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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you

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Speaker 1: an episode from the vault today. This is part two

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Speaker 1: of our series on the Shanhai Jing, also known as

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Speaker 1: the Classic of Mountains and Seas. This episode originally aired

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Speaker 1: on February eleven, and we're revisiting now. We hope you

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Speaker 1: have a great time. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind,

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Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to

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

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're back with part

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Speaker 1: two of our discussion of the Shanhai Jing, the ancient

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Speaker 1: Chinese work of mythic geography that we introduced in the

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Speaker 1: last episode. If you're just coming in on this one,

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Speaker 1: I really recommend you go back and listen to the

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Speaker 1: previous episode first, because that will make sense of we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today. Yeah, it's it's just really was really

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Speaker 1: fun to dive into the nature and history of this

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Speaker 1: ancient Chinese text. Uh, not not only to learn about

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Speaker 1: yet and about the you know, the Chinese culture it

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Speaker 1: emerge from, but it also I think exemplifies a lot

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Speaker 1: of realities about texts and about old texts and old books,

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Speaker 1: so well worth listening to if you happen to skip it. Now.

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Speaker 1: The brief recap is that the Shanhaijing, this title is

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Speaker 1: sometimes translated as the Classic of Mountains and Seas or

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Speaker 1: The Cannon of Mountains and Seas. One of the authors

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Speaker 1: who did some translations and commentary that we talked about

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Speaker 1: in the last episode, Richard Strasburg, I think he translates

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Speaker 1: it as Guideways through the Mountains and Seas. This is

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Speaker 1: in some ways, you could look at it as an

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Speaker 1: ancient travel book. It's a book of ancient mythic geography

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Speaker 1: that tells you about mountains and seas sees sometimes in

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Speaker 1: a metaphorical kind of sense, and not just meaning water,

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Speaker 1: but expanses of the world. Uh, and the animals and

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Speaker 1: plants and minerals you can find there, and often the

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Speaker 1: gods and monsters that you can find there. That's right.

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Speaker 1: So in this episode we're just going to talk about

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Speaker 1: some of the various gods and monsters that pop up um,

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Speaker 1: some big ones, some small ones, some that turns out

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Speaker 1: they're not even perhaps even that fantastic at all, but

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Speaker 1: the description is kind of fantastic. Uh, So we're gonna

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Speaker 1: We're gonna start big though with one of the I

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Speaker 1: think the more interesting looking creatures, at least as it's

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Speaker 1: often depicted in illustrations for this book, but also in

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Speaker 1: terms of just like how deeply weird it happens to be.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about houndun um, which Anne Burrow

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Speaker 1: translates as muddle thick. Uh. But this, uh, this is

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Speaker 1: a cree. I think we touched on this creature very

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Speaker 1: briefly in the last episode, right well, we were talking

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Speaker 1: about some of the illustrations that accompany the at least

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Speaker 1: the Strasbourg translation of these selection from the Shannhaijing. Now,

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Speaker 1: the illustrations that we have in in additions like Strassburg's,

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Speaker 1: they don't go back all the way. These are not

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Speaker 1: illustrations that would have accompanied it in its earliest form.

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Speaker 1: They're more like a few hundred years old, but they're

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Speaker 1: still wonderful. But this one reference, actually the the entry

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Speaker 1: is under the name dij Young, and the dij Young

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Speaker 1: contains a reference to this this idea of Hoondon, which

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Speaker 1: will explain more as we go on. But the ding

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Speaker 1: is sometimes depicted as having no face and no eyes.

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Speaker 1: And in these these classic woodblock illustrations, he's like a

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Speaker 1: six legged, winged beast with butts on both ends. Well, um,

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Speaker 1: as we'll get into. I don't think their butts, um

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Speaker 1: I I would, I would describe it as also looking

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Speaker 1: a bit like an ottoman, like a like a four

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Speaker 1: and I mean, I'm sorry, a six legged ottoman with wings.

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Speaker 1: Um it's it's a strange looking creature. And so let

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Speaker 1: me go ahead and read from the Shanhaijing. This is

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Speaker 1: Barrel's translation quote. Three hundred and fifty leagues further west

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Speaker 1: is a mountain called Mount Sky. It has a great

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Speaker 1: amount of gold and jade and green male yellow. The

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Speaker 1: River Brave rises here and then flows southwest to empty

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Speaker 1: into Hot Water Valley. There is a god here who

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Speaker 1: looks like a yellow sack. He is scarlet like sinnabar fire.

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Speaker 1: He has six ft and four wings. He is muddle thick,

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Speaker 1: He has no face and no wise. He knows how

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Speaker 1: to sing and dance. He is in truth, the great

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Speaker 1: God Long River. Now that is an excellent string of sentences.

