Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday
Speaker 1: Vault episode time. This one originally aired on February four.
Speaker 1: It is Brain and Head Theft, Part two, picking up
Speaker 1: from Part one, which ran last Saturday. So stick around
Speaker 1: and enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our
Speaker 1: discussion of stolen heads and stolen brains. That's right, If
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to part one, go back listen to
Speaker 1: part one, because that's where we initially get into it,
Speaker 1: and we talked about like some ancient ideas about what
Speaker 1: the brain did and uh. Then we get into some
Speaker 1: examples of of brains that have been preserved uh consensually,
Speaker 1: and then get a little bit into the theft. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna get more into the theft here in this episode,
Speaker 1: and then towards the end, we're gonna get into some
Speaker 1: of the mythology and folklore of disembodied heads. That's right.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the last episode, we were
Speaker 1: talking about the theft of the skull of the Austrian
Speaker 1: classical composer Franz Joseph Haydn, which was stolen by phrenologists
Speaker 1: who clung to the mistaken belief that Haydn's musical genius
Speaker 1: would somehow be inscribed in the bone of his cranium.
Speaker 1: But Hayden isn't the only figure like this. There there
Speaker 1: are other figures in history with some kind of reputation
Speaker 1: for genius of one kind or another, who have had
Speaker 1: their heads or their brains stolen in the hope that
Speaker 1: these remnants would somehow explain to science what made them
Speaker 1: so smart. And of course, in the case of phrenology,
Speaker 1: this was an utterly hopeless endeavor, just because phrenology is
Speaker 1: total quack pseudoscience. It's end to end. But this has
Speaker 1: also happened even in ages of more legitimate neuroscience, and
Speaker 1: still maybe doesn't tell us as much as the people
Speaker 1: who stole these brains hoped that it would. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk about another famous stolen head that is
Speaker 1: not even for any pretense of neuroscience or any other
Speaker 1: type of research. I want to talk about the head
Speaker 1: of Jeremy Bentham. Uh, so you might know Jeremy Bentham
Speaker 1: best for I don't know what do people know him
Speaker 1: best for these days? Maybe for the for the idea
Speaker 1: of the panopticon, which he was a promoter of. That
Speaker 1: would be where our listeners might have heard his name
Speaker 1: on this show before. Yeah, Jeremy Bentham was a highly
Speaker 1: influential eighteenth and nineteenth century philosopher and social reformer from England,
Speaker 1: and he's usually thought of as one of the founders
Speaker 1: of liberalism and one of the modern founders of the
Speaker 1: utilitarian theory of ethics. So, in other words, right and
Speaker 1: wrong would be determined not by what the King says,
Speaker 1: or what the Bible says, or not by any deontological duty,
Speaker 1: but by what course of action would provide the greatest
Speaker 1: happiness to the greatest number of people. And Bentham is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because if you read through a collection
Speaker 1: of his opinions and arguments today, it is this strange
Speaker 1: mixture of things that for the time were extremely radical,
Speaker 1: progressive and by our modern ethics admirable, but also things
Speaker 1: that are bizarrely horrifying. So so, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: he was in favor of total political equality, for women
Speaker 1: and the decriminalization of homosexuality. But he also did not
Speaker 1: like the idea of privacy. He thought that was a
Speaker 1: bad concept. And of course this is exemplified in the
Speaker 1: idea of the panopticon, in which prisoners have no privacy
Speaker 1: or and and do not know if the the gaze
Speaker 1: of the like the the lone observation tower, if they
Speaker 1: are looking at them in any given moment, you know. Right,
Speaker 1: So he would dig where we are now in some respects. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Jeremy Bentham. I would love to know
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bentham's thoughts on the modern digital landscape. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that the relevant part of the Jeremy Bentham story today
Speaker 1: is that his head still exists today above ground in
Speaker 1: a grotesque, incompetently mummified form, and and it keeps getting stolen.
Speaker 1: I was reading a piece about this that was a
Speaker 1: transcript of a CBC radio piece which featured an interview
Speaker 1: with the Subadra Doss, who is a curator of collections
Speaker 1: at University College London. The interviewer was named Carol Off
Speaker 1: and this CBC piece includes some excellent biographical tidbits right
Speaker 1: at the top about Bentham's weird and interesting personality apart
Speaker 1: from his politics and his public work. For example, it
Speaker 1: says that Bentham had a walking stick that he called Dapple,
Speaker 1: he had a teapot that he referred to as Dicky,
Speaker 1: and he had an elderly cat that was named the
Speaker 1: Reverend Sir John Langborne. Oh that's that's I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's a good cat name. That's a bit too human.
Speaker 1: I think it's funny when a dog has a very
Speaker 1: human name. I don't I haven't made my mind up
Speaker 1: about cats yet, I think, I guess I assume that's funny.
Speaker 1: I find it cats work best when they have food names,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, yeah, like biscuit or mochy or pound
Speaker 1: cake or um yeah, really anything rabby oli. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can go go crazy with it, but generally speaking, yes,
Speaker 1: it's something kind of cute and foods. He works well
Speaker 1: with cats. I find I'm glad that we've all learned
Speaker 1: that one day you plan to eat a cat. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it would really if that were the case,
Speaker 1: and it's not, then we with the feeling would be
Speaker 1: mutual between me and the cats, So I think the
Speaker 1: cat would respect it. Oh yeah, if we were appreciating game.
Speaker 1: Is that what they say? Yeah, totally if we were
Speaker 1: small enough our cats what heat does yeah? Um, But anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought that was a pretty good window into his personality.
Speaker 1: And uh. And so Bentham a cently had express wishes
Speaker 1: for what would be done to his remains in the
Speaker 1: event of his death, and they fall along some similar
Speaker 1: lines of sensibility. So Bentham died in eighteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: and when that happened, he wanted his dead body to
Speaker 1: be preserved in a way that would allow him to
Speaker 1: be wheeled out and presented to friends at parties in
Speaker 1: case anybody missed seeing him. Take rob, I want you
Speaker 1: to take what I just said and compare that to
Speaker 1: the picture of his preserved head above. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it certainly would be a conversation starter or stopper at
Speaker 1: any party. Uh. I mean it's pretty impressive looking. It
Speaker 1: is identifiable as a head, even his head. Uh, it
Speaker 1: kind of looks it has a very leathery consistency to it. Um.
Speaker 1: The skin is you had kind of darkened and kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a slim gem with these sling Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's hair on it, which I'm guessing as perhaps his
Speaker 1: original hair. Real hair. Yep. The eyes clearly are not
Speaker 1: his original eyes appears to be a pair of glass
Speaker 1: eyeballs that have been inserted into it, which you give
Speaker 1: it this extra uncanny appearance because it looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: the living dead. It looks like the eyes of a
Speaker 1: of of a litch sing at you. But the look
Speaker 1: on his face is also not terrifying. It's more serene.
Speaker 1: It looks like he's patiently listening to you while you're
Speaker 1: sharing a tidbit. Oh, I don't know how serene it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I kind of see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: But he looks to me very like startled and appalled.
