Speaker 1: Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our discussion of stolen
Speaker 1: heads and stolen brains. That's right. If you didn't listen
Speaker 1: to part one, go back listen to part one, because
Speaker 1: that's where we initially get into it, and we talked
Speaker 1: about like some ancient ideas about what the brain did
Speaker 1: and uh, then we get into some examples of of
Speaker 1: brains that have been preserved, uh, consensually, and then get
Speaker 1: a little bit into the theft. And we're gonna get
Speaker 1: more into the theft here in this episode, and then
Speaker 1: towards the end we're gonna get into some of the
Speaker 1: mythology and folklore of disembodied heads. That's right. So at
Speaker 1: the end of the last episode, we were talking about
Speaker 1: the theft of the skull of the Austrian classical composer
Speaker 1: Franz Joseph Haydn, which was stolen by phrenologists who clung
Speaker 1: to the mistaken belief that Haydn's musical genius would somehow
Speaker 1: be inscribed in the bone of his cranium. But Hayden
Speaker 1: isn't the only figure like this. There there are other
Speaker 1: figures in history with some kind of reputation for genius
Speaker 1: of one kind or another, who have had their heads
Speaker 1: or their brains stolen in the hope that these remnants
Speaker 1: would somehow explain to science what made them so smart.
Speaker 1: And of course, in the case of phrenology, this was
Speaker 1: an utterly hopeless endeavor, just because phrenology is total quack
Speaker 1: pseudoscience end to end. But this has also happened even
Speaker 1: in ages of more legitimate neuroscience, and still maybe doesn't
Speaker 1: tell us as much as the people who stole these
Speaker 1: brains hoped that it would. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about another famous stolen head that is not even for
Speaker 1: any pretense of neuroscience or any other type of research.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the head of Jeremy Bentham.
Speaker 1: H So you know Jeremy Bentham best for I don't
Speaker 1: know what do people know him best for these days?
Speaker 1: Maybe for the for the idea of the Panopticon, which
Speaker 1: he was a promoter of. That would be where our
Speaker 1: listeners might have heard his name on this show before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bentham was a highly influential eighteenth and nineteenth century
Speaker 1: philosopher and social reformer from England, and he's usually thought
Speaker 1: of as one of the founders of liberalism and one
Speaker 1: of the modern founders of the utilitarian theory of ethics. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, right and wrong would be determined not
Speaker 1: by what the king says, or what the Bible says,
Speaker 1: or not by any deontological duty, but by what course
Speaker 1: of action would provide the greatest happiness to the greatest
Speaker 1: number of people. And Bentham is kind of interesting because
Speaker 1: if you read through a collection of his opinions and
Speaker 1: arguments today, it is this strange mixture of things that
Speaker 1: for the time were extremely radical, progressive and by our
Speaker 1: modern ethics admirable, but also things that are bizarrely horrifying.
Speaker 1: So so, for example, you know, he was in favor
Speaker 1: of total political equality for women and the decriminalization of homosexuality.
Speaker 1: But he also did not like the idea of privacy.
Speaker 1: He thought that was a bad concept, and of course
Speaker 1: this is exemplified in the idea of the panopticon, in
Speaker 1: which prisoners have no privacy or and and do not
Speaker 1: know if if the gaze of the like the the
Speaker 1: lone observation tower if they are looking at them in
Speaker 1: any given moment, you know, right, So he would dig
Speaker 1: where we are now in some respects. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bentham. I would love to know Jeremy Bentham's thoughts
Speaker 1: on the modern digital landscape. But anyway, that the relevant
Speaker 1: part of the Jeremy Bentham story today is that his
Speaker 1: head still exists today above ground in a grotesque, incompetently
Speaker 1: mummified form, and and it keeps getting stolen. I was
Speaker 1: reading a piece about this that was a transcript of
Speaker 1: a CBC radio piece which featured an interview with the
Speaker 1: Subadra Dos, who was a curator of collections at University
Speaker 1: College London. The interviewer was named Carol Off and this
Speaker 1: CBC piece includes some excellent biographical tidbits right at the
Speaker 1: top about Bentham's weird and interesting personality apart from his
Speaker 1: politics and his public work. For example, it says that
Speaker 1: Bentham had a walking stick that he called Dapple, he
Speaker 1: had a teapot that he referred to as Dicky, and
Speaker 1: he had an elderly cat that was named the Reverend
Speaker 1: Sir John Langborne. Oh that's that's I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's a good cat name. That's too human. I think
Speaker 1: it's funny when a dog has a very human name.
Speaker 1: And I haven't made my mind up about cats yet.
Speaker 1: I think, I guess I assume that's funny. I find
Speaker 1: it cats work best when they have food names, you know, Oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: biscuit or mochi or pound cake or um yeah, really
Speaker 1: anything rabby oli. I mean, you can go go crazy
Speaker 1: with it, but generally speaking, yes, something kind of cute
Speaker 1: and foods. He works well with cats. I find I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we've all learned that one day you plan
Speaker 1: to eat a cat. Well, I mean it would really
Speaker 1: if that were the case, and it's not, then we
Speaker 1: would the feeling would be mutual between me and the cats.
