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Speaker 1: My welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick in today. You know, I didn't

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Speaker 1: think about this until just this moment. But this is

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Speaker 1: another geo mythology episode, isn't it? It ultimately is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we are, of course talking about an often overlooked figure

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Speaker 1: from from the Old Testament and from from from from

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Speaker 1: Jewish myth and legend. We're going to be talking about

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Speaker 1: lots wife. That's right. The story of Lot's wife is

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Speaker 1: a traditional Jewish story that comes from the Torah. It's

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Speaker 1: from the Book of Genesis, chapter nineteen. So I guess

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Speaker 1: we should explain the context of the story before we

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Speaker 1: read the relevant passage. All right, So we're in the

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Speaker 1: part of the Book of Genesis after God has revealed

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Speaker 1: himself to Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish religion, and

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Speaker 1: so Abraham now has a relationship with God, and we're

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Speaker 1: learning about Abraham and Uh and some of his relatives,

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Speaker 1: and one of his relatives is his nephew Lot. That's right.

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Speaker 1: So basically what happens is Abraham catches wind that three

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Speaker 1: angels are about to smite the cities of Sodom and gomor. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The reasoning is that these cities are very bad and

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Speaker 1: God doesn't like them, and they're full of wicked people.

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Speaker 1: But Abraham tries to reason with God. He says, now,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, are you going to destroy all the

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Speaker 1: good people in these cities along with all the wicked people?

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Speaker 1: So he begins to wade into theologically murky waters, right, like,

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Speaker 1: if if bad things must happen to the bad people,

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Speaker 1: what about the good people in those cities, what should

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Speaker 1: we do about them? Right? And he actually is successful

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Speaker 1: in negotiating with God because he argues him down, basically

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Speaker 1: because God, at first it's like, okay, what if they're

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Speaker 1: fifty people, fifty good people in the city, would that

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Speaker 1: be enough to spare the city? And God says yes, sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's okay, you make a good point, he's like. But

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Speaker 1: then Abraham starts hedging, right, He's like, I don't wait,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I can find fifty good people.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a lot, right, But yeah, it

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Speaker 1: begins talking him down, Well, what about forty five? What

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Speaker 1: about forty etcetera. Ultimately brings it down to a mere

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Speaker 1: ten righteous individuals in the city. And uh, and God agrees, Okay,

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Speaker 1: if you can find ten righteous people, I'll spare these cities, right,

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Speaker 1: And so then a couple of angels are sent to

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Speaker 1: the city presumably I guess to like do some recon

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Speaker 1: to figure it out. Yeah, yeah, we're dealing with you know,

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Speaker 1: this is the Old Testament God, whose powers are at

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Speaker 1: once like more like dramatic and cataclysmic, but also requires

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Speaker 1: like foot soldiers to literally go to the town to

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Speaker 1: conduct some surveillance, a little recon. Yeah, there's less of

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Speaker 1: a sense of sort of automatic omniscitions. It's more like,

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Speaker 1: you know, he gets information from beings that work for him, right,

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Speaker 1: And so he sends these two angels down to to

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Speaker 1: scope things out, to do the count, and they visit

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Speaker 1: Abraham's nephew a lot. Now the angels are in disguise,

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Speaker 1: of course, and and this is ultimately a trope that

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Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of different myths and legends throughout history,

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Speaker 1: the idea that the people that are coming to to

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Speaker 1: pay you visit, whether you're having a chance encounter with

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Speaker 1: might actually be divine beings in disguise. Uh yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean this does show up a lot in the Bible.

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Speaker 1: In fact, it also shows up later in in Christian

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Speaker 1: mythology with like the Parables of Jesus where he talks

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Speaker 1: about like, you know, the person who you show a

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Speaker 1: kindness to or you shoot you do not show a

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Speaker 1: kindness to might have been me, right. Yeah, But but

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Speaker 1: then also there are other tales and other traditions that

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Speaker 1: involved like a mysterious stranger who turns out to be

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Speaker 1: a powerful being of some sort of the other. And

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Speaker 1: as this tale makes clear, one of the most important

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Speaker 1: ways of being righteous in the ancient world was showing hospitality. Actually,

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Speaker 1: this is something that I think is under emphasized in

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Speaker 1: a lot of the like morality tales of today. You

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Speaker 1: see it hugely important in the mythology and religion of

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Speaker 1: the ancient world, is like being a good host. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: especially with the story of Lot's wife. Like growing up,

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Speaker 1: I vaguely remember it being brought up in in church

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Speaker 1: from time to time, but more more to the point,

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Speaker 1: you would see it in like like Chit tracks like

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Speaker 1: some sort of you know, you know, cartoon that is

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Speaker 1: ultimately kind of like wallowing an awfulness and and trying

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Speaker 1: and and using the story to spin off a really

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Speaker 1: um homophobic message. Oh yeah, that's weird, like I think,

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Speaker 1: especially in the twentieth century, for some reason, the Sodom

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Speaker 1: and Gomorrah story came to be associated with condemnations of homosexuality,

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Speaker 1: which is not really what what the story and the

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Speaker 1: Bible is focused on. Right, Yeah, Ultimately there's a story

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Speaker 1: about hospitality, and as it turns out, you know, Lots,

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Speaker 1: a Lot and his wife are really the only people

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Speaker 1: that are that show any hospitality to these two angels

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Speaker 1: in disguise, right, They take the angels in hosts them

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Speaker 1: at their house, and then the story turns fairly horrific,

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Speaker 1: like a mob shows up outside the house demanding to

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Speaker 1: rape the angels that are staying there with him, and

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Speaker 1: Lot tries to offer up his daughters instead to the mob,

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Speaker 1: and the mob does not acquiesce to this, and then

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Speaker 1: the angels instruct a Lot to take his wife and

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Speaker 1: his children and flee the city because the city is

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Speaker 1: going to be destroyed. Yeah. Basically, they're like, look, we're

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Speaker 1: not gonna hit our tin righteous individual quota here, but

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Speaker 1: you two seem all right, so you should clear out,

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Speaker 1: and so they do. They attempt to clear out, to

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Speaker 1: flee the city right as it's about to be smited,

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Speaker 1: and uh and and but they warned them like, look,

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Speaker 1: you cannot turn around, You cannot look back at the

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Speaker 1: city while it is a mid smite, or it's gonna

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Speaker 1: be very unpleasant for you. Uh. And so they they're

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Speaker 1: heading out, they're fleeing the destruction. But then Lot's wife

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Speaker 1: either she doesn't listen or she can't help herself, but

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Speaker 1: she turns around and looks backward at the city as

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Speaker 1: it is destroyed by the divine fire. And then this

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Speaker 1: turns her into a pillar of salt. Yeah, so I

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Speaker 1: want to read this passage from the King James translation.