Speaker 1: He looks like a a butler who has accidentally opened
Speaker 1: a door to a room in which something obscene is
Speaker 1: taking place. Oh, I get more of a like he's
Speaker 1: patiently listening to you while you tell him something that
Speaker 1: he personally finds boring. But okay, he's a good listener. Nonetheless. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what was the deal with his head? Like? Why
Speaker 1: is his head off of his dead body but they're
Speaker 1: both preserved. Why does it look like that? Uh? To
Speaker 1: quote from Doss in this interview, she says Bentham had
Speaker 1: made a special request that his head be preserved in
Speaker 1: the style of the Maori, the native New Zealanders. But
Speaker 1: his friend Dr southwood Smith, who was tasked with creating
Speaker 1: the auto icon, wasn't necessarily as practiced with that as
Speaker 1: he probably would have liked to have been. And Dast
Speaker 1: goes on, and so the result was a head that
Speaker 1: southwood Smith said was not suitable for display, which is
Speaker 1: why he had a wax model commissioned. That's the one
Speaker 1: on display with the auto icon, which is the skeleton
Speaker 1: in Bentham's own clothes. So so, according to Daston, the
Speaker 1: head was desiccated here with sulfuric acid, and sometimes his
Speaker 1: hair still falls out. But the situation is that there
Speaker 1: are two separate necro icons of this utilitarian philosopher that
Speaker 1: are both made out of his real body. There's his
Speaker 1: body containing his bones and his clothes, topped with a
Speaker 1: fake wax head, and that's on display at University College London,
Speaker 1: and Rob, I've got an image for you to look
Speaker 1: at down below. Oh here, and then you also have
Speaker 1: his severed head, poorly preserved that we just described, sometimes
Speaker 1: kept separately, sometimes shown at the feet of the auto icon.
Speaker 1: Of the rest of the body, because it's just this disgusting,
Speaker 1: rotten looking beef jerky head. And then of course there's
Speaker 1: the horrible body with a wax head that has these
Speaker 1: gloves on it that look really just this is awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the picture you shared that shows the the wax headed
Speaker 1: figure with an actual skeleton inside of it, uh seated
Speaker 1: and then there it at its feet indeed is the
Speaker 1: original head. And um, yeah, this looks fairly terrifying but
Speaker 1: also symbolically potent. Maybe it's just because of the some
Speaker 1: of the examples that I was looking at from say
Speaker 1: Hindu iconography that we'll get into later. Like there, I
Speaker 1: feel like this image is trying to tell me something
Speaker 1: about about death. Yeah, it seems almost in the style
Speaker 1: of the the Cephaloforce sing, you know, like the Saints
Speaker 1: like San Denis in Paris, the Saints who carry their
Speaker 1: own heads in their hands because of the legends where
Speaker 1: they were decapitated but then just picked up their heads
Speaker 1: and walked around did some miracles or something. Yeah, except
Speaker 1: he's like saying, yeah, it's like, look, there's my head
Speaker 1: down there. It's rotten, but I'm I'm one look at
Speaker 1: this gorgeous wax head I'm boasting. So the story gets
Speaker 1: weirder because we've got to get to the actual theft.
Speaker 1: This was all according to Bentham's wishes, though the mummification
Speaker 1: or preservation of the head got screwed up. Southwood Smith
Speaker 1: did not do a good job with that, or at
Speaker 1: least not to his own liking. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: the results don't look great. But then the theft comes in,
Speaker 1: because apparently Jeremy Bentham's actual preserved head has been repeatedly
Speaker 1: stolen or kidnapped as a result of student pranks like
Speaker 1: Doss points out that sometime in the nineteen nineties, Bentham's
Speaker 1: head was quote kidnapped by uc l's rival university, King's
Speaker 1: College in London. So I assume it was stolen by
Speaker 1: some kind of English version of Jim Magiluski from the Brain,
Speaker 1: you know, a prank boy. And in fact, it seems
Speaker 1: the head was stolen multiple times in its history. I
Speaker 1: was reading a piece about this from Smith Journal that says,
Speaker 1: quote once it was returned upon the making of a
Speaker 1: charitable donation. On another occasion, it was recovered from a
Speaker 1: luggage locker in Aberdeen. A man as clever as Bentham
Speaker 1: should have been able to foresee the inevitable consequences of
Speaker 1: spending eternity among students. Now, at some point the head
Speaker 1: was recovered from what happened in the nineties these mischievous students,
Speaker 1: and it was put back on display at least at
Speaker 1: one point for an exhibit called what does it Mean
Speaker 1: to be Human? Curating Heads at u c L. So
Speaker 1: this is a head that apparently keeps getting stolen. Don't
Speaker 1: know if it will ever be stolen again. I think
Speaker 1: they are taking extreme measures to prevent that, but who
Speaker 1: knows what's going to happen. But we should still say that,
Speaker 1: at least in Bentham's case, this is consensual preservation in
Speaker 1: a museum, despite a few uh en cephalocleptics over the years.
Speaker 1: There are also lots of disturbing cases where someone's head
Speaker 1: or brain ends up in a museum against their own wishes,
Speaker 1: whether it's by the supposed forces of science and preservation
Speaker 1: or some other forces that are doing the stealing. It
Speaker 1: has happened plenty of times that heads, skulls, brains get
Speaker 1: taken from somebody's body, whether they wanted that or not,
Speaker 1: and end up in a museum. And and this brings
Speaker 1: me to the next thing I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: to follow up on some of the uh, some of
Speaker 1: the phrenology discussion from the last episode, because I feel
Speaker 1: like I want to be a bit self critical here,
Speaker 1: because I have to note that I feel a baseline
Speaker 1: sympathy for the classic Indiana Jones line about the Cross
Speaker 1: of Coronado in the Last Crusade when he says it
Speaker 1: belongs in a museum. You know, I I really enjoy museums,
Speaker 1: and I am instinctually drawn to the idea that it's
Speaker 1: good to have artifacts preserved in play. Is like museums
Speaker 1: places where you know, artifacts from history should be the
Speaker 1: you know, the common heritage of all humankind to observe
Speaker 1: and learn from. And so it's good that you get
Speaker 1: to go see them in a museum in a place
Speaker 1: where they will be preserved as well as possible across time.
