Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going
Speaker 1: into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 1: This one was part one of our series on the Minotaur,
Speaker 1: originally published October six. Every nine years, nine men come
Speaker 1: into the house so that I can free them from
Speaker 1: all evil. I hear their footsteps or their voices far
Speaker 1: away in the galleries of stone, and I run joyously
Speaker 1: to find them. The ceremony lasts but a few minutes.
Speaker 1: One after another, they fall, without my ever having to
Speaker 1: bloody my hands. Where they fall, they remain, and their
Speaker 1: bodies helped distinguish one gallery from the others. I do
Speaker 1: not know how many there have been, but I do
Speaker 1: know that one of them predicted as he died that
Speaker 1: someday my redeemer would come. Since then, there has been
Speaker 1: no pain for me in solitude, because I know that
Speaker 1: my Redeemer lives, and in the end he will rise
Speaker 1: and stand above the dust. If my ear could hear
Speaker 1: every sound in the world, I would hear his footsteps.
Speaker 1: I hope he takes me to a place with fewer
Speaker 1: galleries and fewer doors. What will my Redeemer be like
Speaker 1: I wonder will he be bull or man? Could he
Speaker 1: possibly be a bull with the face of a man?
Speaker 1: Or will he be like me? Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind? Production of my Heart Radio album Hey
Speaker 1: you Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's been
Speaker 1: a long time coming. We finally enter a labyrinth of
Speaker 1: the Minotaur. That's right. We're gonna try and leave string
Speaker 1: behind us as we go through these episodes so that
Speaker 1: you can find your way back out again. But we
Speaker 1: figured this would be a perfect journey to take during
Speaker 1: October when we frequently engage on Halloween themed episodes. Now,
Speaker 1: that cold opening I want to point out was from
Speaker 1: the just fabulous short story The House of Hysterian by
Speaker 1: Johey Luis Borges. This one is translated by Andrew Hurley
Speaker 1: and I got this out of the Book of Collected Fictions,
Speaker 1: which is put out by Penguin. The Minotaur is kind
Speaker 1: of the perfect monster. I think the Minotaur has very
Speaker 1: often been done injustice by by films and TV shows,
Speaker 1: and one of the few exceptions I can think of
Speaker 1: is Jim Hinson's storyteller, where that minotaur I think has
Speaker 1: has just the right balance of of pain and terror
Speaker 1: and anguish and and and uh and menace uh and
Speaker 1: and I like that. You you don't often get a
Speaker 1: very full look at the minotaur in that story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do. The Hintston team does a fabulous job presenting
Speaker 1: just the physicality of the minotaur. But then also the
Speaker 1: minotaur is written and performed in such a way that
Speaker 1: that he is this true hybrid. You know, he's not
Speaker 1: just beast, but he is also uh human as well.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this juxtaposition in his being. Uh. He
Speaker 1: stands across this threshold because we we we find him
Speaker 1: both both terrifying and tragic. You know, we fear the
Speaker 1: minotaur even as we empathize with it um you know,
Speaker 1: and and even as just an adversary in the myth
Speaker 1: it can it is supposed to combine brute strength and savagery,
Speaker 1: but also with this cunning, predatory nature. That story by
Speaker 1: Jorge Luis Borgees is quite good because it captures the
Speaker 1: pity and the pathos that we should feel for him,
Speaker 1: but it does it in an ironic way. It's like
Speaker 1: that you feel pity for the minotaur because he's deluded,
Speaker 1: like he he has a very his vision of his
Speaker 1: role in in the culture is very confused, like he believes.
Speaker 1: At one point, he says, he gets out of his
Speaker 1: labyrinth and he wanders around in the streets, and he
Speaker 1: says the people are afraid of him, but he believes
Speaker 1: it's because they recognize his royal blood and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, here's the you know, here's the powerful descendant
Speaker 1: of the queen. We must defer. But of course, the
Speaker 1: the implication once you get to the end of the
Speaker 1: story and realize that it's about the minotaur, is that
Speaker 1: I guess they were looking at his horns. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is as as perfect a short story as as
Speaker 1: I can think of, and it is about really about
Speaker 1: the perfect monster. And Borhes of course totally this was this.
Speaker 1: I mean, Borhes was was obsessed by a by labyrinths
Speaker 1: and and the like, so that this is the perfect
Speaker 1: myth for him to consider. And indeed the labyrinth is
Speaker 1: essential to understanding the minotaur. If you take the minotaur
Speaker 1: out of the labyrinth, as so many works of fiction
Speaker 1: and films and games do, and all you have is
Speaker 1: like a pretty cool beast man, but just a beast man.
Speaker 1: For for the myths to work, for the monster to
Speaker 1: have its true terror, and and and all of these
Speaker 1: other emotions were attributing to it, he has to reside
Speaker 1: within this maze, within this artificial habitat that is seemingly
Speaker 1: designed to confuse us. Yeah, in a way, I think
Speaker 1: it's almost a mistake to have made the minotaur into
Speaker 1: um less of a less of a unique sort of
Speaker 1: proper noun type monster, and more into a species of
Speaker 1: monster that you might encounter in Dungeons and Dragons or
Speaker 1: something like that, because it really does it takes him
Speaker 1: out of his proper context, right right, and and and
Speaker 1: we'll come back to Dungeons and Dragons in a bit,
Speaker 1: because I think there are cases where it can be
Speaker 1: it has been some correction applied, But for the most part, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you you take me, you make the minotaur into just
Speaker 1: a species, and you mostly just have a beast man. Uh.
Speaker 1: The setting is key, and in fact is as Borges
Speaker 1: pointed out in another work, The Book of Imaginary Beings.
Speaker 1: This is also from translation by Hurley quote. Indeed, the
Speaker 1: image of the labyrinth and the image of the minotaur
Speaker 1: seemed to go together. It is fitting that at the
Speaker 1: center of a monstrous house there should live a monstrous inhabitant.
Speaker 1: I agree, And I think another uniting theme here is confusion,
Speaker 1: because what is the thing that makes the hybrid scary.
Speaker 1: It's that it is a perversion. It is a confusion
Speaker 1: of nature and what makes the labyrinth scary? Uh, this
Speaker 1: is the I guess, the more classic maze understanding of
Speaker 1: the labyrinth rather than the unidirectional labyrinth. We can get
Speaker 1: into those distinctions in a bit. But the terror there
Speaker 1: is also a confusion. It's a um it's you know,
Speaker 1: having the stability city of nature and of direction, uh
Speaker 1: taken out from under you. You are unmoored when dealing
Speaker 1: with the minotaur because you don't know which way is which,
Speaker 1: and you don't know what kind of beasts this is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and in and in many ways, this basic idea
Speaker 1: reverberates through a lot of our horror fiction. I mean,
Speaker 1: a haunted house has a ghost in it, you know,
Speaker 1: like that, That's that's how it works. So Leatherface lives
Speaker 1: in the crazy chainsaw house, you know, and uh uh,
Speaker 1: Leatherface takes Manhattan would not work right? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: Freddie Krueger occupies the realm of dreams, and even even
Speaker 1: Jason is a is a creature of like of Crystal Lake, right,
Speaker 1: He's a creature of the woods, of this environment that
Speaker 1: is farig into the various teenagers and what have you
Speaker 1: that have that are visiting it. I guess that is
Speaker 1: one reason Jason Takes Manhattan is so funny, is because
Speaker 1: it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever out of his context.
Speaker 1: And you actually see that in the tone of the
Speaker 1: movie because in Jason Takes Manhattan when he's walking around
Speaker 1: times where the movie at that point transitions to become
Speaker 1: a full comedy, like on purpose comedy with jokes where
Speaker 1: he just lifts his mask up at the punks and
Speaker 1: scares them, you know, and everybody's now and the kids
Speaker 1: are saying, like there's a maniac chasing us, and the
Speaker 1: waitress at the diners like welcomed into York. You know,
Speaker 1: I never thought of this before, but I'm now assuming
Speaker 1: that movie came out after Crocodile Dundee, right, probably, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Crocodile Dundee, but he's Jason. Yeah, and yeah, of
Speaker 1: course that's another fish out of water story. But the
Speaker 1: minotaur is very much a fish in its own waters,
Speaker 1: waters that are foreign and dark and mysterious to us.
