Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we're
Speaker 2: heading on down into the vault to bring you part
Speaker 2: three of our series on the Goat and its Devilish implications.
Speaker 2: This was originally published on October twenty fifth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back with
Speaker 2: Part three of our series on the Goat and the Devil,
Speaker 2: where we are exploring reasons for the some would say
Speaker 2: unfair association in especially Christian cultures, between the ordinary domestic goat,
Speaker 2: a wonderful animal, and the monic realm of sin and flames. Now,
Speaker 2: in previous episodes, we've talked about the basic biology of
Speaker 2: the goat as a browsing bovid that was once adapted
Speaker 2: to harsher environments like mountains and forests, but sometime many
Speaker 2: thousands of years ago was domesticated by the humans who
Speaker 2: used to hunt it. We talked about mythical inspirations for
Speaker 2: later goat man devils, possibly lying in the figure of
Speaker 2: the Greek god Pan and in the satyrs and fawns
Speaker 2: that bore his image. We talked about goat reproduction and
Speaker 2: goat voices, how it's possible that goats could be interpreted
Speaker 2: as sinful by judgmental human eyes because of the he
Speaker 2: goat's reputation for being very enthusiastic about mating, and the
Speaker 2: idea that it's possible people have seen goats as uncanny
Speaker 2: because sometimes some goats, when they kind of moan and scream,
Speaker 2: they sound freakishly human. In the second episode, we talked
Speaker 2: about the role of goats in the Hebrew Bible, where
Speaker 2: they could be associated with demonic forces because of the
Speaker 2: ritual of the Day of Atonement, where it is said
Speaker 2: that one goat is sent off into the wilderness to
Speaker 2: carry the sins of the people off for Azazel, and
Speaker 2: that name is sometimes interpreted as some kind of demonic power.
Speaker 2: We also talked about goats in the Christian New Testament,
Speaker 2: where Jesus is said to have given apocalyptic preaching that
Speaker 2: when the Son of Man comes to bring the end
Speaker 2: of the age, he will separate the righteous from the
Speaker 2: unrighteous and what's the image used there. It's as the
Speaker 2: shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The goats are
Speaker 2: the bad ones. And finally, we also talked about goat
Speaker 2: lore from around the world to point out that the
Speaker 2: association between goats and evil is by no means universal.
Speaker 2: There are some very interesting counter examples in Chinese mythology,
Speaker 2: in Basque mythology with this figure of the black billy
Speaker 2: goat deity who protects livestock and so forth. So it's
Speaker 2: been a wild ride so far, a wild goat ride.
Speaker 2: But to kick things off today, I wanted to come
Speaker 2: back to our discussion about the particular features of goat
Speaker 2: biology that people of centuries past might possibly have interpreted
Speaker 2: as devilish or sinful in one way in one way
Speaker 2: or another, And the example I wanted to look at
Speaker 2: here is goat eyes. One might argue that you haven't
Speaker 2: really been stared at until you've been stared at by
Speaker 2: a goat, and part of the reason for that is
Speaker 2: when you're being stared at by a goat, you're not
Speaker 2: quite sure if you're being stared at by a goat.
Speaker 1: That's right. It comes down to the inhuman shape of
Speaker 1: the goat pupils.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And before I get there, I want to
Speaker 2: say that the goat stare does not have to be
Speaker 2: imbued with any kind of menace. I came across a
Speaker 2: very sweet, whimsical little poem I wanted to read a
Speaker 2: bit from. This is by the British Canadian poet Robert Servis,
Speaker 2: who wrote a poem called The Goat and I, And
Speaker 2: it goes each sunny day upon my way a goat iPad.
Speaker 1: He has a.
Speaker 2: Beard of silver gray and a bell of brass, And
Speaker 2: all the while I am in sight, he seems to
Speaker 2: muse and stares at me with all his might, and choose,
Speaker 2: and choose upon the hill so timy, sweet with joy
Speaker 2: of spring, he hails me with a tiny bleat of welcoming,
Speaker 2: though half the globe is drenched with blood, and cities
Speaker 2: flare contentedly, he chews the cud and does not care.
Speaker 2: Oh gentle friend, I know not what your age may be,
Speaker 2: but of my years I'd give the lot yet left
Speaker 2: to me to chew a thistle and not choke, but
Speaker 2: bright of eye gaze at the old world, weary bloke
Speaker 2: who hobbles by.
Speaker 1: This is great. I love how this drives some like
Speaker 1: an overall interpretation of goat physiology that I think we
Speaker 1: can often fall into, and that is of the goat
Speaker 1: as the old goat, Like there's even if a goat
Speaker 1: need to see some goats that look very virile and
Speaker 1: young in a goatish fashion, but oftentimes encounter goats who
Speaker 1: do kind of hobble about. They have all these likenesses
Speaker 1: that we attribute to elderly human individuals. You know, you'll
Speaker 1: have the beard and so forth. But yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a neat little poem summing up the independent and relatable
Speaker 1: spirit of the goat.
Speaker 2: Oh I also I left off a final stanza where
Speaker 2: essentially the last stanza is just like, why am I
Speaker 2: writing a poem about a goat? It's not great so
Speaker 2: but yeah, anyway, the gaze of the goat has often
Speaker 2: been observed to have a strange character in one way
Speaker 2: or another. Sometimes it's more like what service is saying here?
Speaker 2: Almost narcotically placid and unmoved. And yet other times people
Speaker 2: notice that the gaze of the goat is kind of
Speaker 2: thrillingly alien, because, unlike with a dog or a cat,
Speaker 2: it can be hard to tell if a goat is
Speaker 2: actually looking at you, or at least for me, it can.
