WEBVTT - Dragons: As Real as Mermaids 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.680 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:20.000 There's Chuck, Dragon Slayer Bryant and well that's it. It's 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.120 just the two of us. We can make it if 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:26.560 we try, Chuck, just the two of us, dragons and 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:30.960 us and the great Bill Weathers? Was that Bill with? 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:34.800 You didn't say that this straight say? We just had 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:37.320 the same conversation like two months ago. I'm not doing 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.000 it again. Oh about Bill Withers. Yeah, I didn't realize 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.720 that that was a Bill Withers song. It was a 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.159 good song. Lean on Me though, Man is just I 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:51.600 cannot take it. Grandma's bad? What does that is that 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:55.080 a Bill Withers? I did not know that. It's good. 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.000 He's He's great. And we probably had this exact same conversation. 0:00:58.440 --> 0:00:59.880 I don't know if we had that one or not. 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:02.840 But you know who else I like, Um, who's a 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:05.720 little bit like Bill Wether's not quite as cool. I 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:08.920 guess if you're like a cool person. But um, George 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:11.800 Benson was amazing and still is. I think he's still around. 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:15.040 Do you ever listen to his stuff? Yeah? But now 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:19.640 I'm realized, I uh maybe I should just not correct 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.320 myself and let people be send in a bunch of emails. 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.319 Oh I love that. I love that. And when we 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:28.240 get a million of the same emails, it's Grandma's hands. 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.360 I was getting it. John Denver's Grandma's feather bed kind 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:33.880 of just was in the ether. So as we just 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:38.880 talked about John Denver about Grandma's bad follow up, to 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:43.880 use me up. So dragons, Yeah, let's talk about dragons. 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:48.320 Let's have a pleasant conversation about dragons, shall we chuck? Yeah, 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:54.720 dragons aren't real. And you'll notice by the title of 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:58.840 this episode, which is dragons colon as real as mermaids. 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:02.360 And it's funny because I think the week before this 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:07.240 comes out, Mermaids is a is our pick for the selects, 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:10.639 the select episode, so it aligns perfectly. That is perfect. 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:14.320 The dragons aren't real. Well, okay, I please stop saying 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:18.600 that because you're crushing my dreams. Sorry. Um So, when 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:20.519 we when we talk about dragons, we have to stay 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:22.440 right here at the outset that there's a lot of 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:26.160 different kinds of dragons. Um And typically when you think 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:32.120 of like the the flying winged, usually long, maybe scaly, 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:37.280 fire breathing fire breathing dragon, often with a long kind 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:43.120 of serpentine tail. Sometimes it's even um pointy like the devil, 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:48.720 which will see why. Um that's considered a Western dragon, UM, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:51.840 and that is its own thing that kind of evolved 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:57.239 from a number of different traditions. But there's also the 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:01.639 Asian dragon UM, which you know has variations among different 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.640 Asian countries, but it's generally seems to be kind of 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:08.680 the same ancient Chinese thing. UM. That's a totally different thing, 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.400 and it evolved on its own in isolation as well. 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:16.200 And so UM. Because you've got these different traditions of 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.280 dragons that seem fairly similar in a lot of ways, 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.040 there's a lot of people out there who say, wow, 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:25.200 this is astounding. Every culture in the world has some 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:30.000 sort of tradition of dragons, and that's kind of true. 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.440 But at the at the UM, like throughout this episode, 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:38.520 we'll see, UM, that's not really accurate like that. Nowadays 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.160 it seems that way because we have overlaid the idea 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.240 of dragons over everything. But if you really kind of 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.840 dig into the past and and look into the nuance 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:48.800 of some of these things that we term dragons, they're 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.320 very different. So it's a lot more accurate to say that, 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.840 like every culture in the world has mythical beasts, some 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.720 of which share a lot in common with our modern 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.360 conception of dragon. And that's probably where our modern conception 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.280 of dragons came from, was all these different ideas of 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:09.360 it in the ancient past. Yeah, there's a book called 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:12.920 An Instinct for Dragons written by an anthropologist named David E. 