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Speaker 1: over arrival or to you know, a desire to hurt

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Speaker 1: some kind of competitor or enemy. In Latin, the curse

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Speaker 1: tablets are known as deficitions. In Greek, they're known as

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Speaker 1: cata desmoi. I don't know if I pronounced those correctly,

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Speaker 1: but close enough. You know, you'll sometimes hear people from

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Speaker 1: the you know, people talking about the ancient Greco Roman

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Speaker 1: world as a place of unusual reason and skepticism for

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Speaker 1: its time. You know, that sort of characterization of like

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Speaker 1: ancient Greece in ancient Romans places of like philosophy or something.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's an there's an entire argument that that

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Speaker 1: science and reason is is birthed solely out of out

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Speaker 1: of Greco Roman tradition, and that and that it only

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Speaker 1: spreads to the far corners of the world, that anything

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Speaker 1: that the you know, the that there were there was

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Speaker 1: taking place in ancient India or ancient China or meso America,

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Speaker 1: that these these didn't really count because they hadn't been

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Speaker 1: touched by a by the Greco Roman vibe yet. Now

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Speaker 1: obviously that's a nonsense. In fact, I don't really know.

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Speaker 1: I don't come across people making that argument anymore. I

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Speaker 1: think I feel like most most thinkers have have moved

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Speaker 1: beyond that. But I know that in The Demon Hunted World,

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Speaker 1: Segan spends a little time discrediting this notion as well.

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Speaker 1: But the other side of that is just the belief

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Speaker 1: that the ancient Greco Roman and world was this unusually

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Speaker 1: reasonable and skeptical place, relatively free from superstition and paranoia

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Speaker 1: about witchcraft. But the evidence indicates that just really is

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Speaker 1: not the case. It might be the case among some

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Speaker 1: particular you know, members of the elite or the intelligencia

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Speaker 1: or something. You might read their own memoirs and find

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Speaker 1: that this person in history who left a lot of

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Speaker 1: writing happened to be skeptical about things. But among people

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Speaker 1: in general, the ancient Mediterranean appears to have been run

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Speaker 1: through with fear of witchcraft and with the use of curses,

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Speaker 1: even in the Roman period. Plenty of the Elder rights

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Speaker 1: in his Natural History in the first century CE. We

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Speaker 1: mentioned him a minute ago in the middle of a

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Speaker 1: section about the power of portents and spells. Quote, there

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Speaker 1: is no one who does not dread being spell bound

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Speaker 1: by means of evil imprecations, and hints the practice after

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Speaker 1: eating eggs or snails of immediately breaking the shells or

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Speaker 1: piercing them with a spoon. I was like, well, what

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Speaker 1: is that about? So this is from the translation the

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Speaker 1: eight translation by John Bostock. Bostock or Bostock however you

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Speaker 1: say that, And there's a footnote that says, quote, it

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Speaker 1: is a superstition still practice to pierce the shell of

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Speaker 1: an egg after eating it. Less to the witches should come.

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Speaker 1: I've been doing it wrong this whole time, I know.

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Speaker 1: So I went and read a little bit more about this. Basically,

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Speaker 1: the idea is that if you eat an egg and

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Speaker 1: you leave the shell just sitting around. A witch can

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Speaker 1: come along and prick that shell with a needle while

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Speaker 1: citing the name of a person who wants to cast

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Speaker 1: a curse against you, and that will allow them to

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Speaker 1: do a curse. And this is a common part of

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Speaker 1: like sympathetic magic, like you touch the thing. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: am I peeling eggs wrong? That's what I'm wondering, because

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Speaker 1: whenever I peel an egg, I like I end up

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Speaker 1: just destroying the eggshell. Like it looks pretty pierced to

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Speaker 1: me because I've just ripped it to pieces. Well, maybe

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Speaker 1: it's if they find a big shard of it and

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Speaker 1: they can pierce it, or maybe there's this is like

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Speaker 1: a post egg sucking scenario. People are just you know,

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Speaker 1: putting one hole in it and sucking it out. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, you took that to a nasty place. There's

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Speaker 1: nothing wrong with the eating raw egg that way, I guess.

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Speaker 1: I mean of the things one could be doing in

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Speaker 1: in in ancient Greece, as egg sucking sounds reasonable. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it leaves you vulnerable to witchcraft, I guess so. Famously,

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Speaker 1: many curse tablets have been found in the city of Bath,

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Speaker 1: which was a settlement known for its hot springs used

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Speaker 1: as a spa in a bath during Roman times, and

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Speaker 1: the goddess of these hot springs was a Celtic deity

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Speaker 1: named Soulis, who in many of these curses that have

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Speaker 1: been found at Bath, seems to be merged through syncretism

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Speaker 1: with the Roman goddess Minerva as Sulis Minerva. I read

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Speaker 1: that one of these curses from Bath is a bronze

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Speaker 1: It's for a bronze container that had been stolen. It

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Speaker 1: seems like most of these also have to do with theft,

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Speaker 1: and the curse asked the goddess to make sure that

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Speaker 1: the stolen container ended up old with the thief's blood.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty good. That is really good. That's clever. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it basically comes back to that old adage,

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Speaker 1: I hope you choke on it. You know, so somebody

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Speaker 1: has has has has obtained something of yours or something

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Speaker 1: that you feel should be yours through underhanded actions. Then

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Speaker 1: you just you just say, well, I hope, I hope

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Speaker 1: you choke on that. I hope that this brings about

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Speaker 1: your death. And we just kind of we kind of

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Speaker 1: throw that one out. But that is essentially a curse.

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Speaker 1: Even if we we say it, you know, kind of

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Speaker 1: flippantly or comedically. It's the unspoken part of you can

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Speaker 1: have it, you know, and you can have it just

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Speaker 1: meaning like and something bad is going to happen to you. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this thing is, this is curse now anyway, I don't

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Speaker 1: want it. But then again, a lot of these curses

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Speaker 1: demand the return of the item, and they say like,

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Speaker 1: if you don't return the items, say, you know, in

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Speaker 1: nine days, may he be destroyed by the ninth day

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Speaker 1: or something like that. Another one quote Docillianus, son of

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Speaker 1: Bruce Serra's to the Most Holy God, Sulus, I curse

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Speaker 1: him who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether and or woman,

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Speaker 1: whether slave or free, that Sulis inflict death upon him,

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Speaker 1: and not allow him sleep or children now and in

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Speaker 1: the future until he has brought my hooded cloak to

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Speaker 1: the temple of her divinity. Now, I like how this

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Speaker 1: particular curse is nice and uh and and and broad.

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Speaker 1: Here you know, it's it's the it's the buckshot of curses,

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Speaker 1: because it is it is promising for what problem sleeping

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Speaker 1: and potentially problem bearing children. Uh, there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: room here. So if one if the individual who is

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Speaker 1: cursed and like knows that the curses leveled at them, like, Oh,

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Speaker 1: I think he's talking about me because I totally stole

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Speaker 1: that cloak. Uh. Chances are they might encounter a situation where, oh, man,

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Speaker 1: I'm having a little trouble sleeping, or I'm or are

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Speaker 1: or I'm having trouble conceiving. Maybe it was that curse. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: in the secular interpretation, you're trying to get the victim's

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Speaker 1: mind working against them, and we can talk about that

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Speaker 1: more later when we discuss like the psychological and scientific

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Speaker 1: aspects of cursing. But but you're also probably believing in

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Speaker 1: real magic power and thinking, yeah, something bad is going

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Speaker 1: to happen to this person. That's true. We do have

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Speaker 1: to come back time and time again to the idea

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Speaker 1: that we're dealing with people, more often than the common

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Speaker 1: people here, who do not have anything approaching the scientific

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Speaker 1: understanding of the world. They have magical explanations for how

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Speaker 1: the world works, and therefore that worldview is open to

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Speaker 1: magical manipulation. Now, you mentioned that you liked the things

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Speaker 1: that have been picked out in this curse, denying you

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Speaker 1: sleep and denying your children general things that are invoked

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Speaker 1: in these curses would be to like make it so

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Speaker 1: the thief cannot defecate or urinate, to make the thief bleed,

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Speaker 1: to cause sexual problems, to prevent them from sleeping or eating.

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Speaker 1: There's all kinds of stuff. But I wonder who picks

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Speaker 1: out what goes in the curse. Is that up to

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Speaker 1: the scribe who you're commissioning the curse from, or is

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Speaker 1: that up to you? Do you go to a scribe

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Speaker 1: and say, Okay, here's what I want. I want the

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Speaker 1: bleeding and I want the sexual problems. Yeah. Do you

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Speaker 1: think it's it's package based or it's all a cart right,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, I think this would have

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Speaker 1: been a great, a great curse if you just said,

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Speaker 1: all right, whoever stole this cloak from me, every time

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Speaker 1: from now on, for the rest of your life, every

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Speaker 1: time you stub your toe, that's me. That's this curse,

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Speaker 1: you know, that's that That would be a good one,

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Speaker 1: because nothing is worse than stubbing your toe in that

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Speaker 1: second that you have stubbed it, um and you always

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Speaker 1: feel like somebody's to blame, yes, and you need to blame.

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Speaker 1: So usually, if you're me, you just curse at the

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Speaker 1: coffee table or what have you put that there? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but then you're like, oh, servandas it was you. So

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00:19:36,960 --> 00:19:39,159
Speaker 1: these tablets are actually they're more than just sort of

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Speaker 1: a magical curiosity. Uh. The tablets of Bath and many

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Speaker 1: others have actually proven useful in helping experts understand the

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Speaker 1: common vernacular language of say Roman Britain in the second

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Speaker 1: to fourth century. Because again, when you think about it,

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Speaker 1: curse tablets are kind of like graffiti. It's a window

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Speaker 1: into how written language was used by people who we're

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Speaker 1: not writing the kinds of works that get copied and

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Speaker 1: stored in libraries and come down to us through history,

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Speaker 1: you know, like nowadays, I assume future historians will probably

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Speaker 1: get to know what it was like when the average

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Speaker 1: English speaker in the United States used written English because

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Speaker 1: they can see it all over the internet. But in

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Speaker 1: ancient Rome, unless you like, wrote books that people thought

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Speaker 1: were very valuable, most of the time, people weren't going

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Speaker 1: to see what it looked like when you were, you know,

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Speaker 1: using language. Side note, I wonder if in hip hop,

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Speaker 1: like a distract is considered a curse. That's interesting sort

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Speaker 1: of kind of maybe do you well, I mean, there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of insults but does it actually like, does

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Speaker 1: it invoke a power to wish harm upon you? Maybe?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean sometimes you could say that, well,

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Speaker 1: they're threats, but their self actualized things. They're like I'm

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Speaker 1: going to do something to you. Yeah, I guess they are.

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Speaker 1: They tend to be more threats than though, though I

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Speaker 1: don't I don't know. There might be some distracts out there.

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Speaker 1: I would love to hear about any distracts that invoke

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Speaker 1: magical forces or sort of the the inner workings of fate. Oh,

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00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:10,160
Speaker 1: that's good. I bet there are some. I bet there

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Speaker 1: have to be some religious ones. Surely there's some like

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Speaker 1: religious sort of distracts. Maybe they're not individual, but I

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00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:19,440
Speaker 1: mean one of the big uh selling points of religion,

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Speaker 1: and we'll discuss this more as we go forward, is

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Speaker 1: the idea that God or God's are going to punish

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Speaker 1: those who wronged you or are wronging you or living

394
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Speaker 1: their life in a way that you don't agree with. Now,

395
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Speaker 1: there will be some sort of divine vengeance, and therefore

396
00:21:33,200 --> 00:21:36,040
Speaker 1: you know to invoke that divine vengeance is essentially a curse.