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Speaker 1: It goes, the sun was risen upon the earth when

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Speaker 1: Lot entered into Zoar, and that's like another village that

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Speaker 1: they were fleeing to a small place. Then the Lord

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Speaker 1: reigned upon Sodom and upon Gomor a brimstone and fire

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Speaker 1: from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those

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Speaker 1: cities and all the plane and all the inhabitants of

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Speaker 1: the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But

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Speaker 1: his wife looked back from behind him, and she became

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Speaker 1: a pillar of salt, a pillar of salt. This always uh, this,

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Speaker 1: this is the detail that always captivated me the most.

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Speaker 1: It's this strange, It's like an intriguing, sad, tragic story.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't you know, it doesn't really explain her motives. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And that's something that a lot of people have been

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Speaker 1: able to read back into with like literature about this story.

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Speaker 1: The one main thing that comes to mind for me

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Speaker 1: is the poem by the Russian poet and Akamatva called

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Speaker 1: Lot's Wife. Do you mind if I read this here?

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Speaker 1: This is the translation by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward.

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Speaker 1: It goes, and the just man trailed God's shining agent

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Speaker 1: over a black mountain in his giant track, while a

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Speaker 1: restless voice kept harrying his woman. It's not too late.

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Speaker 1: You can still look back at the red towers of

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Speaker 1: your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the

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Speaker 1: spinning shed, at the empty windows set in the tall

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Speaker 1: house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage bed. A

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Speaker 1: single glance, a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes

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Speaker 1: before she made a sound, Her body flaked into transparent salt,

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Speaker 1: and her swift legs rooted to the ground. Who will

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Speaker 1: grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant

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Speaker 1: for our concern? Yet in my heart I'll never deny

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Speaker 1: her who suffered death because she chose to turn. Oh

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Speaker 1: that's beautiful and sad, and it captures, you know, ultimately

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Speaker 1: a lot of the feelings one has when you encounter this,

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Speaker 1: this passage where yes, she seems to to perish. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know for the smallest slite. You know, all she

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Speaker 1: did is glance backwards. Well yeah, And the what I

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Speaker 1: love about this poem is it emphasizes not the external

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Speaker 1: view of the city as this place of wickedness that

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Speaker 1: must be destroy aid, but the view of it as

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Speaker 1: her home. You know, she's looking back to the place

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Speaker 1: where her home that she loved all you know, all

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Speaker 1: her good memories are there. Yeah. Because one of the

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Speaker 1: things it kind of comes back to our discussions about um,

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Speaker 1: you know, identity and like what makes a person who

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Speaker 1: they are? Is it internal or is it external? And

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Speaker 1: you know, if if a righteous person was able to

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Speaker 1: live in this city, it stands to reason that the

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Speaker 1: place was not like otherwise completely um, you know, exotically evil. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean that that gives it obviously the character of myth,

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Speaker 1: Like this doesn't read like a historical account because you

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Speaker 1: cannot plausibly imagine a city in which everybody except one

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Speaker 1: family is just evil to the core. Right, Uh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's pure myths spinning. Even though that kind of myth

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Speaker 1: spinning still goes on today, um as we consider other

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Speaker 1: places and and then and people from other places, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: But of course this hasn't stopped numerous You see a

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Speaker 1: lot of efforts, especially if you're just searching around online,

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Speaker 1: people looking for historical accuracy of of Sodom and gomorrah

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Speaker 1: um and you know, in in similar cases from the

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Speaker 1: Old Testament. Well, yeah, I think that's a good thing

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Speaker 1: to note, because we're gonna be talking about some geomethology

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Speaker 1: in today's episode, possible connections between between mythology and geological

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Speaker 1: facts about the world. But those those connections are always hypothetical.

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Speaker 1: We can just discuss possible ways that they line up.

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Speaker 1: But I just want to say is a note that

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Speaker 1: when you're reading articles about this kind of thing, you

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Speaker 1: always have to be wary and try to separate out,

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Speaker 1: like what are the facts that are being reported versus

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Speaker 1: what are the conclusions you're being invited or even explicitly

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Speaker 1: told to draw from them, because they're just all kinds

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Speaker 1: of reports about archaeological or geological findings from the ancient

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Speaker 1: levant with headlines like Bible story confirmed. You know. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And then actually when you read, okay, well, what are

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Speaker 1: the facts they're talking about? It might be something like,

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Speaker 1: for example, there was a settlement in the Dead Sea

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Speaker 1: region that was depopulated at some point, and therefore this

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Speaker 1: settlement must be the Sodom from the Bible, and it

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Speaker 1: confirms the Bible story is true about the brimstone and

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Speaker 1: the angels and all that. Yeah, I feel like reads

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Speaker 1: like this they tend to, you know, completely discredit the

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Speaker 1: power of mythology, like it's it's he, it's everything has

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Speaker 1: to be considered as a as as a potential historical reality,

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Speaker 1: whereas mythology is this thing that you know, resides between

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Speaker 1: objective reality and our perception. It is this, I mean,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's not just mirror, you know, made up

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Speaker 1: stuff like mythology. You know, it is essentially the skeletal

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Speaker 1: system on which we we build ourselves in our culture. Well,

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Speaker 1: an important part of culture, I think is is conceiving

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Speaker 1: of mythology is perhaps true without being factual, maybe meaning

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Speaker 1: it somehow contains wisdom, but it is not like an

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Speaker 1: accurate description of things that happened. Uh, And and the

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Speaker 1: emphasis on like people this must be an accurate description

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Speaker 1: of things that happened. First of all, it's such a

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Speaker 1: confused way of looking at archaeology. I don't think we

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Speaker 1: can even be confident that the people originally telling stories

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Speaker 1: like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's Wife

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Speaker 1: and the Pillar of Salt meant for the stories to

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Speaker 1: be taken as literal fact. Maybe they did, but I'm

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Speaker 1: not so sure they meant that right, Because, as we've

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Speaker 1: said plenty of times before, we don't want to discredit

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Speaker 1: the creative abilities of ancient people's and we also don't

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Speaker 1: want to discredit like things like dreams or certainly um

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Speaker 1: in cultures where there was some sort of a tradition

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Speaker 1: of you know, hallucinatory or psychedelic substance use, like that

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Speaker 1: could have been a factor as well. Like there there

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Speaker 1: are there are various ways that one can acquire the

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Speaker 1: elements of these stories, and then of course they're build

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Speaker 1: upon them through Uh. The oral tradition. Yeah exactly. But

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Speaker 1: I mean even even if you think about sometimes myths

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Speaker 1: just being stories that people made up for a reason.