Speaker 1: And uh and I and I feel like like this
Speaker 1: is a perfect metaphor for so many fears and anxieties
Speaker 1: in life. And that's another huge reason that the Minotar
Speaker 1: myth and things that are like the Minetar myth resonates
Speaker 1: so strongly, the idea of a realm that we're uncertain
Speaker 1: about and the things that might be in there that
Speaker 1: can harm us. I don't think we've said it so far,
Speaker 1: but we should acknowledge this is gonna be a two
Speaker 1: part series because we've wanted to do the Minotaur for years.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it took us so long to
Speaker 1: get around to it, but we're gonna have two episodes
Speaker 1: worth of Minotaur for you. And I think maybe at
Speaker 1: first here we should just tell the myth, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should. We should just remind everybody what the story is,
Speaker 1: who the major players are here, and and what happens
Speaker 1: now before we we get going. I do want to
Speaker 1: to drive home, of course, that the minuetar emergence from
Speaker 1: Greek myth, but as always, myths are amorphous they change
Speaker 1: over time with different tellings, with different peoples and cultures,
Speaker 1: stories merged together, stories split apart, stories are finally recorded
Speaker 1: and then re recorded and translated, etcetera real history, magical thinking,
Speaker 1: and many other factors come into the creation of a myth,
Speaker 1: and the Minotaur is no exception. That's right. And this
Speaker 1: is one thing we talked about when we when we
Speaker 1: did the Medusa episodes earlier this year that I find
Speaker 1: often today, like kids are really insistent on knowing what
Speaker 1: cannon is, like what is what is technically canon and
Speaker 1: what is not cannon. I think that that's a product
Speaker 1: of modern myth making, like star wars and stuff, where
Speaker 1: you've got ideas of intellectual property and like one artist
Speaker 1: or owner's control over what technically really happens in this
Speaker 1: mythical universe. That's not how ancient myths are ancient myths
Speaker 1: or you know, there's a million different versions of them,
Speaker 1: especially with like you know, the ones where we have
Speaker 1: a lot of different sources over hundreds of years, like
Speaker 1: the Greek myths. You know, you've got sources they go
Speaker 1: back to a couple of centuries b c. And you've
Speaker 1: got sources going way up into some of our fullest
Speaker 1: sources are from the earliest centuries c. And so you
Speaker 1: end up with tons of different variations and there's no
Speaker 1: way to pick one and say, oh, this is the
Speaker 1: real version of the myth. Yeah. And I feel like
Speaker 1: it would be healthier for us if we approached things
Speaker 1: like Star Wars in that way. I've thought about this
Speaker 1: a little bit because I've been thinking way too much
Speaker 1: about Star Wars this year. Uh. But yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like the Clone Wars, for instance, this is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a mythic event. Uh. And You're going to
Speaker 1: have various tellings and retellings of it, and there will
Speaker 1: continue to be tellings and retellings of it, and and
Speaker 1: and it's and the thing itself is going to ultimately
Speaker 1: be shapeless and unformed at the center. The fixed canon
Speaker 1: is a product of a society that operates largely on
Speaker 1: the basis of fixed recorded media and has a like
Speaker 1: capitalist conception of intellectual property. I think those things are
Speaker 1: just death to mythology. You gotta let it breathe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and certainly you see even with with with films
Speaker 1: and whatnot, you see that energy there in the in
Speaker 1: the fandom and people that follow. You know, we we
Speaker 1: all want to have our own interpretations of what happened,
Speaker 1: alternate interpretations. There's this yearning for for for for these interpretations,
Speaker 1: for fan fictions, for additional fleshings out of mysteries, And
Speaker 1: I think I think that's basically the same sort of
Speaker 1: energy that you would see go into the deviation and
Speaker 1: the and the recreation and of myths over time. Now,
Speaker 1: having said all that, I guess we should also try
Speaker 1: to identify, though, what are the main sources we would
Speaker 1: be looking at for the closest thing to a canonical
Speaker 1: version of the myth. I guess the closest thing to
Speaker 1: canonical would be the version of the myth that most
Speaker 1: people know right, And a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: the modern understanding of of the menatur story, like as
Speaker 1: without many other myths, comes down down to all its metamorphosis. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so that was one of the key areas we
Speaker 1: turned to here. As always, I I pick up Carol
Speaker 1: Rose's uh books of Monsters and Fairies, because she she
Speaker 1: did such a fabulous job, uh, you know, basically, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, nailing down that the essential myths, uh, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But certainly what we're gonna about to
Speaker 1: roll out. Here is not the It is not the cannon,
Speaker 1: but it is maybe as close to the cannon as
Speaker 1: we can sort of agree on for the purposes of
Speaker 1: moving forward. Yeah, I just wanted to mention another major
Speaker 1: source on this I think would be pseudo Apollodorus. The
Speaker 1: I think this is probably now leave to be like
Speaker 1: a first or second century CE work, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's the Biblioteca. It's tells a lot of classic Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman myths, and it was traditionally attributed to an
Speaker 1: author named a Polydorus. Now that authorship is questioned, so
Speaker 1: it's largely known as pseudo Apolodorus. Now ask your doctors
Speaker 1: about pseudo Apolodorus. Okay, Well, what's the story? Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: So so here we go on the isle of Crete.
Speaker 1: There is a king who, like most kings, desires above
Speaker 1: all else to ensure and extend his reign. And as
Speaker 1: he lives in a world ruled by the gods, and
Speaker 1: is himself not entirely without divine blood, he seeks their support. Now,
Speaker 1: given the creed is surrounded on all sides by the sea,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to reach out to Poseidon. Getting into
Speaker 1: bad company there. Yeah, but you know, kings, they're they're vain, uh,
Speaker 1: and they see themselves as powerful enough to stand beside
Speaker 1: such deities. So he asked the sea god to deliver
Speaker 1: up a sign of his divine to rule, as well
Speaker 1: as a proper beast of sacrifice. And so the god
Speaker 1: does just this. He delivers up this white bull from
Speaker 1: the surf. It comes, comes comes out. It's just why
Speaker 1: it is the frothing sea foam itself. And this beast
Speaker 1: comes to be known as the Cretan Bull. I think
Speaker 1: even this aspect of the myth is very interesting because
Speaker 1: what he does is King Minos asks Poseidon to send
Speaker 1: him a bull that he can then turn around and
Speaker 1: sacrifice to Poseidon. So he wouldn't even really be giving
Speaker 1: of himself. He'd just be sort of returning the favor
Speaker 1: in a way. Well, I guess it does kind of
Speaker 1: remind me of like the the gesture of say you
Speaker 1: you visit somebody's house for dinner, and you bring a
Speaker 1: bottle of wine, and then the expectation is kind of
Speaker 1: like that bottle of wine will then be opened and
Speaker 1: shared with the guests. Okay, I can see that the
Speaker 1: analogy I was thinking of was checking the ball in
Speaker 1: a game of basketball where you've only got one goal.
Speaker 1: Check the ball like the ball, you know, like when
Speaker 1: you you never played half court basketball where you get
Speaker 1: to the when possession changes you, you check the ball,
Speaker 1: you throw it to the other team, you say check,
Speaker 1: and then they throw the ball back to you. It
Speaker 1: is a sign that possession has changed. Okay, I'll take
Speaker 1: your word for it. Okay, So the Cretan Bowl is fabulous,
Speaker 1: is beautiful, and then then factors into some other myths
Speaker 1: as well. But but so splendid is this beast, and
Speaker 1: so self interested is King Minos that he decides to
Speaker 1: keep this trophy for himself and instead to offer up
Speaker 1: the blood sacrifice of immortal bowl so that Poseidon, you know,
Speaker 1: will still be pleased. Uh So, it's like you bring
Speaker 1: a really nice bottle of wine to dinner and the
Speaker 1: host is like, oh thanks, and then gets out the
Speaker 1: two buck chuck exactly. Yeah. But, as we've touched on before,
Speaker 1: Poseidon is certainly nobody to trifle with um, even if
Speaker 1: you do have a little bit of of royal blood
Speaker 1: of Zeus in your system, as is uh supposed to
Speaker 1: be the case with Minos. Okay, Well, we know from
Speaker 1: experience ends that Poseidon does not deal well with slides.
Speaker 1: In fact, Poseidon does not even usually treat people well
Speaker 1: if they've done nothing to him. So he is he's
Speaker 1: bad news. How is he going to react to this?
Speaker 1: Well horribly, But by comparing preparing it to other things,
Speaker 1: Poseidon is done. I mean he he was almost playing
Speaker 1: a little softball here, as we'll see, but that still
Speaker 1: he definitely has the last laugh. So here's what Poseidon did.