Speaker 1: So I think the cat would respect it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: if we were appreciating game, is that what they say? Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: if we were small enough our cats what heat does? Yeah? Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I thought that was a pretty good window
Speaker 1: into his personality. And uh. And so Bentham apparently had
Speaker 1: express wishes for what would be done to his remains
Speaker 1: in the event of his death, and they fall along
Speaker 1: some similar lines of sensibility. So Bentham died in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, and when that happened, he wanted his dead
Speaker 1: body to be preserved in a way that would allow
Speaker 1: him to be wheeled out and presented to friends at
Speaker 1: parties in case anybody missed seeing him. Take I want
Speaker 1: you to take what I just said and compare that
Speaker 1: to 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 kind of darkened and kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a slim gem. There's hair on it, which I'm
Speaker 1: guessing is perhaps his original hair, real hair. The eyes
Speaker 1: clearly are not his original eyes. Appears to be a
Speaker 1: pair of glass eyeballs that have been inserted into it,
Speaker 1: which you give it this extra uncanny appearance because it
Speaker 1: looks like, you know, the living dead. It looks like
Speaker 1: the eyes of a of a litch staring at you.
Speaker 1: But the look on his face is also not terrifying.
Speaker 1: It's more serene. It looks like he's pay anciently listening
Speaker 1: to you while you're sharing a tidnet. Oh, I don't
Speaker 1: know how, Serene, And I mean, I guess I kind
Speaker 1: of see what you're saying. But he looks to me
Speaker 1: very like startled and appalled. He looks like a a
Speaker 1: butler who has accidentally opened a door to a room
Speaker 1: in which something obscene is taking place. Oh, I get
Speaker 1: more of a like he's patiently listening to you while
Speaker 1: you tell him something that he personally finds boring by Okay,
Speaker 1: he's a good listener, nonetheless, Okay, So what was the
Speaker 1: deal with his head? Like? Why is his head off
Speaker 1: of his dead body but they're both preserved. Why does
Speaker 1: it look like that? To quote from Doss in this interview,
Speaker 1: she says Bentham had made a special request that his
Speaker 1: head be preserved in the style of the Maori, the
Speaker 1: native New Zealanders, But his friend Dr southwood Smith, who
Speaker 1: was tasked with creating the auto icon, wasn't necessarily as
Speaker 1: practiced with that as he probably would have liked to
Speaker 1: have been. And Dost goes on, and so the result
Speaker 1: was ahead that southwood Smith said was not suitable for display,
Speaker 1: which is why he had a wax model commissioned. That's
Speaker 1: the one on display with the auto icon, which is
Speaker 1: the skeleton in Bentham Zone clothes. So so, according to Das,
Speaker 1: the head was desiccated here with sulfuric acid and sometimes
Speaker 1: his hair still falls out. But the situation is that
Speaker 1: there are two separate necro icons of this utilitarian philosopher
Speaker 1: that are both made out of his real body. There's
Speaker 1: his body containing his bones and his clothes, topped with
Speaker 1: a fake wax head and that's on display at University
Speaker 1: College London, and Rob I've got an image for you
Speaker 1: to look at down below here, and then you also
Speaker 1: have his severed head poorly preserved that we just described,
Speaker 1: sometimes kept separately, sometimes shown at the feet of the
Speaker 1: auto icon of the rest of the body because it's
Speaker 1: just this disgusting, rotten looking beef jerky head. And then
Speaker 1: of course there's the horrible body with a wax head
Speaker 1: that has these gloves on it that look really just
Speaker 1: this is awful. Yeah, the picture you shared that shows
Speaker 1: the the wax headed figure with an actual skeleton inside
Speaker 1: of it, uh seated and then there it at its
Speaker 1: feet indeed is the original head and um, yeah, this
Speaker 1: looks fairly terrifying but also symbolically potent. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: because of the some of the examples that I was
Speaker 1: looking at from say Hindu iconography that we'll get into later.
Speaker 1: Like there, I feel like this image is trying to
Speaker 1: tell me something about about death. Yeah, it seems almost
Speaker 1: in the style of the the cephalophor sat you know,
Speaker 1: like the Saints like San Denis in Paris, the Saints
Speaker 1: who carry their own heads in their hands because of
Speaker 1: the legends where they were decapitated but then just picked
Speaker 1: up their heads and walked around, did some miracles or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except he's like saying, yeah, it's like, look, there's my
Speaker 1: head down there. It's rotten, but I'm I'm one. Look
Speaker 1: at this gorgeous wax head. I'm boasting. So the story
Speaker 1: gets weird because we got to get to the actual theft.
Speaker 1: This was all according to two Bentham's wishes, though the
Speaker 1: mummification or preservation of the head got screwed up. Southwood
Speaker 1: Smith did not do a good job with that, or
Speaker 1: at least not to his own liking, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: the results don't look great. But then the theft comes
Speaker 1: in because apparently Jeremy Bentham's actual preserved head has been
Speaker 1: repeatedly stolen or kidnapped as a result of student pranks
Speaker 1: like Doss points out that sometime in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: Bentham's head was quote kidnapped by uc l's rival University
Speaker 1: King's College in London. So I assume it was stolen
Speaker 1: by some kind of English version of Jim Magilowski from
Speaker 1: the Brain, you know, a prank boy. And in fact
Speaker 1: it seems the head was stolen multiple times in its history.
Speaker 1: I was reading a piece about this from Smith Journal
Speaker 1: that says, quote once it was returned upon the making
Speaker 1: of a charitable donation. On another occasion it was recovered
Speaker 1: from a luggage locker in Aberdeen. A man as clever
Speaker 1: as Bentham should have been able to foresee the inevitable
Speaker 1: consequences of spending eternity among students. Now, at some point
Speaker 1: the head was recovered from what happened in the nineties
Speaker 1: these mischievous students, and it was put back on display
Speaker 1: at least at one point for an exhibit called what
Speaker 1: does it Mean to be Human? Curating Heads at u
Speaker 1: c L. So this is a head that apparently keeps
Speaker 1: getting stolen. Don't know if it will ever be stolen again.