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Speaker 1: The reason might have been something like to convey up point,

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Speaker 1: to explain the origin of something, to emphasize some kind

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Speaker 1: of moral value that you wanted people to take away.

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Speaker 1: Now that this story is kind of a jumble of

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Speaker 1: things that are morally absolutely horrific to us today, but

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Speaker 1: also like in there there is some stuff about that

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Speaker 1: that's worth thinking about, about hospitality, about like taking people

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Speaker 1: in and protecting them under your roof. But yeah, so

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Speaker 1: it just gets so weird when we modern people look

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Speaker 1: at like scientific evidence and then we say, aha, it

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Speaker 1: confirms the story from mythology is true. Uh, It's like

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Speaker 1: it's an impulse that leads to bad reasoning and over

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Speaker 1: interpretation of little bits of physical evidence. But I think

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Speaker 1: it also most of the time just completely misses the

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Speaker 1: point of the story, right, and then you end up

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Speaker 1: kind of like busting your own myth right, kind of

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Speaker 1: like like bye bye. So you know, veheminently attempting to

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Speaker 1: connect mythology with objective reality, like it more often than not,

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Speaker 1: it just it feels fake. It feels like you're trying

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Speaker 1: too hard to make this magical unreality real, and in

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Speaker 1: doing so, you just make it feel like it's just

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Speaker 1: made up stuff. Yeah, totally. Should we take a break

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Speaker 1: and then come back and talk about what kind of

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Speaker 1: myth this might be? Let's do it. Thank Alright, we're

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Speaker 1: back here on this episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: We were talking about lots wife looking enough for looking

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Speaker 1: at this as a story of geo mythology, and later

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Speaker 1: we'll even get into a little bit of chemistry. All right,

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Speaker 1: So there's the question of what kind of myth this

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Speaker 1: is the idea that Lot's wife turned and looked back

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Speaker 1: at her home and then turned into a pillar of salt.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the myths from the ancient Neres and

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Speaker 1: actually from all over the world I think, can can

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Speaker 1: be interpreted as origin myths, also known as ideological myths.

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Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show before, but this

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Speaker 1: means that they explain the beginning or the cause of something,

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Speaker 1: and there are a lot of different forms this can take.

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Speaker 1: One of the most common kinds of ideological myths is

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Speaker 1: the myth that explains the name used for something. Ancient

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Speaker 1: people usually didn't have the tools to study etymology and

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Speaker 1: understand the origins of words and names that passed down

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Speaker 1: through the culture. So a lot of ideological myths I

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Speaker 1: think are built around false cognates, words that sound similar

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Speaker 1: but aren't actually related. And this would be like if

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Speaker 1: I said the capital, why is the capital of the

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Speaker 1: United States called Washington? Well, once there was a man

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Speaker 1: who lived there and he washed himself in the Potomac

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Speaker 1: River all the time. He washed himself so much that

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Speaker 1: he that they would walk by and they would say,

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Speaker 1: there's old Washington washing himself in a way that never ceases.

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Speaker 1: And that's where the town gets its name. Obviously that

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Speaker 1: would be untrue, but that's that's kind of like a

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Speaker 1: name based adeological myth. A lot of other ideological myths

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Speaker 1: I think explain the origins of cultural practices or rituals.

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Speaker 1: So why do we cut a branch of mistletoe and

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Speaker 1: bring two bulls on the solstice to do this ritual? Well,

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Speaker 1: it's because once the god thought or was standing under

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Speaker 1: some mistletoe and it felt, you know, like, so they

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Speaker 1: come up with something that weaves together all of these

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Speaker 1: practices or elements of a ceremony that you don't remember

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Speaker 1: the actual origins of because it's been passed down for generations, right,

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Speaker 1: and these are the these would be the kind of

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Speaker 1: stories that would give your everyday rituals and even just

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Speaker 1: every day you know, sort of vaguely ritualized activities, meaning

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Speaker 1: because you are embodying some sort of mythic motif. Right,

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Speaker 1: you're recreating the actions of the gods when you do

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Speaker 1: this thing now, And so a similar thing happens for

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Speaker 1: natural phenomenon and natural objects. Why do we have thunder

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Speaker 1: and lightning? It's because of a storm god throwing angry

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Speaker 1: bolts of lightning, or fighting a war in the heavens.

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Speaker 1: Why do we have four seasons and we can't grow

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Speaker 1: crops in the winter, Well because in the fall and

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Speaker 1: winter Persephone has to live in Hades and her mother Demeter,

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Speaker 1: the goddess of the harvest. She mourns her absence and

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Speaker 1: won't allow crops to grow. But then the spring and summer,

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Speaker 1: Persephony can come up again and Demeanor rejoy ses and

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Speaker 1: nourishes or crops. And there are also versions of these

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Speaker 1: natural ideologies just for objects in the world. When you know,

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Speaker 1: there will sometimes be a myth explaining the existence of

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Speaker 1: a mountain or of a giant crater or something like that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And we've discussed some of these on the show before,

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Speaker 1: like ideas of basically topography being formed from the say,

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Speaker 1: the bodies of fallen gods, and like, yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: could the story of Lot's wife be a myth like

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Speaker 1: this existing to explain the origin of something we don't know?

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Speaker 1: But I do think it's possible, And so I want

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Speaker 1: to look at a passage from Josephus, the first century

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Speaker 1: Jewish historian. He wrote about the story of Lot's Wife

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Speaker 1: and his work known as the Antiquities of the Jews.