Speaker 1: He bewitched Ninos, his wife Pacific, causing her to fall
Speaker 1: in love with the Cretan bull. So she ends up
Speaker 1: belonging to be one with this beast, and she convinces
Speaker 1: the master artificer Daedalus, who was then residing in Crete,
Speaker 1: to craft for her this mechanical bovine likeness that wouldn't
Speaker 1: enable her to then mate with the bull. Yes, so Poseidon,
Speaker 1: by which is pacifically says, you're gonna fall in love
Speaker 1: with this bull? She does. She gets Deadalus to build
Speaker 1: her a robot bull so she can get inside it
Speaker 1: and have sex with the white bull bowl. Yes, and
Speaker 1: this results in a monstrous pregnancy, producing a monstrous hybrid
Speaker 1: part human part bull. This is the Bull of Minos
Speaker 1: or the minotaur, also known as a stereon yes um.
Speaker 1: And certainly that that gets back to the title of
Speaker 1: that Bores story the House of Asteria. Now, the exact
Speaker 1: form of the minotaur was not always well to find, uh.
Speaker 1: The the A. S. Klein translation of The Metamorphosis describes
Speaker 1: a quote strange hybrid creature, a twin form of bull
Speaker 1: and man, and Bores is actually in that passage that
Speaker 1: I read, he's alluding to this a little bit, uh,
Speaker 1: the idea that sometimes there is this idea that maybe
Speaker 1: the minotaur is more like the face of a man
Speaker 1: on the body of a bull rather than the reverse.
Speaker 1: So now we have the minotaur, and it's easy to
Speaker 1: sort of overlook how strange this creature is and exactly
Speaker 1: like what it's mixed lineage means, because this is a
Speaker 1: monster of two worlds yet none. It's the It's a
Speaker 1: product of Minos's blast from me Poseidon's wrath, specifics lust.
Speaker 1: It was an unnatural being, and yet it also was sacred.
Speaker 1: Minos could not simply just kill it and swatter it
Speaker 1: or cast it out back into the sea. You know
Speaker 1: where it's It's it's father, the bull came from. So
Speaker 1: instead he chooses to hide it away, and luckily he
Speaker 1: had in his employ just the right man to design
Speaker 1: a most elegant hiding place. I want to read here
Speaker 1: from the Metamorphoses, the Garthen Dryden translation that talks about
Speaker 1: this part. So of it writes, when Minos, willing to
Speaker 1: conceal the shame that sprung from the reports of tattling fame,
Speaker 1: resolves a dark enclosure to provide, and far from sight,
Speaker 1: the two formed creature hide. Great. Dadalus of Athens was
Speaker 1: the man that made the draft and formed the wondrous plan,
Speaker 1: where rooms within themselves encircled, lie with various windings to
Speaker 1: deceive the eye. As offt meanders, wanton current plays when
Speaker 1: through the Phrygian fields, it loosely strays backward and forward rolls,
Speaker 1: the dimpled tide, seeming at once two different ways to
Speaker 1: glide when circling streams their former banks survey and waters
Speaker 1: past succeeding waters sea now floating to the sea, with
Speaker 1: downward course now pointing upward to its ancient source. Such
Speaker 1: was the work, so intricate, the place that scarce the
Speaker 1: workman all its turns could trace. And Dadalus was puzzled
Speaker 1: how to find the secret ways of what himself designed
Speaker 1: that wonderful. Oh yeah, So he's describing this thing that's
Speaker 1: these galleries, this place that's often described as a maze
Speaker 1: or a labyrinth, as as being as confusing as waters
Speaker 1: that churned back and forth without apparent rhyme or reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love this. So he makes some comparisons to the
Speaker 1: natural world here. But but it is the ultimate unnatural
Speaker 1: environment to house the ultimate unnatural creature. But maybe I
Speaker 1: should read the next two lines because that sets up
Speaker 1: what we're getting into now, these private walls the minotaur
Speaker 1: include who twice was glutted with Athenian blood. That's not
Speaker 1: a good rhyme, is it. I guess that reflects how
Speaker 1: English pronunciation has changed over time. This is a very
Speaker 1: old translation. I think it's ultimately perfect too, that that
Speaker 1: Minos has this constructed, you know, because ultimately, again, think
Speaker 1: of the of the minotaur as a creature representing the
Speaker 1: shaming of Minos. You know, it is the revenge of
Speaker 1: of Poseidon. But a king doesn't really suffer shame like
Speaker 1: you or I. His awfulness is common knowledge, right, he
Speaker 1: he can't just change the central vileness upon which everything spends.
Speaker 1: But he can alter the surrounding reality. He can foster confusion, misinformation.
Speaker 1: He can care apart your faith in the ordered structure
Speaker 1: of cosmos, of society, of law or order. In short,
Speaker 1: a king builds a maze, or certainly he pays a
Speaker 1: great inventor who is, by the way, in the case
Speaker 1: of datal Ists, fleeing his own shame to build it
Speaker 1: for him. Yeah, and so it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: understand exactly what it means that Dadalust, like the great craftsman,
Speaker 1: builds this maze. The other things we know of Dadalust
Speaker 1: for creating are, for example, the wings that he uses
Speaker 1: ultimately to escape the realm of King Minos or Minos.
Speaker 1: I know, we keep saying it both ways, and we're
Speaker 1: probably just gonna keep saying it both ways. I hope
Speaker 1: you're all right with that. But yeah, he makes the
Speaker 1: wings of the wax and the feathers that he and
Speaker 1: Icarus used to to escape the island that doesn't go
Speaker 1: so well for for Icarus. We all know that story.
Speaker 1: But he, you know, and he's also renowned to be,
Speaker 1: you know, the great master craftsman who makes statues that
Speaker 1: are so lifelike. It seems as if they will, they
Speaker 1: will become quickened and walk away. But here he has
Speaker 1: made this, this sort of like palace of Confusion, which
Speaker 1: is ultimately some combination of prison and weapon, and it
Speaker 1: is his ultimate creation, and as as Ovid points out,
Speaker 1: a creation so well designed that Datalus himself barely escapes it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that of course plays more into the myth of Icrius.
Speaker 1: But you're right, Yes, the maze of the King becomes
Speaker 1: not only a defensive ploy but a weapon. And indeed,
Speaker 1: the Minoan maze came to feature into Minos's destructive policies.
Speaker 1: He required tributes sent each year by other lands, including Athens,
Speaker 1: and these individuals were thrown into the labyrinth, where they
Speaker 1: were then hunted through the twisted halls amid the echoing screams,
Speaker 1: until they too confronted the minotaur and were torn to
Speaker 1: bloody shreds and and presumably consumed as well. Yes, so
Speaker 1: they demand tribute from Athens or is it just from
Speaker 1: Athens or is it from other city states as well?
Speaker 1: I believe other city states as well. But of course
Speaker 1: this is the Athens is most central to the telling
Speaker 1: of the myth, right because ultimately the hero of the
Speaker 1: story Theseus will come from Athens. But from Athens every
Speaker 1: nine years they demanded fourteen young people of sacrifice, seven
Speaker 1: maidens and seven young men, and so they would be
Speaker 1: taken away by ship to to the palace of of Minos,
Speaker 1: and then they would be sent into the labyrinth to
Speaker 1: meet their fate as a human sacrifice to the monster.
Speaker 1: Oh and of course the minutar would eat them. I
Speaker 1: don't know if we mentioned that part. The minotaur would
Speaker 1: devour their flesh. Yum, yum. So inter Theseius. Thetheus is
Speaker 1: the fated one, the one, the fated slayer of the monster. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course there's more to his story as well.
Speaker 1: But basically what happens is he takes the place of
Speaker 1: a tribute that is being sent to Crete. Right, He's
Speaker 1: like one of these guys who would be sacrificed. Now
Speaker 1: I'll go instead because I know what I can do.
Speaker 1: I can kill that minotaur. Right. And of course he
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, he's a handsome prince. So what
Speaker 1: does he do he you know, he impresses people with
Speaker 1: his charisma. He makes an ally in Ariadne, the daughter
Speaker 1: of King Minos. Right, it's often said that she falls
Speaker 1: in love with him, though I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: in every telling. So for some reason they end up allied. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh and what does she do? Well? She she
Speaker 1: gives them privileged information. She gives him a ball of
Speaker 1: string to unwind behind him as he travels through the labyrinth,
Speaker 1: and she tells him the various twist and turns that
Speaker 1: will lead him not out of the labyrinth, because that's
Speaker 1: what the string is for, but to the heart of
Speaker 1: the labyrinth, to the place where the minotaur can be found. Uh.
Speaker 1: In other words, turned the hunted into the hunter instead
Speaker 1: of being in there just kind of lost and hunted
Speaker 1: by the minotaur. He'll know how to get straight to
Speaker 1: the monster and kill it. And that's exactly what happens.