Speaker 1: I think they are taking extreme measures to prevent that,
Speaker 1: but who knows what's going to happen. But we should
Speaker 1: still say that, at least in Bentham's case, this is
Speaker 1: consensual preservation in a museum. Despite a few uh encephaloclepts
Speaker 1: over the years, there are also lots of disturbing cases
Speaker 1: where someone's head or brain ends up in a museum
Speaker 1: against their own wishes, whether it's by the supposed forces
Speaker 1: of science and preservation or some other forces that are
Speaker 1: doing the stealing. It has happened plenty of times that heads,
Speaker 1: skulls and get taken from somebody's body, whether they wanted
Speaker 1: that or not, and end up in a museum. And
Speaker 1: and this brings me to the next thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about, to follow up on some of the
Speaker 1: UH some of the phrenology discussion from the last episode,
Speaker 1: because I feel like I want to be a bit
Speaker 1: self critical here, because I have to note that I
Speaker 1: feel a baseline sympathy for the classic Indiana Jones line
Speaker 1: about the Cross of Coronado in the Last Crusade when
Speaker 1: he says it belongs in a museum. You know, I
Speaker 1: I really enjoy museums, and I am instinctually drawn to
Speaker 1: the idea that it's good to have artifacts preserved in
Speaker 1: places like museums, places where you know, artifacts from history
Speaker 1: should be the you know, the the common heritage of
Speaker 1: all humankind to observe and learn from. And so it's
Speaker 1: good that you get to go see them in a
Speaker 1: museum in a place where they will be preserved as
Speaker 1: well as possible across time. And this sounds good, but
Speaker 1: of course it can in reality be an extremely fraught
Speaker 1: concept and just one of the million complications. We expl
Speaker 1: or some of this in our Invention episode on the
Speaker 1: First Museum is the question of physical location. Like, I
Speaker 1: think it is actually good that artifacts from ancient history
Speaker 1: or even more recent history could in some way be
Speaker 1: the common heritage of all humankind to learn from. But
Speaker 1: they've got to physically be somewhere, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that is often in like wealthy European nations or in
Speaker 1: the United States, so like not everybody actually has the
Speaker 1: same access to these artifacts. You know, you've got to
Speaker 1: physically go to London or to Washington or something to
Speaker 1: see them. Yeah, you have this this um, this this
Speaker 1: severe imbalance where say school children in the United States
Speaker 1: can go to their local museum in a major city
Speaker 1: and see artifacts of ancient Egypt. But those same artifacts
Speaker 1: are not on display at the local museum for actual
Speaker 1: Egyptian children to see if they would have to look
Speaker 1: at a reproduction or a picture in a book or
Speaker 1: on the internet. Right. And of course, another big problem
Speaker 1: here is just the question of, like, how do you
Speaker 1: source these are the facts 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, thank thank uh. And
Speaker 1: so this brings me back to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about in the heidn segment of part one. We were
Speaker 1: talking about the development of the pseudoscience of phrenology, which
Speaker 1: quick refresher. This was a a now completely debunked pseudoscience
Speaker 1: that was popular, especially in like the first half of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, popular throughout Europe in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it was the belief that you could infer mental
Speaker 1: characteristics of people by measuring bumps and contours on their skulls.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the this was one of
Speaker 1: the motivations for the stealing of the of Franz Joseph
Speaker 1: Hydn's skull. Now, there are some strains of phrenology that
Speaker 1: a person could see as extremely wrong and pseudo scientific,
Speaker 1: but not super harmful, or at least not more harmful
Speaker 1: than a belief in like palm reading or something. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just feeling around on your head and doing a
Speaker 1: doing a little personality test for you. Right, It's not accurate,
Speaker 1: there's no science to it, but it's 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 creation, 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 the nineteenth century especially,
Speaker 1: it was very common for proponents of phrenology and other
Speaker 1: types of craniometry. So craniometry would be a any kind
Speaker 1: of a belief system based on the measurements of the skull,
Speaker 1: not necessarily like bumps like phrenology. But there were other
Speaker 1: people who just tried to collect a bunch of skulls
Speaker 1: and measure them and draw inferences. Uh So, so there
Speaker 1: were these things going on, and they would cause people
Speaker 1: to gather these huge collections of human skulls, supposedly to
Speaker 1: form the raw materials for their research. But I was
Speaker 1: reading about this in that same book I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the previous episode, the one by Francis Larson called Severed,
Speaker 1: which this whole chapter is really, uh really horrifying and
Speaker 1: fascinating uh, it would lead these people to gather these
Speaker 1: big collections of skulls that in practice, it seems to
Speaker 1: me these collections were often just as much as sort
Speaker 1: of personal museum exhibit or a morbid curio collection to
Speaker 1: impress guests and wealthy benefactors as they were even a
Speaker 1: failed attempt to actually gather data. And unfortunately, it seems
Speaker 1: like most of these skulls collected for supposed craniometric research
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds were not donated consensually. You can
Speaker 1: probably imagine where a lot of them came from. A
Speaker 1: lot of them were stolen from graveyards and battlefields. Some
Speaker 1: came from prisons and morgues, hospitals, workhouses, burial grounds, without
Speaker 1: the consultation of the owner or their family, and often
Speaker 1: without even knowing who the person had actually been. And
Speaker 1: as you might guess, the less wealth and power the
Speaker 1: person had, the more likely that their skull might be
Speaker 1: stolen after their death. Many came from cemeteries of enslaved
Speaker 1: people in America. There are horrific details of the harvesting
Speaker 1: of skulls from Native American people's during the wars of
Speaker 1: expansion of the U. S Frontier into tribal lands, and
Speaker 1: many came from just from poor people, from workhouses and
Speaker 1: potter's fields. Larson as a whole chapter about this horrible
Speaker 1: episode in history and her book severed Um. But a
Speaker 1: couple of these notorious skull collectors she mentions are the
Speaker 1: English doctor Joseph Barnard Davis and the American physician Samuel
Speaker 1: George Morton. Both were mainly working in the early to
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, and she tells one anecdote about Barnard
Speaker 1: Davis that I wanted to read here, so she says
Speaker 1: quote as a physician, Barnard Davis showed few qualms when
Speaker 1: it came to head collecting. John Betto, a fellow doctor,
Speaker 1: remembered that he looked on heads simply as potential skulls.