Speaker 1: And this sounds good, but of course it can in
Speaker 1: reality be an extremely fraught concept and just one of
Speaker 1: the million complications We explore some of this in our
Speaker 1: Invention episode on the First Museum is the question of
Speaker 1: physical location. Like I think it is actually good that
Speaker 1: artifacts from ancient history or even more recent history could
Speaker 1: in some way be the common heritage of all human
Speaker 1: kind to learn from. But they've got to physically be somewhere,
Speaker 1: And it turns out that is often in like wealthy
Speaker 1: European nations or in the United States, so like not
Speaker 1: everybody actually has the same access to these artifacts. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got to physically go to London or to Washington
Speaker 1: or something to see them. Yeah, you have this this
Speaker 1: um this this severe imbalance where say school children in
Speaker 1: the United States can go to their local museum in
Speaker 1: a major city and see artifacts of ancient Egypt, but
Speaker 1: those same artifacts are not on display at the local
Speaker 1: museum for actual Egyptian children to see. They would have
Speaker 1: to look at a reproduction or a picture in a
Speaker 1: book or on the internet. Right. And of course another
Speaker 1: big problem here is just the question of, like, how
Speaker 1: do you source these artifacts when you're you're bringing them
Speaker 1: into museum collections. A lot of times it's hard to
Speaker 1: make a convincing argument that that what's happening in the
Speaker 1: collection of these artifacts is not just stealing, is just
Speaker 1: stealing from dead people. And so I think that there
Speaker 1: are real dilemmas here. I say this as as a
Speaker 1: lover of museums. Uh. And of course it's true even
Speaker 1: of inanimate artifacts that are produced by people who are
Speaker 1: long gone, but it's obviously even more fraught when you're
Speaker 1: talking about things like the remains of human beings, especially
Speaker 1: human beings who lived relatively recently. Uh. And so this
Speaker 1: brings me back to what we were talking about in
Speaker 1: the Haydn segment of part one. We were talking about
Speaker 1: the development of the pseudoscience of phrenology, which quick refresher.
Speaker 1: This was a now completely debunked pseudoscience that was popular,
Speaker 1: especially in like the first half of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: popular throughout Europe, in the United States, and it was
Speaker 1: the belief that you could infer mental characteristics of people
Speaker 1: by measuring bumps and contours on their skulls. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the this was one of the motivations
Speaker 1: for the stealing of the of Franz Joseph Haydn's skull. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some strains of phrenology that a person could
Speaker 1: see as extremely wrong and pseudo scientific, but not super harmful,
Speaker 1: or at least not more harmful than a belief in
Speaker 1: like palm reading or something. You know, I'm just feeling
Speaker 1: around on your head and doing a doing a little
Speaker 1: personality test for you. Right, it's not accurate, there's no
Speaker 1: science to it, but it's ultimately I guess harmless, right right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I guess all pseudoscience in a
Speaker 1: way is potentially harmful, but it's not It's not as
Speaker 1: harmful as the other stuff we're about to talk to,
Speaker 1: because there are these other strains and incarnations of phrenology
Speaker 1: and other types of pseudoscience that are that are just
Speaker 1: a straight up nightmare. Sometimes forms of racist pseudoscience aimed
Speaker 1: at like proving that people with different skin colors were
Speaker 1: a result of separate acts of divine creations, so they're
Speaker 1: not even really all the same kind of human. Also
Speaker 1: weird ideas of crackpot cranial criminology. Um, that didn't mean
Speaker 1: to be so illiterated there, but in in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century especially, it was very common for proponents of phrenology
Speaker 1: and other types of craniometry. So craniometry would be a
Speaker 1: any kind of a belief system based on the measurements
Speaker 1: of the skull, not necessarily like bumps, like phrenology. But
Speaker 1: there were other people who just tried to collect a
Speaker 1: bunch of skulls and measure them and draw in friendss. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: so there were these things going on, and they would
Speaker 1: cause people to gather these huge collections of human skulls,
Speaker 1: supposedly to form the raw materials for their research. But
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in that same book I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the previous episode, the one by Francis Larson
Speaker 1: called Severed, which this whole chapter is really, uh, really
Speaker 1: horrifying and fascinating. Uh. It would lead these people to
Speaker 1: gather these big collections of skulls that in practice, it
Speaker 1: seems to me these collections were often just as much
Speaker 1: as sort of personal museum exhibit or a morbid curio
Speaker 1: collection to impress guests and wealthy benefactors as they were
Speaker 1: even a failed attempt to actually gather data. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it seems like most of these skulls collected for supposed
Speaker 1: craniometric research in the eighteen hundreds were not donated consensually.
Speaker 1: You can probably imagine where a lot of them came from.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were stolen from graveyards and battlefields.
Speaker 1: Some came from prisons and morgues, spittals, workhouses, burial grounds
Speaker 1: without the consultation of the owner or their family, and
Speaker 1: often without even knowing who the person had actually been.
Speaker 1: And as you might guess, the less wealth and power
Speaker 1: the person had, the more likely that their skull might
Speaker 1: be stolen after their death. Many came from cemeteries of
Speaker 1: enslaved people in America. There are horrific details about the
Speaker 1: harvesting of skulls from Native American people's during the wars
Speaker 1: of expansion of the U. S Frontier into tribal lands,
Speaker 1: and many came from just from poor people, from workhouses
Speaker 1: and potter's fields. Larson as a whole chapter about this
Speaker 1: horrible episode in history and her book Severed Um. But
Speaker 1: a couple of these notorious skull collectors she mentions are
Speaker 1: the English doctor Joseph Barnard Davis and the American physician
Speaker 1: Samuel George Morton. Both were mainly working in the early
Speaker 1: to mid nineteenth century, and she tells one anecdote about
Speaker 1: Barnard Davis that I wanted to read here, so she
Speaker 1: says quote as a physician, Barnard Davis showed few qualms
Speaker 1: when it came to head collecting. John Betto, a fellow doctor,
Speaker 1: remembered that he looked on heads simply as potential skulls.
Speaker 1: Betto recounted introducing Barnard Davis during his rounds at the
Speaker 1: hospital to one of his patients, a sailor from Dubrovnik
Speaker 1: who had nearly drowned. It was being cared for at
Speaker 1: the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Betto was treating the man for
Speaker 1: gang green on the lung. Barnard Davis's curiosity was immediately piqued. Now,
Speaker 1: he said to Betto, you know that man can't recover,
Speaker 1: Do take care to secure his head for me when
Speaker 1: he dies, for I have no cranium from that neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I guess he was talking about the neighborhood of Dubrovnik.
Speaker 1: And Uh. Then Larsen goes on. Luckily for the sailor,
Speaker 1: Barnard Davis had been too enthusiastic in his diagnosis. The
Speaker 1: patient made a full recovery, and Tibetto's amused relief, he
Speaker 1: carried his head on his own shoulders back to hertzegovernor uh.
Speaker 1: And so she says, like this is the is the
Speaker 1: reality of what's often going on in skull collecting. It's
Speaker 1: like basically totally ignoring the humanity of human beings. And
Speaker 1: just being like, how am I going to get that skull?
Speaker 1: It's like a like a cartoon where one cartoon character
Speaker 1: looks at the other and just sees like food as
Speaker 1: a cannibalistic frenzy takes every except yeah, the Looney Tunes
Speaker 1: where like they're in the lifeboat and like Donald Duck
Speaker 1: looks at somebody and just imagines their body is like
Speaker 1: a like a drumstick or something. Yeah, it also reminds
Speaker 1: me of that line and t s Eliott's Whispers of Immortality.