Speaker 2: Despite the efforts of Robert Service, the eye of the
Speaker 2: goat has often been characterized as creepy, and I think
Speaker 2: there could be a couple of reasons for that. It
Speaker 2: might be because it's a bit harder to tell where
Speaker 2: the goat is focusing than it is with some other
Speaker 2: kind of animals, like our predatory companion animals. Or maybe
Speaker 2: it's just because the eye of a goat sort of
Speaker 2: looks weird. It looks unusual if you're not used to it,
Speaker 2: because instead of a round pupil, as you alluded to earlier,
Speaker 2: rob the goat has a horizontal pupil, sometimes described as
Speaker 2: rectangular in shape I think sometimes kind of described as
Speaker 2: like elongated capsule shape, so it's like a rectangle with
Speaker 2: kind of rounded edges. I've also found some photos where
Speaker 2: it looks like a horizontal capital eye with a hint
Speaker 2: of those cross beams or slight bulges at the ends
Speaker 2: of the rectangle. And the question is why do goat
Speaker 2: pupils look that way? Well, funny enough, we actually did
Speaker 2: an episode just a while back which contained a segment
Speaker 2: about the evolution tionary reasoning behind different pupil shapes. In
Speaker 2: The Animal Kingdom, the episode was The Three Pupil Die,
Speaker 2: and I think the study we talked about in that
Speaker 2: show is still a good one to inform us on
Speaker 2: the question I've just raised. So to bring up the
Speaker 2: same paper again. This was by Martin S. Banks at All,
Speaker 2: published in the journal Science Advances in twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 2: it's called why do Animal eyes have pupils of different shapes?
Speaker 2: Basic conclusion is that an animal's pupil shape is usually
Speaker 2: determined by what its ecological niche is, what its role
Speaker 2: in the food chain is. So animals like humans, tigers,
Speaker 2: and wolves have round pupils. Round pupils appear to be
Speaker 2: common a common shape for active hunters who chase down
Speaker 2: their prey. Meanwhile, predators that are lower to the ground
Speaker 2: or hunt by way of ambush, So a predator that
Speaker 2: might lie in wait and then pounce suddenly on a
Speaker 2: prey animal, these tend to have vertical pupils vertically oriented
Speaker 2: slit pupils, and the vertical slits seem to be adaptive
Speaker 2: for low down ambush predators because they're helpful in using
Speaker 2: tricks called stereopsis and defocus blur to very precisely judge
Speaker 2: the distance needed for a single exact medium range pounds.
Speaker 2: But herbivores prey animals are more likely to have horizontal
Speaker 2: pupils like the goat. To quote from the study, horizontally
Speaker 2: elongated pupils create sharp images of horizontal contours ahead and behind,
Speaker 2: creating a horizontally panoramic view that facilitates detection of predators
Speaker 2: from various directions and forward locomotion across uneven terrain. So
Speaker 2: these horizontal pupils are good for scanning the whole panorama
Speaker 2: of the environment, seeing at all angles all the time
Speaker 2: to watch out for any approaching predators, which might be
Speaker 2: one of the reasons you can get that creepy feeling
Speaker 2: where you can't tell if the goat is actually looking
Speaker 2: at you. The goat is sort of designed by nature
Speaker 2: to be looking everywhere rather than to be looking at you.
Speaker 2: But I also thought it's an interesting note about the
Speaker 2: forward locomotion across uneven terrain given the evolutionary history of
Speaker 2: goats occupying mountains and craggy landscapes. Though again, less craggy
Speaker 2: creatures like horses also have horizontal pupils, So that made
Speaker 2: me wonder about the question why do we tend to
Speaker 2: notice the horizontal orientation of goat pupils more than we
Speaker 2: notice it in horses and other herbivores. I think this
Speaker 2: must be a common thing. It's at least true for me,
Speaker 2: and so I was looking into this and I want
Speaker 2: to make two non expert observations just by looking at
Speaker 2: a lot of photos on Google. One is that the
Speaker 2: horse pupil seems less noticeably elongate in the horizontal dimension
Speaker 2: than the goat pupil. So they're both horizontal, but the
Speaker 2: horse pupil seems a little bit shorter usually, or the
Speaker 2: goat went often looks visibly stretched out. Second, and I
Speaker 2: think this might be even more important, there seems to be,
Speaker 2: on average, a stronger color contrast within the goat's eye.
Speaker 2: If you just look at a bunch of pictures of
Speaker 2: the eyes of horses and the eyes of goats, it
Speaker 2: seems goats on average have lighter colored irises, which really
Speaker 2: makes the pupil pop. That makes the pupil stand out,
Speaker 2: which makes it look more noticeably alien, at least to
Speaker 2: me interesting.
Speaker 1: I remember in that episode on The Three People Die,
Speaker 1: we talked about pupil changes in the shape of the
Speaker 1: pupil with predators tended to vary as well depending on height.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right, But I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Any such distinction being made in the materials we were
Speaker 1: looking at then regarding herbivores, like a goat versus cow,
Speaker 1: versus horse, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't recall any distinction like that either. But
Speaker 2: definitely there was a change in height in predators, because again,
Speaker 2: the taller predators have round pupils and the shorter predators
Speaker 2: have vertical slip pupils, and so part of that has
Speaker 2: to do with a difference in hunting strategy like chasing
Speaker 2: versus ambushing, but part of it has to do also
Speaker 2: with just I think, managing the angles at which you
Speaker 2: would be observing your prey.
Speaker 1: Now, this instantly makes me think of something that I
Speaker 1: guess we got into a little bit in the Three
Speaker 1: People to Die, is what sort of eyes do we
Speaker 1: expect knowing all of this of divine beings and divine emissaries,
Speaker 1: certainly in the Irish and some Chinese traditions that we
Speaker 1: discussed in that episode. We talked about the idea of
Speaker 1: someone with three pupils or three irises being in some
Speaker 1: way enlightened and having superior vision and perhaps wisdom as well.
Speaker 1: But taking all that we've discussed here into the scenario,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, if we have some sort of god
Speaker 1: or god like being or anti god taking on the
Speaker 1: head and eyes of a goat, well, in a way
Speaker 1: it seems more fitting. It's like, this is a being
Speaker 1: that can look in many directions at once and doesn't
Speaker 1: need to focus its attention and maybe doesn't focus its
Speaker 1: attention all that much, and hey, being a god, maybe
Speaker 1: you don't want its attention focused too heavily.