Speaker 1: He follows her instructions, he slays the minotaur and then
Speaker 1: follows the string back to the surface. He ends up
Speaker 1: eloping with the daughter of King Minos, but then ultimately
Speaker 1: abandons her, just totally maroons her on an island. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and this is That's another great thing about the
Speaker 1: the Jim Hinson Storyteller episode is that it it definitely
Speaker 1: doesn't just play theseus up. Is this perfect monster killer hero,
Speaker 1: but also shows this, I think, to at least to
Speaker 1: modern interpretations and modern viewers, this unsavory nature of the hero.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about how the story of
Speaker 1: Theseus and the Minotaur has actually so much in common
Speaker 1: with the story of Perseus and Medusa, especially in the
Speaker 1: broad strokes and in the way modern audiences would react
Speaker 1: to it. And you have to imagine, are we reacting
Speaker 1: to the story with different values in a in a
Speaker 1: different way than ancient Greek audiences would have reacted to it.
Speaker 1: But you know, some of the broad contours that are
Speaker 1: the same are starts with Poseidon doing something cruel because
Speaker 1: he's awful, and this cruelty of Poseidon results in the
Speaker 1: creation of a monster. The monster ends up living in
Speaker 1: some kind of secluded underworld where it kills people, but
Speaker 1: only really when they come to its domain. There is
Speaker 1: a young Hero, the son of a king of Sorts.
Speaker 1: Now in Perseus is actually the son of Zeus. Theseus
Speaker 1: is the son of a Gius, the king of Athens,
Speaker 1: but either way the son of a king, the son
Speaker 1: of a king. Hero sets out to kill the monster.
Speaker 1: He receives tools and strategies to help him from other people.
Speaker 1: Perseus gets helped from Athena and Hermi is giving him
Speaker 1: tools and advice that will help him kill Medusa. Theseus
Speaker 1: gets tools and advice from Ariadney and Dadalus that will
Speaker 1: help him kill the monster. The young hero succeeds in
Speaker 1: killing the monster, then turns out, at least on a
Speaker 1: critical reading, to be an absolute jerk. Remember Perseus going
Speaker 1: around just showing the head of Medusa at a random people.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and then like if someone ticks him off,
Speaker 1: he'll just turn him to stone with it. You know.
Speaker 1: He's just kind of rampaging through the aisles, surrounding aisles
Speaker 1: with that thing. Yeah. And Theseus of course abandons Ariadne
Speaker 1: on the on the island, and then in the end,
Speaker 1: at least as a modern critical reader, for some reason,
Speaker 1: I in both stories end up feeling more sympathy for
Speaker 1: the monster. The monster is kind of pitiable. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is this sense in some of the tellings that that
Speaker 1: the and and this is also reflected in Borges retelling
Speaker 1: that the monster doesn't even necessarily put up much of
Speaker 1: a fight, or get to put up much of a fight.
Speaker 1: He is just dispatched by our hero here because you
Speaker 1: have to again, I think you have to think of
Speaker 1: the minotaur not only is an occupant of the maze,
Speaker 1: but a part of the maze, a function of the maze,
Speaker 1: like the killing center of the maze. And via this
Speaker 1: privileged information that he gets Theseus makes himself the center
Speaker 1: of the maze, makes himself the killing function of the
Speaker 1: Manoan maze. Oh and by the way, I also think
Speaker 1: it's fitting that the the that this whole episode ends
Speaker 1: up with with this tragic turn of events for Minos
Speaker 1: his daughter as well, which also feels a part, uh
Speaker 1: somehow of Poseidon's grand design. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And there's more tragedy too, because when um, when Theseus
Speaker 1: is returning home to Athens, his father a Gus gets
Speaker 1: confused about what's happening is the way the boat is
Speaker 1: returning and ends up killing himself throwing himself into the sea. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then that's how we get the name of the
Speaker 1: g and C. Yeah. So there's so many interesting themes
Speaker 1: in this story that that we can get into over
Speaker 1: the next couple of episodes. It deals with, of course,
Speaker 1: this this hybrid bull human monster. Of course, it deals
Speaker 1: with human sacrifice, it deals it deals with mazes, and labyrinths. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of rich territory here, yes, and and
Speaker 1: certainly in a one angle on it too. Is is
Speaker 1: going to be just questions of the the Noan civilization
Speaker 1: of Crete and the Greek perceptions of that civilization. But
Speaker 1: I wanna, I want to stress that the episode following
Speaker 1: this one will get more into that than this episode.
Speaker 1: So just just stay tuned if you have a lot
Speaker 1: of of of of of nagging questions about that aspect
Speaker 1: of the myth. Alright, on that note, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will venture into hell. Alright, we're back. So I want
Speaker 1: to talk a bit about how the figure of the
Speaker 1: minotaur developed after the Greco Roman world. And one example
Speaker 1: that I've come across recently, because I think we've talked
Speaker 1: about this on the show, is that this year Rachel
Speaker 1: and I have been rereading The Divine Comedy, which has
Speaker 1: been surprisingly fun. I know, like to to modern readers
Speaker 1: that can seem kind of weird. Oh really, you want
Speaker 1: to get into all this stuff about you know, medieval
Speaker 1: Catholic theology and politics, But if you have an addition
Speaker 1: that's got really good notes filling you in on the
Speaker 1: historical context is actually a really fun and interesting and
Speaker 1: funny read. We've been reading from several translations. We used
Speaker 1: the Pinske translation of the Inferno. Uh, We've been using
Speaker 1: the Gene Hollander translation of the Purgatorio and the Paradiso,
Speaker 1: but using the notes by John Chiardi, and those notes
Speaker 1: Charity's notes are fantastic. But so the minotaur does appear
Speaker 1: in the Divine Comedy in Hell, of course, and this
Speaker 1: is in Canto twelve, when Dante and his guyed the
Speaker 1: the Latin poet Virgil, are descending into the Seventh Circle
Speaker 1: of Hell. So, of course Virgil is guiding Dante through
Speaker 1: the different realms of the afterlife to sort of educate
Speaker 1: him on what awaits after death and get him to
Speaker 1: repent and turn more fully to God. And so they're
Speaker 1: descending through Hell, and Dante is witnessing all the horrors
Speaker 1: of Hell, and they're going down into the seventh Circle,
Speaker 1: which is reserved for people whose nature is violence. And
Speaker 1: they enter the circle by descending a fallen rock wall.
Speaker 1: And here I just want to read from the RT translation,
Speaker 1: such was the passage down the steep and there at
Speaker 1: the very top at the edge of the broken cleft
Speaker 1: lay spread the infamy of crete, the air of beast reality,
Speaker 1: and the lecherous queen who hid in a wooden cow,
Speaker 1: and when he saw us, he gnawed his own flesh
Speaker 1: in a fit of spleen, And my master mocked, how
Speaker 1: you do pump your breath? Do you think perhaps it
Speaker 1: is the Duke of Athens who, in the world above
Speaker 1: served up your death. Off with you, monster, This one
Speaker 1: does not come instructed by your sister, but of himself
Speaker 1: to observe your punishment in the Lost Kingdom. As a
Speaker 1: bull that breaks its chains just when the knife has
Speaker 1: struck its deathblow, cannot stand nor run, but leaps from
Speaker 1: side to side with its last life. So danced to
Speaker 1: the minotaur, and my shrewd guide cried out, run now
Speaker 1: while he is blind with rage into the past, quick
Speaker 1: and get over the side. This is great. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I love about about like this, this
Speaker 1: particular passage from Inferno, is that it almost is like
Speaker 1: a Looney Tunes cartoon. Yes, you know, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the Inferno is that way.
Speaker 1: It's like they run into a monster or a figure,
Speaker 1: you know, an evil figure or something. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: great part where they come up to plute Us, who's
Speaker 1: clucking at them, and uh, you know there are parts
Speaker 1: where uh, the beasts menacing them in untranslatable languages of Hell,
Speaker 1: you know, the tongue of the Inferno, Poppy, Satan, Aleppe
Speaker 1: and all that great stuff. But uh, but yeah, and
Speaker 1: then and then Virgil will often like mock them, or
Speaker 1: they'll kind of scramble away. And so what Virgil does
Speaker 1: is he gets the minotaur really mad, and he's like
Speaker 1: stomping and huffing like a bull, I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: the like the Loony Tunes bull actually scratching and the
Speaker 1: ground and snorting. And then they scramble over the rocks
Speaker 1: and get away. But I like the implication of them
Speaker 1: scrambling away. This is never fully made clear in the
Speaker 1: Divine Comedy, but it makes me wonder, like, was there
Speaker 1: a possibility that Virgil and Dante could be killed while
Speaker 1: in Hell and would not get to complete the tour
Speaker 1: of the afterlife. I don't know, Um, it's certainly implied.