Speaker 1: Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull
Speaker 1: and eat the skin. Now, it's also worth pointing out
Speaker 1: that the findings of these early craniometrists have not really
Speaker 1: held up to scientific scrutiny. Larson talks about this as well,
Speaker 1: all of the problems with their supposed research. Uh, they
Speaker 1: a lot of them were trying to make generalizations about
Speaker 1: the mental qualities of large groups of people. Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: you can see because of this trend in the skulls
Speaker 1: of people from this part of the world that they
Speaker 1: have these mental characteristics. And this was all based on
Speaker 1: these skull measurements. But their research was plagued by poor methodology,
Speaker 1: inconsistency and samples, inconsistency and measurements, fudging the data when
Speaker 1: it didn't fit, etcetera. Larcent as a whole discussion on this,
Speaker 1: it seems like once again we're we're dealing with something
Speaker 1: that ultimately just amounted to bunk. Though I wanted also
Speaker 1: to discuss a couple of points that she makes which
Speaker 1: I thought were very useful and interpreting what was going
Speaker 1: on here. Historically, one interesting issue was if people are
Speaker 1: looking into, you know, these various questions, trying to understand
Speaker 1: the human mind, trying to understand culture, trying to understand
Speaker 1: mental processes, why the particular emphasis on skulls, like why
Speaker 1: the phrenology and craniometry craze as a very bone focused
Speaker 1: thing to begin with. Well, she talks about how the
Speaker 1: physical characteristics of skulls just happened to lend themselves quite
Speaker 1: well to the practical applications and interests of the people
Speaker 1: who were in these fields. So she writes, quote one
Speaker 1: Victorian physician James eight Ken MiGs noted that skulls are
Speaker 1: easily prepared and preserved, maybe conveniently handled and surveyed. Considered
Speaker 1: in various points of view and compared to each other.
Speaker 1: Skulls are favorable specimens because they're small, hard, and robust.
Speaker 1: They're more compact than whole skeletons, which means that they
Speaker 1: can be relatively easily transported, and they're more durable than
Speaker 1: the messy tissues they contain, surviving for centuries on a
Speaker 1: museum shelf. They're surprisingly resistant to pressure, partly because of
Speaker 1: their shape, but also because the skull, unlike longbones, has
Speaker 1: no marrow, and skulls were thought to be the most
Speaker 1: characteristic part of the human body because there were so
Speaker 1: many ways in which one could be different from another.
Speaker 1: Full of nooks and crannies and holes and lumps, they
Speaker 1: were a statistician's dream. So this seems like one of
Speaker 1: those cases of people who thought they were doing science
Speaker 1: tific research but may well have been letting their theories
Speaker 1: be overdetermined by attraction to the specific practical and esthetic
Speaker 1: aspects of objects that they just wanted to study. Maybe
Speaker 1: because it was kind of attractive to have a collection
Speaker 1: of these in your house that you could show off
Speaker 1: to people. Maybe because they were easy to move around
Speaker 1: from place to place and store, and much more so,
Speaker 1: of course than actual brains themselves, which would quickly wrought
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, skulls
Speaker 1: are really cool. I mean there's no denying it. Um
Speaker 1: that their neat. Uh. You know, it's fun to draw skulls.
Speaker 1: It's fun to look at pictures and photos and illustrations
Speaker 1: of skulls, skull iconography, and just pretty much every culture
Speaker 1: on Earth is instantly captivating. Uh. And then yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see where someone might be like, all right, let's
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lean into this. Skulls are my thing. I
Speaker 1: want to study the skull. What what kind of information
Speaker 1: can I glean from the skull? Yeah, you almost get
Speaker 1: the sense that this was, um, it was very cart
Speaker 1: before the horse. It was kind of like, uh, skull
Speaker 1: collecting first, science second, and it turned out that the
Speaker 1: science was not even good science. Yeah, I mean, it
Speaker 1: just inevitably it brings us back to the you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the scene from Hamlet where he's
Speaker 1: holding the skull and contemplating mortality and impermanence and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, it's just that that's what the
Speaker 1: skull is. It is such a a potent symbol of
Speaker 1: these just all these different ideas and concerns and anxieties
Speaker 1: we have about impermanence. Yeah, now, when it comes to
Speaker 1: brains specifically, I also want to talk about one tragic
Speaker 1: case in history of of brains being preserved for supposed
Speaker 1: scientific uses or by museums without the consent of the
Speaker 1: person and so. And of course this is something to
Speaker 1: consider in contrast to something like Bentham or or like
Speaker 1: you know, where somebody intentionally grants their head to a
Speaker 1: museum or something. Uh. This is the story of a
Speaker 1: man known to his story as ish Now, as told
Speaker 1: by Larson is. She was a Native American man who
Speaker 1: was captured while foraging near a slaughter house in northern
Speaker 1: California in the year nineteen eleven. He was about fifty
Speaker 1: years old. He did not speak English, and he apparently
Speaker 1: at least had no living friends or relatives, And so
Speaker 1: he was taken to anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley,
Speaker 1: who identified him as a member of the Yahi people,
Speaker 1: many of whom had been victims of genocide by the
Speaker 1: white settlers in northern California. And uh, she was not
Speaker 1: even really the man's name is she was an identifier
Speaker 1: given to him by the anthropologist which apparently meant man
Speaker 1: in the Yana language, that's the overarching language to which
Speaker 1: the Yahi people belonged. But the man known as She
Speaker 1: never revealed his real name, do apparently to it to
Speaker 1: accustom within his culture of not revealing your name to
Speaker 1: someone unless you are introduced by a member of your
Speaker 1: own people. So after he after he was captured, he
Speaker 1: was taken to the University of California Museum of Anthropology,
Speaker 1: where he lived for some time. He worked as a janitor,
Speaker 1: and anthropologists did some research with him. They made recordings
Speaker 1: of him speaking and singing in his language. Uh. They
Speaker 1: they studied his language, studied him in other ways. And
Speaker 1: he passed away in nineteen sixteen. And then when I
Speaker 1: want to pick up, quoting from Larsen here, quote she
Speaker 1: had expressly asked that his body not be subject to
Speaker 1: a post mortem. One curator wrote in the days before
Speaker 1: is She's death quote science can go to hell. We
Speaker 1: propose to stand by our friends. He added, Besides, I
Speaker 1: cannot believe that any scientific value is materially involved. The
Speaker 1: prime interest in his case would be of a morbid
Speaker 1: romantic nature. But his letter arrived too late. Staff at
Speaker 1: the museum, who declared themselves. Is She's friends made quote
Speaker 1: a compromise between science and sentiment and performed an autopsy
Speaker 1: against his wishes. They removed his brain and sent it
Speaker 1: to the Smithsonian. Those who undertook the autopsy comforted themselves
Speaker 1: that it had been minimally invasive and certainly not as
Speaker 1: disrespectful as a dissection. His brain, after all, was preserved
Speaker 1: rather than destroyed. The rest of Ish's body, which was
Speaker 1: kept whole, was cremated in a California cemetery. Thus the
Speaker 1: autopsy was seen as a compromise, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: it went against the dead man's wishes. And Larsen goes
Speaker 1: on to say that is She's body was divided after death,
Speaker 1: just as his identity had been in life. He was
Speaker 1: both a man and a scientific specimen. Like so many others.