Speaker 1: Beddo 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 brisk A Royal Infirmary. Betto was treating the man
Speaker 1: for gang green on the lung. Barnard Davis's curiosity was
Speaker 1: immediately piqued. Now, he said to Betto, you know that
Speaker 1: man can't recover, do take care to secure his head
Speaker 1: for me when he dies? For I have no cranium
Speaker 1: from that neighborhood. I guess he was talking about the
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Dubrovnik. And Uh. Then Larsen goes on. Luckily
Speaker 1: for the sailor Bernard Davis had been too enthusiastic in
Speaker 1: his diagnosis. The patient made a full recovery, and Tibetto's
Speaker 1: amused relief he carried his head on his own shoulders
Speaker 1: back to Herzegovina. Uh. And so she says, like, this
Speaker 1: is this is the reality of what's often going on
Speaker 1: in skull collecting. It's like basically totally ignoring the humanity
Speaker 1: of human beings and just being like, how am I
Speaker 1: going to get that skull? It's like a like a
Speaker 1: cartoon where one cartoon character looks at the other and
Speaker 1: just sees like food as a cannibalistic frenzy takes every
Speaker 1: except yeah, the Loony Tunes where like they're in the
Speaker 1: lifeboat and like Donald Doc looks at somebody and just
Speaker 1: imagines their body is like a like a drumstick or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It also reminds me of that line and T. S.
Speaker 1: Eliot's Whispers of Immortality. Webster was much possessed by death
Speaker 1: and saw the skull and eat the skin. Now, it's
Speaker 1: also worth pointing out that the findings of these early
Speaker 1: craniometrists have not really held up to scientific scrutiny. Larson
Speaker 1: talks about this as well, all of the problems with
Speaker 1: their supposed research. Uh, they a lot of them were
Speaker 1: trying to make generalizations about the mental qualities of large
Speaker 1: groups of people. Oh, you know, you can see because
Speaker 1: of this trend in the skulls of people from this
Speaker 1: part of the world that they have these mental characteristics.
Speaker 1: And this was all based on the skull measurements. But
Speaker 1: their research was plagued by poor methodology, inconsistency and samples
Speaker 1: inconsistency and measurements, fudging the data when it didn't fit, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Larson as a whole discussion on this, it seems like
Speaker 1: once again we're dealing with something that ultimately just amounted
Speaker 1: to bunk. Though I it also to discuss a couple
Speaker 1: of points that she makes, which I thought were very
Speaker 1: useful and interpreting what was going on here. Historically. One
Speaker 1: interesting issue was if people are looking into, you know,
Speaker 1: these various questions, trying to understand the human mind, trying
Speaker 1: to understand culture, trying to understand mental processes. Why the
Speaker 1: particular emphasis on skulls, like why the phrenology and craniometry
Speaker 1: craze as a very bone focused thing to begin with. Well,
Speaker 1: she talks about how the physical characteristics of skulls just
Speaker 1: happened to lend themselves quite well to the practical applications
Speaker 1: and interests of the people who were in these fields.
Speaker 1: So she writes quote one Victorian physician, James Aitken MiGs
Speaker 1: noted that skulls are easily prepared and preserved, maybe conveniently
Speaker 1: handled and surveyed, Considered in various points of view, and
Speaker 1: compared to each other. Skulls are favorable specimens because they're small,
Speaker 1: hard and robut dust. They're more compact than whole skeletons,
Speaker 1: which means that they can be relatively easily transported, and
Speaker 1: they're more durable than the messy tissues they contain, surviving
Speaker 1: for centuries on a museum shelf. They're surprisingly resistant to pressure,
Speaker 1: partly because of their shape, but also because the skull,
Speaker 1: unlike longbones, has no marrow and skulls were thought to
Speaker 1: be the most characteristic part of the human body because
Speaker 1: there were so many ways in which one could be
Speaker 1: different from another, full of nooks and crannies and holes
Speaker 1: and lumps. They were a statistician's dream. So this seems
Speaker 1: like one of those cases of people who thought they
Speaker 1: were doing scientific research but may well have been letting
Speaker 1: their theories be overdetermined by attraction to the specific practical
Speaker 1: and esthetic aspects of objects that they just wanted to study.