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Speaker 1: Uh We we got in the last episode into some

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Speaker 1: issues about difficulties in translating the the ancient Chinese graphs

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Speaker 1: that are used in this text and how to turn

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Speaker 1: them into modern concepts or or words in other languages. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, some differences here in Strasburg's translation. So the

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Speaker 1: mountain in Burrel's is called Mount Sky, and Strasbourg it's

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Speaker 1: the celestial mountain. In Burrel green male yellow for Strasburg

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Speaker 1: is green real Gar, and Realgar is the name of

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Speaker 1: an arsenic sulfide mineral that forms these striking red crystals.

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Speaker 1: Burrel's river Brave is imminent river. For Strasburg, I think

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Speaker 1: I like River Brave better um. But the biggest difference

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Speaker 1: is that where Burrel says he is muddle thick, he

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Speaker 1: has no face and no eyes, Strasbourg translates he exists

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Speaker 1: in a state of confusion with no face or eyes.

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Speaker 1: And in this we're getting into that term um undun,

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Speaker 1: which can be used in a couple of different ways. Um.

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Speaker 1: I believe it can be used as a as like

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Speaker 1: a noun and an adjective. This according to Yang and

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Speaker 1: in Turner in their book Chinese Mythology. So it can

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Speaker 1: be a descriptive term, or it can be the noun.

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Speaker 1: It can refer to chaos and primeval chaos, but it

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Speaker 1: also can refer to a person who is quote ignorant

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Speaker 1: and muddle headed. So easily you can see how this

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Speaker 1: complicates the translation process. And Strasburg writes about this that

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Speaker 1: that there are various lines of what he calls associative

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Speaker 1: reasoning and linguistic connections that have taken the dijong and

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Speaker 1: made it in many commentaries not just a creature, not

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Speaker 1: just a critter of the mountains, but somehow the personification

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Speaker 1: of what he calls cosmogonic chaos. And this is the

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Speaker 1: idea of Hoon doon Uh. And he says that the

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Speaker 1: conclusion here is largely based on the line he exists

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Speaker 1: in a state of confusion, that word confusion being hundu

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Speaker 1: and h u n d u in in the English,

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Speaker 1: and how that could be taken as the proper name

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Speaker 1: hun don, which is a chaos personification, a kind of

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Speaker 1: confusion deity. That there are actual myths and fables about yeah,

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Speaker 1: like for instance, um even in modern Mandarin, chaos theory

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Speaker 1: is known as und chia uh chaos theory math. So

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Speaker 1: the illustration that accompanies this is I think really quite

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Speaker 1: cute in many ways I'm kind of reminded of a

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Speaker 1: triple you know, especially in its faithlessness and uh and all. Now, um,

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Speaker 1: what you said earlier, Joe about about this being looking

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Speaker 1: like a winged and legged butt, um or a double

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Speaker 1: butt even, um, you know you are tempting the gods

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Speaker 1: of chaos. I think by by stating this, and interestingly enough, Uh,

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Speaker 1: if you were to say it it looks like it

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Speaker 1: has one butt or two butts, you'd be completely wrong

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Speaker 1: as well, because the god's lack of bodily orifices is

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Speaker 1: stressed in parallel texts from the fourth century b C.

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Speaker 1: According to Beryl. Yes, so, so if this were a

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Speaker 1: creature with six legs and four wings and a butt

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Speaker 1: on each ends, the butts on each end would have

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Speaker 1: to be without anuses. They would just be smooth uh,

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Speaker 1: butts with no orifice at all. Now, Um, it's it's

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Speaker 1: interesting that this is something to keep in mind. If

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Speaker 1: this lunar New Year you happen to have wantons. Apparently

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Speaker 1: Hundun has some connection possibly some connection or connection to

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Speaker 1: the word for wanton. And indeed, if you look at it,

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Speaker 1: it does kind of look like a wanton with wings

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Speaker 1: and feet. Yeah, it's a cute, fluffy little package. It

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Speaker 1: can absolutely look like a dumpling of some sort. Or

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Speaker 1: to go back to the original passage in the Shannhaijing,

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Speaker 1: it is compared to a sack, and in some ways

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Speaker 1: a dumpling is like a sack for food contents. Now

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Speaker 1: she mentions that the legs are are often described as

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Speaker 1: being reptile legs and has these yellow and scarlet markings,

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Speaker 1: and though eyeless and faithless, it is also the originator

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Speaker 1: of song and dance. Now this this really got me

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Speaker 1: thinking because it made me it made me think back

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Speaker 1: to Corman McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Now I'm not aware that

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Speaker 1: cormancarthy ever drew uh any inspiration from Chinese writings or myth,

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Speaker 1: but but I am strongly reminded of Judge Holden in

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Speaker 1: all of this, the murderous scalp hunter and gnostic Archon

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Speaker 1: and his West in that Western novel. Because aside from

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Speaker 1: Holden's deep connections with Eos and the supernatural overtones to

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Speaker 1: the characters, there's this fabulous bit from the closing pages

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Speaker 1: of the novel in which quote he is dancing dancing,

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Speaker 1: he says that he will never die, and he's also

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Speaker 1: described in the scene as seem particularly as being naked

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Speaker 1: and hairless, pale, quote like an enormous infant. So I

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Speaker 1: would propose that Judge Holden might well be Huondon, well Whondon.