Speaker 1: You know, there is this sense of danger at times
Speaker 1: where where virgils having to urge him on, and and
Speaker 1: is there is a protector of sorts, so you know,
Speaker 1: in addition to guide uh So, yeah, I always got
Speaker 1: the sense that that that that was a possibility. And
Speaker 1: oh and by the way, um, I was always partial
Speaker 1: to the robert Ian Durling translations of of Inferno and
Speaker 1: U and Purgatory uh as. I recall when I was
Speaker 1: reading these they had not yet come out with up
Speaker 1: or they had not yet published a translation of his
Speaker 1: All of Paradise. But that is out now as well,
Speaker 1: and has been for for years. Oh. Interesting, I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about that translation. I'll have to look into it.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm almost without doing it on purpose,
Speaker 1: becoming a sort of Dante translation nerd this year, just
Speaker 1: because we've been we've been looking at so many different ones.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the details on that translation so much,
Speaker 1: but but when I um, when I studied uh Dante
Speaker 1: a little bit in college, they those were the additions
Speaker 1: that our our teacher recommended. So that's the one we got,
Speaker 1: and I found it quite I think. Earlier, without the
Speaker 1: you know, the aid of a class environment, I had
Speaker 1: tried reading some other translation, like a Penguin translation, and
Speaker 1: I didn't get as much out of it. But I
Speaker 1: really liked these these additions. One thing I will say,
Speaker 1: if you want to make a go of reading The
Speaker 1: Divine Comedy, I think it is absolutely crucial to seek
Speaker 1: out one that has really good notes that absolutely it
Speaker 1: helps explain everything because these books like this is this
Speaker 1: is medieval epic poetry that is full of contemporary political
Speaker 1: and historical and you know, theological mythological references. It's just
Speaker 1: crammed with culture and cultural references that you're not gonna
Speaker 1: understand unless you have some background. But if you do
Speaker 1: get the background, it can become very like interesting and
Speaker 1: funny watching like how you know again, like medieval Florentine
Speaker 1: politics are projected into the afterlife. Oh yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Dante settling old scores and picking at his
Speaker 1: enemies and also like talking about friends who you know,
Speaker 1: tragic things happen to and sort in remembering them like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's a really beautiful work and it
Speaker 1: covers it does. It covers a lot of territory. Once
Speaker 1: you even emerge from just the inferno, you'll feel like
Speaker 1: you've had a crash course in in in the politics
Speaker 1: and uh and uh and and religious and just cultural
Speaker 1: world of the time. Totally. Now, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about a couple of things about this passage that I
Speaker 1: thought were interesting. One of them is, uh, why is
Speaker 1: this where the minotaur is in Hell in the seventh circle?
Speaker 1: I mean, one part is clear, because this is the
Speaker 1: circle of violence, right, One part is clear, it's the
Speaker 1: violence against others. You know, the minotaur kills and eats people.
Speaker 1: But I think there's like a threefold thing going on here,
Speaker 1: which is that the minotaur is depicted as a violent
Speaker 1: against others by killing and eating them, violent against himself
Speaker 1: because it shows him gnawing his own flesh and anger,
Speaker 1: and then finally that this is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that shows up a lot in the inferno. He is
Speaker 1: violent against nature by way of his monstrous hybridity. The
Speaker 1: fact that he's part human and part bull is a
Speaker 1: form of violence. Now you could say that's not really
Speaker 1: the minotaur's fault, but uh. In the in the medieval
Speaker 1: Catholic theology that places people in Dante's Hell, a lot
Speaker 1: of people are there for things that we would say
Speaker 1: are not really their fault, right, right, But this is also,
Speaker 1: interestingly one of the dozens i'd say, probably hundreds of
Speaker 1: instances throughout the Divine Comedy of what I think would
Speaker 1: be called syncretism in any other context. Of course, syncretism
Speaker 1: is the blending or mixing of different religious or cultural traditions. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dante is supposedly writing orthodox Catholic theology and fantasy form,
Speaker 1: but throughout the Divine Comedy he takes as real all
Speaker 1: the gods and heroes and monsters of classical Greek and
Speaker 1: Roman mythology, which would have been considered like Satanic paganism
Speaker 1: in a way by by a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: Christian thinkers. But it seems for Dante, Greco Roman mythology
Speaker 1: is is just sort of rolled straight up into Christianity
Speaker 1: as if they are the same thing and part of
Speaker 1: the same tradition. So hell is full of figures from
Speaker 1: Greek mythology, as if they actually existed and are real figures,
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with with the ramifications of of Christian
Speaker 1: salvation and stuff. Yeah, it is a It is a
Speaker 1: rich hell that Dante creates here, full of full of
Speaker 1: all these mythological figures. Uh, these monsters, also demons and devils,
Speaker 1: but also people he knew, people, he liked, people he hated,
Speaker 1: reviled characters, from recent histories. Uh, yeah, they're all there.
Speaker 1: I just find that so interesting if anybody out there
Speaker 1: is a Dante scholar and wants to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us about the uh syncretistic aspects, like what why
Speaker 1: was it seen as totally acceptable to just essentially take
Speaker 1: all of these classic Greco Roman myths as basically true,
Speaker 1: except unfortunately Odysseus was not afforded Christian salvation. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we could, We could obviously keep going on and on
Speaker 1: about Dante, and we should, we should probably will definitely
Speaker 1: come back to Dante again in the future, and maybe
Speaker 1: we should do a proper episode about about Inferno as well.
Speaker 1: But let's come back to the meat here. Let's come
Speaker 1: back to the minute our. Okay, So maybe we should
Speaker 1: talk about labyrinths and mazes. We alluded earlier to the
Speaker 1: fact that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but sometimes
Speaker 1: they're used to mean very distinct and different things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At times, there's this distinction between a branching assembly of
Speaker 1: artificial paths and halls that are designed to confuse, and
Speaker 1: in some cases these attributes are defined as a maze,
Speaker 1: not a labyrinth. And then on the other hand, there's
Speaker 1: the idea of this complex system that has but one
Speaker 1: path through it. Uh. And this is sometimes described more
Speaker 1: as a pure labyrinth. Uh. We need not get caught
Speaker 1: up too much in the terminology here, because they are
Speaker 1: used interchangeably today. But but this is this idea is
Speaker 1: rather fascinating because you know, first and foremost, a labyrinth
Speaker 1: or maze is generally an artificial environment um or at
Speaker 1: least an artificial reworking of the natural environment in terms
Speaker 1: of things like hedge mazes, hedge labyrinths, etcetera. But in
Speaker 1: in there, in the purer sense of the word, a
Speaker 1: labyrinth or made has no other purpose other than to
Speaker 1: confuse the individual with a complex system or to seamlessly
Speaker 1: guide them through it. So the sort of labyrinth one
Speaker 1: encounters on stones and church courtyards, for instance, there's only
Speaker 1: one way through, there's not You don't have to make
Speaker 1: any decisions. You just follow the path and it will
Speaker 1: lead you through a complex system and back out again.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a mindfulness exercise. Yeah, these are Sometimes the
Speaker 1: terminology used is unicursive versus multi cursive. So like, if
Speaker 1: a labyrinth is the of the unicursive type, it means
Speaker 1: there's only one path. It is very complicated, but you
Speaker 1: can only basically go one direction unless you turn around
Speaker 1: and go back the way you came from. The multi
Speaker 1: cursive would be the ones where you have options about
Speaker 1: which way to turn and can reach dead ends. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In one you you lose your way, and the other
Speaker 1: one you sort of lose your your sense of self. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and so the unicursive labyrinth, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: think how that, like, you know, it could be thought
Speaker 1: of as having metaphorical meanings, Like it's kind of fatalistic
Speaker 1: in a way, there's only one way you can go.
Speaker 1: It's also sort of an an act of submission in
Speaker 1: a way, you're submitting to the designer of the labyrinth
Speaker 1: and saying like, I will just go the only way
Speaker 1: there is to go. Yeah. And what I find interesting
Speaker 1: is that ultimately both of these interpretations work well with
Speaker 1: the minotaur myth. I mean, we we tend to go
Speaker 1: with the version of the Minoan maze or the labyrinth
Speaker 1: that the minetar resides in as being a place of confusion,
Speaker 1: and then the master of confusion is the minotaur that
Speaker 1: lives there. But you know, I also like the idea
Speaker 1: of the labyrinth as a thing that is complex, but
Speaker 1: leads you down one path, and that one path, of course,
Speaker 1: will take you to the mazes kill function the minotar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a different kind of terror. You can instead
Speaker 1: of confusion, you can only go one way and you
Speaker 1: know what lies that way, but you can't go back.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere to go there. Yeah. You can either go
Speaker 1: forward to death or not go at all. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: again the data lists is the you know, the master
Speaker 1: builder here, so you know, you can easily imagine him
Speaker 1: creating this sort of structure that is about delivering people
Speaker 1: under the minotaur. Which do you think Dadalus would have
Speaker 1: been more likely to create? I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: often described explicitly as a maze, a multi cursive maze.