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:20.320 Jones about dragons and and dragons throughout cultures and across cultures. 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.320 And there's the theory he's got going, which is humans 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.800 evolved in primates. H evolved with the fear of three 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:36.400 predators basically um snakes, cats which are big cats, house cats, 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:39.760 and eagles, and that a dragon. It sort of makes 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.320 sense that every culture sort of has something like a dragon, 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:47.440 because in folklore and myth and storytelling, you might combine 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:50.800 the three scariest things into one super scary thing, and 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:53.440 that is a dragon. Right, And you might say, like, well, 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.320 wait a minute, Like I think eagles are kind of cool. 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:58.680 I'm not at all scared. Number one, have you ever 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:02.120 been around an eagle and it was loose, but you'd 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:04.400 be kind of scared of it? Because those talents are serious, 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.680 or one that dive bond you, I think exactly more 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.280 to the point though, or more toys, I should say, Um, 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:15.159 David Jones point, um, that this would be this fear, 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.840 this innate fear that humans have, would be based much 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.520 more deeply in our evolutionary past when we were monkeys 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:24.640 and you actually could be killed by certain kinds of 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:26.839 eagles like the harpy eagle. Remember we talked about the 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:29.880 harpy eagle and the sloth episode. Because they can mess 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.120 a sloth up, they can mess a monkey up too. 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.480 So this guy's premises, like, we have these ancient fears 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.480 of these things, and as we evolved and became humans 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.680 that started telling each other's stories, these things combined, like 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:45.160 you were saying, into this one fierce mythological monster, which 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:47.960 was basically the the sum of all of our most 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:51.400 primal fears. Yeah. And then of course, if you look 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:57.360 at ancient cultures, they always had sort of mythical stories 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.200 in folklore to explain you know, everything from weather phenomenon 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.360 to things like volcanoes. Uh. And if they happened upon 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:09.400 maybe dinosaur bones or whale bones, then a story might 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.039 go along with that. To explain it away, like you know, 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:14.839 this was clearly some huge lizard like creature or maybe 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:17.800 a snake like creature, and there was probably a story 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:21.520 around it and why they should fear it or usually 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:25.320 some sort of a sacrifice that they needed to make, um, 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:27.440 you know, sort of in lock step with those stories. 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.680 But that's just sort of another theory on maybe how 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.960 the dragon might have come about as far as folklore goes. 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:37.200 One of the most interesting theories that I saw, and 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:41.240 we should say, no one has a widely accepted answer 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.159 for this, which I love, is always um, but that 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:49.400 it was the b that the that the description um 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.760 often um in ancient cultures they used to use like 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:57.960 riddles and exaggeration and metaphor to um discuss and and 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:02.440 talk about and describe actual things. And that the the 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:07.560 b um a description of a b or I should say, 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.880 a swarm of a bee is what actually became the 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.680 dragon in in mythology. And at first it just like 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:16.800 that doesn't doesn't make any sense at all, But some 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:18.360 of the points of these people made. There was a 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.520 journal article in it um and I think like a 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.720 journal on Tolkien studies or something like that. But they 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:29.480 say that um, a be swarm moving together. It doesn't 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.640 necessarily resemble or dragon, but it makes a lot more 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.560 sense along those lines than it doesn't when you're talking 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:40.160 about an individual b exactly it can do. It can 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:42.400 point an air, It can make an arrow to point 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.960 a direction, you know, where somebody's hiding, that kind of thing. Um. 