Speaker 1: Maybe because it was kind of attractive to have a
Speaker 1: collection of these in your house that you could show
Speaker 1: off to people. Maybe because they were easy to move
Speaker 1: around 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 a very
Speaker 1: cart before the horse. It was kind of like, uh,
Speaker 1: skull collecting first science second, and it turned out that
Speaker 1: the science was not even good science. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it just inevitably it brings us back to the you know,
Speaker 1: the end of the scene from Hamlet where he's holding
Speaker 1: 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 like you know,
Speaker 1: where somebody intentionally grants their head to a museum or something. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the story of a man known to history
Speaker 1: as is She now, as told by Larson is She
Speaker 1: was a Native American man who was captured while foraging
Speaker 1: near a slaughter house in northern California in the year
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven. He was about fifty years old. He did
Speaker 1: not speak English, and he apparently at least had no
Speaker 1: living friends or relatives, and so he was say into
Speaker 1: anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who identified him
Speaker 1: as a member of the Yahi people, many of whom
Speaker 1: had been victims of genocide by the white settlers in
Speaker 1: northern California. And Uhhi was not even really the man's name.
Speaker 1: Is She was an identifier given to him by the anthropologist,
Speaker 1: which apparently meant man in the Yana language, that's the
Speaker 1: overarching language to which the Yahi people belonged. But the
Speaker 1: man known as She never revealed his real name, do
Speaker 1: apparently to to accustom within his culture of not revealing
Speaker 1: your name to someone unless you are introduced by a
Speaker 1: member of your own people. So after he after he
Speaker 1: was captured, he was taken to the University of California
Speaker 1: Museum of Anthropology, where he lived for some time. He
Speaker 1: worked as a janitor, and anthropologists did some research with him.
Speaker 1: They made recordings of him speaking and singing in his language. Uh.
Speaker 1: They they studied his language, studied him in other ways,
Speaker 1: and he passed away nineteen sixteen. And then when I
Speaker 1: want to pick up, quoting from Larsen here quote is
Speaker 1: She had expressly asked that his body not be subject
Speaker 1: to a post mortem. One curator wrote in the days
Speaker 1: before is She's death, quote science can go to hell.
Speaker 1: We propose to stand by our friends. He added, Besides,
Speaker 1: I cannot believe that any scientific value is materially involved.
Speaker 1: The prime interest in his case would be of a
Speaker 1: morbid romantic nature. But his letter arrived too late. Staff
Speaker 1: at the museum, who declared themselves is She's friends made
Speaker 1: quote a compromise between science and sentiment, and performed an
Speaker 1: autopsy against his wishes. They removed his brain and sent
Speaker 1: it to the Smithsonian. Those who undertook the autopsy comforted
Speaker 1: themselves that it had been minimally invasive and certainly not
Speaker 1: as disrespectful as a dissection. His brain, after all, was
Speaker 1: preserved rather than destroyed. The rest of Ishi's body, which
Speaker 1: was kept whole, was cremated in a California, sim Terry.
Speaker 1: Thus the autopsy was seen as a compromise, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that it went against the dead man's wishes, and
Speaker 1: Larson goes on to say that she's body was divided
Speaker 1: after death, just as his identity had been in life.
Speaker 1: He was both a man and a scientific specimen. Like
Speaker 1: so many others. He had supposedly been quote the last
Speaker 1: of his tribe, and was apparently without living relatives, and
Speaker 1: was considered to quote valuable to lose in death. And
Speaker 1: I feel like this story is such an important reminder
Speaker 1: that even if what you're doing is real science and
Speaker 1: not for anology or something, you can't ever let yourself
Speaker 1: start thinking about human beings as information first. I mean,
Speaker 1: the situation she's describing here is that there were scientists
Speaker 1: who were saying, like, oh, but it's just it would
Speaker 1: just be too valuable, uh, to to study his brain.
Speaker 1: There's too much we can learn from it. But I mean,
Speaker 1: he didn't want this to happen. And so you've got
Speaker 1: to remember to think of people as people first, and
Speaker 1: only once they say Okay, I am willing to have
Speaker 1: my my body somehow translated into information for science, that
Speaker 1: you can proceed down that road. It's the basis of
Speaker 1: the concept of informed consent, which is so important and
Speaker 1: scientific research today. Plus, I feel like, you know, certainly
Speaker 1: from our perspective, the case was not very strong, for
Speaker 1: we must preserve this brain, we must study this brain.