397
00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:39,840
Speaker 1: Like anybody has ever stood on a street corner and

398
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Speaker 1: yelled nasty things with a God sign at participants in

399
00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:46,960
Speaker 1: a parade or something like that, they're essentially spitting out curses. Now,

400
00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:49,359
Speaker 1: they probably wouldn't think of it that way because they

401
00:21:49,359 --> 00:21:53,160
Speaker 1: wouldn't think like, I'm asking the divine power to do

402
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:55,119
Speaker 1: something to you. They would probably think of it as

403
00:21:55,160 --> 00:21:57,720
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm just telling you what the divine power

404
00:21:57,760 --> 00:21:59,800
Speaker 1: is going to do to you. Anyway, right, Well, they

405
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:02,160
Speaker 1: had their view and it's probably the same. But from

406
00:22:02,320 --> 00:22:04,160
Speaker 1: this side of the curse, I feel like the two

407
00:22:04,160 --> 00:22:08,080
Speaker 1: are are basically indistinguishable, Like the guy with the sign

408
00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:11,800
Speaker 1: is still the jerk in the scenario. Agreed. Now, we

409
00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:14,360
Speaker 1: have been talking about how often curses are used sort

410
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:16,760
Speaker 1: of after the fact to get back at somebody who

411
00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:20,080
Speaker 1: wronged you, usually somebody who stole something from you. But

412
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Speaker 1: there's another way you could use an anti theft curse,

413
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Speaker 1: which would be a curse employed preemptively against thieves. So

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about medieval anti theft curses in

415
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Speaker 1: monastic libraries. Uh. Last year, the British Library put up

416
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Speaker 1: this awesome blog post by a medieval studies scholar named

417
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:45,000
Speaker 1: Clark Dreyschen, highlighting medieval books in their collection that contained curses. So,

418
00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:49,359
Speaker 1: for example, and early fourteenth century copy of a thirteenth

419
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Speaker 1: century Middle Dutch encyclopedia and beastiary called The Flower of

420
00:22:53,200 --> 00:22:57,240
Speaker 1: Nature by Jacob von Merland. It has its own little

421
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Speaker 1: checkout ledger within the book, you know, like you at

422
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Speaker 1: a library book, you put the card in. So what

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00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:04,680
Speaker 1: you have to picture here is there's a cross under

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Speaker 1: which anyone borrowing the book had to sign their name

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Speaker 1: and then had to swear a dear oath that if

426
00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:13,840
Speaker 1: they did not return the book they would die. And

427
00:23:14,040 --> 00:23:16,480
Speaker 1: there's there's one name at least there. It's a midwife

428
00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 1: named Abstricts hype Motor who signed the oath. So we

429
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:23,199
Speaker 1: we hope Absterricts brought the book back. There's also a

430
00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,800
Speaker 1: fourteenth century commentary on the harmony of the Gospels, inscribed

431
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 1: with a printer's note saying, anyone who steals this book

432
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:32,639
Speaker 1: will receive quote death from evil things. May the thief

433
00:23:32,680 --> 00:23:35,199
Speaker 1: of this book die. So instead of a sticker that

434
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:40,280
Speaker 1: says this book belongs to blank, it's essentially the same thing.

435
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 1: It's that sticker, but it's like this book belongs to blank,

436
00:23:43,359 --> 00:23:45,720
Speaker 1: and if you were not blank, you will die, right

437
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:48,320
Speaker 1: and it But you know, we're we're getting into an

438
00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:52,040
Speaker 1: area here. We're talking about books that were tremendously valuable

439
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:54,960
Speaker 1: in some cases and uh and also probably had a

440
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:58,639
Speaker 1: bit of the a bit of magic to them. You know,

441
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:02,320
Speaker 1: this reminds me of episode that I did with Christian

442
00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:05,879
Speaker 1: while back about books that were attributed magical properties in

443
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:08,199
Speaker 1: a large part base just because of the like the

444
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 1: power of writing, like the ideas that were contained within

445
00:24:10,880 --> 00:24:13,119
Speaker 1: it and made it special. Oh yeah. The author of

446
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 1: this blog post actually points out that while some of

447
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: the curses seem like overkill, I'm going to mention a

448
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 1: couple more in a minute that are really overkill, um

449
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 1: for what's deserving of a simple book thief. In context,

450
00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 1: it makes more sense because of what you're talking about.

451
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 1: Like we would today consider stealing a book to be

452
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:33,200
Speaker 1: a pretty minor petty crime like shoplifting or something. But

453
00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 1: this was before the printing press, when books were extremely

454
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: labor intensive to produce and a copy and often if

455
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:41,679
Speaker 1: you lost a copy of the book, you weren't just

456
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:44,800
Speaker 1: out a lot of monetary value. It might have been

457
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 1: something that you can't get another copy of. And now

458
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 1: add to that exactly what you're saying, maybe this book

459
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:54,360
Speaker 1: has important information about how to interpret the Bible that

460
00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: you consider important to saving your eternal soul. This is

461
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,640
Speaker 1: a book of extremely important ma jical significance in a way,

462
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 1: So for a medieval Christian monk, stealing or damaging someone

463
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: else's religious literature, was this extremely costly and perhaps even

464
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 1: dangerous thing to do to them? Yeah, you're you're stealing

465
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: from the pool of collected knowledge. Yeah. Now, a couple

466
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:18,800
Speaker 1: of other great book curses. One was this book that

467
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: belonged to the Church of St. Al Dad. In the

468
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:24,080
Speaker 1: Gloucester States quote, this book is of St. Al Date.

469
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 1: He that takes this book shall be hauled by the neck,

470
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:34,080
Speaker 1: bye bye, by who, well, presumably by Christ himself. Also

471
00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:36,879
Speaker 1: later in the book, a curse is attributed directly to

472
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,800
Speaker 1: the mouth of Jesus Christ and the curses this book

473
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 1: belongs to the Church of St. Al Dad. This book

474
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:47,159
Speaker 1: is one and Christ's curses another. He that takes the

475
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:51,640
Speaker 1: one takes the other. I'm in a couple more. There's

476
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:54,680
Speaker 1: a twelfth century manuscript known as the Arnstein Bible. It's

477
00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:57,000
Speaker 1: owned by the Abbey of St. Mary and St. Nicholas

478
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: and what's now Germany. Uh here here is the inscript

479
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: and quote a book of Saints Mary and Nicholas of Arnstein.

480
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,159
Speaker 1: If anyone steals it, may he die, May he be

481
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:09,359
Speaker 1: roasted in a frying pan, May the falling sickness and

482
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 1: fever attack him, and may he be rotated and hanged. Amen.

483
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:16,919
Speaker 1: I think the rotated is on the wheel, and the

484
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: falling sickness. I think they're saying that's supposed to be epilepsy.

485
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:24,000
Speaker 1: These are odd prayers. I never really heard amen thrown

486
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: on anything this, uh, you know, overtly ghastly in a while. Well,

487
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:30,120
Speaker 1: it makes me think about the version of amen. That's

488
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 1: like when someone in church yells that out after after

489
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:36,159
Speaker 1: the preacher says something that they agree with. You know,

490
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:38,480
Speaker 1: the preacher has had something you agree with, you yell amen.

491
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:41,199
Speaker 1: This is like the person writing the curse being like

492
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:43,919
Speaker 1: that was a good curse. I agree with it. I

493
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe that's not the best reading. One more,

494
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: how about a mid fifteenth century book belonging to the

495
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:53,159
Speaker 1: Benedictine monastery of St. Albans. It was loaned to monks

496
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 1: studying in Oxford. Quote this book is given and used

497
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 1: to the Brothers of Oxford by John Weatham Steed father

498
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: of the Flock of the proto Martyr of the English.

499
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:06,119
Speaker 1: If anyone secretly tears this inscription or removes it, may

500
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,400
Speaker 1: he feel Judas is noose or forks. And I think

501
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: that's referring to like being either pitchforks or maybe being

502
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:15,520
Speaker 1: impaled on forked trees. But then there are other more

503
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 1: spiritual curses, like some of them say, you know, if

504
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:20,040
Speaker 1: you steal this book, your name will be deleted from

505
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:23,399
Speaker 1: the Book of Life. It's essentially excommunicating you or sending

506
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 1: you to Hell. I wonder if that was thought to

507
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,120
Speaker 1: be binding or you know, of what extent too, were

508
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,120
Speaker 1: some of these kind of jokes, if they were if

509
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: these books were going to be checked out and read

510
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 1: by other monks. I mean, is there a certain tongue

511
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:39,439
Speaker 1: in cheek vibe going on here? Oh, I wonder that

512
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: could be the case. I mean, you can see something

513
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,440
Speaker 1: like that today. It's like the sign that says, uh, so,

514
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: you know, employee parking only all offenders cars will be

515
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 1: crushed and melted. Yeah, or trespassers will be eaten that

516
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:55,920
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yeah. Like, generally one assumes that these

517
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:57,679
Speaker 1: are these are are not meant to be taking at

518
00:27:57,720 --> 00:27:59,719
Speaker 1: face value. No, I mean I think the books were

519
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 1: value bill and they were legit trying to scare people. Yeah.

520
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: I mean, on on one hand, I can I can

521
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: see that, see it as a as a legit a

522
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,679
Speaker 1: scare tactic. But on the other it's also just if

523
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:14,439
Speaker 1: you have like a really ridiculous, outlandish, um a curse

524
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: in the book. I mean, it's kind of a great reminder.

525
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:18,159
Speaker 1: It sticks in your head. It makes you realize, oh,

526
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 1: I need to return this. I don't need to just

527
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: let this sit on my corner of the study or

528
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: what have you. I don't need to let it gather

529
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: dust in the scriptorium. I need to return it. That's

530
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: a very good point. I mean, I think we can

531
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 1: return to that again when we discuss the psychological impact

532
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: of curses. But yeah, a curse sticks in the mind

533
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: in a way that a general sort of moral injunction

534
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 1: might not. You know, just selling somebody you need to

535
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: return books you've borrowed. That's easy to forget saying people

536
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:51,239
Speaker 1: who don't return books they've borrowed will be roasted and

537
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: rotated and hanged. Uh. You know you might not believe that,

538
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:57,880
Speaker 1: but you're more likely to remember that now we've been

539
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: talking about warning curses here with library books essentially says

540
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 1: a curse will happen to you if you do this thing.

541
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: One of the obvious examples I can think of this,

542
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 1: which may be a real curse or maybe sort of

543
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: a myth about a myth, um would be would be

544
00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 1: the idea of tomb curses, like the curse of the Pharaohs.

545
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,480
Speaker 1: You know, do not enter here or ye shall be cursed.

546
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: Maybe we can address that when we come back from

547
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:21,520
Speaker 1: a break. Yes, and I need to add that if

548
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 1: you skip over the ad you will be cursed. Than alright,

549
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: we're back now, Robert, can you tell me about tomb curses?

550
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: Is the curse of the Pharaoh's real Well, if you

551
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: watch enough movies, it seems like it is, right, I mean,

552
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: it's it's it's become a tremendously fun trope and so

553
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: many different uh, pictures that we watch, fiction that we read. Um,

554
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 1: you can't really mention curses at all else without summoning

555
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:51,520
Speaker 1: thoughts of the Curse of the Pharaohs, the curse of

556
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 1: the Mummy, etcetera. Um. So for starters, we should point

557
00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: out that, yes, you will find curses and things like

558
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: curses in a ancient Egyptian magic in setting sail for

559
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 1: the afterlife, the dead had to be prepared with spells

560
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 1: to counter curses in the realms beyond death, and pyramids

561
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 1: and tombs also sometimes engage security features nothing like you'd

562
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: find in an Indiana Jones movie, really, but certainly sturdy

563
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 1: doors and sometimes false burial chambers as well. But really

564
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: you can encounter only a very few written warnings in tombs,

565
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 1: and from what I've read, you find them protecting the

566
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 1: graves of common people as well as as pharaohs, but

567
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: again very very few cases, and they tended to promise

568
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,160
Speaker 1: punishment in the afterlife for things like stolen bricks, don't

569
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: steal bricks from this tomb, or you're you'll get it,

570
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: or in one case there was a threat of crocodile

571
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 1: attacks in the living world should you mess with the tomb.

572
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:48,400
Speaker 1: That's a good one. But this idea of the of

573
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: the Mummy's curse, this is largely a product of Victorian

574
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 1: England and the popular writings of one individual, in particular

575
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 1: Marie Corelli, who was a novelist and a stick of

576
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: the time. Um again, we're getting back to the idea

577
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: of of just like spiritual ideas, uh, you know, un

578
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:11,400
Speaker 1: scientific ideas that are popular with people at the time,

579
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: and certainly Victorian England we're dealing with. There's a lot

580
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: of spiritualism going on, right, and so that is the

581
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: that that is the the environment from which this emerges.

582
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: So Correlli, she quoted a quote unquote rare book which

583
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: she said stated that quote the most dire punishment follows

584
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: any rash intruder into a sealed tomb, diverse secret poisons

585
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: enclosed in boxes in such wise that they who touched

586
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: them should not know how they come to suffer secret poison.

587
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, So and then it sounds good, right, you know,

588
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 1: the idea that there's gonna be secret poison something or

589
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: some sort of magical effect that's going to punish anyone

590
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,520
Speaker 1: who who dares, you know, break open a tomb. Well,

591
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: Tomb desecration is is widely you know, one of the

592
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: most prohibited things in many ancient law codes and stuff like.

593
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 1: I know, it's clear, as you mentioned that the ancient

594
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 1: Egyptians were very invested in preventing tomb desecration. You're just

595
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: saying that like achieving that by writing a curse on

596
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 1: the tomb was not especially common I know of also

597
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: worth knowing they universally failed at it, at least in

598
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: the long term, but also sometimes in the short term.