Speaker 1: He had supposedly been quote the last of his tribe
Speaker 1: and was apparently without living relatives, and was considered to
Speaker 1: quote valuable to lose in death. And I feel like
Speaker 1: this story is such an important reminder that even if
Speaker 1: what you're doing is real science and not for anology
Speaker 1: or something, you can't ever let yourself start thinking about
Speaker 1: human beings as information first I mean the situation she's
Speaker 1: describing here is that there were scientists who are saying, like, oh,
Speaker 1: but it's just it would just be too valuable, uh,
Speaker 1: to to study his brain. There's too much we can
Speaker 1: learn from it. But I mean, he didn't want this
Speaker 1: to happen, And so you've got to remember to think
Speaker 1: of people as people first, and only once they say Okay,
Speaker 1: I am willing to have my my body somehow translated
Speaker 1: into information for science, that you can proceed down that road.
Speaker 1: It's the basis of the concept of informed consent, which
Speaker 1: is so important and scientific research today. Plus, I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly from our perspective, the case was not
Speaker 1: very strong for we must preserve this brain, we must
Speaker 1: study this brain. I know, as as one of the
Speaker 1: people who worked with you. She said, you know that
Speaker 1: it's probably more a case of motivation by mere morbid
Speaker 1: curiosity with also i'm sure, quite racist undertones. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not like they were trying to solve a crime.
Speaker 1: It's not like they were trying to understand the ravages
Speaker 1: of a particular disease, etcetera. Yeah, it seemed based almost
Speaker 1: entirely in just morbid interest. Fortunately, there is a better
Speaker 1: conclusion to this story. So I was reading a San
Speaker 1: Francisco Chronicle article by Kevin Fagan from the year two
Speaker 1: thousand that was about the reunification of of E's remains.
Speaker 1: So Fagan here writes, quote, sometime today, a jet is
Speaker 1: scheduled to land in California carrying a band of Ishi's descendants,
Speaker 1: and with them will be the long lost final piece
Speaker 1: of their ancestor, Ishi's brain. Leaders of the Reading Rancheria
Speaker 1: and Pitt River tribes, which trace their bloodlines to iss
Speaker 1: She's extinct Yahe nation through the Yana tribe, promised to
Speaker 1: never reveal where they buried him. They're not saying when
Speaker 1: they will do it either, just that they're landing in
Speaker 1: California today and that they want to be left alone
Speaker 1: to shepherd their departed elder spirit away in peace. So
Speaker 1: obviously it's good to hear that that happened, But it
Speaker 1: only follows you know what had already happened and could
Speaker 1: not be undone, And it makes you, I mean again,
Speaker 1: it brings me back to this question about like, um,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you manage the sort of
Speaker 1: scientific and preservation impulse that it belongs in a museum
Speaker 1: impulse against questions where maybe it's not as clear, like
Speaker 1: it's clear that this should not that that's brain should
Speaker 1: not have been removed because he was alive. You got
Speaker 1: to hear him say no, I don't want this. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess the tougher question is in cases of like
Speaker 1: what what about the remains of people who have been
Speaker 1: dead for a longer time and you know, could not
Speaker 1: be consulted on the question of whether they would be
Speaker 1: interested in being the subject of scientific research or not.
Speaker 1: And I genuinely don't know the answer there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do like how the story ended with the brain being
Speaker 1: returned into tribal privacy, you know, like and I feel
Speaker 1: like that detail you know of itself, that that lines
Speaker 1: up with a lot of different you know, things for
Speaker 1: seeing regarding not only like actual artifacts, but also just
Speaker 1: like traditions and information. Um. I did a I did
Speaker 1: an article last year for Housetuff Works about the skin Walker.
Speaker 1: They wanted an article about the Navajo tradition of the
Speaker 1: skin walker, and like that was one of the things
Speaker 1: I really was driven home for me in researching that
Speaker 1: is like that there there are certain you know, aspects
Speaker 1: of of of living tradition that you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's disrespectful to to to you know, to act on
Speaker 1: this desire to collect it all and to and to
Speaker 1: keep it all and to codify it and to put
Speaker 1: it on a shelf. Uh that some things, you know,
Speaker 1: still belong to the people who created them, and you
Speaker 1: know they can share them if they want to, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh So yeah, I can't help but be reminded of
Speaker 1: that with this the story of of this this piece
Speaker 1: of this individual finally being returned uh to his people,
Speaker 1: and in doing so it kind of passes out of
Speaker 1: of the broad order like media view, right that you're
Speaker 1: not going to be like taking TV cameras to his
Speaker 1: grave site or that kind of thing, because that would
Speaker 1: just be a continuation of the same sort of energy
Speaker 1: that he seemed very outspoken against. Well, now that we've
Speaker 1: talked a good bit about the foibles and horrors of
Speaker 1: relatively recent skull head and brain theft, Uh, what do
Speaker 1: you say we go back into some some more deeper
Speaker 1: history and mythology. Yeah, yeah, because again you know, the skull,
Speaker 1: the head, Uh. You know, these are certainly longstanding icons,
Speaker 1: so they've been focal points for myth making and dreaming
Speaker 1: and anxiety, you know, throughout all the human existence, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's only relatively recently we've been able to
Speaker 1: focus more on the brain as an icon. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you ever encounter a ghost movie
Speaker 1: that has like a brain based ghost, it's a little
Speaker 1: off off putting, right, because it doesn't seem like the
Speaker 1: ghost should be associated with the brain. The brain seems
Speaker 1: more of a science fiction quality as opposed to something
Speaker 1: that is more supernatural in nature. Uh So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess to begin with, we should point out that folks
Speaker 1: have been taken heads for longer than they have had
Speaker 1: any any certainly any understanding of the brains rattling around
Speaker 1: inside them. Uh And we don't even have to get
Speaker 1: into all the gory details because you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of things we're talking about, you know, heads hewn off
Speaker 1: in battles, heads mounted on poles and pikes, lobbed with
Speaker 1: a catapult, skulls lined up on the on shelves in catacombs,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And we're also never in some cases,
Speaker 1: we're not sure, you know, when we're dealing with something
Speaker 1: where it's okay, is this head a trophy. Is this
Speaker 1: some sort or of this some some sort of like
Speaker 1: sacred funerary tradition or something in between a lot of
Speaker 1: times we have to sort of piece together what it
Speaker 1: actually meant. So one example, I was looking at from
Speaker 1: the ancient world and this is this is not so
Speaker 1: much myth here, this is actual, like you know, actual
Speaker 1: um archaeological evidence. Uh. I was reading ritual use of
Speaker 1: trophy heads in ancient um Nasca society and this was
Speaker 1: by Donald A. Prue, published in Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient
Speaker 1: Peru in two thousand and one. So the taking of
Speaker 1: heads for ritual use has a long history in the
Speaker 1: Central Andes from the pre Ceramic period prior to about
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred BC and continuing through Inca times and with
Speaker 1: the Nasca, the craftspeople uh you know, responsible for the
Speaker 1: Nasca lines, these were created between five hundred BC and
Speaker 1: five d C. With the Nasca, uh, they also engaged
Speaker 1: in the taking of heads, and we see it represented
Speaker 1: in their rich textile art, depicting warriors, shamans, mythical beings
Speaker 1: in some cases with human heads, often on their cloaks
Speaker 1: or in their hands. And according to Prue, over one
Speaker 1: hundred examples remain of the Nasca mummified heads, which were
Speaker 1: the which were first removed from the body, apparently with
Speaker 1: an obsidian knife, and then a hole would have been
Speaker 1: punched through the base of the skull using a club
Speaker 1: or some sort of a tool, and then the brain
Speaker 1: and the eyes were moved through that opening. But then
Speaker 1: another hole, smaller hole was punched or drilled through the
Speaker 1: forehead and this was uh apparently in order to allow
Speaker 1: a carrying rope to be secured. The lips were pinned
Speaker 1: with thorns and cloth was stuffed into the skull, and
Speaker 1: so you have a preserved skull at this point. So
Speaker 1: you said these were believed to be for ritual use.