Speaker 2: Well. Also, though, thinking about the predator prey distinction, I mean,
Speaker 2: shouldn't the horizontal pupils make it less dangerous? Like wouldn't
Speaker 2: round pupils really be the most dangerous?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But then I guess it comes down to the
Speaker 1: human scenario, right. We want to we want to connect
Speaker 1: with the human in the superhuman, and therefore we want
Speaker 1: them to have pupils. Though I guess we see, especially
Speaker 1: in modern depictions, you know, we love to black out
Speaker 1: the eyes of inhuman beings, you know, often with those
Speaker 1: really cool contact lenses. So we'll have various there's so
Speaker 1: many treatments of this where various fallen angels and so
Speaker 1: forth will have all black eyes or maybe all white eyes,
Speaker 1: and that tends to note some sort of strangeness of
Speaker 1: vision as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right about that. Like sometimes otherworldly
Speaker 2: beings are just depicted as having eyes like that, Sometimes
Speaker 2: their eyes change into all white or all black or
Speaker 2: something when they are exercising a type of second sight.
Speaker 1: When it sometimes works quite well, though sometimes you're kind
Speaker 1: of I think you're kind of inconveniencing your actors by
Speaker 1: taking away their eyes or taking one of their tools.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe we should look at a little bit more,
Speaker 2: goat mythology and goat symbolism and history. I think if
Speaker 2: we're trying to figure out why, especially a lot of
Speaker 2: say Continental European Christian cultures made an association between the
Speaker 2: devil and goats, I think we must talk about the
Speaker 2: figure known as Baphomet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this is a fascinating but also kind of
Speaker 1: convoluted situation because it involves multiple different cultures either appropriating
Speaker 1: or interpreting, or miss interpreting or outright right slandering something
Speaker 1: that other culture, the previous cultures or different cultures believed
Speaker 1: in or believe in. And the end result is this
Speaker 1: strange satanic goat creature that you're more likely to encounter
Speaker 1: now in a TV show or on a heavy metal
Speaker 1: T shirt, that sort of thing. So I covered some
Speaker 1: of this in a Monster Fact episode about the Goat
Speaker 1: of Mendis that came about shortly after we recorded a
Speaker 1: weird House cinema episode on the film The Devil Rides Out,
Speaker 1: which prominently features this satanic goat man appearing at a
Speaker 1: black mass. And so this entity of Baphame or the
Speaker 1: Goat of Mendes is essentially a Western occultist distortion of
Speaker 1: a Greek interpretation of the god of Egypt, the Egyptian
Speaker 1: god known as beneb Jujet that was worshiped in Mendays,
Speaker 1: which is the Greek name for an ancient Egyptian city
Speaker 1: named Jadet, also known today as Tel el Ruba. Fifth
Speaker 1: century Greek historian Herodotus wrote of this god and his
Speaker 1: practices and made veiled references to sexual aspects of the worship,
Speaker 1: and also compared the entity to Pan, of course from
Speaker 1: Western traditions. So already I know this sounds like some
Speaker 1: sort of a You can imagine like the different pins
Speaker 1: on a board with the different bits of string colored string,
Speaker 1: showing you where all this is going across a map
Speaker 1: of Europe and North Africa. So here's a quote from
Speaker 1: Herotodus via S. Birch's translation. Quote. Now, the reason why
Speaker 1: those of the Egyptians whom I have mentioned do not
Speaker 1: sacrifice goats, female or male, is this The Mendicians count
Speaker 1: Pan to be one of the eight gods. Now, these
Speaker 1: eight gods, they say, came into being before the twelve gods,
Speaker 1: and the painters and image makers represent in painting and
Speaker 1: in sculpture the figure of Pan, just as the Hellenese
Speaker 1: do with goat's face and legs, not supposing him to
Speaker 1: be really like this, but to resemble the other gods.
Speaker 1: The cause, however, why they represent him in this form,
Speaker 1: I prefer not to say. The Mendisians then reverence all goats,
Speaker 1: and the males more than the females. And the goatherds
Speaker 1: too have greater honor than other herdsmen. But the goats,
Speaker 1: one especially is reverenced, and when he dies there is
Speaker 1: great mourning in all the Mendisian district. And both the
Speaker 1: goat and Pan are called in the Egyptian tongue Mendis.
Speaker 2: Okay, So not knowing exactly what's going on here. I
Speaker 2: would wonder if Herodotus is seriously misinterpreting reports he has
Speaker 2: heard about Egyptian worship in light of Greek religion.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's clearly a lot going on, like using
Speaker 1: Greek religion to try and understand what individuals in this
Speaker 1: region and are worshiping going. You know, there's so many
Speaker 1: ways that the information here can become skewed. We have
Speaker 1: this veiled reference to I believe other critics have pointed
Speaker 1: out that he's referencing a supposed beast reality in worship
Speaker 1: and so forth. So already we're engaging in various levels
Speaker 1: of mis interpretation and perhaps slander. Now. As Geraldine Pinch
Speaker 1: explains in her excellent book Egyptian Mythology, the word for
Speaker 1: ram bah and the word for soul or manifestation sound
Speaker 1: much the same in Egyptian to the ancient Egyptians, so
Speaker 1: they were often regarded as manifestations of other deities such
Speaker 1: as Osiris, and Pinch writes quote, the sexual aspect of
Speaker 1: occult admindis made it particularly disliked by early Christians. Benetjedet's
Speaker 1: form as a ram or goat headed man was reinterpreted
Speaker 1: as a devil figure who entered Western tradition as the
Speaker 1: Horned King of the Witches.
Speaker 2: A classic example of literal demonization, taking a god in
Speaker 2: another mythology, in this case one having the head of
Speaker 2: a sheep or a goat, and saying that, well, actually,
Speaker 2: this is just a demon in our mythology, right right.