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:49.360 And then another one is that the fire, the idea 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.240 of of dragon breathing fire is a metaphor for the 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:55.200 feeling of like your skin burning from a be sting 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.760 or the intense pain. And then lastly um in the 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:03.480 Western tradition, a lot of dragons protect like mounds of 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.320 gold or treasure, and that this is a metaphor for 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:11.120 honey and gold, like the honeycombs that ancient people would 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:15.920 have basically considered gold not just you know, um food, 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:18.840 but also it was used as medicine as well. So 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:20.800 if you kind of put all it together, it's it 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.080 seems like a pretty interesting theory. At least it makes 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:27.000 a lot more sense than a bee, you know, when 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.520 you really kind of dig into it, Yeah, totally. The 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:34.640 word itself is um. Well, you can look back to 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:38.199 the Iliad when Homer wrote about the d R. A. K. 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:43.480 O n uh. The drecon, which supposedly is the first 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.880 known use of the word uh in ancient Greek, is 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.560 sort of has some uh confusing etymology behind it, but 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:55.120 basically Homer uses that word to describe snakes, like like 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:59.960 unequivocally yeah, and not you know, huge, flying, fire breathing snakes, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.760 but just snakes. Yeah. Yeah. He even says, no, I'm 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.600 just talking about snakes, everybody, not dragons. To get ahead 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.000 of yourself, These are snakes, and I mean they say that, 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:11.000 like he points out that he's talking about snakes because 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.679 he even says um a chimera, which is um uh 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.439 I think ahead of a lion, the goat body, a 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.920 serpent tail, and bats wings. He even says the serpent 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.600 tail that the back portion of the chimera is a dragon. 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.440 So he's talking about just regular old snakes for sure. Yeah. 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.280 And other writers and other classical stories did the same thing, 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:35.800 whether it was uh, dracontis or draconis, using all these 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:40.360 words sort of interchangeably with other words for snake. But 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:44.760 then we go to the history of not the history 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.920 but just history of animals, and that's the first sort 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:52.200 of scientific take on the draccone which is an enemy 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:54.880 of the eagle because uh, an eagle as a bird 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.440 of prey would eat snakes obviously, and different people got 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:01.640 a little more specific and later writing system what kind 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.600 of snake, but it's still just snakes. Yeah. So over time, 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:08.600 like that's that's where the word dragon came from, was 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.719 to use the it was a word for snake, that's it. 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:15.800 And then over time as people, um started to exaggerate. 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.959 Here they're conflate different types of snakes and different behaviors 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.240 that aren't found in snakes, but saying that they were, 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:24.800 and they all kind of put that under the umbrella 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.880 word for snakes. Dragon. Um, it seems like the legend 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:32.240 or the myth, the mythical version of dragons started to 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.600 kind of plump up and grow. Yeah, and this, um, 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:38.760 this is a point ed the grabster put this together, 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:41.840 put this together for us. But need points out something 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:44.440 I kind of never really considered back in the day. 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:48.360 In the classical period, writers were writers. There weren't like, hey, 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.680 I'm going to write h only about you know, natural history, 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:55.719 and I'm only gonna write fiction and myth and storytelling 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:58.600 like writers just wrote. So there were people that wrote 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:03.280 natural history to homes and also myth and storytelling legends, 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:05.679 and so a lot of this stuff could get kind 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:10.600 of mixed up and confused. Exaggerated mistranslation is a huge, 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.760 huge deal. Oh yeah, and a lot of this is 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:15.760 sort of where the sort of the myth of the 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.720 dragon came from. I just think of like some writer 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.280 getting confused what they were working on that day, and 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.920 now we have the myth of dragons. You know, it's like, 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:26.959 was this real or not? I can't remember? Who cares? 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.120 So um yeah, like you you really hit upon something 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.199 really important. Mistranslations are at a different way to put 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:39.000 his lazy translation have really kind of changed um our 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:42.080 idea of what people were talking about in the ancient world. 