Speaker 1: It was the thought that they would be like displayed somewhere,
Speaker 1: or that they would be like carried in a ceremony.
Speaker 1: This is where it all gets really interesting, and this
Speaker 1: is where that where a lot of authors have and
Speaker 1: a lot of scientists have have really chimed in with
Speaker 1: different views. But you know, it looks it's easy to
Speaker 1: look at something like this and think of it just
Speaker 1: as trophy taking, right, like the just the trophy taking
Speaker 1: of a war like people. And indeed war was an
Speaker 1: important part of their culture, but the reality seems to
Speaker 1: have been ultimately far more complicated substitute head jars where
Speaker 1: something times were found to be buried with the bodies,
Speaker 1: and the actual heads were not merely symbols of victory,
Speaker 1: but they were used in shamatic rituals, perhaps entailing hallucinogenics
Speaker 1: as a means of communing with the spirit realm and
Speaker 1: according to pro quote, propagating and controlling the forces of nature,
Speaker 1: especially so far as natural resources are concerned. Now, apparently
Speaker 1: some have argued that these were not trophy heads but
Speaker 1: the heads of honored ancestors, but pro dis disputes this.
Speaker 1: He he defines them instead as quote trophies of warfare
Speaker 1: collected for ritual purposes. So that that's that's interesting because
Speaker 1: it seems to I think to a lot of modern minds,
Speaker 1: it seems to be it seems sounds like a mashup
Speaker 1: of two different ideas, like you're taking the head of
Speaker 1: your your enemy off of their dead body, but isn't
Speaker 1: but you're probably doing that as like a trophy or
Speaker 1: a sign of disrespect. You know. We often think of that,
Speaker 1: um I think of the key and peel skit, where
Speaker 1: one like uh, barbarian beheads and other and then goes
Speaker 1: through all these various sort of comedic acts with the
Speaker 1: head to see what How the rest of the tribe responds,
Speaker 1: I know, that's what does he do? He uh, he
Speaker 1: like puts little shoes under it and makes it walk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like that's that's a big hit. But he also
Speaker 1: like does things like pretend to give birth to the
Speaker 1: head and like that just doesn't don't want to like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But it's the kind of thing where like when we
Speaker 1: think about head taking, we think of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: We think of like something barbaric and trophy oriented. But
Speaker 1: in this case it seems like it wasn't bad or
Speaker 1: it wasn't purely that it was. It was also this
Speaker 1: idea of what you need this head, This head is
Speaker 1: necessary for various religious purposes, a way of a means
Speaker 1: of communing with the spirit realm um. Now, as for
Speaker 1: the brain, it seems like the brain was was discarded.
Speaker 1: That would have been again, that would have been part
Speaker 1: of like that first act of punching through the back
Speaker 1: of the skull to remove the eyes and the brain. Uh.
Speaker 1: Probably going back to the reality we talked about before,
Speaker 1: where the brain uh rots rather rather quickly, and that's
Speaker 1: going to be one of the first things you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to remove now. This also reminds me of the
Speaker 1: mummified heads of the Kocoum dynasty of the Maya, which
Speaker 1: were kept and preserved because they were said to contain
Speaker 1: the voices of their ancestors, again a means of communicating
Speaker 1: with spirits and or the dead. This is interesting to
Speaker 1: compare to remember what we talked about in the first
Speaker 1: episode about the plastered heads of Chattelhyuk in southern Turkey,
Speaker 1: which you know from this Stone Age settlement, there were
Speaker 1: often heads of ancestors that were kept in some kind
Speaker 1: of preserved form, apparently within the home. Yeah, and during
Speaker 1: the mid first millennium BC there were there were various
Speaker 1: accounts of the use of human heads in acts of
Speaker 1: of of communion, necromancy, divination across the Mediterranean. We see
Speaker 1: it mentioned in the accounts of Herodotus. In Aristotle, um
Speaker 1: uh Cleomnis of the first of Sparta is said to
Speaker 1: have consulted with the head of his friend our quantities
Speaker 1: on all major decisions ahead, which he kept preserved in honey, honey, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good, and so you know. Of course, when we
Speaker 1: deal with accounts like this, we're we're beginning to at
Speaker 1: least beginning to transfer into the realm of myth and
Speaker 1: lore and legend, where we we become less sure about
Speaker 1: what is actually going on, because then there is this
Speaker 1: broader realm of just stories about disembodied heads that still
Speaker 1: have life in them, that can speak, that can fly,
Speaker 1: that can terrorize, that can give you know, important advice
Speaker 1: to the living, etcetera. I think one of the coolest
Speaker 1: of these that uh, that folks may have heard of
Speaker 1: is is the myth of of Memir uh in Norse mythology.
Speaker 1: Uh So, this Memir was one of the Jiltons in
Speaker 1: Norse mythology, one of the frost giants, and he was
Speaker 1: the ardian of the well of inspiration and wisdom at
Speaker 1: the roots of the world tree, and Odin would come
Speaker 1: to to drink from the well, and member would make
Speaker 1: him leave an eye and payment. And then Memor was
Speaker 1: held hostage in in battle by the Vanier during the
Speaker 1: the Aser Vanier War, and they beheaded him, but Odin,
Speaker 1: since he liked the guy, you know, retrieved his head
Speaker 1: and kept it alive with magic herbs so that the
Speaker 1: head could continue to give counsel to the King of
Speaker 1: the gods. And so you'll see uh, some wonderful illustrations
Speaker 1: of this, both old and then recent, where there's like
Speaker 1: this of some cases, is like a zombie head that
Speaker 1: Odin is is holding that he is, uh, that is
Speaker 1: his advisor. Yeah, you've attached one here where Odin is
Speaker 1: is leaning his head over on the severed head like
Speaker 1: he's almost kind of snuggling with it. Of course Odin
Speaker 1: is missing one eye as usual, and uh, and there's
Speaker 1: just fire coming out of the thing's mouth or I
Speaker 1: don't know, it looks like he's got like a star
Speaker 1: in at the back of his throat. Yes. Um. In
Speaker 1: terms of heads that give advice like this, there's also
Speaker 1: an Arabian Nights story of of King Yunnan and the
Speaker 1: Duban and Duban the sage and the stage in question.