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Speaker 1: And this is from book one, chapter eleven, translated by

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Speaker 1: William Wiston, and it starts off talking about the wickedness

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Speaker 1: of the people who lived in Sodom, saying that Lot

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Speaker 1: fled the city with his wife and daughters. And then

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Speaker 1: Josephus writes, God then cast a thunderbolt upon the city

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Speaker 1: and set it on fire with its inhabitants, and laid

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Speaker 1: way the country with the like burning, as I formerly

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Speaker 1: said when I wrote the Jewish War. But Lot's wife

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Speaker 1: continually turning back to view the city as she went

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Speaker 1: from it, and being too nicely inquisitive what would become

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Speaker 1: of it, although God had forbidden her so to do,

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Speaker 1: was changed into a pillar of salt. For I have

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Speaker 1: seen it, and it remains at this day. Lot's wife confirmed. Yes, exactly,

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Speaker 1: Bible story confirmed. That's Josephus's headline. But I mean, WHOA,

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Speaker 1: that's interesting. So Josephas in the first century CE is

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Speaker 1: saying that he personally saw a Lot's wife frozen in

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Speaker 1: time as a pillar of salt, hundreds of years after

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Speaker 1: the events of this myth allegedly took place. Now, I

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Speaker 1: think we can assume that joseph Has probably wasn't lying

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Speaker 1: about having seen something here that's something that he thought

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Speaker 1: was Lot's wife. But at the same time, I think

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Speaker 1: we can probably safely assume that whatever he saw was

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Speaker 1: not actually a human woman who got turned into sodium chloride.

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Speaker 1: So what could he be talking about. The obvious answer

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Speaker 1: would be, if not an actual woman that was turned

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Speaker 1: into salt, something that looks like a humanoid figure, something

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Speaker 1: that looks like it could be interpreted as such. Right. Uh,

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Speaker 1: we need to start by stipulating again that we don't

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Speaker 1: know we don't know the answer to this. But if

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Speaker 1: we want to examine some possibilities. We can look at

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Speaker 1: modern analogies. Now today, there are at least two different

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Speaker 1: things I've found that regularly get called Lot's wife, and

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Speaker 1: these are strange geological formations or pillars in the area

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Speaker 1: of the Dead Sea. One is an odd looking rock

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Speaker 1: pillar standing on a cliff top that overlooks the Dead

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Speaker 1: Sea on the Jordan's side, which is over on the

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Speaker 1: eastern side, and it does have an eerily human posture it.

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Speaker 1: It looks like some local tourism concerns advertise this as

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Speaker 1: Lots wife. And I couldn't figure out how long people

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Speaker 1: have been referring to this particular formation as Lot's wife,

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Speaker 1: but at least today and for some years now they've

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Speaker 1: been calling it that, and it LUs look creepy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from some of our listeners who

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Speaker 1: have visited the area or reside in the area. You

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Speaker 1: can weigh in on, you know, just what was your

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Speaker 1: experience looking at this thing that is referred to as

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Speaker 1: Lot's wife. There is a there's a kind of agony

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Speaker 1: to the posture of the mineral. I mean, uh, it does.

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Speaker 1: It's got some pathos to it. You can see it.

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Speaker 1: I can see Okay, I like, I get the acumen

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Speaker 1: of a poem almost out of this rock pillar. Another

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Speaker 1: thing that is often called Lot's Wife is a geological

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Speaker 1: formation on the opposite side of the Dead Sea, on

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Speaker 1: the west side, on a hilltop now known as Mount Sodom.

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Speaker 1: This formation, also called Lot's Wife, is kind of funny

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Speaker 1: when you actually see people approach it, Like I watched

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Speaker 1: a video of some tourists just taking video of themselves

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Speaker 1: going up to see lots Wife. And this one is

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Speaker 1: funny because it's less suggestive of human posture and and

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Speaker 1: shape than the formation on the Jordan's side, and because

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Speaker 1: it's gigantic. If it were a Lot's wife, Lot's Wife

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Speaker 1: was huge. And I should also went out that like

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Speaker 1: sub subsequent geologic formations in other parts of the world

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Speaker 1: have been dubbed Lot's Wife merely because they sort of

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Speaker 1: vaguely resemble a humanoid form. And I think arguably that's

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's what's happening in all of these cases.

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Speaker 1: It's like it kind of looks like a person let

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Speaker 1: and then we have this myth of a person having

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Speaker 1: turned to a salt or to some stone like substance,

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Speaker 1: and that is like the natural thing to call it.

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Speaker 1: Right now, Mount Sodom is interesting because it is actually

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Speaker 1: almost entirely made of salt. It's like more than salt,

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Speaker 1: with a few layers of other strata. It's got things

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Speaker 1: like limestone, and it hosts a gigantic salt cave that

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Speaker 1: is miles long. But there is no evidence whatsoever that

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Speaker 1: either of these formations were once a human. They appear

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Speaker 1: to be fairly normal mineral columns. But one could pretty

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Speaker 1: easily imagine one of two scenarios. You've either got the

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Speaker 1: myth already existing independently, and somebody who had both read

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Speaker 1: the story and seen the geological features put two and

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Speaker 1: two together, and then people like Josephus come along and

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Speaker 1: hear from those people and say, look, this is Lot's wife,

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Speaker 1: and why would you question it. Yeah, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: like the whole mermaid scenario. Did you know, to what

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Speaker 1: extent to someone see a manatee and think, oh, it's

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Speaker 1: a mermaid, or associate with the Mermaid's tale, the Tale

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Speaker 1: of the Mermaid, or is it the reverse right where

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Speaker 1: someone sees manatees and to make sense of it, they

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Speaker 1: create a story of mermaids exactly. And that second part

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Speaker 1: is the other option. I was going to say that

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Speaker 1: the actual geo mythology inspiration, maybe some tribe in the

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Speaker 1: ancient Dead Sea region was aware of either one of

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Speaker 1: these geological formations or another one like it that doesn't

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Speaker 1: exist anymore, that is not identified the same way now,

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Speaker 1: maybe eroded, But anyway, they were aware of some kind

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Speaker 1: of geological formation that looks kind of like a human,

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Speaker 1: and then a great storyteller comes along to come up

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Speaker 1: with a tale of how that person was crystallized in

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Speaker 1: place there, and that's why you're always hospitable to visitors. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, mythologies are interesting that way because often they're

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Speaker 1: often a woven together tapestry of pre existing streams of

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Speaker 1: storytelling tradition. I can absolutely see the possibility of how

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Speaker 1: like a story that was once about, you know, showing

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Speaker 1: hospitality to agents of the Lord, we're just showing hospitality

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Speaker 1: in general, got woven together with like somebody just stuck

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Speaker 1: in ideological myth into part of it. Yeah. Well, I

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Speaker 1: mean we even see this, of course, with the evolution

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Speaker 1: of of modern tales that are told you know, where

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Speaker 1: there'll be one version of it, like you just look

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Speaker 1: at our comic book characters, right, the evolution of some

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Speaker 1: of them from characters of pure exploitation two characters that

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Speaker 1: are being used to you know, discuss some sort of uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, socially relevant topic. Uh So, I mean stories evolve.