Speaker 1: But of course it gets more complicated than that. There
Speaker 1: are all these other additional threads going on here. Because
Speaker 1: as for the actual name Goat of Mendes, this is
Speaker 1: the name given by French writer Elfius Levi in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, most likely referencing the writings of Erotodus. The
Speaker 1: most well known image of this particular monstrous humanoid is
Speaker 1: in the eighteen fifty sixth edition of Levi's book Dogma
Speaker 1: and Ritual of High Magic. And as with any many
Speaker 1: examples of divine and occult imagery, the image of Baphame
Speaker 1: here Is, or the Goat of Mendes, is highly symbolic,
Speaker 1: and it's been incorporated into various occult traditions, subcultures, new
Speaker 1: religious movements, and so forth. I think everyone's probably seen
Speaker 1: this is a goat being with the upper body of
Speaker 1: sometimes a female but sometimes like half the chest is female,
Speaker 1: halfs male. They're like black angelic wings, the goat head,
Speaker 1: the pentagram on the forehead, a middle horn that is
Speaker 1: like a torch, various other symbols going on in the image.
Speaker 2: Is loaded with stuff to look at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so, I mean as far as images of
Speaker 1: the divine or the demonic, it's a pretty great one.
Speaker 1: There's lots to focus on, lots to try and figure out.
Speaker 1: And at the very least, you know, as we've discussed
Speaker 1: many times before, the basic symbolism involved here of combining
Speaker 1: beast with man or beast with woman, et cetera. Like,
Speaker 1: it instantly starts forming patterns in the mind. You can't
Speaker 1: look at it and not have some sort of reaction. Oh.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I've noticed this before, but at
Speaker 2: least in Levi's depiction, it incorporates a symbol that is
Speaker 2: like the Cadusius or like the rod of Esclepias. It
Speaker 2: has the rod and the snakes intertwined around it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, as for the name of Baphomet here, this
Speaker 1: gets us into something that we've we've touched on a
Speaker 1: few times on the show before, never devoted like full
Speaker 1: episode to it, but it involves the Templars, the poor
Speaker 1: Knights of Christ, and the Temple of Solomon. So just
Speaker 1: to get the basics out here again, this was a
Speaker 1: religious military order of the Catholic Church during the Crusades,
Speaker 1: which ran about roughly ten ninety five through twelve ninety one.
Speaker 1: See they were This organization was intended to serve as
Speaker 1: a way to protect pilgrims on their way to the
Speaker 1: Holy Lands, but a sort of power creep occurred. They
Speaker 1: were given free rein to move across borders, They were
Speaker 1: made exempt from taxes and ended up playing key military
Speaker 1: roles in various battles of the Crusades, and even the
Speaker 1: warriors became important, managing the movement of funds across vast
Speaker 1: distances that were involved in the Crusades and setting up
Speaker 1: a kind of proto banking system. They became powerful, and
Speaker 1: so they made powerful enemies. And as the Crusades failed,
Speaker 1: the Templars were blamed, and finally Philip the Fourth of France,
Speaker 1: with the aid of Pope Clement the Fifth, who was
Speaker 1: then based in France, they suppressed the order and falsely
Speaker 1: accused them, or generally every I think most sources and
Speaker 1: historians agree that these are false or trumped up charges
Speaker 1: of blasphemy and heresy, saying that, among other things, they
Speaker 1: worshiped a severed head called Bahamet and there's a whole
Speaker 1: litany of charges against them. Some of them were burned
Speaker 1: at the stake, I think fifty six in total, and
Speaker 1: that included Grand Master Jacques de Malay and others. Other
Speaker 1: members of the order were absorbed into different militaries and
Speaker 1: so forth. Now the name Bahame here is generally understood
Speaker 1: be a French corruption of the name Muhammad. The monstrous
Speaker 1: templar god Baphomet is therefore a product of trumped up
Speaker 1: charges that the templars had converted to the Islamic faith
Speaker 1: of their enemies, and the French and papal accusers invoked
Speaker 1: this fanciful and grotesque degradation of Islam to make their case, because,
Speaker 1: to be clear, nowhere in Islamic traditions do you find
Speaker 1: a creature like this.
Speaker 2: So it's essentially the monster at the heart of a
Speaker 2: xenophobic conspiracy theory created to slander one's political enemies. In
Speaker 2: the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: Yes, pretty much. And there's a lot more to all
Speaker 1: of this as well, and certainly when you get into
Speaker 1: writings about the templars, there are added theories, some perhaps
Speaker 1: worth talking about, some worth skipping over unless you're engaging
Speaker 1: in just like pure entertainment, I suppose. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: seems to be the most straightforward explanation. And it is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting how in this you have something that
Speaker 1: is put together as a corruption, as a slander, and
Speaker 1: over time it kind of takes on life of its own.
Speaker 1: It becomes used as a symbol of liberation, it becomes
Speaker 1: used as a symbol of a rebellion against organized religion,
Speaker 1: it becomes used as a part of new religious movements.
Speaker 1: Even so, it's always fascinating the life of symbols and
Speaker 1: the life of ideas like this.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of rebellion, there is one more biological feature
Speaker 2: of goats that I wanted to talk about. If you're ready, Robert,
Speaker 2: or are you ready to get into goat intelligence, let's
Speaker 2: do it. I think this one is interesting because while
Speaker 2: I don't think this is a primary reason that goats
Speaker 2: would be identified with devils or with the legions of Hell,
Speaker 2: I do think there is some interesting resonances here, and
Speaker 2: we can come back to that. But basically I was
Speaker 2: just thinking, what is more identified with evil than intelligence? Right,
Speaker 2: because intelligence is often associated with a tendency toward rebellion
Speaker 2: or a tendency maybe to think a little too critically
Speaker 2: about what somebody is telling you to do. And while
Speaker 2: goats are not generally a species known for how smart
Speaker 2: they are, there's some evidence that at least in some ways,
Speaker 2: they might be more clever than we give them credit for,
Speaker 2: but that it's also a kind of intelligence that is
Speaker 2: sort of alien to human primate intelligence. So I want
Speaker 2: to look at a paper by LEDF. Briefer at All
Speaker 2: published in Frontiers in Zoology called Goats excel at Learning
Speaker 2: and Remembering, a highly novel cognitive task, published in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen to explain the context of what the authors were
Speaker 2: trying to figure out here. They begin by highlighting a
Speaker 2: couple of competing frameworks for explaining the evolution of higher intelligence.