599
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: We've we've discussed this before on the podcast that You'll

600
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: You'll Have, not not only in Egyptian traditions, but in

601
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: other traditions as well. It's pretty common to find evidence

602
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: of tombs having been broken into rated Pilford like we

603
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 1: within a lifetime of their construction. Right, it wasn't just

604
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 1: modern people going through ancient Egyptian tombs. That being said,

605
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 1: nobody robs an ancient tomb quite like like a Victorian

606
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: era Western explorer. So, as a science journalist Joe Marchant

607
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:01,600
Speaker 1: explains in their Ian magazine article The Mummy's Curse Um

608
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:05,240
Speaker 1: CORRELLI here was it was kind of ground zero for

609
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: all of this curse nonsense. So she at the time

610
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: she had monished George Herbert for the fifth Earl of Carnarvon,

611
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: for his involvement in an architect archaeological dig in Egypt,

612
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 1: in particular the Tomb of Tuton Common and Uh. And

613
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 1: then an interesting thing happened. Herbert died from a mosquito

614
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 1: born illness in a Cairo hotel. Okay, or one assumes

615
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 1: it was a mosquito born illness because he was bitten

616
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 1: by a mosquito and then grew ill and died. But

617
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:35,800
Speaker 1: so he's a guy involved in in excavating the tomb

618
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: and he dies of some illness, right, and so the

619
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: stories began to spin out from there. From there, the

620
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: idea going around that that British archaeologist Howard Carter, who

621
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: was also a part of this particular endeavor, that he

622
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: discovered a tablet warning death to tomb raiders, and that

623
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 1: he quickly hit it away buried in the sand to

624
00:33:55,280 --> 00:34:00,120
Speaker 1: keep the workers from seeing. Now, as as marchant explorers,

625
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: you you had skeptics of the day saying that this

626
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: was clearly all bologny. But this was again in the

627
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:10,320
Speaker 1: midst of a spiritualist boom. Uh So you had famous minds,

628
00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 1: including the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was

629
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 1: definitely susceptible to uh to this line of thinking. He

630
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 1: he ends up, you know, jumping in when people say, well, look,

631
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:25,319
Speaker 1: if there's a curse, why didn't Carter die from the curse?

632
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:29,239
Speaker 1: To why did only one of the two principles on

633
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: this dig die from the curse, and uh, Sir Arthur

634
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: Conan Doel's response was apparently, quote one might as well

635
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 1: say that because bulldogs do not bite everybody, therefore bulldogs

636
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:44,760
Speaker 1: do not exist, which is such a ludicrous counter argument

637
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: Like this is the kind of counter argument one expects

638
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:50,239
Speaker 1: to find on you know, in talk radio nowadays, or

639
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: on you know, political commentating on certain channels. I disagree.

640
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: Incredibly tight logic, exactly parallel. You can guess what fall

641
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:03,360
Speaker 1: allow it? Right, anybody with the slightest connection to Herbert

642
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 1: was looped into the curse. If they happen to die,

643
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: and if they didn't die, well you just ignored that,

644
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: right You only focus this is this is key to

645
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:14,840
Speaker 1: any kind of supernatural thinking, right you only you only

646
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:18,879
Speaker 1: focus on the bits of information that back up your

647
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:22,239
Speaker 1: supernatural premise. Uh. Now, one of the things that we

648
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge here is that everybody from this scenario

649
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: is dead now. So if you want to, you could say, yeah,

650
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: well the curse must have worked because now nobody is alive.

651
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: Who who was originally in on the cracking of this tune?

652
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: Time the ultimate enforcer of all curses? Right? I mean

653
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: in a way, it's it's perfectly safe to cast a

654
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: curse because everybody will die and or something bad is

655
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 1: liable to happen to everybody involved. Now, the cool thing

656
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: is is that scientists and uh and more skeptical minds

657
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: have applied our scientific understanding of contagions to this idea

658
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:03,719
Speaker 1: of a mummy's curse. Egyptologist Herbert Winlock published a chart

659
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: in the New York Times back in nineteen thirty four

660
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: that attempted to dismiss a lot of this, uh, you know,

661
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:14,320
Speaker 1: mummies curse nonsense by pointing out that of forty people

662
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 1: who entered the tomb in question, only six died in

663
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: the following twelve years. And some of those people who

664
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:23,919
Speaker 1: entered may have happened to be Westerners who were in

665
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:26,879
Speaker 1: Egypt in a place with mosquito born diseases that they

666
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,560
Speaker 1: were not resistant too. Oh yeah, there's so many factors

667
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:33,440
Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with any kind of supernatural model. Um.

668
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: But by the way, if anybody wants to to read this,

669
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: you can find it on the New York Times website

670
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: in their archive. But the full title is Curse of

671
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: Pharaoh Denied by Winlock. Metropolitan museum director ridicules tale of

672
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 1: malediction about Teuton Common tomb. Quote. The so called curse

673
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: of tutin Common is a superstition, so holy, devoid a

674
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:58,880
Speaker 1: foundation foundation that only the most credulous and ill informed

675
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 1: person can of a moment's credence to it, according to

676
00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: Herbert Ewinlock, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and

677
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 1: its curator of Egyptology. So this is false on multiple levels.

678
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: Like the the idea of the curse of the Pharaoh's

679
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: It's not only not true that everybody who went in

680
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,399
Speaker 1: the tomb died, it's also not even true that there

681
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: was a curse involved as far as we know, never issued,

682
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: never enforced, Whereas if you listen to all of the bologna,

683
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: it sounds like, oh, it was issued and it was enforced.

684
00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: Isn't it creepy right now? Another individual who sought to

685
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: apply some common sense to the scenario was Mark Nelson

686
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:37,280
Speaker 1: from the University of Tasmania, and he had a study

687
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:41,040
Speaker 1: published in a two edition of the British British Medical

688
00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 1: Journal that compared the death rates for people who entered

689
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: the tomb at key times with people who are simply

690
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:51,160
Speaker 1: in Egypt not only did the tomb not make you

691
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 1: more likely to die, everyone that was analyzed in this

692
00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:58,440
Speaker 1: particulars particular study generally lived twenty more years. Okay, so

693
00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: actually going into the tomb seems to be like a

694
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: fountain of youth. Well, or I think I think more

695
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:08,319
Speaker 1: along the line is like everybody involved, whether you went

696
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 1: into the tomb or not, you had at least twenty

697
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: more years. So if there was a curse in place,

698
00:38:13,239 --> 00:38:17,320
Speaker 1: it's working, Like what it takes that long to kick in? Uh,

699
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 1: that's not a curse, that's just that's just you living

700
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:22,840
Speaker 1: two more decades. And you have to think about like

701
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: the what are the what are the probable ages of

702
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:30,239
Speaker 1: the individuals that are going out on one of these expeditions. Um, yeah,

703
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: twenty years does not a curse make, but the appeal

704
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 1: of the curse, you know, it seems to play I think,

705
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: in part on the modern trope of you know, the

706
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: the modern expert has has gone too far. You know,

707
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:46,919
Speaker 1: it's it's essentially the Frankenstein idea, Right, your curiosity led

708
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 1: you to to places that should not be tread by humans. Yeah,

709
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: and then also I can't help but suspect that there's

710
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:57,839
Speaker 1: a certain sense of of you know, buried colonial grave

711
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 1: robin guilt here as well. You know, like there's maybe

712
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:04,160
Speaker 1: there's this deep idea that what I'm doing is, yes,

713
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:08,479
Speaker 1: it's archaeology, but I'm also kind of desecrating a grave here,

714
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:11,560
Speaker 1: and uh and and and maybe it ends up playing

715
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 1: on some of these like these older, more primal ideas

716
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:19,279
Speaker 1: about um, the inherent defilement of that act. Yeah. I

717
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:22,360
Speaker 1: think this is always something strange to consider an archaeology,

718
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:24,839
Speaker 1: because of course I love archaeology, and I love what

719
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 1: we can discover about the past from it, but it

720
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:31,239
Speaker 1: very often involves exposing things that ancient people's did not

721
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:34,600
Speaker 1: want exposed, that they wanted left alone. Uh. And that's

722
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 1: true not just in Egyptian archaeology, but everywhere. One of

723
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:39,479
Speaker 1: one of the funny things I find about that, though,

724
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:41,799
Speaker 1: is that the anxiety, like with the Curse of the

725
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: Pharaohs as an example, tends to only come up with

726
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:48,840
Speaker 1: regard to unearthing the remains or or hidden things of

727
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 1: rich people of the past. And you know, when you

728
00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 1: just dig up like a common mask grave from the

729
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: past or something, people don't seem to worry about the

730
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:58,760
Speaker 1: same stuff. I feel like that just betrays an extra

731
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 1: sort of level of bio us in the way we

732
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 1: think about what sort of ancient people's wishes should be honored.

733
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: If your remains are old enough and you were poor enough,

734
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 1: than nobody cares. But if you were very rich, there

735
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 1: might be a curse. You never know. If they could

736
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:14,239
Speaker 1: afford all this, then they could probably pay the curse

737
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:17,720
Speaker 1: crafter Now, and in talking about curses and exploring curses,

738
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:20,920
Speaker 1: there's so many different cultures we could look at, so

739
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: many different periods of history. I ended up looking around

740
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,319
Speaker 1: a little bit in Chinese history, and I ended up

741
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: focusing on a sorcery scare that occurred rather late in

742
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 1: Chinese history during the the Ching Dynasty, the last dynasty

743
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:36,919
Speaker 1: of China that that last at sixteen forty four through

744
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve. Now, I read before that the Ching Dynasty's

745
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: penal code was rather harsh on sorcery and called for

746
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: the execution of not only all those who employed spells

747
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 1: and incantations quote to agitate and influence the minds of

748
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 1: the people, but also anyone who wrote or edited books

749
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 1: of sorcery. So all you had to do is just

750
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: be the editor you know, or or one would presume,

751
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:06,320
Speaker 1: like just proof reading a copy of of a sorceress

752
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: text could get you end up getting you beheaded. That's harsh.

753
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 1: Now read about about this in the notations to Herbert A.

754
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:18,400
Speaker 1: Giles's translation of Pooh Song Wings Strange Tales from a

755
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: Chinese studio. This is a fabulous book. It's it's widely

756
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 1: available in English translation, uh, and it's it's from seventeenth

757
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: century China, and it collects and retails various weird tales,

758
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:33,760
Speaker 1: some of which are horrifying ghost stories about like awful

759
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: spirits jumping out and gnawing on your head, you know,

760
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 1: strange goblins living uh in the forest, that sort of thing.

761
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:46,360
Speaker 1: Others are more whimsical, like a pen dragon that infiltrates

762
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:51,040
Speaker 1: a scholars office, or there's there's also a few that

763
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: are kind of body and hilarious as well. But again,

764
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 1: this is a book from seventeenth century China, and it

765
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:02,320
Speaker 1: was written in a time that it was sometimes referred

766
00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: to as the troubles Uh. This was in the coastal

767
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: province of shang Dong. That's where Pusson ling U lived,

768
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 1: and there it was an area subject to a various

769
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 1: peasant rebellions. Manshu uprisings. They were unstable times and then

770
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 1: UH during the eighteenth century it was also a time

771
00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: of mass panic. I was looking at a book by

772
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 1: Philip A. Kun titled Soul Steel Steelers The Chinese Sorcery

773
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 1: Scare of seventeen sixty eight. This came out in two

774
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:36,879
Speaker 1: thousand six. Uh and um It points out that during

775
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 1: the reign of the Qing Long Emperor, a mass hysteria

776
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:44,919
Speaker 1: swept through the people. Quote in the year seventeen sixty eight,

777
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: on the eve of China's tragic modern age, there ran

778
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:52,879
Speaker 1: through her society a premonitory shiver, a vision of sorcerers

779
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: roaming the land, stealing souls. By enchanting either the written

780
00:42:57,239 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: name of the victim or a piece of his hair

781
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:03,279
Speaker 1: or thing. The sorcerer would cause him to sicken and die.

782
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 1: He then would use the stolen soul force for his

783
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:10,400
Speaker 1: own purposes. Now. Coon points out that a lot of Chinese,

784
00:43:10,600 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: a lot of Chinese sorcery, concerns the fragility of this

785
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: supposed link between the body and the soul, and he

786
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: also specifically mentions the power of the beggar's curse UH

787
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 1: leveled at one who you know refuses to give alms

788
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 1: to the poor. Quote, his polluted nature was entirely combatible

789
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 1: with magical terrorism. So in this way, we kind of

790
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:34,880
Speaker 1: returned to that idea we talked about earlier, the idea

791
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: that like the curse is kind of like it's it's

792
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 1: the last bit of power that somebody in a in

793
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,320
Speaker 1: a reduced cast or in a reduced level of society,

794
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: the last thing they have that they can turn to

795
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: if they're you know, they're on the street corner and

796
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: they're asking for a coin from the from the rich man,

797
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: and the rich man doesn't give them to them. You know,

798
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 1: what can you do? You can curse them. You can

799
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,400
Speaker 1: you can spit that curse. Uh, And they can't quite

800
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:02,479
Speaker 1: take that way from you. They like, even no matter

801
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 1: what your position in life, they're they're going to have

802
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:06,919
Speaker 1: to deal with that curse that you that you unleashed. Well,

803
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: I feel like a version of this comes through so

804
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:12,800
Speaker 1: often even um, not just in all the real history

805
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:15,800
Speaker 1: we've been talking about how curses have been used by people,

806
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:18,279
Speaker 1: but even in like say the Witch literature, I mean,

807
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: the witch we often forget is an outcast figure. Right

808
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: that the witch is oppressed, the witch tends to be

809
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:29,280
Speaker 1: an ugly old woman at a time when an ugly

810
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,520
Speaker 1: old woman generally did not hold much power in society,

811
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: and at times and places where government and society are

812
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: very misogynist that would look on a single old woman

813
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:41,160
Speaker 1: with with disdain and say, you know, why should she

814
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: have any say over how anything goes? And so maybe

815
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 1: she needs some magic to have a say. Yeah, there's

816
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: I feel like there's so much potentially unpack with the

817
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:53,799
Speaker 1: idea of of of of the beggar figure in their

818
00:44:53,800 --> 00:44:56,279
Speaker 1: power to curse. You know, it's kind of like you've

819
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 1: like you've reduced their stature and you've kind of associated

820
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 1: a certain amount of pollution with them, and in doing so,

821
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:07,719
Speaker 1: you've kind of given them the power to curse you,

822
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Now, I mentioned at the top of

823
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:12,439
Speaker 1: the podcast that we would come back to Lo Pan

824
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 1: because Lo Pan in a sense, does pop up in

825
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 1: Kuhn's book. So Lo Pan, the character from Victor Little China,

826
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:26,080
Speaker 1: does not really exist in um in Chinese myth or history,

827
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: but we do have the figure of Lupan um and

828
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:32,759
Speaker 1: he and he does come up in this particular book book,

829
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:37,479
Speaker 1: Lupan being the mystic figure uh and inventor Chinese god

830
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 1: of carpentry. You have a particular book called the Lupan Qing,

831
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: and this text includes instructions for the construction of a

832
00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:47,840
Speaker 1: house in such a way to deal with the quote

833
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 1: various kinds of carpenters, mason's and plasters who will plot

834
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 1: to poison, curse and harm the owner. Whoa why would

835
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 1: they do that? Well? Uh, I mean, on one hand,

836
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,319
Speaker 1: maybe it's just that, you know, how he's dealing with contractors.