Speaker 1: I know, as as one of the people who worked
Speaker 1: with you. She said, you know that it's probably more
Speaker 1: a case of motivation by mere morbid curiosity, with also
Speaker 1: I'm sure quite racist undertones. Yeah, yeah, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not like they were trying to solve a crime. It's
Speaker 1: not like they were trying to understand the ravages of
Speaker 1: a particular disease, etcetera. Yeah, it seemed based almost entirely
Speaker 1: in just morbid interest. Fortunately, there is a better conclusion
Speaker 1: to this story. So I was reading a San Francisco
Speaker 1: Chronicle article by Kevin Fagan from the year two thousand
Speaker 1: that was about the reunification of of She's remains. So
Speaker 1: Fagin here writes quote, sometime today, a jet is scheduled
Speaker 1: to land in California carrying a band of Ish's descendants,
Speaker 1: and with them will be the long lost final piece
Speaker 1: of their ancestor, Ish's brain. Leaders of the reading Rancheria
Speaker 1: and Pitt River tribes, which trace their bloodlines to is
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 belongs in a museum impulse
Speaker 1: against questions where maybe it's not as clear, like it's
Speaker 1: clear that this should not that that's brain should not
Speaker 1: have been removed because he was alive. You got to
Speaker 1: hear him say no, I don't want this. Um. I
Speaker 1: guess the tougher question is in cases of like what
Speaker 1: what about the remains of people who have been dead
Speaker 1: for a longer time and you know, could not be
Speaker 1: consulted on the question of whether they would be interested
Speaker 1: in being the subject of scientific research or not. And
Speaker 1: I genuinely don't know the answer there. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: like how the story ended with the brain being returned
Speaker 1: into tribal privacy, you know, like and I feel like
Speaker 1: that detail you know of itself, that that lines up
Speaker 1: with a lot of different you know, things for seeing
Speaker 1: regarding not only like actual artifacts, but also just like
Speaker 1: traditions and information. Um. I did a I did an
Speaker 1: article last year for House to 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 from me in researching that
Speaker 1: is like that there there are certain you know, aspects
Speaker 1: of of living tradition that you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: disrespectful to to to you know, to act on this
Speaker 1: desire to collect it all and to and to keep
Speaker 1: it all and to codify it and to put it
Speaker 1: on a shelf. That some things you know, still belong
Speaker 1: to the people who created them, and you know they
Speaker 1: can share them if they want to, you know. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't help but be reminded of that with this
Speaker 1: the story of of this this piece of this individual
Speaker 1: finally being returned to his people, and in doing so
Speaker 1: it kind of passes out of of the broader like
Speaker 1: media view, right that you're not going to be like
Speaker 1: taking TV cameras to his grave site or yeah, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, because that would just be a continuation
Speaker 1: of the same sort of energy that he seemed very
Speaker 1: outspoken against. Well, now that we've talked a good bit
Speaker 1: about the foibles and horrors of relatively recent skull head
Speaker 1: and brain theft, uh, what do you say we go
Speaker 1: back into some some more deeper history and mythology. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because again, you know, the skull, the head, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: these are certainly long standing icons. So they've been focal
Speaker 1: points for myth making and dreaming and anxiety, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout all the human existence. And it's it's it's only
Speaker 1: relatively recently we've been able to focus more on the
Speaker 1: brain as an icon. You know. Um, you know, like
Speaker 1: if you ever encounter a ghost movie that has like
Speaker 1: a brain based ghost, it's a little off off putting,
Speaker 1: right because it doesn't seem like the ghost should be
Speaker 1: associated with the brain. The brain seems more of a
Speaker 1: science fiction quality as opposed to something that is more
Speaker 1: supernatural in nature. So yeah, I guess to begin with,
Speaker 1: we should point out that folks have been taken heads
Speaker 1: for longer than they have had any any certainly any
Speaker 1: understanding of the brains rattling around inside them. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we don't even have to get into all the gory details,
Speaker 1: because you know the sort of things we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, heads hewn off in battles, heads mounted on
Speaker 1: poles and pikes, lobbed with a catapult, skulls lined up
Speaker 1: on the on shelves in catacombs, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And we're also never in some cases we're not sure,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're dealing with something where it's okay,
Speaker 1: is this head a trophy? Is this some sort or
Speaker 1: of this some some sort of like sacred funerary tradition
Speaker 1: or something in between a lot of times we have
Speaker 1: to sort of piece together what it actually meant. So
Speaker 1: one example, I was looking at from the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and this is this is not so much myth here,
Speaker 1: this is actual, like you know, actual um archaeological evidence. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was reading ritual use of trophy heads in Ancient
Speaker 1: Nascar society and this was by Donald A. Prue, published
Speaker 1: in Ritual Sacrifice in ancient Peru in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: So the taking of heads for ritual use has a
Speaker 1: long history in the Central Andes, from the pre Ceramic
Speaker 1: period prior to about eighteen hundred BC and continuing through
Speaker 1: Inca times and with the Nasca, the craftspeople Uh you know,
Speaker 1: responsible for the Nasca lines. These were created between five
Speaker 1: BC and five 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 removed through that opening. But then
Speaker 1: another hole, smaller hole was punched or drilled through the forehead,
Speaker 1: and this was apparently in order to allow a carrying
Speaker 1: rope to be secured. The lips were pinned with thorns
Speaker 1: and cloth was stuffed into the skull, and so you
Speaker 1: have a preserved skull at this point. So you said
Speaker 1: that these were believed to be for ritual use. Was
Speaker 1: the thought that they would be like displayed somewhere, or
Speaker 1: that they would be like carried in a ceremony. This
Speaker 1: is where it all gets really interesting, And this is
Speaker 1: where that where a lot of authors of and a
Speaker 1: lot of scientists have have really chimed in with different views.
Speaker 1: But it looks it's easy to look at something like
Speaker 1: this and think of it just as trophy taking, right
Speaker 1: like the just the trophy taking of a war like people,
Speaker 1: and indeed war was an important part of their culture.
Speaker 1: But the reality seems to have been ultimately far more complicated.