Speaker 2: One you might call the social intelligence hypothesis, and the
Speaker 2: other you might call the ecological competence hypothesis. The social
Speaker 2: hypothesis argues that the evolution of intelligence and higher cognition
Speaker 2: is primarily for managing relationships between individuals within a social species.
Speaker 2: So there are obvious huge survival benefits to being social
Speaker 2: and working together, and I think there's a very good
Speaker 2: case to be made that that is what primarily explains
Speaker 2: the success of humans as a species of animal. But
Speaker 2: there are also a lot of unique problems that arise
Speaker 2: when animals congregate in social groups and perform or try
Speaker 2: to perform any cooperative behaviors. The social hypothesis would say
Speaker 2: that animals need intelligence in order to get as many
Speaker 2: benefits as possible from social cooperation and to negate the
Speaker 2: possible downsides of social cooperation, so to do things like
Speaker 2: maintain group cohesion and reduce conflict between group members. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the competing ecological competence hypothesis would say that the evolution
Speaker 2: of intelligence is mainly for increasing survival advantage when faced
Speaker 2: with the problems posed by the environment. In a sense,
Speaker 2: the world is a puzzle, and the better you are
Speaker 2: at solving that puzzle, the more likely you are to survive.
Speaker 2: So examples would be finding ways to extract difficult to
Speaker 2: access nutrition during foraging, remembering the locations of important resources
Speaker 2: and threats, and things like that. And these views would
Speaker 2: tend to also have implications for the type of learning
Speaker 2: that we see in different animals because creatures with social
Speaker 2: intelligence tend to be capable of social learning. This is
Speaker 2: a very important concept. Social learning is the ability to
Speaker 2: learn not only by doing, but to learn by watching others.
Speaker 2: So when you learn how to do a task by
Speaker 2: observing someone else doing it, that's social learning, and it's
Speaker 2: a very important ability. That is arguably what makes it
Speaker 2: possible for human beings to have technology, civilization, and culture.
Speaker 2: Animals with the largest brains and the most advanced cognition
Speaker 2: tend to usually be social animals, and the authors right
Speaker 2: that quote. The prevalent view today is that intelligent species
Speaker 2: should excel at social learning. But the authors argue that
Speaker 2: a lot of this research is focused on primates, which
Speaker 2: we already know are very smart, they have relatively large brains,
Speaker 2: and we already know they're very social. But what would
Speaker 2: happen if we studied this on this question on relatively
Speaker 2: smaller brained mammals. What if we test this theory on
Speaker 2: the goat. Goats have a few interesting characteristics. They not
Speaker 2: only have relatively smaller brains than primates. Also, the domestication
Speaker 2: process itself tends to lead to a decrease in brain
Speaker 2: size when compared to wild ancestors, I mean domestic animals
Speaker 2: have fewer puzzles to solve, let's say, and this could
Speaker 2: also affect cognition and the author's write quote. Goats possess
Speaker 2: several features commonly associated with advanced cognition, such as successful
Speaker 2: colonization of new environments and complex fission fusion societies. To
Speaker 2: briefly explain both of those, I guess colonization of new
Speaker 2: environments is fairly self explanatory. I mean, you know goats
Speaker 2: that have a pretty adventurous relationship with the natural world,
Speaker 2: and they can they can spread into areas where it's
Speaker 2: harder for other animals to survive, but they thrive there,
Speaker 2: so that they're they're getting something out of the environment
Speaker 2: that some other animals can't quite get. But the other
Speaker 2: thing that's interesting is the complex fission fusion societies. This
Speaker 2: means animals that live together in groups, but they are
Speaker 2: able to sort of alter those groups in a fluid
Speaker 2: way and then come back together. So an example would
Speaker 2: be humans live in fission fusion societies. We live in groups,
Speaker 2: but those groups separate off into subgroups. They separate, and
Speaker 2: they come back together. The groups change sizes. People separate
Speaker 2: on their own and do different tasks and then rejoin.
Speaker 2: That's fission fusion. So the authors here tested out goat
Speaker 2: intelligence and memory on what they call a food box
Speaker 2: cognitive challenge pretty much a puzzle box with a special
Speaker 2: lever that a goat had to learn how to operate
Speaker 2: in order to access food, and there were different conditions
Speaker 2: in this experiment. Would it make a difference to a
Speaker 2: goat's ability to learn how to use this box if
Speaker 2: the goat were able to watch another goat opening the
Speaker 2: box successfully aka social learning? And the authors in their
Speaker 2: result section right quote the majority of trained goats nine
Speaker 2: out of twelve, successfully learned the task quickly on average
Speaker 2: within twelve trials at intervals of up to ten months.
Speaker 2: They saw the task within two minutes, indicating excellent long
Speaker 2: term memory. The goats did not learn the task faster
Speaker 2: after observing a demonstrator than if they did not have
Speaker 2: that opportunity. This indicates that they learned through individual rather
Speaker 2: than social learning. So goats pretty smart. They learn the
Speaker 2: task pretty well, they can solve the puzzle most of
Speaker 2: the time, and they're able to remember that solution pretty
Speaker 2: well in the long term. Ten months later, he give
Speaker 2: them another puzzle box. They get into it pretty fast.
Speaker 2: But the goats did not seem to benefit from watching
Speaker 2: the struggles of other goats at all, so they did
Speaker 2: not display signs of social learning. And I think that's
Speaker 2: kind of interesting because goats are to some degree social
Speaker 2: they live in herds, but biologically they are not oriented
Speaker 2: to learn in a cooperative way. They can't learn, at
Speaker 2: least according to this finding, by watching other goats do
Speaker 2: the way we can. And the authors say that this
Speaker 2: would provide some evidence that the evolution of goat cognition
Speaker 2: is driven more by ecological competence pressure than by social
Speaker 2: intelligence pressure. So they think, you know, what's pushing goats
Speaker 2: to to be able to think more efficiently is probably
Speaker 2: more the stuff about trying to extract solve puzzles in
Speaker 2: the environment. How do you extract the maximum amount of
Speaker 2: forging resources from this area? How do you remember where
Speaker 2: caches of food are? How do you remember where threats are?