837
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:03,839
Speaker 1: You never know when they're going to curse you behind

838
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: your back, right. Uh, seems to belie maybe a guilty

839
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:12,880
Speaker 1: conscience on the owner's part, exactly maybe exactly um, or

840
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,360
Speaker 1: just to sort of a general distrust of everybody that

841
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:17,720
Speaker 1: you've you know, I'm assuming in this case, you're probably

842
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:22,280
Speaker 1: dealing with a wealthy individual. Who's who's who's either building

843
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: the house for themselves or or for another wealthy member

844
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 1: of society. Uh So, yeah, they're they're they're a number

845
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: of different societal elements and economic factors to consider and

846
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: why they might be uh subject to being cursed or

847
00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 1: just be paranoid about being cursed. Yeah, okay, I can

848
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: see that. I Mean, generally, wealth might tend to cause

849
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,279
Speaker 1: a sense of isolation in your brain, where you start

850
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 1: to look around at everybody else and think, oh, they're

851
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: all jealous of me. Well, luckily, this particular book included

852
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: some instructions how to how to create a counter curse

853
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:58,359
Speaker 1: against the curse spitting contractor Okay, what do you do?

854
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 1: All right? So, first of all, when the roof beam

855
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,720
Speaker 1: is raised, quote, offer a sacrifice to three types of animal.

856
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 1: And then the next recite the following secret charm to

857
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: master lupon quote. Evil artisans, do you not know that

858
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:17,920
Speaker 1: poisons and curses will rebound upon yourselves and bring no

859
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: harm to the owner. Let the artisan responsible for the

860
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: sorcery meet misfortune. I have received the proclamation of the

861
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 1: Supreme Ruler, the Jade Emperor, ordering that I shall suffer

862
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:33,759
Speaker 1: no harm from others, and that all will redound to

863
00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:38,759
Speaker 1: my good fortune an urgent decree. Next, you burn a

864
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:41,000
Speaker 1: copy of the charm in a private place where no

865
00:47:41,040 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: pregnant woman can see it. Then you mix ashes with

866
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: blood of both a black and a yellow dog. Uh

867
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 1: dog blood apparently often factored into magical spells of the time.

868
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: Then you dissolve all of this in wine. And then

869
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: when the main roof beam is raised. You serve this

870
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:01,880
Speaker 1: potion to the builders, and the boss of the builders

871
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 1: uh that they have to drink three cups of it,

872
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 1: and then whoever is plotting sorcery against you will perish. Also,

873
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:11,799
Speaker 1: you want to paste of a million inc copy of

874
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: this um this anti curse a top of the roof beam.

875
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 1: That's a lot of lengths to go to. But it

876
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:22,280
Speaker 1: makes me think again how sometimes we've talked about sometimes

877
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:25,719
Speaker 1: it seems like magic operates on like the sunk costs

878
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:28,400
Speaker 1: kind of issue. Like the more work you put into

879
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:31,880
Speaker 1: making a magic spell work, maybe the more effective it

880
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:34,359
Speaker 1: feels to you, because it will become harder for you

881
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:37,919
Speaker 1: to admit that it didn't work. Yeah, I wonder too

882
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 1: if this is Like I wonder how much of this

883
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:45,720
Speaker 1: scenario though, is about legitimate concern that underlings will work

884
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:48,759
Speaker 1: evil sorcery against you, or the fear that their their

885
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:51,280
Speaker 1: their work will be shoddy, or that they might steal

886
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 1: from you, etcetera. Like how much of this is is

887
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 1: just making up for lack of oversight in the construction process. Essentially,

888
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 1: I do not steal this book, warning that's possible. But

889
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,000
Speaker 1: then there's all there's just all kinds of weird psychology

890
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:07,800
Speaker 1: about the way that owners tend to resent the people

891
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 1: who work for them. You know. Uh, this is almost

892
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: like a like a weird magical version of an employment contract. Yeah. Now,

893
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 1: I do have to say I I have never had

894
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: an experience with a contractor or repair person, etcetera where

895
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: I felt that they were cursing me. Now, just in

896
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:25,359
Speaker 1: case anyone out there is listening and they're thinking, hey,

897
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:28,320
Speaker 1: well I I worked on Robert's house or I fixed

898
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,319
Speaker 1: one of Robert's appliances, let me assure you I have

899
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: never had any experience with with a with a a

900
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:37,439
Speaker 1: pair person, or a contractor where I felt like they

901
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:39,719
Speaker 1: were cursing me in any way, shape or form. On

902
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:41,720
Speaker 1: the other hand, I do think you need to return

903
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 1: that bronze vase pretty soon, because I can see it's

904
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:48,280
Speaker 1: filling up with your blood rather quickly. What if Yelp reviews,

905
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:52,880
Speaker 1: like negative Route Yelp reviews were um were overtly curses.

906
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: What if they were they were worded in that way,

907
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 1: there's probably something in the in the by laws for

908
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 1: for Yelp that you from doing that. From doing evil magic, Yeah,

909
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 1: no evil magic, no linguistic sorcery. It privent permitted on

910
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:08,799
Speaker 1: the beat on the website. You know, one of the

911
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:12,040
Speaker 1: things that's interesting about curses is that it seems like

912
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:16,279
Speaker 1: words are very important to them. Like it is definitely

913
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: not enough to simply think that you wish ill will

914
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:23,480
Speaker 1: to come upon somebody. It is often the case that

915
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:26,200
Speaker 1: you need to put it down in writing or have

916
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:29,839
Speaker 1: a spell spoken allowed in in conjunction with some kind

917
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 1: of ritual. It's putting the ill will into words that

918
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: makes it real. Yeah. We see that in the Roman example,

919
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:39,520
Speaker 1: and we certainly see it here in this Chinese example,

920
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 1: both in that it is plastered to the beam and

921
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: then also the physical writing is used in a potion

922
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 1: that will become a part of the contractor's bodies. So

923
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 1: I think maybe this is a good opportunity to transition

924
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: to talking about the psychology of curses. What's going on

925
00:50:54,800 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 1: when people cast curse spells against others? Are curse spells

926
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: maybe sometimes actually effective in a way even though magic

927
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,839
Speaker 1: isn't real. I'm ready to do that, Are you ready, Robert, Yeah,

928
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:09,799
Speaker 1: let's do it. I mean, I think one thing that's

929
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:12,319
Speaker 1: important to note here is that a curse need not

930
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 1: be entirely psychological or or or or you know, even social.

931
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:20,279
Speaker 1: But certainly if if like someone publicly curses you, there's

932
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:22,879
Speaker 1: probably gonna be a certain societal pressure. Like if you're

933
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 1: the guy who walks by the beggar and doesn't give

934
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,839
Speaker 1: them a coin, and the beggar curses you in front

935
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 1: of other people, that's I mean, that's essentially like a

936
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 1: public shaming to to a certain extent, So there may

937
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 1: well be a pipe a price to pay, uh of

938
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,399
Speaker 1: on a social level. But then if you have other

939
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: examples where like a curse is but perhaps accompanied by

940
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:48,080
Speaker 1: some sort of a monetary penalty or some other kind

941
00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:51,680
Speaker 1: of penalty, then um, yeah, again it's not mirror. It's

942
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: not just a psychological attack. It may have these other components,

943
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:57,800
Speaker 1: but for the most part, when we're talking especially about

944
00:51:57,840 --> 00:51:59,840
Speaker 1: the beggar's curse or the curse of the end of

945
00:51:59,840 --> 00:52:03,239
Speaker 1: the role who's whose cloak is stolen with no hope

946
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:05,960
Speaker 1: of ever getting it back, all you have are the

947
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:09,160
Speaker 1: words of the curse, and and to to a certain extent,

948
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 1: they might not even be heard or processed by the

949
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:14,799
Speaker 1: individual that is the target. Right, Well, I mean, it's

950
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: important to think about the curse existing at two levels.

951
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:21,240
Speaker 1: It's working at two levels. On one level, or maybe

952
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:23,920
Speaker 1: you can even say three levels. One is it works

953
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:27,120
Speaker 1: on the person who cast the curse. The other is

954
00:52:27,160 --> 00:52:29,759
Speaker 1: that it works on the you know, the target of

955
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:32,440
Speaker 1: the curse. And the third is that it works on

956
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:35,480
Speaker 1: the society in general, the people who you know, the context,

957
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:38,800
Speaker 1: people who observe the curse happening. UM. Now to focus

958
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:41,720
Speaker 1: first on the idea of the target of the curse,

959
00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: Like you have had a curse put on you, are

960
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: there ways that that might actually be effective, that you

961
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:51,720
Speaker 1: might think that you are actually suffering from a curse

962
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:54,880
Speaker 1: even though there's no magic. And I think quite clearly

963
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:57,520
Speaker 1: the answer to that is yes, you know, there's a

964
00:52:57,560 --> 00:53:01,279
Speaker 1: lot of psychological power. UM. Like the I guess we

965
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 1: should talk about the no Seebo effect. Yeah, we've we've

966
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show before in the past.

967
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 1: There was an episode from I think eleven about placebos,

968
00:53:10,040 --> 00:53:11,520
Speaker 1: and then we of course end up talking about no

969
00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:14,520
Speaker 1: sepos which is in the same way that a curse

970
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:17,400
Speaker 1: is the kind of the opposite of a prayer or

971
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:20,640
Speaker 1: a or a blessing, the no Seebo effect is the

972
00:53:21,200 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 1: dark reflection of the plus sebo effect exactly. So we're

973
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:27,000
Speaker 1: all very aware of the placebo effect now, right. So

974
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 1: the human body responds favorably sometimes to treatments that don't

975
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 1: actually chemically do anything to you. So you've got pain

976
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:37,359
Speaker 1: in your shoulder, and I give you a pill and

977
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:39,359
Speaker 1: tell you it's a pain killer. Even though the pill

978
00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:43,359
Speaker 1: contains no medicine whatsoever, many people will report that their

979
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:47,920
Speaker 1: symptoms are being healed, and sometimes the expectation of benefit

980
00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:50,520
Speaker 1: leads people to have a greater chance of improvement over

981
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:54,000
Speaker 1: the baseline from all kinds of negative conditions. The effect

982
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:56,520
Speaker 1: is powerful enough that it's a standard part of the

983
00:53:56,560 --> 00:54:00,160
Speaker 1: scientific method in medicine. We always have to control for

984
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 1: placebo effect if you want your study to be valid. Yeah,

985
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:06,240
Speaker 1: place the placebo effect is is one of the reasons

986
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:11,919
Speaker 1: that any number of like faith healing or alternative medicine, uh,

987
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:16,560
Speaker 1: these various practices may be perceived as having a positive

988
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:22,640
Speaker 1: benefit because they may well have a marginally measurable positive

989
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 1: benefit in the short term, but it's all due to

990
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 1: the placebo effect. Or well that I'd say, there are

991
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,640
Speaker 1: actually two things. Placebo effect is a strong part. Another

992
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:33,279
Speaker 1: strong part I want to mention just real quick is

993
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: the idea of regression to the mean. Um. So, sometimes

994
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,000
Speaker 1: I think people overstate the power of the placebo effect,

995
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:43,520
Speaker 1: attributing almost magical powers to it. I'm sure you've encountered

996
00:54:43,520 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: this to where people think it proves some kind of

997
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 1: radical mind over matter state of affairs. I don't think

998
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: it goes that far. Though. The placebo effect is very

999
00:54:52,120 --> 00:54:55,439
Speaker 1: real and very interesting and absolutely worth talking about. It's

1000
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 1: not like, you know, a magic, almost psychic power kind

1001
00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: of right. Sometimes it can be presented it almost like

1002
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:02,920
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like a lucid dreaming, right, like I

1003
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: have broken free from the boundaries of my physical body.