Speaker 1: Substitute head jars where sometimes we're found to be buried
Speaker 1: with the bodies and the actual heads were not merely
Speaker 1: symbols of victory, but they were used in shamatic rituals,
Speaker 1: perhaps entailing hallucinogenics as a means of communing with the
Speaker 1: spirit realm and according to pro quote, propagating and controlling
Speaker 1: the forces of nature, especially so far as natural resources
Speaker 1: are concerned. Now, apparently some have argued that these were
Speaker 1: not trophy heads, but the heads of honored ancestors. But
Speaker 1: pro dis disputes this. He he defines them instead as quote,
Speaker 1: trophies of warfare collected for ritual purposes. So that that's
Speaker 1: that's interesting because it seems to I think to a
Speaker 1: lot of modern minds, it seems to be it seems
Speaker 1: sounds like a mashup of two twoferent ideas, like you're
Speaker 1: taking the head of your your enemy off of their
Speaker 1: dead body, but isn't. But you're probably doing that as
Speaker 1: like a trophy or a sign of disrespect. You know,
Speaker 1: we often think of that. Um, I think of the
Speaker 1: key and peel skit where one like Barbarian the heads
Speaker 1: another and then goes through all these various sort of
Speaker 1: comedic acts with the head to see what how the
Speaker 1: rest of the tribe responds. I know that what does
Speaker 1: he do? He? Uh, he like puts little shoes under
Speaker 1: it and makes it walk, Yeah, and like that's that's
Speaker 1: a big hit. But he also like does things like
Speaker 1: pretend to give birth to the head, and like that
Speaker 1: just doesn't they don't like it. That's funny, Yeah, But
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing where like when we think
Speaker 1: about head taking, we think of stuff like that. We
Speaker 1: think of like something barbaric and trophy oriented. But in
Speaker 1: this case it seems like it wasn't bad or it
Speaker 1: wasn't purely that it was. It was also this idea
Speaker 1: of what you need this head. This head is necessary
Speaker 1: for various religious purposes, a way of a means of
Speaker 1: communing with the spirit realm um. Now, as for the brain,
Speaker 1: it seems like the brain was was discarded. That would
Speaker 1: have been again, that would have been part of like
Speaker 1: that first act of of punching through the back of
Speaker 1: 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 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 rodotas in Aristotle, um
Speaker 1: uh Cleo Manis of the first of Sparta is said
Speaker 1: to have consulted with the head of his friend our
Speaker 1: quantities on all major decisions ahead, which he kept preserved
Speaker 1: in honey, whoa in honey, Yeah, that's good. And so
Speaker 1: you know, of course, when we deal with accounts like this,
Speaker 1: we're we're beginning to at least beginning to transfer into
Speaker 1: the realm of myth and lore and legend, where we
Speaker 1: we become less sure about what is actually going on,
Speaker 1: because then there is this broader realm of just stories
Speaker 1: about disembodied heads that still have life in them, that
Speaker 1: can speak, that can fly, that can terrorize, that can
Speaker 1: give you know, important advice to the living, etcetera. I
Speaker 1: think one of the coolest of these that uh, that
Speaker 1: folks may have heard of is is the myth of
Speaker 1: of Memir uh in Norse mythology. Uh So this Memir
Speaker 1: was one of the Jiltons in Norse mythology, one of
Speaker 1: the frost giants, and he was the guardian of the
Speaker 1: well of inspiration and wisdom at the roots of the
Speaker 1: world tree. And Odin would come to to drink from
Speaker 1: the well and Memory would make him leave an eye
Speaker 1: and payment. And then member was held hostage in in
Speaker 1: battle by the Vanier during the the Aser Vanier War,
Speaker 1: and they beheaded him, but Odin, since he liked the guy,
Speaker 1: you know, retrieved his head and kept alive with magic
Speaker 1: herbs so that the head could continue to give counsel
Speaker 1: to the King of the gods. And so you'll see uh,
Speaker 1: some wonderful illustrations of this, both old and then recent,
Speaker 1: where there's like this some of some cases is like
Speaker 1: a zombie head that Odin is is holding that he is,
Speaker 1: uh that that is his advisor. Yeah, you've attached one
Speaker 1: here where Odin is is leaning his head over on
Speaker 1: the severed head like he's almost kind of snuggling with it.
Speaker 1: Of course, Odin is missing one eye as usual, and uh,
Speaker 1: and there's just fire coming out of the thing's mouth
Speaker 1: or I don't know, it looks like he's got like
Speaker 1: a star inside the back of his throat. Yes. Um.
Speaker 1: In terms of heads that give advice like this, there's
Speaker 1: also an Arabian Nights story of of King Yu Nan
Speaker 1: and the Duban and Duban the sage and the stage
Speaker 1: in question. At least in some variations of this tale,
Speaker 1: continues to speak after it has been removed from its body.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna get into some other examples. Uh here,
Speaker 1: Uh you know 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 attendants.
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 ten 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 Westerners, 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 heads associated with tellings and retellings
Speaker 1: of the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic heads placed on poles
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 Panna Nick,
Speaker 1: who has a whole page about these tales at his
Speaker 1: mythology website dev Dute dot com. It's d V d
Speaker 1: U t T dot com. Uh. He writes that these
Speaker 1: tales are often about perspective. Quote. The talking head is
Speaker 1: thus a symbol for a less confined, more global perspective
Speaker 1: on things. All of us see the world from our
Speaker 1: individual point of view, limited by our prejudices, our expectations,
Speaker 1: and our experiences. The talking head sees it from an
Speaker 1: alternative angle, and when he voices his opinions, we see
Speaker 1: the world quite differently. When he speaks, we realize the
Speaker 1: Pandavas and the caravas are are tiny elements of God's
Speaker 1: greater canvas. The Mahabarata is not just about one kingdom.
Speaker 1: It is about cosmic order. Now that's not to say
Speaker 1: 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 discus 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 in trails, which then turned to pearls,
Speaker 1: and so that leaves only the head. So Shiva then
Speaker 1: commands uh Kota Muka to serve as the guardian of entrances.
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 of
Speaker 1: Hindu architecture from India and from other countries. You know,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because you brought it up and I
Speaker 1: somehow did not think about it. But from Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: You know, we did the episode last year about about Medusa.