Speaker 2: And things like that, rather than using that intelligence to
Speaker 2: try to maintain relationships within the group like you might
Speaker 2: see in chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that makes sense. Based on my limited experience
Speaker 1: with with goat mischief, it tends to be things like
Speaker 1: you're at a petting zoo and oh, you have a
Speaker 1: map of the zoo sticking out of your pocket. Somebody
Speaker 1: decides to sneak that out of your pocket and start
Speaker 1: eating it, you know, Or I've spoken.
Speaker 2: That's problem solving, that has problem solving.
Speaker 1: It's curiosity, it's pure curiosity. Is it food? I shall investigate.
Speaker 1: I know other situations that have come up from some
Speaker 1: goat farmers that I've spoken to in the past have
Speaker 1: been like the goat wants to find out how to
Speaker 1: get on top of something and doing that may well
Speaker 1: find its way out of an enclosure.
Speaker 2: So that sort of thing, right, so clever problem solving
Speaker 2: within the physical space, but less so within the social arena.
Speaker 2: So one might be tempted to say that crafty antisocial
Speaker 2: goats cast long in sinister shadows. However, I wanted to
Speaker 2: put another weight on the scale, sort of on the
Speaker 2: other side of the scale. And this was a study
Speaker 2: I was looking at by Christian Nowroth at All published
Speaker 2: in Biology Letters in twenty sixteen called goats display audience
Speaker 2: dependent human directed gazing behavior in a problem solving task.
Speaker 2: And the background of this one is the observation that okay, domestication.
Speaker 2: When you domesticate a wild animal, this clearly affects the
Speaker 2: animal's brain and its cognition. A domestic dog simply does
Speaker 2: not think and solve problems the same way its nearest
Speaker 2: wild relative. Would you know, dog thinking is way different
Speaker 2: than wolf thinking. But how much of this difference is
Speaker 2: a result of straight domestication and how much is the
Speaker 2: result of the fact that dogs are domesticated specifically as companions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, certainly we get into the whole scenario where
Speaker 1: we often talk about dogs and cats and other close
Speaker 1: domesticated animals as we talk about how they look at humans,
Speaker 1: what do they think humans are? And I know there
Speaker 1: are different interpretations, but I know that it's often said, well,
Speaker 1: like a cat thinks you may think that you are
Speaker 1: another cat. I've heard, you know, they think you're another kitten,
Speaker 1: or they think you're its mom, that sort of thing. Dogs,
Speaker 1: I believe, tend to look at their humans kind of
Speaker 1: like their dogs.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, to some extent, I mean you can tell
Speaker 2: that there is a there's a very natural, inclusive kind
Speaker 2: of social relationship with dogs to humans, so they acclimatize
Speaker 2: easily to humans.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, there seems to be a kind
Speaker 2: of special thing with humans, right, where like you have
Speaker 2: these studies where you give a dog a puzzle that
Speaker 2: it cannot solve, like it can't get the treat out
Speaker 2: of the puzzle box, And is it going to look
Speaker 2: at the other dog in the room for help or
Speaker 2: look at the human for help? It's going to look
Speaker 2: at the human.
Speaker 1: Right right. And I don't have any studies to back
Speaker 1: this up, but I mean this seems to be the
Speaker 1: case with cats as well. Like the cats will come
Speaker 1: to the human, they will use their special meal that
Speaker 1: is a way of communicating with the humans, as if
Speaker 1: they are like the mama cat that will fix things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but with a goat. Yeah, where do we go with that? Because,
Speaker 1: as we've already established, like there's a different underlying social dynamic.
Speaker 2: Right, But what the authors here found, just to read
Speaker 2: from their abstract, they say, quote, we investigated human directed
Speaker 2: behavior in an unsolvable problem to in a domestic but
Speaker 2: non companion species goats. Okay, so they're giving goats sort
Speaker 2: of like a puzzle box that they can't solve. There's
Speaker 2: clearly an outcome they want, but they can't achieve it
Speaker 2: on their own. It's not like they, you know, the
Speaker 2: lever that they could figure out with few tries in
Speaker 2: the other experiment. They can't win this game, so the
Speaker 2: author's write quote. During the test goats experienced a forward
Speaker 2: facing or an away facing person, they gazed toward the
Speaker 2: forward facing person earlier and for longer, and showed more
Speaker 2: gaze alterations and a lower latency until the first gaze
Speaker 2: alteration when the person was forward facing. Our results provide
Speaker 2: strong evidence for audience dependent, human directed visual orienting behavior
Speaker 2: in the species that was domesticated primarily for production. And
Speaker 2: they also say their results quote show similarities with the
Speaker 2: referential and intentional communicative behavior exhibited by domestic companion animals
Speaker 2: such as do horses. This indicates the domestication has a
Speaker 2: much broader impact on heterospecific communication than previously believed. So
Speaker 2: the study is finding that even though goats were domesticated
Speaker 2: for production for agriculture, meat, milk, hide, and fur things
Speaker 2: like that, as opposed to dogs, which were domesticated as
Speaker 2: companions and helpers. Nevertheless, goats do this dog like thing.
Speaker 2: When they have this unsolvable problem task. They are more
Speaker 2: likely to look up for presumably for help at a
Speaker 2: human who is looking at them as opposed to the
Speaker 2: control of a human that is looking away from them.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of the impact of the goatherd yeah,
Speaker 1: over the goat.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't know exactly what all this adds up
Speaker 2: to about, you know, how this would affect humans over
Speaker 2: the years looking at the goats they're familiar with, and
Speaker 2: whether they would imagine that this goat is having crafty,
Speaker 2: devilish designs on them or is thinking impure thoughts. But
Speaker 2: I did find it interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like maybe there is a long underlying realization that
Speaker 1: the goat thinks and behaves differently when we're looking at
Speaker 1: it as opposed to when we're not looking at it,
Speaker 1: which reminds me of that ridiculous idea that we folks
Speaker 1: will tell that we brought up in the last episode
Speaker 1: about how you can't keep tracking the goat's not even
Speaker 1: there all the time. Sometimes it's there, but the rest
Speaker 1: of the time it's going to hell so that Satan
Speaker 1: can clean its beard for it.