1004
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:08,239
Speaker 1: Thank you placebo effect. All hell the mighty sugar bill. Right,

1005
00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 1: I've I've changed the laws of chemistry with my brain

1006
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:13,120
Speaker 1: and no uh and And the idea of regression to

1007
00:55:13,160 --> 00:55:15,479
Speaker 1: the mean is important to understand because in fact, many

1008
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:19,239
Speaker 1: placebo effects can probably be attributed to it. Whenever you

1009
00:55:19,280 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 1: hear the words this is a science e term regression

1010
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:24,440
Speaker 1: to the mean, Basically, you can just think of regression

1011
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 1: to the mean as going back to normal. So most

1012
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:29,840
Speaker 1: of the time you're in a position to be studied

1013
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:33,040
Speaker 1: for some kind of medical treatment, it's because something has

1014
00:55:33,080 --> 00:55:36,719
Speaker 1: gone wrong with your body. And often after something goes

1015
00:55:36,719 --> 00:55:39,879
Speaker 1: wrong with your body, eventually you just get better. Right

1016
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:42,360
Speaker 1: whether or not you've got any kind of treatment. Something

1017
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:45,040
Speaker 1: went wrong and then it went away. So to test

1018
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 1: the real effectiveness of placebo's qua placebo effects, you need

1019
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 1: to not only get a test group getting the real

1020
00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:54,400
Speaker 1: treatment under study, and then a test group getting a

1021
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: fake treatment the placebo group, but also a group that

1022
00:55:57,160 --> 00:56:00,720
Speaker 1: gets no treatment whatsoever, and compare the three of those.

1023
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:03,600
Speaker 1: In many cases, a significant number of people will get

1024
00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:06,839
Speaker 1: better even despite getting no treatment at all. But then

1025
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:09,920
Speaker 1: usually on top of that, you'll get more people getting

1026
00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:12,359
Speaker 1: better in the placebo group, people who think that they're

1027
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: getting treated even though they're not getting anything that does

1028
00:56:15,160 --> 00:56:18,040
Speaker 1: anything chemically real to their body. But, like we said,

1029
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:21,920
Speaker 1: placebo is robustly observed, very real anyway, The no sebo

1030
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:25,560
Speaker 1: effect is the evil twin of the placebo effect. If

1031
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:28,120
Speaker 1: a placebo can make you feel like you're getting better

1032
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:31,239
Speaker 1: when there's no physical cause, the no sebo can make

1033
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:34,040
Speaker 1: you feel worse when there's no physical cause. Yeah, this

1034
00:56:34,120 --> 00:56:36,640
Speaker 1: is the idea that the sugar pill is hurting me

1035
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:39,359
Speaker 1: as opposed to the sugar peel A pill is healing me. Yeah,

1036
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: And so in randomized placebo controlled trials of drugs and

1037
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:46,520
Speaker 1: other medical treatments, people in the placebo group sometimes report

1038
00:56:46,600 --> 00:56:49,720
Speaker 1: not only feeling better despite not receiving the real drug,

1039
00:56:49,960 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 1: sometimes they report negative side effects despite not receiving the

1040
00:56:53,760 --> 00:56:56,920
Speaker 1: real drug, and researchers have determined that this is likely

1041
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: due to the process of informed consent. Right, so, before

1042
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: you sign up to an experiment, subjects have to be

1043
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,560
Speaker 1: told of any known adverse side effects that they might

1044
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:09,440
Speaker 1: experience due to the drug, even if they end up

1045
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:12,319
Speaker 1: sorted into the control group. So having been informed of

1046
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:16,480
Speaker 1: those possible side effects, people sometimes experience and report them

1047
00:57:16,520 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: even though they're not getting any active ingredients. In other words,

1048
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,080
Speaker 1: a placebo effect for bad things. And there are all

1049
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:24,960
Speaker 1: kinds of examples of this. One of them is that

1050
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:28,000
Speaker 1: the no sebo effect can absolutely make people feel pain.

1051
00:57:28,920 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: Uh an example cited and I was just reading an

1052
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:35,200
Speaker 1: article about this in Science from seventeen by Luana Colloca,

1053
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: and Colloca writes about there's a concurrent study in in

1054
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:42,640
Speaker 1: the journal that talks about how so you can take

1055
00:57:42,680 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 1: two creams. I would put some creams on your skin.

1056
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:49,520
Speaker 1: Robert and these two creams are actually both placebos. Neither

1057
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: of them do anything. But I've told you that one

1058
00:57:53,200 --> 00:57:56,000
Speaker 1: of the or I've given you indications a visual indications,

1059
00:57:56,080 --> 00:57:58,280
Speaker 1: that one of them is very expensive and one of

1060
00:57:58,280 --> 00:58:00,400
Speaker 1: them is very cheap. And what I tell you they're

1061
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:02,840
Speaker 1: supposed to do is they will stop itching, but they

1062
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:06,120
Speaker 1: will increase your sensitivity to pain in the affected area.

1063
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:09,480
Speaker 1: So not only does this cause people to think that

1064
00:58:09,520 --> 00:58:13,320
Speaker 1: they're experiencing heightened pain, they actually think that the more

1065
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 1: expensive looking cream causes them to feel more pain. I

1066
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:20,360
Speaker 1: think there's another thing going on there that's interesting with

1067
00:58:20,400 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 1: like the idea of you having to cast a spell

1068
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:25,160
Speaker 1: that involves like a cost, like you pay the scribe,

1069
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:27,600
Speaker 1: or you have to do a lot of steps like

1070
00:58:27,840 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 1: building the house. You know, that's something that's costly to you.

1071
00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: It seems like the more you spend on a magical

1072
00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:36,920
Speaker 1: spell or a curse, maybe the more effective it is

1073
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 1: because of some version of this effect, like the more

1074
00:58:39,800 --> 00:58:43,439
Speaker 1: expensive cream seems like it's giving you worse side effects. Yeah,

1075
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:45,280
Speaker 1: and plus just the sunk cost. Right, I put this

1076
00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:48,600
Speaker 1: much time and energy into this magical vendetta. It has

1077
00:58:48,640 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 1: to work, That's exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Now, Coloca,

1078
00:58:52,080 --> 00:58:54,880
Speaker 1: just note something very quickly that I thought was kind

1079
00:58:54,880 --> 00:58:58,840
Speaker 1: of interesting. What are the evolutionary explanations for the placebo

1080
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:02,400
Speaker 1: and no cebo effects? Why would there be a pressure

1081
00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:06,720
Speaker 1: on the creation of our brains through evolution to feel

1082
00:59:06,760 --> 00:59:11,960
Speaker 1: better or worse depending on suggestion rather than actual physical stimuli.

1083
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:15,680
Speaker 1: Uh and she she mentions quote. In evolutionary terms, no

1084
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:20,320
Speaker 1: cebo and placebo effects coexist to favor perceptual mechanisms that

1085
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:25,600
Speaker 1: anticipate threat and dangerous events no cebo effects and promote

1086
00:59:25,640 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 1: appetitive and safety behaviors in placebo effects. So it's almost

1087
00:59:29,560 --> 00:59:32,400
Speaker 1: like giving you a taste of what's to come. I

1088
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 1: think this also makes sense if you you unroot um

1089
00:59:36,240 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: our experience with placebo and no cebo no cebo effects,

1090
00:59:40,240 --> 00:59:41,840
Speaker 1: if you if you try and take it outside of

1091
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: the context of of of the human mind and thinking

1092
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:48,720
Speaker 1: so intently about the future and worrying about what the

1093
00:59:48,760 --> 00:59:51,040
Speaker 1: future is, and you think of it in terms of

1094
00:59:51,080 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 1: like a longer biological history of essentially like a dog

1095
00:59:54,960 --> 00:59:58,840
Speaker 1: eating grass when its stomach is bothering it. Yeah, exactly,

1096
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:02,560
Speaker 1: um So, so you can clearly see how something like

1097
01:00:02,600 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: the no cebo effect could be at play and somebody

1098
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:07,920
Speaker 1: who knows they're the target of a curse. Right, if

1099
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:10,880
Speaker 1: you're the target of a curse, it might not do

1100
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:13,439
Speaker 1: everything to you, Like somebody who curses you and says,

1101
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:15,920
Speaker 1: may he grow horns or something like that, that's not

1102
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:18,360
Speaker 1: going to happen. But if it is something like, may

1103
01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:22,520
Speaker 1: you're urine sting ever so slightly when you urinate, or

1104
01:00:22,720 --> 01:00:25,680
Speaker 1: more and more intently, may your may your stomach hurt?

1105
01:00:25,760 --> 01:00:28,360
Speaker 1: May you have stomach pains? And you might start thinking,

1106
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:30,439
Speaker 1: I think I might have stomach pains. I think there's

1107
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:33,640
Speaker 1: something going on, And then there to a certain extent,

1108
01:00:33,720 --> 01:00:36,120
Speaker 1: is something going on via the no cebo effect. Yeah,

1109
01:00:36,120 --> 01:00:38,280
Speaker 1: so we know we're vulnerable to stuff like this, and

1110
01:00:38,320 --> 01:00:41,560
Speaker 1: I think in those kinds of cases, curses could actually

1111
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:45,720
Speaker 1: be highly effective, depending on if the person believes that

1112
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:48,920
Speaker 1: the curse could be effective, and especially if the curse

1113
01:00:49,000 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 1: appears expensive like the more expensive cream, and if it

1114
01:00:53,560 --> 01:00:57,040
Speaker 1: is creating stress in the body. And that's always something

1115
01:00:57,120 --> 01:01:00,440
Speaker 1: to look at too there because when we feel heightened

1116
01:01:00,760 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 1: levels of stress there there can be physical ramifications for that.

1117
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:07,720
Speaker 1: There are limits to that, as we'll discussing in in

1118
01:01:07,720 --> 01:01:12,000
Speaker 1: a minute, but but still stress in the body. Uh,

1119
01:01:12,640 --> 01:01:16,840
Speaker 1: can have ill effects on the body. Yes, And now

1120
01:01:17,320 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 1: here's another way that we could think of curses as

1121
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:22,280
Speaker 1: maybe being effective, just in what you're talking about, the

1122
01:01:22,320 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 1: idea of the the the threat of a curse causing

1123
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:30,440
Speaker 1: stress or anxiety. Um, what about the cases where the

1124
01:01:30,560 --> 01:01:34,560
Speaker 1: person's cloak is stolen and the person doesn't know who

1125
01:01:34,600 --> 01:01:37,280
Speaker 1: stole the cloak and the cast a curse anyway, how

1126
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:40,040
Speaker 1: could that be doing anything well? I would argue that

1127
01:01:40,120 --> 01:01:43,240
Speaker 1: maybe that could and sort of like an economic standpoint,

1128
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:46,919
Speaker 1: So take the context of the curse tablets against an

1129
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: unknown thieves. Let's say you remember of the you know,

1130
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:54,360
Speaker 1: the common classes in in the ancient Mediterranean. Somewhere, one

1131
01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 1: of your most valuable possessions gets stolen. Somebody takes your

1132
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 1: bronze pot, or somebody takes your cloak, and you live

1133
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:02,560
Speaker 1: in a time and place when the authorities are not

1134
01:02:02,760 --> 01:02:05,280
Speaker 1: very helpful to you. They might be Uh, they might

1135
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,280
Speaker 1: not be especially interested in solving the case or getting

1136
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 1: your stuff back, especially if you're poor. And I checked

1137
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:14,000
Speaker 1: out what what it was like in the Roman Empire,

1138
01:02:14,200 --> 01:02:16,760
Speaker 1: like if you got your stuff stolen. I was trying

1139
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:19,160
Speaker 1: to find evidence of what you would do, right, you know,

1140
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:21,720
Speaker 1: if you could go to the police or something, what

1141
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:24,440
Speaker 1: kind of access to justice he would have. And as

1142
01:02:24,480 --> 01:02:26,960
Speaker 1: far as I could tell, the Romans did at different

1143
01:02:26,960 --> 01:02:30,240
Speaker 1: periods have various internal forces which might be thought of

1144
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 1: as something like police, like the vigil as or the

1145
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:37,240
Speaker 1: watchman or the urban cohorts. But I've not found any

1146
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:40,680
Speaker 1: evidence that these forces would actually help common people in

1147
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:43,520
Speaker 1: solving petty crimes. Maybe they did in some cases, but

1148
01:02:43,560 --> 01:02:45,480
Speaker 1: I have not found anything about that. It seems more

1149
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:49,960
Speaker 1: like they were oriented toward heavy jobs like firefighting or

1150
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:53,600
Speaker 1: putting down riots or violent gangs or mobs. It's almost

1151
01:02:53,600 --> 01:02:57,080
Speaker 1: more like an uh, you know, a domestic military force

1152
01:02:57,240 --> 01:02:59,960
Speaker 1: or something. It is just so difficult for the modernist

1153
01:03:00,320 --> 01:03:03,880
Speaker 1: to imagine this world you're describing. No, I mean there

1154
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 1: are many yeah, exactly. I mean a lot of people

1155
01:03:06,560 --> 01:03:10,160
Speaker 1: do not have access to any kind of police force

1156
01:03:10,200 --> 01:03:13,520
Speaker 1: that could give them justice on a small scale. And

1157
01:03:13,600 --> 01:03:16,320
Speaker 1: even if you were privileged enough to like have access

1158
01:03:16,360 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: to a police force, who's going to take down a

1159
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:21,320
Speaker 1: report about you getting your cloak stolen or something like that,

1160
01:03:21,360 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 1: They're probably not going to be able to get it

1161
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:25,480
Speaker 1: back for you. A lot of times that written report

1162
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:27,840
Speaker 1: is about as useful as a written curse. You might

1163
01:03:27,880 --> 01:03:30,920
Speaker 1: pay for a good point, dollars are paying for that

1164
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:34,200
Speaker 1: written curse, I suppose. So the state can't help you.