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.360 And I can't imagine how much nuance and understanding has 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:49.200 been lost and how probably dumb in a lot of 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.560 ways ancient people seemed compared to how they actually were 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:58.840 because of this tradition of like, um, p, poor translation 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:03.000 that was passed down over the year people. Yeah, that's 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:07.520 very cute. And the reason why it's kind of lazy 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:11.800 translation is it seems like anybody who came across an 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.640 ancient text or a text in another language, um, who's 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.240 translating something into English. Um, and they were seemed to 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:23.720 be describing anything even remotely dragon like, any mythical beast, 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.320 anything that might have wings, anything with a serpent tail, 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.120 anything that breathe fire, boop, dragon, it's a dragon. And 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:35.520 then now those of us who have a certain compartmentalized 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:39.040 idea of what a dragon is, everything was a dragon. 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.520 And now we reached that point where it's like, this 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.520 is how we got this idea that every culture has dragons. No, 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.199 we just kind of lazily translated what other cultures we're 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.760 talking about into dragons along the way, right. I think 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.440 that is a great first act. Thank you, thank you. 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:58.079 I'm bowing, I'm throwing roses at your feet. Thank you. 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:01.400 And uh, we're gonna take a little break and Rooney 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:36.880 and be right back. So the rose petals I sent 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:39.960 you arrived in time, just in time. Thank you for 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:42.440 throwing them and not saving them for something else. I 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:44.520 also realized I just went on ned Flanders with the 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:46.520 break of Rooney. I've never said that before in my life. 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:49.480 I liked it though. It was refreshing. We need that 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:55.680 kind of wet behind the ears, you know, wholesomeness right now. Chuck, Yeah, 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.960 in your fourteen No, not just us, I mean the world. Okay, 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:04.640 you know, yeah, up up with Flanders? Yeah, up with Flanders. 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:08.320 That's right. So my favorite thing always about Flanders is 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.120 when he would be really buff, like every time he 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:17.400 shirt good sexy Flanders. I know, it's hilarious. He he 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:25.200 ascribed it to a healthy dose of vitamin Church. Oh man, 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:30.120 I love it all. Right. Where were we here? Giants snakes, Yeah, 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:32.680 we talked about them. We're talking about miss translations were 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:34.480 a big problem, and I think a good place to 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:38.040 start with that is back in Sumeria. Yeah, the Sumerian 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.880 legends wrote about something called the use um u s 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:45.360 u m um also called dragons or you know, at 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:49.040 least referred to as dragons now. And these were kind 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:50.560 of like you said at the beginning, these were just 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:55.200 sometimes just large monsters, large scary things and not necessarily 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:58.600 a dragon, but was sort of just translated as dragon. Yeah, 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:02.120 and I should say sumer not Humeria. But um, they 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.560 they were. These were like their gods that they were 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:09.440 talking about. These were, you know, the like the god 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:13.440 of the goddess of water who gave birth to the world. 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:18.240 Like they had this incredibly detailed cosmology that explained, you know, 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:20.640 where they came from, where the world came from, where 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.240 the sun came from. Um, and we along the way 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:29.200 translated that to dragons. You know. So luckily there are 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.520 scholars who have learned to speak Acadian. I guess the 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:37.000 world's oldest UM spoken language A K K A d 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:42.320 I An not the the Canadian group that the Cajuns 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:46.400 come from. This is different, um. But the so we 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:50.280 understand now that there's much more nuance, much more detailed 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.960 to it. But I think the upshot of this is 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:57.600 that there there were conceptions of like fire breathing and 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:04.160 like flying serpents and like potentially malicious, malevolent, evil mythical 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:07.720 beasts that would resemble kind of what we would understand 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.960 as a dragon dating back thousands of years. Yeah, and 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.680 you know, this course goes straight to the Bible as well. 