Speaker 1: That's of course the case of a stolen head in mythology,
Speaker 1: or the head is severed and like he takes it
Speaker 1: and 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 that looking around though sometimes it appears
Speaker 1: to have arms, So I don't know if it it
Speaker 1: gains arms later or arms just end up popping back
Speaker 1: up in the iconography. But there you go. Another entity
Speaker 1: we've talked about before in the show is Rahu in 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 dump. 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 battle,
Speaker 1: had his followers cut off his head so that it
Speaker 1: could be returned to Britain one day. And for a
Speaker 1: long time this head was said to speak before it
Speaker 1: grew silent, and the story goes that the silent head
Speaker 1: was finally taken to White Hill. Uh. This is where
Speaker 1: the Tower of London, they say would one day be built,
Speaker 1: and they buried it there facing France to word off
Speaker 1: the enemy. And this supposedly ties into the uh the
Speaker 1: The Celtic cult of of the head also reflected in
Speaker 1: the Tale of the Green Knight. Uh. We're in In
Speaker 1: the Green Night, the Green Knight comes into Arthur's court
Speaker 1: and challenges someone to cut off his head. But then
Speaker 1: when they do, he just picks it up and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm fine. Now I get to cut off your head,
Speaker 1: but I'll do it a year from now. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: the decapitation battle is another motif or contest. You see that,
Speaker 1: uh in a lot of legends from this part of
Speaker 1: the world, and it's interesting, you know. Um. Terry Jones
Speaker 1: of Money Python, of course, was very steeped in uh
Speaker 1: in this sort of lore, and he was one of
Speaker 1: the author one of the writers for the screenplay for Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: and Labyrinth features those wonderful fiery red creatures that attempt
Speaker 1: to engage in a decapitation contest with our our heroine, Sarah.
Speaker 1: Do you remember them where they're like? Where did they
Speaker 1: get mad at her? Because you're only you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to take someone else's head, only supposed to take your
Speaker 1: own head. Off of this, this reminds me of of
Speaker 1: the head swapping scene and teams in the universe. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean this sort of thing, head swapping, decapitated heads
Speaker 1: living on You see it just everywhere. Um. For instance. Here,
Speaker 1: here's some other examples in in Maya mythology, you have
Speaker 1: head app Woo who was tripped by the lords of
Speaker 1: the underworld and his decapitated head was didn't hung as
Speaker 1: a trophy from a giant tree. But then this head
Speaker 1: later spits into a woman's hand and in doing so
Speaker 1: impregnates her with the Maya hero twins, who would go
Speaker 1: on to have various adventures. We've already touched on in
Speaker 1: the previous episode. We've touched on Orpheus is singing head
Speaker 1: and Greek mythology. Oh yeah, and the possible symbolic connection
Speaker 1: to the box made for Hyde and Skull with the
Speaker 1: liar Yeah. Uh. In the trial of the Knights Templars,
Speaker 1: one of the charges was that they worshiped an entity
Speaker 1: called Bahammet that was sometimes described as a severed head.
Speaker 1: And then oh, you have some wonderful monsters as well. Um,
Speaker 1: there's the Kara Sioux in the Southeast day. It's a
Speaker 1: Southeast Asian spirit that takes the form of a beautiful
Speaker 1: woman's head with her organs dangling below her neck so
Speaker 1: it floats it close and it seems to essentially be
Speaker 1: another variation of the willow the whisp tradition. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is held around the world and that we devoted a
Speaker 1: big episode two in the past, so she can't what
Speaker 1: she like glows and leads people off the path. I believe,
Speaker 1: so yes. Um. And there's there's actually Indonesian horror movie
Speaker 1: titled Mystics in Bali that looks pretty interesting because it
Speaker 1: features the kara su I included a screenshot here for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: and for a movie trailer for you to check out later.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I gotta, I gotta see that. That looks
Speaker 1: great now. The melee version of this is the pontionic,
Speaker 1: which functions like a vampire, only it prays exclusively on
Speaker 1: babies 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 people's 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 doctor 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 ape. But there's
Speaker 1: a tail apparently of an old woman who is roasting
Speaker 1: some chestnuts over the fire, and then she brings a
Speaker 1: fiery coal back from the fire with her to keep
Speaker 1: her warm. And then here comes the flying head and
Speaker 1: it it gobbles her up chestnuts and all, but then
Speaker 1: it has to spit her out because of the fiery coal,
Speaker 1: and then that coal burns the monster up from the
Speaker 1: inside out. Oh. I love when the story is a
Speaker 1: trick like that. Yeah, especially when it's like an old
Speaker 1: lady who gets gets the wind over the monster. That's
Speaker 1: always nice, not not your traditional young, dashing male slayer. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so that's just an example of some of the myths
Speaker 1: and legends and folklore tales you'll find just throughout the world.
Speaker 1: I 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 Maile 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
Speaker 1: laugh there's one where I think their laughs there distracts
Speaker 1: are Anna during the battle, um, you know, and there's
Speaker 1: a sense of like being free from the body. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm also reminded of the heads that show up in
Speaker 1: Miyazaki Spirited Away, the three heads that kind of roll
Speaker 1: around and bumble, and they don't have much personality to them,
Speaker 1: and I don't really know what they're doing and what
Speaker 1: they're there for, but they don't seem to stressed. They say,
Speaker 1: maybe perpetually alarmed. But uh, that's about it. That's good stuff.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, we're gonna go ahead and close this
Speaker 1: episode out, but yeah, we'd love to hear from everybody
Speaker 1: out there. Any any other examples of flying heads and
Speaker 1: self decapitating spirits, other examples of brain and head preservation.
Speaker 1: Have you been taken by a particular specimen of brain
Speaker 1: or head at a museum. We would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you all about it. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to check out other episodes of stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind, you can find us wherever you get your
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Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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