1165
01:03:34,200 --> 01:03:36,320
Speaker 1: You don't really have the power to take matters into

1166
01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:38,240
Speaker 1: your own hands, especially if you're not sure who the

1167
01:03:38,280 --> 01:03:42,040
Speaker 1: culprit is. So what can you do about your stolen cloak? Well,

1168
01:03:42,160 --> 01:03:44,320
Speaker 1: you go to the temple and you pay ascribe to

1169
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:47,880
Speaker 1: write out a curse tablet for you. It's not actually magic,

1170
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:51,600
Speaker 1: but imagine if enough people do this and believe in

1171
01:03:51,640 --> 01:03:54,200
Speaker 1: the power of the curses to find and inflict pain

1172
01:03:54,320 --> 01:03:57,680
Speaker 1: on the culprits. I wonder if it might actually discourage

1173
01:03:57,800 --> 01:04:01,440
Speaker 1: thieves from praying on the power of lists to begin with, Right,

1174
01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:04,520
Speaker 1: if you're surrounded by these cursed tablets nailed up everywhere,

1175
01:04:04,560 --> 01:04:07,480
Speaker 1: they're giving you all these reminders that if I steal

1176
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:10,760
Speaker 1: something from somebody, I might get a curse cast against me,

1177
01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:12,720
Speaker 1: and that would be really bad. Then I wouldn't be

1178
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: able to defecate, or you know, I'd bleed into a pot,

1179
01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:19,040
Speaker 1: or have sexual problems or something that might prevent me

1180
01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 1: from stealing somebody's cloak to begin with, Yeah, this, This

1181
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:25,880
Speaker 1: almost makes me want to devote an episode to to

1182
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:29,280
Speaker 1: figuring out like what, you know, what sort of mindset

1183
01:04:29,360 --> 01:04:33,040
Speaker 1: the career uh cloak thief, a career criminal might have

1184
01:04:33,080 --> 01:04:35,920
Speaker 1: had then in ancient times? Were they perhaps okay with

1185
01:04:36,040 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 1: being cursed? Were they to some degree or even a

1186
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:42,600
Speaker 1: large degree? Uh? Did they see through the bologna of

1187
01:04:42,720 --> 01:04:45,160
Speaker 1: the curse and like realize this is just a bunch

1188
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:47,280
Speaker 1: of people who are angry because I'm really good at

1189
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 1: stealing cloaks, but so far I can still urinate, so

1190
01:04:50,880 --> 01:04:54,000
Speaker 1: I'm in the clear. Or were there perhaps other magical

1191
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:58,040
Speaker 1: protections like ultimately, does the does the does the the

1192
01:04:58,200 --> 01:05:02,360
Speaker 1: curse spitting only work with an certain religious worldview? And

1193
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 1: if you have a slightly different religion or perhaps different

1194
01:05:04,760 --> 01:05:08,840
Speaker 1: religious values, perhaps you worship another god, then you're protected.

1195
01:05:09,040 --> 01:05:10,840
Speaker 1: At any rate, it still make it probably, it's still

1196
01:05:10,880 --> 01:05:13,560
Speaker 1: definitely makes that the individual feel good, like, well, I'm

1197
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:15,240
Speaker 1: not going to get that cloak back, but at least

1198
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:17,880
Speaker 1: I got this curse rolled out. Yeah, it's hard to tell.

1199
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to look into the two the

1200
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:23,200
Speaker 1: minds of ancient people and know whether they expected it

1201
01:05:23,240 --> 01:05:25,760
Speaker 1: to work or maybe I don't know, maybe it's possible

1202
01:05:25,800 --> 01:05:29,080
Speaker 1: that people who were putting these curves, you know, paying

1203
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:32,160
Speaker 1: to get these curses done, or writing them themselves or whatever,

1204
01:05:32,640 --> 01:05:36,240
Speaker 1: we're not always expecting to actually get their thing back.

1205
01:05:36,280 --> 01:05:38,360
Speaker 1: But they were trying to create a kind of curse

1206
01:05:38,480 --> 01:05:41,960
Speaker 1: culture that might offer a deterrent from committing crimes. It

1207
01:05:42,040 --> 01:05:45,000
Speaker 1: was almost like an altruistic you know, for the greater

1208
01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:47,840
Speaker 1: good kind of thing that I'm doing to discourage cloak

1209
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:50,800
Speaker 1: stealing in general. Alright, well, on that note, we're gonna

1210
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:53,560
Speaker 1: do one more break and again. You'll be cursed if

1211
01:05:53,560 --> 01:05:56,120
Speaker 1: you skip the advertisement, but then we'll be right back.

1212
01:05:56,720 --> 01:06:00,919
Speaker 1: Thank thank Alright, we're back. So we've been talking about

1213
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:03,720
Speaker 1: the ways that curses, even though they're not magic, might

1214
01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:05,720
Speaker 1: be effective in one way or another. They might be

1215
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:08,800
Speaker 1: effective against the target of the curse via the no

1216
01:06:08,920 --> 01:06:12,040
Speaker 1: Seebo effect. They might be effective on the society in

1217
01:06:12,080 --> 01:06:15,520
Speaker 1: general via some kind of magic belief system in a

1218
01:06:15,600 --> 01:06:18,840
Speaker 1: deterrent or that would create a deterrent from committing crimes

1219
01:06:18,960 --> 01:06:22,120
Speaker 1: or something. Um then I wonder how they work on

1220
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:24,919
Speaker 1: the self. But one quick idea I had. I don't

1221
01:06:24,920 --> 01:06:26,880
Speaker 1: have a whole lot to say about this, but just

1222
01:06:26,960 --> 01:06:30,040
Speaker 1: a thought, is I wonder if sometimes a curse could

1223
01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:34,720
Speaker 1: be a psychological self manipulation technique, like a way to

1224
01:06:34,880 --> 01:06:39,640
Speaker 1: persuade yourself to fully turn against someone you previously had

1225
01:06:39,680 --> 01:06:42,640
Speaker 1: some kind of relationship. Probably not with the curses against

1226
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:45,480
Speaker 1: like unknown enemies, you know, whoever took my cloak. But

1227
01:06:45,520 --> 01:06:48,960
Speaker 1: when you're cursing somebody, you know, it almost reminds me

1228
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:53,680
Speaker 1: of um. You know, sometimes you see people like in

1229
01:06:53,760 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 1: movies and stuff, like they go through a breakup or something,

1230
01:06:56,720 --> 01:06:59,080
Speaker 1: and while they're going through the breakup, they just suddenly

1231
01:06:59,080 --> 01:07:02,520
Speaker 1: say lots of really mean, hurtful things to the person

1232
01:07:02,560 --> 01:07:05,720
Speaker 1: they're breaking up with. And obviously, you know you see that,

1233
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:08,360
Speaker 1: so you know that happens sometimes in reality. That's that's

1234
01:07:08,560 --> 01:07:12,920
Speaker 1: based off people's experiences, And I wonder if people do

1235
01:07:13,040 --> 01:07:17,640
Speaker 1: stuff like that to help themselves enforce a clean break.

1236
01:07:17,720 --> 01:07:20,520
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, like once I say something like this,

1237
01:07:20,680 --> 01:07:24,000
Speaker 1: I've crossed the line, and now this person is quote

1238
01:07:24,040 --> 01:07:25,880
Speaker 1: dead to me or you know that that you're not

1239
01:07:25,920 --> 01:07:29,480
Speaker 1: going to go back and rekindle the relationship. Perhaps, But

1240
01:07:29,520 --> 01:07:33,080
Speaker 1: then also these curses feel so formal that it feels

1241
01:07:33,080 --> 01:07:35,480
Speaker 1: like it would be easier to take back a formal

1242
01:07:35,560 --> 01:07:39,080
Speaker 1: curse than something that is uh, that is you know

1243
01:07:39,120 --> 01:07:41,640
Speaker 1: that that you just say in a moment of anger,

1244
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:46,640
Speaker 1: you know those things that you can truly never unsay. Yeah,

1245
01:07:46,680 --> 01:07:49,280
Speaker 1: I wonder, But I wonder also if putting it into words,

1246
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:51,560
Speaker 1: written down as a way of trying to make it

1247
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:55,400
Speaker 1: like untake back double from you know, like if somebody's

1248
01:07:55,400 --> 01:07:58,480
Speaker 1: written it on a lead sheet and then nailed it

1249
01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:01,920
Speaker 1: up somewhere, you can't say like, I take it back now,

1250
01:08:01,960 --> 01:08:05,520
Speaker 1: it's external to you. You've made the curse and you're

1251
01:08:05,640 --> 01:08:08,280
Speaker 1: you're that person is dead to me. Sentiment sort of

1252
01:08:08,320 --> 01:08:11,040
Speaker 1: public and unalterable. I don't know if people take down

1253
01:08:11,080 --> 01:08:15,040
Speaker 1: crazy Facebook and Twitter posts every day, though I guess

1254
01:08:15,080 --> 01:08:18,280
Speaker 1: sometimes you have. You can say my account was hacked. Sorry.

1255
01:08:18,400 --> 01:08:22,439
Speaker 1: That curse is not really intended for everybody. But I

1256
01:08:22,479 --> 01:08:23,920
Speaker 1: mean there are a lot of ways that I think

1257
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:28,160
Speaker 1: modern behaviors like you're talking about could be considered equivalent

1258
01:08:28,200 --> 01:08:30,800
Speaker 1: to curses. I mean, putting aside people who would still

1259
01:08:30,840 --> 01:08:34,240
Speaker 1: practice some form of witchcraft and like literally think they're

1260
01:08:34,360 --> 01:08:37,960
Speaker 1: enacting evil magic against somebody else. There are other like

1261
01:08:38,040 --> 01:08:41,120
Speaker 1: modern equivalents of curses. I think. Yeah, I mean, just

1262
01:08:41,160 --> 01:08:43,000
Speaker 1: to go back to social media, I think We've probably

1263
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:46,639
Speaker 1: all seen examples of someone pointing out some wrongdoing and saying,

1264
01:08:47,680 --> 01:08:50,920
Speaker 1: in varying degrees of viciousness, saying like, I hope something

1265
01:08:50,960 --> 01:08:53,759
Speaker 1: bad happens to you because of this. But then also

1266
01:08:54,240 --> 01:08:57,200
Speaker 1: you see the the opposite of that sometimes where someone

1267
01:08:57,320 --> 01:08:59,559
Speaker 1: is going out of their way to to either not

1268
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:02,439
Speaker 1: make a curse or even to a certain extent, kind

1269
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:06,720
Speaker 1: of bless the perpetrator. You know, where someone says like, hey,

1270
01:09:06,920 --> 01:09:11,160
Speaker 1: whoever it was who mugged me, uh the other day? Uh,

1271
01:09:12,040 --> 01:09:13,960
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope you find the help that you need.

1272
01:09:14,000 --> 01:09:15,960
Speaker 1: You know that that sort of statement, which can be

1273
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:17,720
Speaker 1: a very positive statement to make. Can you see someone

1274
01:09:17,960 --> 01:09:20,400
Speaker 1: make a statement like that and you you're like, yeah,

1275
01:09:20,439 --> 01:09:22,519
Speaker 1: this is a person who had every right to curse

1276
01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:25,360
Speaker 1: the individual who wronged them, but they did not. And

1277
01:09:25,400 --> 01:09:27,960
Speaker 1: there's something noble in that. But it's kind of playing

1278
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:29,960
Speaker 1: upon the same energy of the curse. It is in

1279
01:09:29,960 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 1: the it is in the tradition of the curse. Even

1280
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:35,920
Speaker 1: if it is if it is a significant improvement. Yeah,

1281
01:09:35,960 --> 01:09:37,840
Speaker 1: I can see that. And of course, I mean we

1282
01:09:37,880 --> 01:09:41,480
Speaker 1: should not ignore that modern religions that are widely practiced

1283
01:09:41,520 --> 01:09:44,400
Speaker 1: to do have things that are I don't know, maybe

1284
01:09:44,439 --> 01:09:47,920
Speaker 1: not exactly like the you know, curse tablets or something,

1285
01:09:47,960 --> 01:09:52,600
Speaker 1: but are in some form like invoking of supernatural authority

1286
01:09:52,720 --> 01:09:55,559
Speaker 1: against someone. Oh yeah, I mean you can still find

1287
01:09:55,600 --> 01:09:59,840
Speaker 1: yourself excommunicated in any number of faith and did not

1288
01:10:00,160 --> 01:10:03,440
Speaker 1: nations where you were essentially kicked out of the religion,

1289
01:10:03,840 --> 01:10:07,880
Speaker 1: and any rewards that might await you in the afterlife

1290
01:10:07,880 --> 01:10:10,840
Speaker 1: are therefore denied you. And the time was when you

1291
01:10:10,880 --> 01:10:14,880
Speaker 1: could you could essentially perform this on an entire nation.