Speaker 1: But if you have the option which is more Dadalus like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, if he's more egotistical, if he's more
Speaker 1: you know, obsessed with his own skill and all that,
Speaker 1: he might want to be the the ultimate controller that
Speaker 1: sets you on a unicursal labyrinth where you know you
Speaker 1: have to go the way he tells you to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, I like, I think I can
Speaker 1: make a case for either way, but ultimately I see
Speaker 1: the Maze of the Minotaur as being a place of multiple,
Speaker 1: multiple branching paths and confusion. Now, I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that you begin to see though, when you
Speaker 1: read about labyrinths and ancient accounts of alleged labyrinths, aside
Speaker 1: from just how diverse the subject is, is that there's
Speaker 1: often a description leveled at certain ancient complexes and uh
Speaker 1: and and temples and structures like that, and over time
Speaker 1: there's a transformation from a place that has another purpose
Speaker 1: but it is also confusing into a place that was
Speaker 1: clearly designed and built to confuse. And perhaps we kind
Speaker 1: of observed the same sort of hyperbole when considering confusing
Speaker 1: store layouts, you know, new cities and more, you know
Speaker 1: where we think, oh man, they just they just made
Speaker 1: this place to drive me crazy. Why is this place
Speaker 1: constructed like this? Um is is like Walmart a maze,
Speaker 1: whereas I Kea is a unicursal labyrinth. It's true, I
Speaker 1: Kia does have that layout where you can you you
Speaker 1: can cut directly through everything, but still they are very
Speaker 1: much guiding your path. So I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: have much experience with Ikea. I went there once and
Speaker 1: I remember it being more more like that there is
Speaker 1: a minotar, they say, but it's called flingbow with an
Speaker 1: ooml out probably. But coming back to what you were
Speaker 1: saying about places with an original use being laid are
Speaker 1: confused for a labyrinth, I think that that actually does
Speaker 1: apply to some possible ruins in Egypt which um have
Speaker 1: been interpreted by some archaeologists, or maybe not archaeologists, by
Speaker 1: some thinkers throughout history as something that was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a confusing maze or labyrinth, but in fact was
Speaker 1: probably just some kind of like temple or burial complex
Speaker 1: that has been you know, massively degraded in a structural
Speaker 1: sense over time and appears confusing to people who are
Speaker 1: unearthing and exploring it. Now, Yeah, this is the case
Speaker 1: of the ancient Egyptian labyrinth, so it was often referred
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in a book by William
Speaker 1: Henry Matthews, A Mazes and uh in Labyrinths. This is
Speaker 1: a siminal work on the subject, but he mentions just
Speaker 1: the the evocative language of of using labyrinth quote a
Speaker 1: structure which evoked so much wonder and admiration in ancient
Speaker 1: times that can hardly fail to have roused the curiosity
Speaker 1: of later generations. And so when he's talking about the
Speaker 1: the ancient ancient Egyptian labyrinth, this is interesting because this
Speaker 1: is the the oldest structure or place that apparently has
Speaker 1: been described in these terms, and it was described by
Speaker 1: the likes of Herodotus Um. Now these these whatever this
Speaker 1: exactly was. It did not survive destruction during Roman times. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it seems though that it was some sort of
Speaker 1: temple structure or some sort of temple compound. It definitely
Speaker 1: was not created just to confuse foreigners, much like um,
Speaker 1: foreign airports that you travel to were not designed just
Speaker 1: to confuse you, even though that is the effects you
Speaker 1: may feel. Um. But at any rate, the thing that
Speaker 1: confuses foreigners becomes a thing that was built to confuse
Speaker 1: them in these tellings. Oh, that's like one of those
Speaker 1: ecocentric biases we've discovered, where you think that the the
Speaker 1: effect a thing has on you is the purpose it
Speaker 1: was intentionally created for. Yeah. Uh. There's a quote that
Speaker 1: gets into some of this too that ran across. This
Speaker 1: is from pet Penelope read Dube from the idea of
Speaker 1: the Labyrinth from classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages. Quote,
Speaker 1: what you see depends on where you stand. And thus,
Speaker 1: at one and the same time, labyrinths are single. There
Speaker 1: is one physical structure and double they simultaneously incorporate order
Speaker 1: and disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity, artistry and chaos.
Speaker 1: Nice much like the minotaur in his double nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I have to say I see another
Speaker 1: common trend as well. If you write about mazes and labyrinths,
Speaker 1: or even if you do a little podcast that covers them. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're doing fiction or nonfiction, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you if you do something about mazes and labyrinths, you
Speaker 1: can end up crafting or traversing this sort of literary
Speaker 1: um maze or labyrinth as well. This is something that's
Speaker 1: that's often you know, cited in these works like just
Speaker 1: straight up either sometimes ingest but other times as part
Speaker 1: of the texture of the piece. Almost more than any
Speaker 1: other physical object or structure in the world, the maze
Speaker 1: or labyrinth just asks you to use it as a metaphor.
Speaker 1: I mean, the maze is time, right, It's like you
Speaker 1: can't see around the corner. Yeah, the maze is time.
Speaker 1: I think that the maze is is the world, but
Speaker 1: it's also our perception of the world. Um And again,
Speaker 1: I think that's why this idea so engages us. There's like,
Speaker 1: there's basically no complex system in the world or in
Speaker 1: our you know, information technology, etcetera that you cannot apply
Speaker 1: the metaphor of the maze and the minotaur too and
Speaker 1: get something memorable out of it. You know, there's like
Speaker 1: any complex system. I don't I don't care if it's
Speaker 1: the law, or politics or or science. I mean that
Speaker 1: whatever it is, there is conceivably a minotaur in there. Alright,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we will be right back. All right, we're back now.
Speaker 1: I think it's time that we talk a little bit
Speaker 1: of minotaur biology because one of the things that I
Speaker 1: have always wondered about the minotaur is why does it
Speaker 1: eat humans? Now, I could imagine if the minotaur was
Speaker 1: not the minotaur, but say the minto croc and it
Speaker 1: had the head of a crocodile, a crocodile that could
Speaker 1: eat a human. And so you could totally understand why
Speaker 1: the human with the head of a crocodile would live
Speaker 1: at the center of a maze and eat fourteen youths
Speaker 1: from Athens every year. But bulls do not normally eat humans.
Speaker 1: A bull is a herbivore. It eats grass, or it
Speaker 1: eats grain, or you know, it can of course eat
Speaker 1: some animal protein supplemented grain if that's what you're feeding it.
Speaker 1: But in the natural world, we do not think of
Speaker 1: bow vines like bulls and cows as hunting and eating
Speaker 1: other animals, certainly not other mammals. So why doesn't the
Speaker 1: minotaur just eat grass? Well, I think maybe we've got
Speaker 1: a good answer for you, and it's along some lines
Speaker 1: that might be familiar to listeners of the show. Now,
Speaker 1: we've already ruined squirrels for you. You know, sometimes a
Speaker 1: squirrel just needs to eat a bird or another rodent.
Speaker 1: How do you like that? Well, we're going to do
Speaker 1: the same thing with cattle, Joe, I am. I am
Speaker 1: happy to report that chipmunks have also developed an appetite
Speaker 1: for the meal worms that I put out for the squirrels.
Speaker 1: Uh um, that's that's been one of my recent observations.
Speaker 1: Uh here in quarantine, more beautiful rodents getting in on
Speaker 1: the animal flesh action. Yeah, but they're adorable when they
Speaker 1: do it. Chipmunks cannot help the adorable But but as
Speaker 1: far as the myth goes, I guess I gathered that
Speaker 1: the minotaur has been starved. He is down there like
Speaker 1: an animal in a pit. Uh, so he's gonna tear
Speaker 1: into whatever he gets. But then, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: of course he is not entirely bull. He has also
Speaker 1: part human in humans eat meat. But yeah, but if
Speaker 1: he was fully human, wouldn't that mean he would eat
Speaker 1: twice as much meat as it It just doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense that like adding part bull to him would make
Speaker 1: him more desiring of human flesh, except in the general
Speaker 1: logic of well, he's a monster, and monsters eat humans,
Speaker 1: so maybe he could also have the head of a
Speaker 1: rabbit and he would eat humans. He would not be
Speaker 1: as terrifying. But yeah. This brings us back to some
Speaker 1: of the best of modern zoology, which is that some
Speaker 1: of the animals, many of the animals that subsist largely
Speaker 1: on plant based food, are actually able to eat meat.