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:19.560 In Revelations, UM, there's a lot of talk about the archangels, 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.960 archangels battling a great dragon. Uh. In this case, the 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:27.600 dragon is Satan. But again this is sort of a translation, 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.800 like Satan was always sort of the serpent, at least 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.720 in Genesis, at first appeared as a serpent, and so 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.080 in the end, Satan is also a serpent, but spelled 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.040 you know, with the d r A k O n 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:44.800 like the ancient Greek. But yeah, but there's you know, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.120 I mean not in the King James version and stuff 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:51.600 like that, obviously, but again you know pre translation uh 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:54.720 and you know, there were uh sort of renderings of 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:56.720 this of the big war for heaven and this is 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:58.720 when we see, you know it kind of what we 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.680 would see later on, which is metaphor for good versus 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.000 evil in a big battle. So that's what William Blake's 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.840 Paradise Lost is about, right, I've never read it. I 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:11.280 haven't either, I'm just familiar with it from that movie 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:16.000 Red Dragon. Okay, about the silence of the Lamb's prequel, 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:21.879 I think, yeah, um, he's like, do you see you 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.240 remember when Ray finds has got poor Philip seymore often 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:31.800 strapped to that wheelchair that I had spoiler coming. I 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:33.879 didn't love that movie. It was okay, but that was 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:38.920 that shot of that burning wheelchair and body going down 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:40.879 the parking deck is one of the most sort of 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:43.239 chilling images I've seen in movies. I know. The thing 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:45.240 that chills me about it though, is it's an antique 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.040 wicker wheelchair, which is the scariest thing I've ever seen 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.200 in my life. I hate those You don't like this, 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.040 huh No, I think we just talked about it recently, 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.240 and I every for the rest of my life, I 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.280 will be creeped out by those things. I'm gonna get 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.840 you one slide whistle this Christmas. Next Christmas, you're just 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.640 gonna get an ancient quicker wheelchair. And I don't want 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:07.560 I don't want to be wasteful, so I won't throw 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:09.320 it away and I'll just have to live among it. 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:12.000 It's gonna be terrible, like I'll never get used to 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:16.760 it either. You could make a uh life size Chuck dummy, 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:19.000 put it in there and set it on fire and 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:20.840 roll it down to parking. Oh I wouldn't do that. 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.760 I'd make a life size version of Chuck and just 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.080 talk to you and be like, listen, I got a 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:29.520 lot of stuff to say to you that's even creepier. 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.359 But and you're gonna sit there and listen to it. 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.399 I'll be wearing nothing but an apron, just like a 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:41.320 real doll with a big fake beard. Oh man, Okay, 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.040 so yeah, good versus Evil is sort of how a 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.720 lot of these um tales and folklore play out and 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.880 also incorporating stuff that you would see time and time 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:54.159 again in literature later on, Like there's a dragon that 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:58.840 lives out by itself near a village, and it's a greedy, 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:01.040 eventful dragon, and we need to a piece of dragon 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.760 with sacrifice once a year or else it will come 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.600 down and like rain fire upon everyone. Yeah. So, um, 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.200 all of this stuff, like this idea, this western dragon 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:14.600 that you're describing, like that's taken from like um Bao Wolf. 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.479 I believe that the dragon that killed bo Wolf in 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:19.920 the I always thought it was a Norse legend, but 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:24.160 apparently it's English, Old English. It's just set in Um 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.680 in the Netherlands, or in Scandinavia in the north, I think, 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:30.560 I think somewhere. I don't remember exactly where it sat. 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.399 It's just set there. It's not written by them. Um. 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:37.240 But that like that dragon was malevolent, and I believe 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:39.360 it was guarding treasure. I think the reason it went 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:41.879 berserk and Beowulf had to kill it was because somebody 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:45.040 stole one of its golden goblets a k. A honey, 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:48.080 because they're really talking about a b But so you 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:53.320 have an idea of a a greedy, murderous dragon that 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.520 protects treasure like that comes from an ancient tradition, but 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:02.040 that's a pretty pretty standard feature of dragons. You were saying, Yeah, 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:05.560 so all this is going on for many, many, many years. 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:09.120 Finally the rubber kind of meets the road as far 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.440 as Western dragons are concerned. With the legend of St. 