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Speaker 1: That's that's essential to the human experience. And of course

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Speaker 1: we see that in mythology as well. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: we always have to remember that the myths, even though

428
00:22:51,240 --> 00:22:55,399
Speaker 1: they are often encountered in some stationary form, recorded in

429
00:22:55,600 --> 00:22:57,439
Speaker 1: a book that is at least presented to you as

430
00:22:57,480 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: if it has not changed over the course of millennia. Uh,

431
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:03,040
Speaker 1: it is still a thing that is The story itself

432
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:05,440
Speaker 1: is something that is fluid and will have changed through

433
00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:08,240
Speaker 1: time and through tellings. Yes, and as for a single

434
00:23:08,359 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 1: ideological element being inserted into a story that already exists,

435
00:23:12,080 --> 00:23:14,800
Speaker 1: you can see that in storytelling today. Think about how

436
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:18,639
Speaker 1: common it is for there to be like a historical story.

437
00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 1: Think the Forrest Gump, okay, movie Forrest Gump. How many

438
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:24,959
Speaker 1: things are there in that story where you could have

439
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,119
Speaker 1: the story be pretty much exactly the same without it,

440
00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: except they inserted a little thing where like Forrest Gump

441
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 1: invented to have a nice day slogan, you know, on

442
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 1: a T shirt with the smiley face, or there are

443
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:37,920
Speaker 1: a bunch of things like that in the movie where

444
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,879
Speaker 1: they just insert a little fake ideology to say, oh,

445
00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:42,879
Speaker 1: and by the way, I remember this thing from history

446
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:46,520
Speaker 1: Forrest Gump did that. I forgot about that, the myth

447
00:23:46,560 --> 00:23:48,919
Speaker 1: making of Forrest Gump. I don't know why people like

448
00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 1: things like that so much, but they clearly do, because

449
00:23:51,280 --> 00:23:53,399
Speaker 1: it's in a lot of stories and movies to just

450
00:23:53,480 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 1: have a little thing that people recognize from the real

451
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: world and say, hey, this fictional character there. Actually the

452
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 1: reason it's that way, I feel like stuff is that

453
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:03,560
Speaker 1: there have been films that do that with a leaning

454
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,359
Speaker 1: tower of of pizza, right, yeah, yeah, where where a

455
00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:09,320
Speaker 1: character bumps into it and makes it crooked, you know,

456
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:11,680
Speaker 1: or something that out to that effect. Yeah, totally the

457
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: Superman movie. Maybe Superman like fixes it, he fixes it.

458
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:21,600
Speaker 1: That makes people mad? Why said always that in Superman

459
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,919
Speaker 1: movies Superman is protecting monuments from destruction. I remember that,

460
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 1: especially being the case in Superman four, where like great

461
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 1: monuments are under attack by the villains and Superman has

462
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:34,800
Speaker 1: to prevent them from being destroyed. Right, it should be

463
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 1: the people that mat are, right, Yeah, But Anyway, I

464
00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:40,080
Speaker 1: wanted to say something else about possible geological explanations for

465
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: mythology like this. Another thing has to do with salt

466
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,639
Speaker 1: formations around high salinity bodies of water. And there, of

467
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: course is a famously salty body of water in the

468
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:52,879
Speaker 1: vicinity here. Yeah, that's right, the Dead Sea, of course,

469
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:55,480
Speaker 1: which is not which is not an ocean, by the way,

470
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 1: The Dead Sea is a is a hyper saline lake.

471
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: It is like a super salt salty locked up lake.

472
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:04,240
Speaker 1: The water of the Dead Sea is fascinating. It is

473
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 1: so salty that no large life forms dwell there. No fish, no, no,

474
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,959
Speaker 1: no insects live in there, No plants live in there.

475
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: There are some micro organisms I think that live around

476
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 1: vents and stuff near the bottom of it. Right, and

477
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:22,720
Speaker 1: then in certain areas you'll find a human tourists floating

478
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:25,719
Speaker 1: in it, right, And that's rather easily. Yes, that's one

479
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:28,120
Speaker 1: of the fascinating things about the water there, because it's

480
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 1: so saline. I guess the density of the water is

481
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:33,159
Speaker 1: so much higher than normal. They say, it's almost like

482
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 1: you can just sit on the water. You know, it's

483
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 1: really hard to sink. You float so easily. Most ocean

484
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:42,440
Speaker 1: water is about three point five percent salt in solution,

485
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:45,520
Speaker 1: the Dead Sea is something like five to ten times

486
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: as briny as normal ocean water. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking

487
00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: super salty like, uh, you know, the kind of similar salinity.

488
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 1: Of course, one encounters in salt water isolation tanks, float tanks,

489
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:00,959
Speaker 1: you know, where you're you're floating in to this highly

490
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: salty water that almost takes on this like viscous consistent consistency. Yeah.

491
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:09,800
Speaker 1: But the first time he games it takes getting east

492
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,200
Speaker 1: to well, you might wonder why is the Dead Sea

493
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: so salty? The answer is that the Dead Sea does

494
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: not having natural outlet. There's nowhere for the water of

495
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 1: the Dead Sea to drain out to. Uh. And part

496
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: of the reason for this is that the bottom of

497
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 1: the Dead Sea is more than fourteen hundred feet below

498
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:29,199
Speaker 1: sea level, and the basin it sits in is just

499
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 1: generally one of the lowest elevations of any land area

500
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:36,119
Speaker 1: on Earth, depending on where you're measuring. It is sometimes

501
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,120
Speaker 1: cited as the lowest land elevation on the planet. So,

502
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 1: if you're the lowest elevation, where could the water drain

503
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 1: to if there's nothing downhill from it? Right, So, while

504
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a natural outlet. It does have a

505
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,400
Speaker 1: natural source, which is the Jordan River. So the Jordan

506
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 1: River feeds into the Dead Sea occasionally. Of course, as

507
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 1: you know, fresh water comes through has tiny amounts of

508
00:26:57,320 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: dissolved salt and mineral stuff that it carries with it.