Speaker 1: At least in some variations of this tale, continues to
Speaker 1: speak after it has been removed from its body. Now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get into some other examples. Uh here, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know of of of disembodied heads of decapitation in
Speaker 1: mythology that are that are pretty interesting. One that I
Speaker 1: found really fascinating is the self decapitating nude goddess of Hinduism. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is that is known as China Masta, and that
Speaker 1: just means she's she whose head is severed, and she's
Speaker 1: typically depicted red fleshed and holding a scimitar in one
Speaker 1: hand and her own head in the other as blood
Speaker 1: fountains from the stump of her neck, which and in
Speaker 1: some cases is then consumed by her thirsty skeletal tendance.
Speaker 1: And then she is usually stand depicted standing on top
Speaker 1: of a copulating human couple. Uh. So it's it's an
Speaker 1: instantly um captivating image. She's one of the tin goddesses
Speaker 1: of the esoteric tradition of Tantra, and she's a slayer
Speaker 1: of demons. So she's a highly uh symbolic deity. There's
Speaker 1: the sense of the transcendence of the body free of
Speaker 1: the mind, you know, the body, the mind has clearly
Speaker 1: literally been removed from the physical form. She's a symbol
Speaker 1: of sacrifice and ferocity. Yeah, this image rey is amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably goes without saying, but this in particular, though,
Speaker 1: this goes for a lot of Hindu iconography. This is
Speaker 1: an image that's caught the interest of various Westerns, so
Speaker 1: you'll sometimes see it depicted by Western artists or adopted
Speaker 1: by death metal bands, etcetera. Right, man, the death metal bands,
Speaker 1: they just they just snatch up everything. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If it's you know, it hits a certain vibe for them,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll, they'll take it. Uh. So they're at least
Speaker 1: a couple of speaking as associated with tellings and retellings
Speaker 1: of the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic heads placed on polls
Speaker 1: after being sacrificed or having their body sacrifice in order
Speaker 1: to watch the battle. And I was reading a little
Speaker 1: bit about this from author and mythologist dev Dute uh
Speaker 1: pan Nick, who has a whole page about these tales
Speaker 1: at his mythology website uh devdut dot com. It's d
Speaker 1: e V d u t t dot com. Uh. He
Speaker 1: writes that these tales are often about perspective. Quote. The
Speaker 1: talking head is thus a symbol for a less confined,
Speaker 1: more global perspective on things. All of us see the
Speaker 1: world from our individual point of view, limited by our prejudices,
Speaker 1: our expectations, and our experiences. The talking head sees it
Speaker 1: from an alternative angle and when he voices his opinions,
Speaker 1: we see the world quite differently. When he speaks, we
Speaker 1: realize the Pandavas and the Kavas are are tiny elements
Speaker 1: of God's greater canvas. The Mahabarata is not just about
Speaker 1: one kingdom. It is about cosmic order. Now that's not
Speaker 1: to say there aren't just monster heads too in Hindu iconography. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a really cool example, uh named Kurta Muka, or
Speaker 1: the head of Glory as it's often referred to. And
Speaker 1: this is a monstrous flying head in Hindu mythology that
Speaker 1: seems to be similar in many ways to the Gorgonian
Speaker 1: head of the Greek tradition that we discussed in our
Speaker 1: Medusa episodes. So, according to Carol Rose, the folklore is
Speaker 1: when Shiva was told that he was unworthy of marrying Parvati.
Speaker 1: In his rage, his experiences such rage that a monstrous
Speaker 1: lion springs from his head and then it attacks Shiva,
Speaker 1: and he commands that, no, we're not doing that, uh,
Speaker 1: eat yourself instead, And so this monster consumes its own body,
Speaker 1: leaving only its entrails, which then turned to pearls, and
Speaker 1: so that leaves only the head. So Shiva then commands
Speaker 1: uh Kurta Muka to serve as the guardian of entrance.
Speaker 1: And so you see this head, this head of glory
Speaker 1: uh in um, you know, above the door or around
Speaker 1: the door of in in many different examples of Hindu
Speaker 1: architecture from India and from other countries. You know, this
Speaker 1: is interesting because you brought it up and I somehow
Speaker 1: did not think about it. But from Greek mythology, you know,
Speaker 1: we did the episode last year about about Medusa. That's
Speaker 1: of course the case of a stolen head in mythology,
Speaker 1: or the head is severed like he takes it and
Speaker 1: uses it as a tool. Yeah, it becomes a weapon,
Speaker 1: not so much a means of communicating with anything, but
Speaker 1: but this this weapon, this symbol, and and here we
Speaker 1: see another tradition. Now I've not read anything that that
Speaker 1: links the two in any respect. You know, let's just
Speaker 1: say that like one inspired the other anything of that nature.
Speaker 1: But clearly they're getting it similar ideas. The idea of
Speaker 1: this um, this terrifying head uh and or face that
Speaker 1: stares out from a work as a as a way
Speaker 1: of warning those who would who would trespass. Now I
Speaker 1: should know that looking around though sometimes it appears to
Speaker 1: have arms, so I don't know if that it gains
Speaker 1: arms later or arms just end up popping back up
Speaker 1: in the iconography. But there you go. Another entity we've
Speaker 1: talked about before in the show is Rahu in hin Hinduism,
Speaker 1: the eclipse entity. Uh you know this is the you
Speaker 1: know once was a proud oshera demi god of immense
Speaker 1: power and hunger and seeking immortality. It drinks the divine nectar,
Speaker 1: but before this drop can pass his throat, he's swallowing
Speaker 1: it mid swallow. Vishnu decapitates him for his transgression and yeah,
Speaker 1: and this ends up translating into this um this eclipse
Speaker 1: mythology where the head of Rajo attempts to consume the
Speaker 1: sun or does consume the sun, but then it passes
Speaker 1: out of the next stump. I think we talked about
Speaker 1: this in one of the first episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. I ever did the one on the eclipse. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Another example is uh Braun the Blessed
Speaker 1: in Welsh mythology. The giant king who mortally wounded in
Speaker 1: battle had his followers cut off his head so that
Speaker 1: it could be returned to Britain. One day and for
Speaker 1: a long time this head was said to speak before
Speaker 1: it grew silent, and the story goes that the silent
Speaker 1: head was finally taken to White Hill. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: where the Tower of London, they say would one day
Speaker 1: be built, and they buried it there facing France to
Speaker 1: ward off the enemy. And this supposedly ties into the UH.