Speaker 1: We now know this in the modern world, especially with
Speaker 1: you know, modern video documentation, you can learn quite a
Speaker 1: bit about what supposedly docile herbivores will do when given
Speaker 1: the opportunity. Uh. And it appears that bovines are no exception.
Speaker 1: So I want to start with a story that was
Speaker 1: reported in Reuters from March seven, two thousand seven. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a dateline Calcutta quote. When dozens of chickens
Speaker 1: went missing from a remote West Bengal village, everyone blamed
Speaker 1: the neighborhood dogs. That would make sense, right, you know,
Speaker 1: the dogs get into the chicken coop. But it continues.
Speaker 1: But Agi Ghosh, the owner of the missing chickens, eventually
Speaker 1: solved the puzzle when he caught his cow, a sacred
Speaker 1: animal for the Hindu family, gobbling up several of them
Speaker 1: at night. That's gobbling up several of the chickens, not
Speaker 1: of the family. We were shocked to see our calf
Speaker 1: eating chickens alive, Ghost told Reuters by phone from chand
Speaker 1: Poor village. The family decided to stand guard at night
Speaker 1: on Monday at the cow shed, which also served as
Speaker 1: a hen coop, after forty eight chickens went missing in
Speaker 1: a month. Instead of the dogs, we watched in horror
Speaker 1: as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal sneak
Speaker 1: to the coop and grabbed the little ones. But the
Speaker 1: precision of a jungle cat, said his brother Gor ghosh uh.
Speaker 1: And then it goes on to describe how a local
Speaker 1: television station in India went to the village to get
Speaker 1: pictures of the cow grabbing and eating a chicken uh
Speaker 1: and uh. Then the article consults me here sat Pati,
Speaker 1: who is a district veterinary officer, who said, quote, we
Speaker 1: think lack of vital minerals in the body is causing
Speaker 1: this behavior. We have taken a look and ask doctors
Speaker 1: to look into the case immediately. The strange behavior is
Speaker 1: possible in some exceptional cases. So it says that hundreds
Speaker 1: of villagers had come to chant poor to Uh to
Speaker 1: watch the cow eat and sometimes eat chickens um. And
Speaker 1: it said that local veterinary authorities believe the cow was
Speaker 1: probably suffering from some kind of disease that made it
Speaker 1: eat these chickens, but ultimately they didn't really know. Now,
Speaker 1: on one hand, I would say, okay, this is a
Speaker 1: Reuters report. I think of Reuter's is very credible reporting.
Speaker 1: But also this story feels very daily mail. You know,
Speaker 1: I I could easily react to this and say this
Speaker 1: is I don't know. I don't trust this reporting except
Speaker 1: that there's video. I don't necessarily recommend people watch it
Speaker 1: because I don't know if if you are inclined to
Speaker 1: feeling bad about watching a live chicken get eaten the
Speaker 1: whole by a cow, if that sounds like something that
Speaker 1: would upset you, don't check out this video. But if
Speaker 1: you're interested, look at it. It just yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: a chicken wanders up in front of the cow and
Speaker 1: the cow just bites it and eats its whole body.
Speaker 1: Oh man, well, you know this this brings a few
Speaker 1: thoughts to mind. First of all, in terms of relatives
Speaker 1: of the cow that eat meat. I mean, now you
Speaker 1: can certainly point you know, not directly, but by you know,
Speaker 1: if a few degrees removed to carnivorous whales. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is interesting, And actually I wish I had looked this up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the ancestors of whales. Of course,
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating things about whale biology is
Speaker 1: that we now know that whales evolved from a creature
Speaker 1: that once dwelt on land. So the the ancestors whales
Speaker 1: going way back were land dwelling tetrapod mammals, four footed
Speaker 1: mammals that walked around on the earth. And we know
Speaker 1: that over millions of years, they gradually adapted and evolved
Speaker 1: to a sea based existence. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: their ancestors on land were carnivorous or not, or if
Speaker 1: they transitioned to eating meat once they became uh full
Speaker 1: time dwellers of the sea. Well this makes me think
Speaker 1: also of horses, because there are tales of horses eating
Speaker 1: meat as well. UM. And I I was not familied
Speaker 1: with this story previously, but even shackledon UM, they explore
Speaker 1: UH and noted his his his pony socks UH, preferring
Speaker 1: a meat based diet in UH. In some in the
Speaker 1: you know, the harsher climates, This would have been in
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight, I believe. Yeah, So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of these little stories here and there, and you
Speaker 1: wonder if you should believe the stories now. In the
Speaker 1: case of the cow in the West Bengal village, there's
Speaker 1: at least video or there's video of a cow eating
Speaker 1: a chicken that I think is video of that cow.
Speaker 1: I can't be a hundred percent certain, but whatever cow
Speaker 1: it is, it's eating a chicken. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any special effects involved. But but but no, apparently this
Speaker 1: is it's not limited to just these few weird cases
Speaker 1: described in the extreme. UH. For example, I was reading
Speaker 1: a paper in the Wilson Journey All of Ornithology from
Speaker 1: two thousand five by Jamie L. Knack and Christine A.
Speaker 1: Ribbic or Ribbits r I B I C called apparent
Speaker 1: predation by cattle at grassland bird nests. The authors here
Speaker 1: were documenting pastures in southwestern Wisconsin during the years two
Speaker 1: thousand to two thousand one which were used for cattle grazing.
Speaker 1: So there's video documentation of what's going on in these pastures,
Speaker 1: and UH, it was noticed there was something odd that
Speaker 1: was noticed about this video. Cattle appeared to be mostly
Speaker 1: grazing but also occasionally quote behaving as a vian predators,
Speaker 1: removing nestlings and eggs from three active ground nests. So
Speaker 1: with video documentation, they showed that cattle were removing eggs
Speaker 1: and baby birds from bird nests that were on the
Speaker 1: ground or at ground level and probably eating them. A
Speaker 1: couple of the nests belonged to the savannah sparrow past
Speaker 1: circulus sandwich insist that is its name him uh. And
Speaker 1: in one of these savannah sparrow nests, they removed three
Speaker 1: of the four eggs from the nest, and they damaged
Speaker 1: the fourth egg. In the other savannah sparrow nest, they
Speaker 1: removed all three of the nestlings. So these were baby birds.
Speaker 1: They were already hatched there they took them out of
Speaker 1: the nest. There was another nest that belonged to the
Speaker 1: eastern meadow lark, which is Sternella magna, and the cattle
Speaker 1: apparently took all four nestlings out of this nest. Uh
Speaker 1: the author's right quote. We found only two of the
Speaker 1: three missing eggs intact and one of seven missing nestlings
Speaker 1: dead near two of the nests. Cows may have eaten
Speaker 1: the egg and nestlings we were unable to account for. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: the egg and nestlings may have been scavenged by predators
Speaker 1: or removed from the area by the adult birds. Without
Speaker 1: videotaped documentation, we would have attributed nest failure to traditional
Speaker 1: predators and cattle would not have been implicated. We may
Speaker 1: be underestimating the impact of cattle on ground nests by
Speaker 1: not considering cattle as ventil predators. This is almost like
Speaker 1: you're wondering, you know, you find like your window broken
Speaker 1: and several items missing from your house and you assume
Speaker 1: it is a burglar until the I don't know, until
Speaker 1: the can't security camera footage reveals it was your house cat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the cows are out there in the field.
Speaker 1: They're easy to take for granted. Um. I also love
Speaker 1: how this feels very much like something from Gary Larson
Speaker 1: Far Side cartoons. You know, this is exactly what his
Speaker 1: cows would be up to. They got out their cow
Speaker 1: tools and then they went to town on the nests. Um.
Speaker 1: So what do we make of this? Well? I was
Speaker 1: reading about this on a blog post by the British
Speaker 1: paleo zoologist Darren Nice. He's got a blog called tetrapod Zoology.
Speaker 1: It's a very good blog and Nice makes the following points.
Speaker 1: First of all, a lot of animals that we understand
Speaker 1: as strict herbivores are just not really that strict. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they are primarily herbivores, but there are certain scenarios.
Speaker 1: Eating of other animals is quote absolutely deliberate and likely
Speaker 1: motivated by a need for calcium. This brings us back
Speaker 1: to the squirrels, right. This came up in some of
Speaker 1: our research about squirrels gnawing on the bones of other animals.