509
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: The water in the Dead Sea just stays there, doesn't

510
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,199
Speaker 1: drain away. It stays there until it evaporates. But of

511
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:10,440
Speaker 1: course this is an extremely hot and dry desert climate,

512
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: so evaporation is extremely aggressive. But that evaporation removes water

513
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: without removing the salt. And then with anthropogenic changes to

514
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:21,680
Speaker 1: the flow of the Jordan River, the Dead Sea now

515
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: gets less water fed into it ever than ever before,

516
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 1: and it's shrinking rapidly. I read that the water level

517
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: has been falling at a rate of something like three

518
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: feet or about a meter a year, which is fast.

519
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 1: But with this much salt dissolved in the water, the

520
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:41,440
Speaker 1: water can leave deposits of crystallized salt around its edges.

521
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: In fact, if you walk around the shores of the

522
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: Dead Sea, you will find strange sparkling domes and piles

523
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:51,479
Speaker 1: of salt crystals collecting on rocks due to wave action

524
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 1: and evaporation. Yeah, and and any of these are just

525
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 1: they are really alien to behold strange looking formations, which

526
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 1: makes one thing, Well, perhaps some formation like this could

527
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: have caught the eye of someone in the past, and

528
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 1: either it would have been exactly the sort of thing

529
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: you would incorporate into a myth, or would serve to

530
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:12,200
Speaker 1: spin off a new myth exactly. Yeah, So salt crystals

531
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: like these, they can take on extremely bizarre shape. Sometimes

532
00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 1: they crystallize over a over a vertical rock column, or

533
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: maybe over an old tree trunk or a post driven

534
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 1: into the ground or something anything that has a sort

535
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 1: of vertical form. You can see how pretty easily heavy

536
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 1: crystallization of salt on the outside of it could start

537
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 1: to take on human looking form. And there's also I

538
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 1: would just say something about the the nature and shapes

539
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 1: of salt crystals that naturally draws the eye like it

540
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 1: looks unusual in the landscape, It looks kind of alive.

541
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: Some of the salt crystals can form these large cubes

542
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 1: and stuff you take on angles that don't look natural. Yeah,

543
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: there's a there's a geometric quality to it. Yeah, that

544
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:55,960
Speaker 1: that is it generally seems out of keeping with the

545
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: surrounding environment. So what was Josephus looking at when he

546
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 1: said he saw all Lot's wife in person. Well, we

547
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, and we don't know if whatever

548
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 1: he saw was actually the inspiration for the story in

549
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:09,600
Speaker 1: the first place. But if it were, I think it

550
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: would be in keeping with many other ideological tales in

551
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: the Bible and in human mythology. Absolutely well, on that note,

552
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 1: I think we should take one more break, and when

553
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:21,400
Speaker 1: we come back, let's talk a little bit about salt

554
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:25,120
Speaker 1: salt in the human body. And a really fabulous paper

555
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: that we ran across that really breaks down how an

556
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: Old Testament woman could be transformed into a pillar of

557
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: salt or salt like substance. Thank alright, we're back. So

558
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: one way that I would often that I would often

559
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:45,280
Speaker 1: think about this story as as I would think, Okay,

560
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: a person being turned into just salt. That doesn't make

561
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, you know, because salt salt is

562
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 1: is of course, you know, is the salt comes from somewhere, Like,

563
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,479
Speaker 1: how do you replace all of us with salt? Certainly

564
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 1: our bodies contain salt. How much salt does our body?

565
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 1: It does our body? Do our bodies contain. Well, let's

566
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 1: let's let's break down this a little bit. So first

567
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: of all, salt is obviously sodium and chlorine, and we

568
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 1: need sodium for example, as a it's a key extracellular electrolyte,

569
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 1: and it's crucial to a number of health functions. Now,

570
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:20,959
Speaker 1: for the for the most part, we consume way too

571
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: much salt today. Uh though the minimum consumption is roughly

572
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: I've read, uh, fifteen hundred milligrams a day, while the

573
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:31,719
Speaker 1: American Heart Association says the absolute minimum is more like

574
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 1: five hundred milligrams a day, and the average American consumes

575
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: something like uh thirty four hundred milligrams of sodium per day.

576
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: Those are amateur numbers, um. And Now, also according to

577
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: the Salt Association, chlorine is also important preserving acid balance

578
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: in the body, aiding potassium absorption. It also contributes to

579
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 1: the hydrochloric acid in our gut, and it enhances the

580
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: blood's ability to transport carbon dioxide. UM. And so all

581
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: of this breaks down to, like is a rough average,

582
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: an adult human body contains two fifty grams of salt,

583
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 1: and any excess is naturally excreted by the body. Now

584
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 1: we we've talked about excretion of excess salt in a

585
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: past episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, um where

586
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: we discussed a drinking salt water. So I recommend that

587
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: one to to anyone who would like it even more

588
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 1: salt after this episode. So if Lot's wife, you know,

589
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: wasn't so much turned into a pillar of salt, if

590
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: we're gonna say, okay, what if the magic rays of

591
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 1: the city smiting taking place, what if it just reduced

592
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: her to her body salt content, you know, like just

593
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: you know, a holy ray that that destroys everything except salt.

594
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: How much salt would be left? It would be you know,

595
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:47,320
Speaker 1: about two grams of salt. That's roughly what one point

596
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: to four cups what we got our cup and a

597
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 1: quarter of salt in our bodies. Well, I mean it's

598
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: impressive when you think about it, you know, in those terms,

599
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 1: I guess, but in terms of like a person being

600
00:31:57,120 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 1: reduced to that, uh, you know, it's not it's not

601
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: really a pillar of salt, they would have to say.