Speaker 1: The The Celtic cult of of the head also reflected
Speaker 1: in the Tale of the Green Knight. Uh. We're in
Speaker 1: in the Green Night. The Green Knight comes into Arthur's
Speaker 1: court and challenges someone to cut off his head. But
Speaker 1: then when they do, he just picks it up and
Speaker 1: he's like, no, I'm fine now I get to cut
Speaker 1: off your head, but I'll do it a year from now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the decapitation battle is another motif or contest. You
Speaker 1: see that, uh in a lot of legends from this
Speaker 1: part of the world, and it's interesting, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: Terry Jones of Monty Python, of course, was very steeped
Speaker 1: in UH in this sort of lore, and he was
Speaker 1: one of the author one of the writers for the
Speaker 1: screenplay for Labyrinth, and Labyrinth features those wonderful fiery red
Speaker 1: creatures that attempt to engage in a decapitation contest with
Speaker 1: our our heroine Sarah. Do you remember them where they're
Speaker 1: like where they get mad at her because you're only
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to take someone else's head. No one's
Speaker 1: supposed to take your own head off this this reminds
Speaker 1: me of of the head swapping scene and teams in
Speaker 1: the universe. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, head swapping, decapitated heads living on You see
Speaker 1: it just everywhere. Um for instance, here, here's some other examples.
Speaker 1: In Maya mythology, you have head Appo who was tripped
Speaker 1: by the lords of the underworld, and his decapitated head
Speaker 1: was that hung as a trophy from a giant tree.
Speaker 1: But then this head later spits into a woman's hand
Speaker 1: and in doing so, impregnates her with the Maya hero twins,
Speaker 1: who would go on to have various adventures. We've already
Speaker 1: touched on in the previous episode. We've touched on Orpheus
Speaker 1: is Singing Head and Greek mythology. Oh yeah, and the
Speaker 1: possible symbolic connection to the box made for Hyde and
Speaker 1: Skull with the liar Yeah uh. In the Trial of
Speaker 1: the Knights, Templars One of the charges was that they
Speaker 1: worshiped an entity called Bahammet that was sometimes described as
Speaker 1: a severed head. And then oh, you have some wonderful
Speaker 1: monsters as well. Um, there's the Kara Sioux in the
Speaker 1: Southeast day. It's the Southeast Asian spirit that takes the
Speaker 1: form of a beautiful woman's head with her organs dangling
Speaker 1: below her neck so it floats it close and it
Speaker 1: seems to essentially be another variation of the willow the
Speaker 1: Whisp tradition. Uh that is held around the world and
Speaker 1: that we devoted a big episode two in the past.
Speaker 1: So she cannot what she like, glows and leads people
Speaker 1: off the path. I believe, so yes, um, and there's that.
Speaker 1: There's actually a Indonesian horror movie titled Mystics in Bali
Speaker 1: that looks pretty interesting because it features the Kara su
Speaker 1: I included a screenshot here for you, Joe and for
Speaker 1: a movie trailer for you to check out later. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta see that. That looks great now.
Speaker 1: The melee version of this is the the Panteonic, which
Speaker 1: functions like a vampire, only it prays exclusively on babies
Speaker 1: and infants. Then there's also the Japanese uh nuki kubi,
Speaker 1: which is a type of yokai and Japanese traditions. It's
Speaker 1: humanoid in form, but it can separate its head from
Speaker 1: its body and this can float free to work mischief.
Speaker 1: It's just one of one of various examples of disembodied
Speaker 1: heads that you'll find in Japanese lore, and then in
Speaker 1: um uh the native peoples of the Americas, you find
Speaker 1: some other interesting traditions as well. Uh. The flying head
Speaker 1: of the Iroquois and the one dot mythology. This is
Speaker 1: a great flying head sometimes with bat wings on each
Speaker 1: side of its head, with long hair and terrible eyes.
Speaker 1: Carol Rose writes about these in her book on Monsters. Uh.
Speaker 1: She said that this was an entire class of monsters
Speaker 1: in the folklore of the Iroquois, huge ugly heads with
Speaker 1: eyes of fire, dripping fangs, and huge wings instead of ears.
Speaker 1: They fly through storm winds with wild hair, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: helping to keep them afloat and kind of floating around them.
Speaker 1: They prey on villagers and animals alike, and their teeth
Speaker 1: they're like it sounds like they were kind of like
Speaker 1: like a cage if their if their teeth or their
Speaker 1: jaws close over you. There's no escape. But there's a
Speaker 1: tail apparently of an old woman who is roasting some
Speaker 1: chestnuts over the fire, and then she brings a fiery
Speaker 1: coal back from the fire with her to keep her warm,
Speaker 1: and then here comes the flying head and it it
Speaker 1: gobbles her up, chestnuts and all, but then it has
Speaker 1: to spit her out because of the fiery coal, and
Speaker 1: then that coal burns the monster up from the inside out. Oh.
Speaker 1: I love when the story is a trick like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when it's like an old lady who gets gets
Speaker 1: the wind over the monster. That's always nice, not not
Speaker 1: your traditional young, dashing male slayer. Yeah. So so that's
Speaker 1: just an example of some of the myths and legends
Speaker 1: and folklore tales you'll find just throughout the world. I
Speaker 1: know there's some wonderful ones that I didn't touch on,
Speaker 1: and certainly i'd love to hear from anyone out there
Speaker 1: if you have a really good one, if you have
Speaker 1: a favorite, uh, we would love to to hear it
Speaker 1: and then potentially share it back with everybody else in
Speaker 1: a listener mail episode. But I think just this selection
Speaker 1: gives you a certain taste of what out what's out there?
Speaker 1: You know, these various imaginative contemplations on like what happens
Speaker 1: if the head lives and the body dies, what happens
Speaker 1: if the body decapitates itself. Like, there's just it's just
Speaker 1: such rich grounds for contemplation regarding identity and mortality and
Speaker 1: just so much. It seems like a lot of times
Speaker 1: disembodied heads are angry. Yeah, well, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of times I guess they do have something to be
Speaker 1: angry about. But but then sometimes their jovial um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some of those examples from the from tellings of
Speaker 1: the Mahabarata I was reading, like they're laughing, like their laughing,
Speaker 1: there's one I think their laughterre distracts Archina during the battle, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's a sense of like being free
Speaker 1: from the body. Um. I'm also reminded of the heads
Speaker 1: that show up in Miyazaki Spirited Away, the three heads
Speaker 1: that kind of roll around and bumble, and they don't
Speaker 1: have much personality to them, and I don't really know
Speaker 1: what they're doing and what they're there for, but they
Speaker 1: don't seem distressed. They say, maybe perpetually alarmed, but uh,
Speaker 1: that's about it. That's good stuff. All right. Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and uh close this episode out, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everybody out there. Any any
Speaker 1: other examples of flying heads and self decapitating spirits, other
Speaker 1: examples of brain and head preservation. Have you been taken
Speaker 1: by a particular specimen of brain or head at a museum?
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you all about it.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find
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Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
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