Speaker 1: A a leading hypothesis to explain why something that is
Speaker 1: mostly herbivorous would sometimes need to like eat a bird
Speaker 1: skull or something, and the ideas that there are certain
Speaker 1: mineral deficiencies that can lead to it, primarily calcium. But
Speaker 1: deer and other hoofed animals in particular have frequently been
Speaker 1: observed eating the antlers and bones of other dead animals.
Speaker 1: Red deer or service a lap as sometimes eat seabirds,
Speaker 1: but Nice reports that they sometimes appear to intentionally avoid
Speaker 1: eating the flesh of the birds, sort of separating out
Speaker 1: the bones and just eating those bones. He also mentions
Speaker 1: the study that I just talked about where videotape caught
Speaker 1: domestic cattle rating ground level bird nests and apparently eating
Speaker 1: the birds, eating the chicks and the eggs, and Nice
Speaker 1: says quote this behavior is likely opportunistic, but may well
Speaker 1: be common and widespread. It is difficult to document since
Speaker 1: it mostly occurs at night and no evidence remains. I
Speaker 1: guess unless you're just randomly picking through you know, cow
Speaker 1: feeces to see if there are bird bones in it,
Speaker 1: and then there are just a bunch of other examples,
Speaker 1: it often appears to be opportunistic. A cow is not
Speaker 1: going to chase down a human and eat it, but
Speaker 1: small defenseless animals they might just sort of be in
Speaker 1: the why not zone. Now, there are a few other
Speaker 1: reasons that animals we think of as strict herbivores might
Speaker 1: sometimes eat meat. Nice points out a study from two
Speaker 1: thousand by b. B and Griffiths that documented how cattle
Speaker 1: drinking from water sources often accidentally ingest lots of water
Speaker 1: dwelling life, say tadpoles, So they are eating the tadpoles,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't appear to be on purpose. They're just
Speaker 1: sort of like getting sucked into the mouth in the
Speaker 1: same way. I think probably grazing herbivores end up eating
Speaker 1: a lot of insects without meaning to. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of carnivory by herbivores is probably just a result
Speaker 1: of not being super picky or careful while eating plants
Speaker 1: or drinking water. So one option is that some herbivores
Speaker 1: deliberately eat other animals to make up for a mineral deficiency.
Speaker 1: Another option is it's just accidental. But then Nice goes
Speaker 1: on to say, quote, but as shown by the studies
Speaker 1: cited below, bird eating in bovids and deer may actually
Speaker 1: just be a fairly normal bit of behavior that we're
Speaker 1: only beginning to document. I also think that individuals of
Speaker 1: herbivorous species sometimes learn quote accidentally that they can kill
Speaker 1: and eat other animals, and then take to this habit
Speaker 1: as and when the opportunity arises. That is because they
Speaker 1: can not because they need to. In fact, I'd go
Speaker 1: as far as saying that an ammals and other organisms
Speaker 1: likely do a lot of things simply because they can
Speaker 1: not because their anatomy or physiology is is specifically suited
Speaker 1: to that activity. So there seems to be quite possibly
Speaker 1: a role for just sort of you know, almost like
Speaker 1: skin aery in kind of adaptation. Right, if you just
Speaker 1: happen to eat an animal one time and it works
Speaker 1: out just fine for you, you might well learn that like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a this is a beneficial activity
Speaker 1: I never thought of doing before, But I can just
Speaker 1: keep repeating it if it seems to yield a benefit.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes when we consider ideas like being
Speaker 1: a herbivore or a carnivore, I think the metabolic bottleneck
Speaker 1: is is not nearly as likely to rule out meat
Speaker 1: as it is to rule out tough, fibrous, or chemically
Speaker 1: hostile plant matter. I mean, what what you need to
Speaker 1: have a really specialized digestive system to digest. I would
Speaker 1: think it is probably more likely to be plants than
Speaker 1: to be meat. Animal flesh is relatively energy rich and
Speaker 1: easy to digest. Yeah, I mean, we certainly see that
Speaker 1: in in uh animals like the panda, which I would
Speaker 1: have adapted over time from this um more very diet
Speaker 1: to a very particular herbivorous diet. Yeah, exactly. So you know,
Speaker 1: obviously different animals have differently specialized digestive systems. Those are
Speaker 1: shaped by evolution like everything else. But without being sure,
Speaker 1: I'd imagine it's probably easier for more herbivores to get
Speaker 1: down on some available meat than it would be for
Speaker 1: carnivores to try to survive on leaves. M That's interesting,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. This is one of those many
Speaker 1: things where you start to wonder about what undocumented observations
Speaker 1: could have occurred in the ancient world. You know, if
Speaker 1: somebody suddenly had a cow like law that starts eating chickens,
Speaker 1: or somebody has a bull that starts eating I don't know,
Speaker 1: whatever kind of meat you give to it. Could that
Speaker 1: give rise to the idea that that well, maybe there's
Speaker 1: some kind of like hidden monstrous nature that is easy
Speaker 1: to unlock when you starve a bull and make meat.
Speaker 1: It's only opportunity to get calories. Huh. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not as well read on on this episode, but
Speaker 1: the minotaur would not be the only Greek mythological um
Speaker 1: herbivore to eat meat, specifically the meat of humans, because
Speaker 1: you also have the mayors of the Omides, the man
Speaker 1: eating herd of horses that were one of the labors
Speaker 1: of Hercules. Right he had to corral them or something, right? Ah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and I if I remember correctly, Like there,
Speaker 1: it's it's sometimes implied that like this is part of
Speaker 1: their magical nature that they eat humans, but other times
Speaker 1: it's like it's the ideas they've been conditioned to do
Speaker 1: so because this is the way their master treats them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they feed unsuspecting guests on the island to these
Speaker 1: man eating horses. I mean, I would be surprised. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I would be surprised if a
Speaker 1: if a bovine could live entirely on meat. It does
Speaker 1: have a ru minute digestive system that is in many
Speaker 1: ways specialized to eating tough plant matter. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, you could probably get by
Speaker 1: feeding feeding a well adapted bull or cow all kinds
Speaker 1: of strange things if you give it an acquired taste,
Speaker 1: so uh so as possible, something like this lies behind
Speaker 1: the horror of the Minotaur. Yeah, if Ernest Shackleton gives you, um,
Speaker 1: some feed with some some meat added to it, you
Speaker 1: want seconds. Well, I think we're gonna have to wrap
Speaker 1: it up for part one here, But there is so
Speaker 1: much more fun minute our stuff to talk about. We
Speaker 1: need to talk about my knowing crete. We've got to
Speaker 1: talk about other weird scientific interpretations of the origin of
Speaker 1: the minotaur legend. I'm I'm so excited for part two.
Speaker 1: I can't wait. Oh and by the way, we originally
Speaker 1: intended for part two of our Minotaur series to come
Speaker 1: out this following Thursday. Due to some scheduling issues, we're
Speaker 1: going to actually have to air part two the next Tuesday,
Speaker 1: so it'll be a week out from this episode, so
Speaker 1: you have an extra week there to be lost in
Speaker 1: the maze. Since we're talking about myths, uh and the monsters.
Speaker 1: First of all, we have other episodes in the vault
Speaker 1: dealing with these, such as the Medusa episodes. We have
Speaker 1: episodes that deal with data lists UH in more detail.
Speaker 1: But also if you go to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com, that will shoot you over to our
Speaker 1: I Heart page and if you look over to the
Speaker 1: right there you'll see some show links and you'll see
Speaker 1: something that says store. Click on that. See I'm guiding
Speaker 1: you through the labyrinth here. Click on that and you
Speaker 1: will go to our key public store and here you'll
Speaker 1: find we actually have some monstrous shirts available. We have,
Speaker 1: of course, the the all Hail the Great basiliska shirt
Speaker 1: uh that relates to a monster episode. We have two
Speaker 1: different monstrous squirrel episodes, one with a squirrel gnawing on
Speaker 1: a bone with death in its eyes, and then we
Speaker 1: have the skug King of Rats shirt and uh, I
Speaker 1: am I am to understand that there will soon be
Speaker 1: an additional a Deusa's shirt added that says Petrifying Gaze
Speaker 1: with a with an illustration that my son created of
Speaker 1: so it's like it's drawn by an eight year old
Speaker 1: and eight year old's um dedicated idea of what the
Speaker 1: Medusa looks like. Lest it be forgotten, your son was
Speaker 1: also the origin of the phrase skug king of Rats,
Speaker 1: which I think might be my favorite shirt in our store.
Speaker 1: I love my scug King of Rat's shirt. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: still wears he's wearing this the other day. Um, that's
Speaker 1: why he is a head of marketing. Well deserved promotion. Now,
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Speaker 1: That's a way you can help us out huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
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Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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