602
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: And then she turned back and was reduced to a

603
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:07,440
Speaker 1: small amount of salt. Man, I love thinking about the

604
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 1: stuff in human bodies. In measuring quantities used for cooking. Yeah,

605
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: because according to Harvard Health that's less than nine ounces

606
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: and about the amount in three or four salt shakers. Wait,

607
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: do the salt shakers have a little bits of dry

608
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: rice in them? Um? I don't know if it's necessary

609
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: in such an area to environment. So that that's one

610
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: place my mind went in terms of trying to figure

611
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: out what's what's happening. Now. Obviously your mind also turns

612
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:38,120
Speaker 1: to of course fossilization. Like fossilization is a very real

613
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: process by which a living body is turned into a

614
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 1: solid mineral form. But of course that's not going to

615
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: occur in an instant. It's something that takes place over

616
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 1: the course of geologic time. Uh. Likewise, I'm thinking, Okay,

617
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 1: Essentially what we're talking about is a pair of nuclear

618
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:01,080
Speaker 1: blasts taking place that have been uh, you know, unleashed

619
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: by angelic forces. Okay, might might that's the might the

620
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: the flash of this, might the the radiation from this

621
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: have incinerated the body and reduced it to ash. Well,

622
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: you know, that's one way of looking at it. But

623
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: it wouldn't produce like a call, like a statue of ash.

624
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 1: It would just obliterate a body if it was turning

625
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:22,640
Speaker 1: into ash. And then of course so one thinks to mummies,

626
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: but of course mummies are you know, are just examples

627
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: of body that has been when which the fluid has

628
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: been removed. Uh. And likewise, there are a number of

629
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:35,800
Speaker 1: different you know, preservation um uh models for the human

630
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:39,400
Speaker 1: body where you're you know, you're adding something or replacing something.

631
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: But none of these are processes that are going to

632
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: take place in an instant And there there are forms

633
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 1: of natural mummification that take place. Uh. We often think

634
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:54,440
Speaker 1: that natural mummification in some cultures preceded deliberate mummification, But

635
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: you wouldn't normally think of that as like something that

636
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 1: somebody would look at and see a mummy and say

637
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:01,560
Speaker 1: they turned to salt. Now you could, you could play

638
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:04,600
Speaker 1: a kind of crazy jigsaw of different natural effects if

639
00:34:04,600 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 1: anything goes right. What if there was some kind of

640
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 1: natural mummy of a woman in the Dead Sea region

641
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: that suddenly, like because I don't know, a storm or

642
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 1: something blew all this salt crystal on her and then

643
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 1: it covered her body and salt and she glistened all

644
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,879
Speaker 1: over and people said, look there's the salt woman. Yeah

645
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's one of those where it's Altosately

646
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:24,960
Speaker 1: a lot of steps are required to get to the

647
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: place you want to go, right. So I kept looking

648
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:30,319
Speaker 1: around about this. I'm like, somebody's out there. There has

649
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:33,760
Speaker 1: to have been a scientist, a pure scientist, who decided

650
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: to tackle this is kind of a thought experiment. One

651
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:39,840
Speaker 1: of these great playful chemistry papers, like the like what

652
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 1: are the thermodynamics of Hell and all that? Right? Or

653
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: one of another favorite that I have more of a

654
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 1: biology paper is um like how a centaur's body work

655
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 1: run across that one where the they the authors argued

656
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 1: that a centaur would require two hearts in order to

657
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:59,040
Speaker 1: power this you know, conjoined uh system. So I was

658
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: lucky enough to find just such a paper on Lot's

659
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: wife titled the Chemical Death of Lot's Wife Discussion Paper.

660
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: This was published in the Journal of the Royal Society

661
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 1: of Medicine in July of and it was by Irving M. Clots,

662
00:35:16,120 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: pH d, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University. And I want

663
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: to note here that the Clots was not some like

664
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: weird quack right in a bunch of like biblical papers,

665
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:29,360
Speaker 1: uh you know, which I think should be obvious given

666
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 1: the details of not only you know his his employment,

667
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,240
Speaker 1: but also the publication. But I should stress that during

668
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:40,320
Speaker 1: his lifetime he authored more than two hundred scientific articles

669
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:42,600
Speaker 1: and pure view journals, and he also wrote numerous books,

670
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:46,600
Speaker 1: including one titled Diamond Dealers and Feather Merchants Tales from

671
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 1: the Sciences, which sounds sounds quite good. I meant to

672
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 1: hunt up a copy of it. So anyway, he's I

673
00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 1: feel like he's very much engaging on a thought experiment here,

674
00:35:56,560 --> 00:36:00,080
Speaker 1: but his his science cred is is ultimately above reproach it.

675
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:01,920
Speaker 1: But so he's going to take this from a like

676
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: biochemistry point of view and say, all right, if a

677
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: person was turned into salt, how would that work? What

678
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 1: would that mean exactly? So, first of all, he reminds

679
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 1: us that we shouldn't take salt too literally. Rather, he says,

680
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: it's likely, you know, used in a generic sense to

681
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 1: refer to any solid with mineral characteristics to it and

682
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: perhaps a salt like taste. So he's not necessarily talking

683
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 1: about sodium chloride. But he says that in the Bible,

684
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 1: if they said salt, they probably mins just any kind

685
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 1: of crystalline mineral. A lot of things taste vaguely salty. Uh.

686
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:36,919
Speaker 1: And he uses the point of comparison to the way

687
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,800
Speaker 1: the Bible uses the word plague to refer to basically anything,

688
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: you know, anything that's like an epidemic. So he writes quote,

689
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: A particularly likely candidate for the salt that caused the

690
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:52,759
Speaker 1: death of Mislot is calcite. This mineral is very susceptible

691
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: to a precipitation in the presence of low concentrations of

692
00:36:56,960 --> 00:37:01,319
Speaker 1: free calcium and carbonate, both of which are present ubiquitously

693
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: in all human tissues. And there he's talking about calcium

694
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:08,960
Speaker 1: ions and carbonate ions. So what must have happened, he argues,

695
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 1: is something something occurred to overwhelm the homeostatic systems that

696
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: maintain calcium and carbonate levels below critical values, thus leading

697
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:23,439
Speaker 1: to the onset of calcite formation. Uh. And this would

698
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:24,799
Speaker 1: have been due to some sort of sort of you know,

699
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: catastrophic stress. And so what could have could have caused

700
00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: this to happen? Well, Clots looks to the text and

701
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: considers that they were running from a powerful firestorm radiating

702
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:39,359
Speaker 1: outward from the from this side of destruction, and that

703
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: as she stops and looks back, perhaps she's then hit

704
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: by a powerful blast of hot air with high c

705
00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: O two content along with heat and radiation. So it

706
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: would be the hot air coming in with the pressure

707
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: and the CEO two, the chemical properties of the CEO