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.720 George Um, who was a Christian saint, a real Christian saint, 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.760 maybe a real person who may have been a Roman 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:24.200 soldier who was you know, tortured and killed for converting 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.280 Pagans to Christianity. This is sort of fourth century a 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:33.280 d and because of stories getting passed around like a 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.960 game of telephone. Um the actual first name of that 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.560 story when it was told with Saint Theodore, but it 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:43.320 was really St. George. So I saw that they're both 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:49.000 possibly known as dragon slaying saints. Okay, it's not necessarily 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:51.080 like George took that from theater. They're both known for 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.840 having slain a dragon. But what's interesting is if you 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:57.440 see um St. Theodore depicted with his dragon, it's very 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:03.560 clearly a crocodile, and the the the origin story um 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.560 of either one, but particularly St. George is that there 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:10.800 is a town in modern day Turkey or possibly Palestine, 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:15.120 I'm short, but in what would have been called Anatolia 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:19.600 back then um where they had the spring. Like this 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.280 town got their water from the spring, and it was 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:27.040 guarded by a giant, massive crocodile, and that the townspeople 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:31.080 would sacrifice as sheep to sometimes to a day, basically 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:33.159 to distract the crocodile so they could go get the 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:35.359 water and then get out of there. And then they 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:37.760 ran out of sheep, so they said, well, what's what 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:41.520 comes after sheep? How about maidens? So they started throwing maidens, 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:45.480 sacrificing maidens literally throwing them to the crocodile to to 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:48.520 distract it so they could get the water. And eventually 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:51.680 they came upon the king's daughter. They drew straws to 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:54.680 see what maiden was good would go next, and St. 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.200 George apparently arrived just in time to slay the dragon 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.800 a k a. The crocodile. But that that that's this idea, 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:03.840 that that's where this story of somebody slaying a dragon 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:07.359 could have been rooted in reality, that over the years, 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.200 this massive crocodile, which was so fearsome and so murderous 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.120 and killed so many people, was converted into a dragon 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.560 over the years, and so St. George slew the dragon, 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:20.480 and that's where that came from. And that was a 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:23.640 real crocodile that lived by a real spring. Right. That's 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:25.560 pretty cool. Yeah, I thought so too. I'd love it 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:28.480 when something that seems totally legendary had was rooted in 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:30.920 some sort of fact. It's just people in blished or 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:34.640 exaggerated over time totally. If you want to go with 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:39.320 the sort of real great first image of what we 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:42.199 think of as a Western dragon, you can go to 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:46.280 twelve sixty eight D in an illustration in a medieval 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:53.159 beastiary called MS. Harley. Uh, great title. I think Ed 0:22:53.200 --> 0:22:56.000 said it was probably a catalog designation. Yeah, I think 0:22:56.000 --> 0:23:00.639 the real title is peral this is theological miscellany. Yeah, 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:06.360 which is that's an actual great title. Yeah. I like MS. Harley. 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:09.040 It's it's cool looking. Though. You can if you're near 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:11.040 a laptop or something, you can look this thing up 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:13.520 and it is you know, you look at it and 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:16.640 this is exactly what you think of as something from 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:19.120 like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or whatever. Yeah, 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:21.480 it's like it's a dragon. It's how a scene starts, 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:25.440 you know. Yeah, um so so oh sorry, I see 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:27.600 what you're saying, Like the dragon that that shows up 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:30.679 in their specifically the red one. Well, no, I just 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:32.760 mean sort of the dragon that we all think of 0:23:32.920 --> 0:23:36.040 in in sort of literature and folklore, like this is 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:39.520 clearly that. Yeah, and supposedly it's the first one from 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:44.000 around twelve sixty Did you say that? Yeah? So um 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:46.719 and yeah, when you see it, you're like, yes, this 0:23:46.800 --> 0:23:49.159 is probably the basis of the Western Dragon as we 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:53.359 understand it. Um, and it would have spread to Europe, 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:56.239 which it did. I think that was English. Um. It 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:58.840 was by a guy named William Perrault, and I believe 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:01.479 he was English. So it would spread from England to 0:24:01.560 --> 0:24:04.879 the rest of Europe, and that that kind of um 0:24:05.160 --> 0:24:09.080 set the stage for at least the visual version of 0:24:09.280 --> 0:24:13.760 the Western Dragon from that point on. Thanks to England Dan. Right, 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:16.400