WEBVTT - The Monstrefact: Marvel Comics’ Medusa

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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<v Speaker 2>Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,

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<v Speaker 2>a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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<v Speaker 2>focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters. In time on

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<v Speaker 2>Stuff to Blow Your Mind, We've discussed the mythical Gorgon

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<v Speaker 2>Medusa at length, but today I want to look at

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<v Speaker 2>the character with the same name from the Marvel Comics universe.

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<v Speaker 2>This Medusa is an inhuman, a branch of Homo sapiens,

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<v Speaker 2>descended from experiments conducted on primitive humans by the alien

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<v Speaker 2>Cree to give them various emergent powers. While other inhumans

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<v Speaker 2>boast devastating offensive powers or highly augmented physiologies, Medusa's power

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<v Speaker 2>is all about her long red hair, which she can

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<v Speaker 2>extend to double its normal six foot length, and most

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<v Speaker 2>remarkably of all, control each strand as if it were

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<v Speaker 2>a highly prehensile arm or tentacle. She can cause her

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<v Speaker 2>scarlet locks to bundle together into reinforcing strands and accomplish

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<v Speaker 2>everything from minor tool manipulation to intense physical combat with

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<v Speaker 2>other superpowered individuals. Now as the excellent book Marvel Anatomy

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<v Speaker 2>by Mark Sumerak and Daniel Wallace, with illustrations by Jonah

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<v Speaker 2>Loebe points out Medusa's hair is just normal hair. It's

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<v Speaker 2>perhaps fuller and longer than most human heads of hair,

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<v Speaker 2>but its prehensile power stems not from its internal structure,

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<v Speaker 2>which is just the standard cross linked kerat and protein filament,

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<v Speaker 2>but from her own powerful psionic abilities. Yes, she has telekinesis,

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<v Speaker 2>but can only control her own hair, and that's no

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<v Speaker 2>slight against Medusa here. Think about it. The average human head,

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<v Speaker 2>according to Harvard's Bio Numbers website, consists of between ninety

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<v Speaker 2>thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand individual hairs, and

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<v Speaker 2>we might position her at the upper end of that spectrum,

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<v Speaker 2>even allotting for thicker hair shafts, as Sumac and Wallace suggest,

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<v Speaker 2>even being rather conservative. Let's say she's using her brain

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<v Speaker 2>to minutely control one hundred thousand strands of hair as

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<v Speaker 2>if they were one hundred thousand additional arms. Assuming that

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<v Speaker 2>her sonic powers emerged primarily through neural tissue, her brain

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<v Speaker 2>is putting in quite a lot of work here, in

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<v Speaker 2>addition to controlling her human limbs. Of course, remember that

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<v Speaker 2>an octopus in order to control. Its own sophisticated system

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<v Speaker 2>of grasping arms depends in part on intramuscular nerve cords

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<v Speaker 2>that act as sort of many brains to provide partially

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<v Speaker 2>independent action. So perhaps Medusa as well benefits from something

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<v Speaker 2>akin to this. We might well assume her telekinetic powers

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<v Speaker 2>rival those of Century or even those of the mighty

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<v Speaker 2>Jeen Gray, only much more localized in range. But if

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<v Speaker 2>telekinetic hair strand control is a heavy lift, what about

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<v Speaker 2>the actual physical lift of picking up various objects and

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<v Speaker 2>even superheroes with her telekinetically manipulated hair. This question is

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<v Speaker 2>a good bit easier to nail down, as we know

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<v Speaker 2>exactly how strong human hair is. As Tim Radford pointed

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<v Speaker 2>out in a two thousand and four article for The Guardian,

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<v Speaker 2>Secrets of Human Hair Unlocked at Natural History Museum in London,

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<v Speaker 2>a single human hair strand can only sustain a weight

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<v Speaker 2>of one hundred grams or three ounces, but when hair

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<v Speaker 2>is woven together it can sustain much more, a fact

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<v Speaker 2>that hair hangar aerialists have long exploited. In fact, if

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<v Speaker 2>all the strands of hair on a typical human head

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<v Speaker 2>were woven together, the resulting megabraid could hold twelve metric

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<v Speaker 2>tons or the weight of two elephants. So the idea

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<v Speaker 2>of Medusa coiling her braids and holding say, iron Man

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<v Speaker 2>in place, isn't that far fetched, at least from a

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<v Speaker 2>material standpoint. Interestingly enough, in the comics, as Queen of

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<v Speaker 2>the Inhumans, Medusa's greatest strength is perhaps her diplomatic abilities,

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<v Speaker 2>a reminder that while superpowered hair can move around superheroes,

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<v Speaker 2>a well placed word can move mountains. Tune in for

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<v Speaker 2>additional episodes of The Monster, Fact, The Artifact, or Animally

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<v Speaker 2>a Stupendium each week. As always, you can email us

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<v Speaker 2>at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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<v Speaker 1>Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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