708
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 1: two content, and how that would affect the pH of

709
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 1: the blood and the body, and then the heat and radiation. Now,

710
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,240
Speaker 1: I think I understand from his analysis that it doesn't

711
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: actually matter that she's looking back at the city. He's saying, like,

712
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,399
Speaker 1: maybe it's just that she stopped running away, right, It's

713
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: more that she stopped and looked back, or perhaps kept

714
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:15,800
Speaker 1: stopping and looking back, So you know, it's not about

715
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 1: like your eyes beholding the thing, right, So it's not

716
00:38:18,719 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: the Josephus issue. Remember Josephas says the problem is that

717
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 1: she thought too kindly of of Sodom and that she

718
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: should have been I guess colder in her in her

719
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:32,240
Speaker 1: condemnation of it. Right, This is basically this Claus's argument

720
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:34,719
Speaker 1: is that she's still in the danger zone from a

721
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: terrific blast that's taking place. So Clots goes on from

722
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:41,560
Speaker 1: here to do a lot of chemical analysis on how

723
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 1: all this would break down. And I'm not going to

724
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: attempt to summarize that here. If you're if you're more

725
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 1: of a chemistry whiz, I suggest looking up this paper.

726
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 1: It's available for free online and a PDF form, But

727
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: I am going to skip ahead to his final summary quote. Thus,

728
00:38:57,160 --> 00:39:00,359
Speaker 1: by turning around in her direction of flight, Miss Lot

729
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:06,200
Speaker 1: exposed herself instantly to stresses that generated immediate enormous escalations

730
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 1: in concentrations of calcium and carbonate, so that the critical

731
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:14,239
Speaker 1: limits specified by equation six, which was something he uh

732
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:18,160
Speaker 1: uh he covered earlier in the paper, were exceeded overwhelmingly

733
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:25,400
Speaker 1: and instantaneously. Internal massive pervasive crystallization of calcite followed. Immediately,

734
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 1: Misslat died instantly of rigor calcium carbonitus and turned into

735
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: a rigid block of calcite. Since the prevailing winds from

736
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: the Dead Sea always carry along a spray of salt

737
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: which is accumulated on this pillar, succeeding generations to modern

738
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:46,400
Speaker 1: times have testified that this column is a block of salt. Okay,

739
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:49,920
Speaker 1: So he lays out a process by which, in the

740
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 1: presence of of certain chemical pressures and you know, high

741
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:58,200
Speaker 1: pressure and temperature from this blast, the body could conceivably

742
00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: undergo rapid crystallization s of its calcium content. Because like

743
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:06,280
Speaker 1: the some of the calcium containing compounds in the body,

744
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 1: like the albumen he refers to, like those good d nature.

745
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,600
Speaker 1: The calcium gets freed, it joins up with the carbonate,

746
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: you get rapid crystallization, and you get a calcite body.

747
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: It's pretty creepy. Yeah, it is. It's tremendously creepy. I

748
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 1: don't know if he makes the case really that this

749
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,879
Speaker 1: could happen in reality. One thing I wasn't quite clear

750
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: on is whether he's just saying, like, Okay, what's the

751
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: most plausible possible, like chain of of chemical things you're

752
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,320
Speaker 1: leading to the crystallization of the body like this, or

753
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:38,000
Speaker 1: if he's actually saying, oh, yeah, given the right circumstances,

754
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:41,839
Speaker 1: this couldn't happen to a human body. Yeah. Yeah, it's um.

755
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a playful article, I feel, but

756
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,280
Speaker 1: it's not. It doesn't have an obvious like wink moment.

757
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:49,839
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's very um, you know, it's it's

758
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: very professional. It's delivery. I feel like modern papers of this, uh,

759
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:56,320
Speaker 1: this variety would tend to have a few more winks

760
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 1: towards the fact that it is a thought experiment, if

761
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 1: not outright saying a thought experiment, and he's a little

762
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:04,320
Speaker 1: more I guess in since he's a little more playful

763
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:07,719
Speaker 1: with how he's framing it. But but yeah, I love

764
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: this this idea of that the chemical death of miss

765
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: Loot and he always refers to her as misslot instead

766
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:17,279
Speaker 1: of just lots wife in the paper. Yeah, so, uh,

767
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:21,439
Speaker 1: you know, again, not not a situation where where this

768
00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: paper is confirming a biblical account, Bible story confirmed, but

769
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 1: the crystallization of calcite in the blood. But but it is.

770
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: It is another one of the examples of like, what's

771
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:35,600
Speaker 1: a what's a completely outrageous scenario from you know, from

772
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: from myth and then and then trying to sort of

773
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,759
Speaker 1: recreate it to reverse engineering using science and it's it's

774
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 1: fascinating how sometimes you can you can just recreate how

775
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:46,879
Speaker 1: something like that could occur. And it makes me want

776
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:50,360
Speaker 1: to see more like calcite death rays in our science fiction.

777
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:52,520
Speaker 1: This has been interesting, Robert, Yeah, yeah, I had. I

778
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun uh researching and reading about

779
00:41:55,920 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: Lots wife. I'm also reminded how in um Our Scott Baker,

780
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 1: there's a second Apocalypse saga. He has a bit about

781
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 1: wizards that come into contact with a particular uh, substance,

782
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:10,840
Speaker 1: it causes their bodies to essentially turn into a pillar

783
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:14,759
Speaker 1: of salt um and then it's uh, it's hinted that

784
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,799
Speaker 1: that salt can then be used for for other purposes.

785
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:21,719
Speaker 1: So I'll leave leave that out there for anyone who

786
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:24,280
Speaker 1: wants to explore those books on their own. In the meantime,

787
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:26,320
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff

788
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,040
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, heading over to stuff to Blow

789
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:30,439
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find them. Uh.

790
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:32,759
Speaker 1: And if you want to support our show, the best

791
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: thing you can do is make sure you have subscribed.

792
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:37,960
Speaker 1: Also rate and review wherever you have the power to

793
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 1: do so, and don't forget about invention. That's our other

794
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 1: show comes out once a week and it is a

795
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:46,960
Speaker 1: continuous examination of human techno history. Huge thanks as always

796
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:50,239
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Maya Cole. If you would

797
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on

798
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:54,400
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for

799
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email

800
00:42:57,200 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

801
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:11,960
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart

802
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,680
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803
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:17,520
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804
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:22,800
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