Speaker 2: You know what you call that, It's a fission fusion society.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like, all right, what's your day look like, Carl, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat a bunch of a bunch of grass.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna climb some rocks and then oh, I've got
Speaker 1: I've got I've got a one PM with Satan. Got
Speaker 1: to get this beard taken care of now. As previously mentioned, goats,
Speaker 1: of course, are really good at figuring out how to
Speaker 1: make use of new and environments. And as a result,
Speaker 1: as a result of that reality and a result of
Speaker 1: human domestication of the animals, goats are a common sight
Speaker 1: all over the world. They're one of our oldest domesticated animals.
Speaker 1: As we discussed in the first episode, They've traveled long
Speaker 1: and far with us. And yeah, the goat is especially
Speaker 1: good at sustaining itself even in places where nothing like
Speaker 1: the goat has ever lived. And I want to go
Speaker 1: to a particular place. And part of this is because
Speaker 1: I just physically return from this place, and so it's
Speaker 1: on my mind a lot. But I want to go
Speaker 1: to the Galapagos Archipelago. This is a cluster of volcanic
Speaker 1: islands located five hundred and sixty three miles or nine
Speaker 1: hundred and six kilometers off the coast of Ecuador. It's
Speaker 1: a place famous for its biodiversity and for the examples
Speaker 1: of evolution found there in various species, many found nowhere
Speaker 1: else in the world, that have evolved to thrive in
Speaker 1: isolated environments. And while there is some dispute over whether
Speaker 1: the Inca ever reached the island, we can be certain
Speaker 1: that Europeans discovered the islands in fifteen thirty five, and
Speaker 1: outside of Charles Darwin's visit to the island three hundred
Speaker 1: years later, the history of human contact with the island
Speaker 1: has frequently been a bloody one, entailing at times penal colonies,
Speaker 1: utopian communities, whalers and pirates. Sailors infamously made off with
Speaker 1: many of the smaller female Galapagos tortoises, which they used
Speaker 1: to restock their food supplies of these islands, and later
Speaker 1: these sailors that were visiting the Galapagos Islands would see
Speaker 1: the islands with food species like goats and pigs, so
Speaker 1: drop off some goats and pigs, knowing that these are
Speaker 1: hardy creatures that will find out how to survive, that
Speaker 1: will breed, and then when you drop back by, we
Speaker 1: just send some of some sailors ashore and say, hey,
Speaker 1: go get me some goat meat. Go get me some
Speaker 1: pig meat.
Speaker 2: Can you bring back thirty to fifty faral hogs.
Speaker 1: And given how good these creatures were at thriving in
Speaker 1: new environments, and given that these islands had never seen
Speaker 1: goats or pigs before, yeah, they did quite well. And
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, this sort of willful introduction of
Speaker 1: invasive species had a huge negative impact on the environment.
Speaker 1: In addition to feral goats and pigs, also feral cats
Speaker 1: feral cattle have along been an issue along with of
Speaker 1: course rats, Cats are of course terrific killers of birds.
Speaker 1: Pigs will consume hidden eggs, including Glopaco's tortoise eggs, iguana eggs, etc.
Speaker 1: And our problems in other parts of the world as well.
Speaker 1: But you might well wonder why feral donkeys and especially
Speaker 1: feral goats would be an issue. Like what ultimately is
Speaker 1: so destructive about the goat? Yeah, well, think back to
Speaker 1: the browsing dietary habits of the goat that we discussed
Speaker 1: in the first episode. Again, the goat excels at consuming
Speaker 1: vegetation and ultimately actually outperforms the giant Galapagos tortoise, munching
Speaker 1: down parts of the plant that would ultimately be inaccessible
Speaker 1: to the tortoise and in doing so, they also end
Speaker 1: up loosening the underlying soil. They also, along with donkeys
Speaker 1: and cattle, can trample eggs for the eggs as well
Speaker 1: as just young tortoises, feral pigs, dogs, cats, and black
Speaker 1: rats can serve as deadly predators, and so for these
Speaker 1: reasons along with human hunting, we saw the extinction of
Speaker 1: the Floriana Island subspecies of the Glapagos tortoise during the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, and of course all of the Galapagos
Speaker 1: tortoises have kind of had an uphill battle to regain
Speaker 1: successful numbers. Another important thing to keep in mind here,
Speaker 1: and this reminds me of our discussions of the moa,
Speaker 1: the giant flightless bird in the past. We have to
Speaker 1: remember that, okay, Glapagos tortoises are notoriously slow, but they
Speaker 1: do move around quite a bit, and aided by a
Speaker 1: slow digestion, they're able to spread seeds across vast distances.
Speaker 1: So the Galapagos tortoise isn't just this amazing curiosity to
Speaker 1: be found on the Glapcos Islands. They're a crucial part
Speaker 1: of island ecology. They've evolved to thrive within these isolated ecosystems,
Speaker 1: and those ecosystems have evolved to depend upon them and
Speaker 1: to live alongside them. There are other examples of this
Speaker 1: as well, like one in particular, you see these very
Speaker 1: tall cactus varieties that have evolved to climb high enough
Speaker 1: to where they're above the tortoise's reach, and then you'll see,
Speaker 1: you know, all the fruiting parts of the cactus up there,
Speaker 1: and they'll be more like this hard bark on the
Speaker 1: lower portions of it, a very tall cacti. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: we end up with this situation where on we have
Speaker 1: we have islands here that have lots of goats, and
Speaker 1: the goats are destructive. The goats are in competition with
Speaker 1: the animals that we want to help, that we want
Speaker 1: to see survive, and have no other place in the
Speaker 1: world where they can survive, where they can call home.