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Speaker 1: While in uh some manifestations is a sort of from

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Speaker 1: what I can tell, morally neutral, there are evil hun

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Speaker 1: don as well. Yeah, and I think it's it's interesting

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Speaker 1: that chaos would would have these sort of different definitions

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Speaker 1: and different um you know, tonal shifts, because a lot

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Speaker 1: of reality is concerning chaos. It did does depend on

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Speaker 1: on who's telling the story, who's thinking about chaos. You know,

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Speaker 1: I'm again reminded of that line from A Connoisseur of

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Speaker 1: Chaos by Wallace Stevens. A violent order is a disorder,

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Speaker 1: and a great disorder is an order, and these two

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Speaker 1: things are one you know. Um oh, you're empaside. One

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Speaker 1: man's order is another man's chaos. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it kind of depends, uh depends his his commentating on it.

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Speaker 1: So the most sighted version of this myth comes from

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Speaker 1: zong Zoo, and it's a third century BC text that's

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Speaker 1: traditionally attributed to this uh Dallast philosopher. Um So, anyway,

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Speaker 1: He tells the story in which the chaos deity Hunding

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Speaker 1: resides in a central region. And it's this central region

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Speaker 1: where two gods from far flung parts of the world

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Speaker 1: come to meet. And these two gods are fast and swift,

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know that they felt they after a

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Speaker 1: while they've been meeting here. Um you know, I guess

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Speaker 1: like having coffee and stuff. They felt they owed whom

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Speaker 1: doing a debt of gratitude. But how do you repay

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Speaker 1: a being who has none of the seven openings of

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Speaker 1: the face? Right? You can't sing to them because there

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Speaker 1: are no ear holes. Uh, you can't speak, nor can

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Speaker 1: you speak a word of thanks to them. You can't

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Speaker 1: give them food or wine. So these two gods did

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Speaker 1: the only natural thing. They decided to chisel holes into

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Speaker 1: the chaos deity. So they chiseled one hole per day

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Speaker 1: for seven days, and then on the seventh day, the

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Speaker 1: god Hundun dies. Do you mind if I just read

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Speaker 1: the direct translation that Strasbourg has of this, because I

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Speaker 1: think the wording is very funny. It's very brief. So

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Speaker 1: his version is the the arc of the Southern Sea

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Speaker 1: was named Sudden. The the arc of the Northern Sea

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Speaker 1: was named Hasty, and the the arc of the center

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Speaker 1: was named Hundun. Once Sudden and Hasty together paid a

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Speaker 1: visit to Hundun's domain and were treated most courteously by him.

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Speaker 1: They discussed among themselves how to repay his generosity, saying,

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Speaker 1: all men have seven orifices to see here, eat, and breathe,

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Speaker 1: only he does not. Why not drill them for him?

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Speaker 1: Every day they drilled one hole, But after seven days

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Speaker 1: Hundun died, so they made it six days. They drilled

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Speaker 1: six holes in his head and he was still okay.

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Speaker 1: But when they got to the seventh hole, is just

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Speaker 1: just too much. Now you might be wondering what could

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Speaker 1: this possibly mean? It just sounds like like sheer madness, right, Um, Well,

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Speaker 1: apparently the message of the myth that Young tells is

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Speaker 1: that one must not inflict artificial order on the natural world.

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Speaker 1: So fast and swift. Here are agents of unnatural order

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Speaker 1: attempting to inflict their way of thinking, um in a

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Speaker 1: in a way that is you know, ultimately disastrous, you know,

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Speaker 1: killing the entity in the process. Yeah, I got to

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Speaker 1: thinking about this. So Strasburg explains that pretty much in

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Speaker 1: the same way. He says that the traditional way the

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Speaker 1: story is interpreted within Taoism is that Undun is the

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Speaker 1: embodiment of primordial chaos quote, who is a victim of

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Speaker 1: purposeful activity, destroyed by the well intentioned, though dangerously misguided

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Speaker 1: efforts of humanizing civilization. The fable thus reflects the philosopher's