1292
01:10:15,439 --> 01:10:18,559
Speaker 1: Uh what a writ of interdict? I believe? Yeah, I think.

1293
01:10:18,720 --> 01:10:21,600
Speaker 1: Uh well, I just looked at a pope innocent. The

1294
01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:26,040
Speaker 1: third issued an interdict against Norway. It's just like Norwegians.

1295
01:10:26,479 --> 01:10:29,280
Speaker 1: You're out. Sorry, the outside curse on all of you

1296
01:10:29,560 --> 01:10:33,800
Speaker 1: until presumably you know, work things out. Um. And there

1297
01:10:33,800 --> 01:10:37,120
Speaker 1: are forms of excommunication and other religions as well, um

1298
01:10:37,760 --> 01:10:41,400
Speaker 1: in um. In Islamic traditions, there is tach fear, which

1299
01:10:41,479 --> 01:10:45,640
Speaker 1: is a contentious declaration that an individual is a nonbeliever

1300
01:10:46,240 --> 01:10:51,000
Speaker 1: that is sometimes compared to excommunication. And there was a

1301
01:10:51,040 --> 01:10:55,880
Speaker 1: practice of cast excommunication in medieval India, and in Judaism

1302
01:10:55,960 --> 01:11:00,759
Speaker 1: there is hiram, which is supposedly similar as well. Now

1303
01:11:01,000 --> 01:11:04,800
Speaker 1: if you turn on evangelical television programming in the United States,

1304
01:11:04,840 --> 01:11:06,760
Speaker 1: or if you've had an opportunity to watch any of

1305
01:11:06,760 --> 01:11:10,439
Speaker 1: it um in the last few decades, you've probably seen

1306
01:11:10,479 --> 01:11:13,559
Speaker 1: a lot of prayer activity and m and as well

1307
01:11:13,600 --> 01:11:17,360
Speaker 1: as sometimes something that could definitely be considered a curse. Right, So,

1308
01:11:17,400 --> 01:11:21,840
Speaker 1: if you're praying to God to invoke religious texts, uh,

1309
01:11:21,880 --> 01:11:24,320
Speaker 1: you know, to spit doom at someone in particular, then

1310
01:11:24,320 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 1: you're I think you're essentially talking about a curse. Again,

1311
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:28,600
Speaker 1: it comes back to the idea of the protester with

1312
01:11:28,640 --> 01:11:31,680
Speaker 1: the sign. They may see it as them just invoking

1313
01:11:32,160 --> 01:11:36,479
Speaker 1: the rule or reminding everybody how God works. But when

1314
01:11:36,520 --> 01:11:39,599
Speaker 1: push comes to shove, how is that different? Really? Well? Yeah,

1315
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:42,559
Speaker 1: I mean from the from the third party's perspective, it

1316
01:11:42,600 --> 01:11:45,120
Speaker 1: looks a lot like a curse. The person might say, no, no,

1317
01:11:45,120 --> 01:11:47,439
Speaker 1: no, no no, I'm not making this happen. I'm just telling

1318
01:11:47,439 --> 01:11:49,879
Speaker 1: you how it is. But the victim or the target

1319
01:11:50,000 --> 01:11:52,959
Speaker 1: of this threat is probably going to perceive it essentially

1320
01:11:52,960 --> 01:11:55,360
Speaker 1: as being something like a curse, like I I cast

1321
01:11:55,439 --> 01:11:58,840
Speaker 1: down ill fortune upon you. Yeah, like so many, so

1322
01:11:58,840 --> 01:12:00,920
Speaker 1: many different religion. Let's say, any religion that has a

1323
01:12:01,000 --> 01:12:06,840
Speaker 1: theology of hell. Essentially you have a built in revenge fantasy.

1324
01:12:06,920 --> 01:12:08,479
Speaker 1: And and I think this plays into some of the

1325
01:12:08,479 --> 01:12:11,519
Speaker 1: psychology of the curse, issuing the curse, right, Like I'm

1326
01:12:11,800 --> 01:12:14,320
Speaker 1: I I can't actually get back at whoever stole this

1327
01:12:14,400 --> 01:12:17,840
Speaker 1: cloak from me, But in my mind they're suffering. In

1328
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:20,920
Speaker 1: my mind, they're they're going to be tormented. And that's

1329
01:12:20,960 --> 01:12:24,040
Speaker 1: essentially what any health theology really is, like, Oh, those

1330
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:27,040
Speaker 1: people who didn't believe like me, or the people who

1331
01:12:27,080 --> 01:12:29,599
Speaker 1: actually did something nefarious in a life, they may get

1332
01:12:29,600 --> 01:12:33,240
Speaker 1: away with it now, but in the afterlife they will,

1333
01:12:33,360 --> 01:12:35,960
Speaker 1: they will burn, And in my mind they are burning

1334
01:12:36,320 --> 01:12:39,840
Speaker 1: in the depraved notions that I have incorporated into my worldview. Well,

1335
01:12:39,840 --> 01:12:42,280
Speaker 1: you could also say, in like the economic example we gave,

1336
01:12:42,360 --> 01:12:45,320
Speaker 1: that perhaps a belief like that might create a deterrent

1337
01:12:45,439 --> 01:12:49,040
Speaker 1: among people from doing something negative. Unfortunately, now I think

1338
01:12:49,080 --> 01:12:51,840
Speaker 1: you could take strong issue with saying that that a

1339
01:12:52,080 --> 01:12:54,080
Speaker 1: that it was worth it to do that deterrent, or

1340
01:12:54,120 --> 01:12:56,600
Speaker 1: be that it actually worked or did anything. Yeah, and

1341
01:12:56,600 --> 01:12:59,240
Speaker 1: this we kind of get into the whole theological idea

1342
01:12:59,320 --> 01:13:02,439
Speaker 1: that if people were not threatened with hell, they will

1343
01:13:02,479 --> 01:13:04,840
Speaker 1: just they won't. They won't obey any law right, right.

1344
01:13:05,280 --> 01:13:07,280
Speaker 1: I don't put much stock in that, but for my money,

1345
01:13:07,400 --> 01:13:11,600
Speaker 1: especially in today's world, everyone has any kind of access

1346
01:13:11,760 --> 01:13:16,720
Speaker 1: to the to the marketplace of of religious ideas. Like you,

1347
01:13:16,720 --> 01:13:19,720
Speaker 1: you ultimately choose which version of a particular faith you're

1348
01:13:19,720 --> 01:13:21,840
Speaker 1: going to adhere to, and if you choose the one

1349
01:13:21,960 --> 01:13:26,640
Speaker 1: with the more elaborate, uh, you know, all inclusive revenge fantasy,

1350
01:13:27,240 --> 01:13:29,760
Speaker 1: then you were deciding, like what curses you want to

1351
01:13:29,840 --> 01:13:35,960
Speaker 1: level against nonbelievers or people who have who have sinned, etcetera. Yeah,

1352
01:13:36,000 --> 01:13:39,040
Speaker 1: it's sort of a cursed by interpretation. Yeah, and then

1353
01:13:39,080 --> 01:13:41,839
Speaker 1: of course you have plenty of individuals in our modern

1354
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:44,800
Speaker 1: world who have if they're not actually cursing people, they're

1355
01:13:44,800 --> 01:13:47,320
Speaker 1: at least pushing the narrative that there are those out

1356
01:13:47,320 --> 01:13:50,720
Speaker 1: there who are cursing. There have been specific examples with

1357
01:13:51,400 --> 01:13:56,360
Speaker 1: Pat Robertson's claim that Satanist were cursing babies, or Alec

1358
01:13:56,439 --> 01:13:59,880
Speaker 1: Jones saying that, which is, we're using curses and witchcraft

1359
01:14:00,840 --> 01:14:03,719
Speaker 1: against Donald Trump, that sort of thing. Wait, does Jones

1360
01:14:03,760 --> 01:14:05,960
Speaker 1: believe that the curse or does he claim to believe

1361
01:14:06,040 --> 01:14:09,000
Speaker 1: that the curses are working? I don't know. You'd have

1362
01:14:09,080 --> 01:14:11,640
Speaker 1: to ask Alex Jones about that. But to pick up

1363
01:14:11,640 --> 01:14:14,120
Speaker 1: on what you're saying, a curse can also serve as

1364
01:14:14,200 --> 01:14:17,519
Speaker 1: a form sort of a public shaming, right. You know,

1365
01:14:17,560 --> 01:14:20,400
Speaker 1: it's been hypothesized that the bath curse tablets I think

1366
01:14:20,400 --> 01:14:22,720
Speaker 1: I mentioned this a little bit earlier, may have been

1367
01:14:22,760 --> 01:14:26,720
Speaker 1: publicly displayed, meaning that people could see the allegations, they

1368
01:14:26,720 --> 01:14:30,120
Speaker 1: could sympathize with the victim, they could shame or punish

1369
01:14:30,160 --> 01:14:33,479
Speaker 1: the perpetrator, they could help the victim with details, maybe

1370
01:14:33,560 --> 01:14:38,200
Speaker 1: to discover who the perpetrator was. Like, something about this

1371
01:14:38,320 --> 01:14:43,040
Speaker 1: historical scenario is saying maybe maybe it wasn't just the

1372
01:14:43,080 --> 01:14:45,760
Speaker 1: magical qualities. I mean, these people probably did believe in

1373
01:14:45,880 --> 01:14:48,719
Speaker 1: curses and believe there was a magic kind of work

1374
01:14:48,760 --> 01:14:51,120
Speaker 1: being done, but it also might have also been just

1375
01:14:51,240 --> 01:14:53,040
Speaker 1: kind of like the curse is part of a public

1376
01:14:53,080 --> 01:14:57,280
Speaker 1: bulletin board system that helps keep everybody informed about crimes

1377
01:14:57,280 --> 01:14:59,760
Speaker 1: that are going on and and what your friend might

1378
01:14:59,760 --> 01:15:02,439
Speaker 1: need help with. Now, I'm also reminded in all of

1379
01:15:02,439 --> 01:15:06,120
Speaker 1: this of prosperity churches, you know, churches that in many

1380
01:15:06,160 --> 01:15:10,920
Speaker 1: cases they interpret poverty or even illness as divine punishment,

1381
01:15:10,960 --> 01:15:14,960
Speaker 1: as is essentially a curse from God, which which which

1382
01:15:15,000 --> 01:15:17,759
Speaker 1: really really plays into this older idea, right, if things,

1383
01:15:17,920 --> 01:15:20,759
Speaker 1: if bad things are happening to people and we don't

1384
01:15:20,800 --> 01:15:24,960
Speaker 1: know why, we we we end up attributing all of

1385
01:15:24,960 --> 01:15:28,479
Speaker 1: these magical causes to it. Uh. And we still see

1386
01:15:28,479 --> 01:15:30,720
Speaker 1: this throughout the world. I mean, they're they're. There are

1387
01:15:30,720 --> 01:15:32,360
Speaker 1: a number of different examples. I was looking at a

1388
01:15:32,360 --> 01:15:36,400
Speaker 1: particular paper though, published in the journal Plos one from

1389
01:15:36,400 --> 01:15:39,439
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of East Anglia, and they point

1390
01:15:39,439 --> 01:15:42,719
Speaker 1: out that many people in rural African communities still believe

1391
01:15:42,800 --> 01:15:46,920
Speaker 1: that disability occurs due to some sort of supernatural force,

1392
01:15:47,640 --> 01:15:51,240
Speaker 1: such as curses such as, you know, a demon afflicting

1393
01:15:51,240 --> 01:15:54,320
Speaker 1: a child, that sort of thing um, and these are

1394
01:15:54,560 --> 01:15:58,839
Speaker 1: caused by wrongdoing. So, for instance, one of the common

1395
01:15:59,479 --> 01:16:01,920
Speaker 1: versions of the US is there's a there's infidelity and

1396
01:16:01,960 --> 01:16:05,320
Speaker 1: therefore the child of that infidelity is punished with some

1397
01:16:05,360 --> 01:16:08,439
Speaker 1: sort of deformity. But the research has found that as

1398
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:12,759
Speaker 1: medical understanding grows, apparents are more likely to seek medical

1399
01:16:12,840 --> 01:16:15,800
Speaker 1: aid first rather than a which doctor to you know,

1400
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:19,200
Speaker 1: interpret what is going on, like why this deformity has

1401
01:16:19,240 --> 01:16:23,240
Speaker 1: taken place, etcetera. This particular research was condicted conducted in Kenya,

1402
01:16:23,280 --> 01:16:25,600
Speaker 1: by the way, but I think it does illustrate you know,

1403
01:16:25,680 --> 01:16:29,280
Speaker 1: why the idea of a curse work so well, you know, right,

1404
01:16:29,320 --> 01:16:31,759
Speaker 1: because it can what play on anxieties you have about

1405
01:16:31,800 --> 01:16:34,439
Speaker 1: guilt and inadequacy. Yeah, and then on top of just

1406
01:16:34,760 --> 01:16:40,080
Speaker 1: not having access to information about how deformities work, how

1407
01:16:40,439 --> 01:16:42,960
Speaker 1: how medical science works, you know that sort of thing.