Speaker 1: And so this led to goat removal efforts, a war
Speaker 1: on goats. And there had been prior goat removal efforts
Speaker 1: in other islands, but this was the largest at this
Speaker 1: point in history. We're getting into the nineteen nineties here,
Speaker 1: So according to the Galapagos Conservancy quote, prior to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, the largest island with a successful goat eradication
Speaker 1: was Auckland Island in New Zealand, where only one hundred
Speaker 1: and five goats occupied a mere four thousand hectares. The
Speaker 1: next two the largest islands with successful goat eradications were
Speaker 1: Lenai in Hawaii and San Clemente Island in California. And
Speaker 1: this and San Clemente Island they removed apparently twenty nine
Speaker 1: thousand goats.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah. By the late twentieth century, some real movements
Speaker 1: were being made to eradicate feral populations from the Galapagos Islands.
Speaker 1: This included the nineteen ninety seven Project Isabella Plan, which
Speaker 1: aimed to eradicate goats and donkeys from northern Isabella Island,
Speaker 1: also pigs, goats and donkeys from Santiago Island and goats
Speaker 1: from Penta Island. And with international funding, they waged a
Speaker 1: war against the goats and their feral kin and the
Speaker 1: results are pretty staggering. By two thousand and four, eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand pigs were removed from Santiago Island. The same year,
Speaker 1: roughly fifty five thousand goats were eliminated on Isabella. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting when you start, when you start getting into
Speaker 1: this sort of problem. When you have thousands, tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of goats, how do you get rid of them?
Speaker 1: How do you round them all up? I'm to understand
Speaker 1: some of this was done via aerial hunting and some
Speaker 1: of the pig removal. I think it still goes on today.
Speaker 1: I'm to understand with hunting efforts, but with the goats,
Speaker 1: they used judas goats to help carry this out, some
Speaker 1: seven hundred and seventy of them. Now what is a
Speaker 1: judas goat, you might ask, Well, these are trained goats,
Speaker 1: and in these efforts, they are also sterilized goats, because
Speaker 1: you don't you're not going to solve your goat problem
Speaker 1: by releasing seven hundred and seventy greatable goats into the population.
Speaker 1: But these are trained goats that there were traditionally used
Speaker 1: in previous times to lead sheep to slaughter, but they
Speaker 1: can also be used to lead feral goats to their destruction.
Speaker 1: So in the case of the Galapagos efforts, sterilized goats
Speaker 1: were used. And yeah, yeah, they were used to help
Speaker 1: round up many of these goats so that they could
Speaker 1: be eliminated. But I think this whole scenario is it's
Speaker 1: kind of a testament to so many of the properties
Speaker 1: of the goat that we've discussed, their tenacity, their great
Speaker 1: ability to thrive in an environment, and in this case,
Speaker 1: they're too good at it. Again, they just outperform everything
Speaker 1: that's already there. Then you have to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: And how do you wrangle them up? Well, you've got
Speaker 1: to use goat against goat. You've got to You've got
Speaker 1: to enlist trader goats or Judas goats to go out
Speaker 1: there and help you lead them in to the kill.
Speaker 2: I had heard the phrase judas goat before, but I
Speaker 2: don't think I ever knew what that meant. So it's
Speaker 2: a goat that it takes advantage of the social herding
Speaker 2: behaviors of goats by being trained by humans to lead
Speaker 2: goats where you want them to go off into a
Speaker 2: place that's not in the interest of goats themselves.
Speaker 1: Right, right, so that they can be rounded up and
Speaker 1: in this case eliminated. And I believe that they still
Speaker 1: keep Judas goats around on some of these islands for
Speaker 1: monitoring purposes.
Speaker 2: I wonder, how do you train a goat that other
Speaker 2: goats really want to follow? Like, what is the most
Speaker 2: followable type of goat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I didn't go in deep and
Speaker 1: of like the making of a Judas goat, Like, how
Speaker 1: does it come together? Since you're training an animal to
Speaker 1: betray it's its own species, it instantly you can't help
Speaker 1: an anthropomorphize the scenario when you start thinking of various
Speaker 1: episodes of the Outer Limits and imagining like aliens brainwashing
Speaker 1: human captives so that they'll betray their the human species
Speaker 1: or something. But I don't think it's quite that complicated.
Speaker 1: But thank goodness, we can do it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: think of other problems species like the rat. To my knowledge,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a Judas rat. The rats
Speaker 1: are too clever for that. I suppose we've got to
Speaker 1: resort to, in some cases more basic methods, but also
Speaker 1: methods that are perhaps just incapable of solving a large
Speaker 1: scale rat problem. All right, Well, as we reach the
Speaker 1: end of these three episodes, how does this change the
Speaker 1: way we feel about goats?
Speaker 2: But change is nothing for me. My allegiances to the
Speaker 2: goat and to the goat alone as it has always been.
Speaker 1: Well, obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 1: about all of this. Yeah, did these episodes change the
Speaker 1: way you think about goats. Yeah, perhaps, perhaps not. And
Speaker 1: of course I feel like we do have listeners who
Speaker 1: raise goats, or have raised goats, or have been around goats.
Speaker 1: I'm almost certain of it, if I'm thinking, if I'm
Speaker 1: remembering correctly. So if you out there, if you are
Speaker 1: a goatherd, we would love to hear from you. Let
Speaker 1: us know what your thoughts are about the way of
Speaker 1: the goat. So, if you've ever worked at a petting zoo,
Speaker 1: if you have any experience with goats, the lines up
Speaker 1: with anything we've discussed here right in, and we'll discuss
Speaker 1: them on future episodes of Listener Mail. It's also not
Speaker 1: impossible there'll be another episode concerning goats in the not
Speaker 1: too distant future, because we were just wrapping up our
Speaker 1: work on this and I got a press release from
Speaker 1: somebody who had it like a new study regarding the
Speaker 1: behavior of goats and rams, and it's like, yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh man, maybe I'll have to Maybe we'll have to
Speaker 1: have them on the show and chat with them. So
Speaker 1: this may not be the end of the goats in
Speaker 1: the long run, but it is the end of this
Speaker 1: three part series. Oki Dokie as a reminder you can
Speaker 1: find all the episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We
Speaker 1: are primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays with listener mail episodes and Mondays. On Wednesdays
Speaker 1: we do a short form monster fact or artifact episode,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do a little something called Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact, stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.