1408
01:16:43,200 --> 01:16:47,679
Speaker 1: And then also especially the curses vague enough. I mean,

1409
01:16:47,800 --> 01:16:52,000
Speaker 1: we're all going to violate a moral value to some extent.

1410
01:16:52,040 --> 01:16:54,040
Speaker 1: At some point, We're all going to do something we

1411
01:16:54,120 --> 01:16:56,400
Speaker 1: are not proud of and we feel guilty about, and

1412
01:16:56,439 --> 01:16:59,240
Speaker 1: then something that we can interpret as bad luck is

1413
01:16:59,280 --> 01:17:01,080
Speaker 1: going to happen to all of us. I mean, if

1414
01:17:01,080 --> 01:17:03,760
Speaker 1: nothing else, you may find yourself in a situation where

1415
01:17:03,760 --> 01:17:05,920
Speaker 1: you accidentally say a square word in front of a child,

1416
01:17:06,320 --> 01:17:09,040
Speaker 1: and then later you'll stub your toe. And if you

1417
01:17:09,200 --> 01:17:11,559
Speaker 1: and if you wanted to, if there was, if there

1418
01:17:11,600 --> 01:17:14,920
Speaker 1: was support for this interpretation in your worldview, you could say,

1419
01:17:15,000 --> 01:17:17,840
Speaker 1: oh h, that the god of toe stubbing punished me

1420
01:17:17,960 --> 01:17:20,040
Speaker 1: for having sworn in front of that child. So it's

1421
01:17:20,080 --> 01:17:23,599
Speaker 1: quite easy for us to make ourselves the victims of

1422
01:17:23,880 --> 01:17:28,160
Speaker 1: magical causality via magical thinking, even if you know nobody

1423
01:17:28,200 --> 01:17:30,880
Speaker 1: else out there is telling you I'm cursing you. Yeah,

1424
01:17:30,920 --> 01:17:32,800
Speaker 1: because we was. We've discussed plenty of times in the

1425
01:17:32,800 --> 01:17:35,920
Speaker 1: show before. Our brains are just pattern recognition engines, and

1426
01:17:35,960 --> 01:17:40,280
Speaker 1: we'll often make connections that are not really there. And

1427
01:17:40,400 --> 01:17:42,280
Speaker 1: uh and this is where we see so many different

1428
01:17:42,280 --> 01:17:46,720
Speaker 1: magical ideas about how the world works emerging, right. Um,

1429
01:17:46,800 --> 01:17:50,320
Speaker 1: you know, even outside of traditional beliefs and the developing world.

1430
01:17:51,479 --> 01:17:53,840
Speaker 1: Who I mean, who out there has encountered the the

1431
01:17:53,840 --> 01:17:57,280
Speaker 1: the negative people get cancer model, you know, that kind

1432
01:17:57,280 --> 01:18:00,120
Speaker 1: of Western New Age thinking. It's like, you know what,

1433
01:18:00,320 --> 01:18:03,360
Speaker 1: it's like the secret kind of Yeah. And and I

1434
01:18:03,360 --> 01:18:05,960
Speaker 1: can see why this is attractive too, because in the

1435
01:18:06,000 --> 01:18:09,439
Speaker 1: same way that if one doesn't have access tom like

1436
01:18:09,479 --> 01:18:14,000
Speaker 1: a modern scientific understanding of disease, they might be susceptible

1437
01:18:14,120 --> 01:18:17,599
Speaker 1: to to to some sort of magical explanation. I can

1438
01:18:17,600 --> 01:18:21,679
Speaker 1: see where even with access to uh uh to medical

1439
01:18:21,840 --> 01:18:25,040
Speaker 1: understanding of the world, if the if modern medicine is

1440
01:18:25,080 --> 01:18:29,400
Speaker 1: not able to you know, provide the level of of

1441
01:18:29,439 --> 01:18:33,840
Speaker 1: treatment that you would require, I can see where you

1442
01:18:33,960 --> 01:18:36,240
Speaker 1: might turn to some of these magical ideas, you know,

1443
01:18:36,360 --> 01:18:38,559
Speaker 1: or you might sort of stumble back into them or

1444
01:18:38,560 --> 01:18:40,599
Speaker 1: even sort of have them at the same time, I mean,

1445
01:18:40,600 --> 01:18:44,559
Speaker 1: are are we're certainly capable of having to conflicting ideas

1446
01:18:44,560 --> 01:18:46,679
Speaker 1: in our head at the same time. We're on one level.

1447
01:18:47,080 --> 01:18:50,479
Speaker 1: You know what cancer is, and you know that it

1448
01:18:50,520 --> 01:18:54,360
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with your personality or your life decisions.

1449
01:18:54,400 --> 01:18:56,400
Speaker 1: But still somewhere in the back of your mind there's

1450
01:18:56,439 --> 01:18:59,439
Speaker 1: that old bit of magical thinking, sort of clawing at

1451
01:18:59,439 --> 01:19:02,120
Speaker 1: the door, you know, trying to to to tear you

1452
01:19:02,160 --> 01:19:05,400
Speaker 1: down into believing some other bit of nonsense about it. Yeah,

1453
01:19:05,439 --> 01:19:07,559
Speaker 1: you brought all this on yourself with, like you say,

1454
01:19:07,560 --> 01:19:11,080
Speaker 1: all that negative thinking. Yeah. Now that being said, psychological

1455
01:19:11,120 --> 01:19:13,640
Speaker 1: stress cannon does have an effect on the body in

1456
01:19:13,680 --> 01:19:17,480
Speaker 1: many ways. Stress can cause a number of physical health problems.

1457
01:19:17,520 --> 01:19:20,280
Speaker 1: But the experts say, if you look, you can find

1458
01:19:20,280 --> 01:19:22,960
Speaker 1: this answer if you look at cancer dot gov. The

1459
01:19:23,000 --> 01:19:26,559
Speaker 1: link between stress and cancer is weak at best. Yeah, though,

1460
01:19:26,840 --> 01:19:29,439
Speaker 1: as we explained earlier, of course we know all about

1461
01:19:29,520 --> 01:19:31,720
Speaker 1: no cebo effects and stuff, so I can certainly see

1462
01:19:31,760 --> 01:19:36,719
Speaker 1: that ways you know that the ways you're thinking could

1463
01:19:36,880 --> 01:19:41,719
Speaker 1: have especially effects on the subjective experience of the negative

1464
01:19:41,920 --> 01:19:45,160
Speaker 1: parts of an illness. Right, pain might feel like it

1465
01:19:45,240 --> 01:19:48,280
Speaker 1: hurts more if there if your brain is in certain

1466
01:19:48,360 --> 01:19:52,600
Speaker 1: states of of bad feelings or bad expectations or expectations

1467
01:19:52,640 --> 01:19:55,200
Speaker 1: that you will feel pain. So it's interesting anyway you

1468
01:19:55,280 --> 01:19:59,160
Speaker 1: cut it, uh, the curse at one On one hand,

1469
01:19:59,200 --> 01:20:02,240
Speaker 1: the curse has no power, the curse is just pure

1470
01:20:02,479 --> 01:20:05,400
Speaker 1: magical thinking. But on the other hand, a curse carry

1471
01:20:05,479 --> 01:20:09,479
Speaker 1: some weight. And that's probably why people have been have

1472
01:20:09,600 --> 01:20:12,559
Speaker 1: been spitting curses at each other for so long, and

1473
01:20:12,560 --> 01:20:15,200
Speaker 1: we'll continue to do so in one form or another. Yeah,

1474
01:20:15,200 --> 01:20:17,880
Speaker 1: I think you're right. Really, I'm surprised there aren't more

1475
01:20:17,920 --> 01:20:19,920
Speaker 1: curses today because I imagine a curse gives you a

1476
01:20:19,960 --> 01:20:22,680
Speaker 1: certain amount of legal protection. Like if like, if you

1477
01:20:22,800 --> 01:20:27,040
Speaker 1: threaten somebody, you can be arrested like that. That that

1478
01:20:27,160 --> 01:20:29,840
Speaker 1: is a that is a crime. But is it a

1479
01:20:29,840 --> 01:20:31,920
Speaker 1: crime to curse someone? Is it a crime to invoke

1480
01:20:32,240 --> 01:20:35,719
Speaker 1: divine powers against them? So if you say I will

1481
01:20:35,760 --> 01:20:39,120
Speaker 1: make you unable to defecate, that that's a crime. But

1482
01:20:39,240 --> 01:20:42,679
Speaker 1: if if you say I will invoke maglus to make

1483
01:20:42,680 --> 01:20:46,000
Speaker 1: it unable make you unable to defecate, man, you know, Yeah,

1484
01:20:46,000 --> 01:20:47,840
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a harder sell to the local

1485
01:20:47,880 --> 01:20:51,000
Speaker 1: police force. I guess one last thing I would end

1486
01:20:51,040 --> 01:20:53,759
Speaker 1: on is I would say, when I think about curses

1487
01:20:53,760 --> 01:20:55,400
Speaker 1: and stuff. I think it's the kind of thing that,

1488
01:20:55,439 --> 01:20:57,559
Speaker 1: even though I don't believe in magic, I think it's

1489
01:20:57,560 --> 01:21:00,160
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you shouldn't do really because, as

1490
01:21:00,360 --> 01:21:02,519
Speaker 1: you know, because it does have these effects, especially I

1491
01:21:02,520 --> 01:21:05,080
Speaker 1: would say effects on the self, Like even if you

1492
01:21:05,120 --> 01:21:07,760
Speaker 1: don't tell the person about it, you know it, it

1493
01:21:08,080 --> 01:21:11,000
Speaker 1: kind of dirties your mind. To cast a curse, wishing

1494
01:21:11,040 --> 01:21:13,840
Speaker 1: ill on other people hurts you, It hurts your hurts

1495
01:21:13,840 --> 01:21:17,479
Speaker 1: your mind, it hurts your character absolutely, So hopefully in

1496
01:21:17,520 --> 01:21:20,200
Speaker 1: this episode we've been able to, you know, to make

1497
01:21:20,240 --> 01:21:23,720
Speaker 1: you rethink the world of of the curse. And heck,

1498
01:21:23,760 --> 01:21:25,960
Speaker 1: we didn't even get into the idea of cursed items

1499
01:21:25,960 --> 01:21:28,800
Speaker 1: and allegedly cursed items so much. But that's a whole

1500
01:21:28,840 --> 01:21:31,519
Speaker 1: other area that we could potentially explore in the future. Yeah.

1501
01:21:31,800 --> 01:21:35,240
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you should check out our website, No

1502
01:21:35,360 --> 01:21:37,800
Speaker 1: Curses at All, to be found at stuff to Blow

1503
01:21:37,840 --> 01:21:39,600
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find all the

1504
01:21:39,640 --> 01:21:42,880
Speaker 1: podcast episodes, links out to our various social media accounts

1505
01:21:42,920 --> 01:21:45,040
Speaker 1: of a button for our store at the top of

1506
01:21:45,080 --> 01:21:50,120
Speaker 1: the page, where you can buy some cool merchandise, shirt stickers, etcetera.

1507
01:21:50,200 --> 01:21:52,000
Speaker 1: It's a great way to support the show, and if

1508
01:21:52,040 --> 01:21:54,320
Speaker 1: you want to support our show without spending any money

1509
01:21:54,360 --> 01:21:57,080
Speaker 1: at all, just simply go to wherever you get the

1510
01:21:57,120 --> 01:22:00,719
Speaker 1: podcast and rate and review us huge thing as always

1511
01:22:00,760 --> 01:22:04,599
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.

1512
01:22:04,920 --> 01:22:06,719
Speaker 1: If you'd like to get in touch with us directly

1513
01:22:06,880 --> 01:22:09,320
Speaker 1: to let us know feedback about this episode or any other,

1514
01:22:09,400 --> 01:22:11,600
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

1515
01:22:11,680 --> 01:22:14,519
Speaker 1: say hi, you can email us at blow the Mind

1516
01:22:14,600 --> 01:22:25,680
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this

1517
01:22:25,880 --> 01:22:28,400
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works

1518
01:22:28,400 --> 01:22:36,240
Speaker 1: dot com. B