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Speaker 1: nostalgia for a golden age of primitive society, when all

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Speaker 1: life was believed to be in accord with the simple

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Speaker 1: patterns of the natural way other words, in other words

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Speaker 1: the Tao. So that seems to be the classic interpretation

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Speaker 1: that was presented in this ancient text. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: there used to be a time when humans were more

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Speaker 1: in accord with nature, and then there were the civilizing

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Speaker 1: impulses that that led us to, you know, create the

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Speaker 1: kind of complicated society we live in today, and that

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Speaker 1: sort of ruins everything and and kills this this uh

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Speaker 1: being of primordial simplicity. But I was thinking about another

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Speaker 1: way to interpret pretty much the same themes is that

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Speaker 1: it could be applied to the perils of trying to

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Speaker 1: catch lightning in a bottle. You know, that classic story

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Speaker 1: of when there is some kind of organic, chaotic creative

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Speaker 1: process that really works and then somebody tries to formalize

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Speaker 1: it and impose order, and it just dies. Uh. You

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Speaker 1: know this can be This is true of all different

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Speaker 1: kinds of creativity and fun. I was trying to think

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Speaker 1: of a better example from a higher form of literature,

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Speaker 1: but the best example that actually came to my mind

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Speaker 1: was the movie Wayne's World. The plot out of Wayne's

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Speaker 1: World is that Wayne and his friend Garth they do

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Speaker 1: a public access TV show from their basement that is

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Speaker 1: lovable because it is a stupid, improvised screw around project

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Speaker 1: by a couple of losers in their basement. But everybody

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Speaker 1: likes it and it's fun. And then Rob Lowe shows

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Speaker 1: up and he's a slick business executive and he decides

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Speaker 1: to buy their show and turn it into a slick,

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Speaker 1: high budget production with sets and sponsors and professionalism, and

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Speaker 1: the magic dies and the show is terrible. I'm also reminded,

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Speaker 1: of course, of the goose that lays the golden eggs, right,

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Speaker 1: you know where laziest fag was golden eggs. And then

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Speaker 1: you you you're like, well, I want to I want

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Speaker 1: all the eggs, so I'm just gonna cut it open,

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Speaker 1: you know. Um, And that one kind of lines up

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Speaker 1: and it kills them the goose, of course, but that

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Speaker 1: kind of lines up with this one as well. And

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Speaker 1: since it's both involved this um this, this visceral violence

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Speaker 1: that is perpetrated on something in an attempt to um

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Speaker 1: to get the most out of it and to instill

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Speaker 1: some sort of order on things. I guess maybe it's

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Speaker 1: just because we work in the media space that the

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Speaker 1: main ideas that come to my brain are media ones.

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Speaker 1: But it does absolutely seem to be a replica, like

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Speaker 1: a repeating pattern in the real world. Is like something

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Speaker 1: is creative and interesting and fun and then order gets

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Speaker 1: imposed on it and it just dies. Yeah. I wonder

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Speaker 1: what Dr Ian Malcolm would have had to say about

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Speaker 1: all this concerning genetically modified, resurrected dinosaurs and so forth.

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Speaker 1: And he is a worshiper of Hundun in some respects. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's a practitioner of hundu ju, was it? Yes, I

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Speaker 1: believe so. Yeah. The chaos chaos theory. Now, another thing

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Speaker 1: Strassbord notes is that it is tempting to see parallels

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Speaker 1: between the characteristics of this of this chaos creature Hundun,

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Speaker 1: and the idea of a formless void or the undifferentiated

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Speaker 1: cosmos that exists prior to the creation of the world

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Speaker 1: or of the cosmic order in a number of ancient cosmologies. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, the noise that exists it prior to any signal. Now,

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Speaker 1: why would that be, especially if you're taking it out

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Speaker 1: of the broader picture of Hundun as a as an

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Speaker 1: ancient personification of chaos and into the specific example of

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Speaker 1: the dij Young as the creature from the Classic of

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Speaker 1: the Mountains and Seas. Why would this be? Well, the

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Speaker 1: Young has four wings, six legs, no face, no eyes,

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Speaker 1: and this seems to imply that its movement is not directed.

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Speaker 1: It's a kind of omnidirectional wandering without purpose. And also

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Speaker 1: the comparison of his body to a sack. What do

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Speaker 1: sacks contain? Well, unless you put something in them, they

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Speaker 1: contain emptiness. Now another thing. Strasburg says, that's interesting, but

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Speaker 1: I don't think I really understood. He says that the

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Speaker 1: body of the dis Young suggests creation myths where the

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Speaker 1: universe is created from the body of a dead God.

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Speaker 1: And this absolutely is a fascinating and common type of

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Speaker 1: creation myth. But I'm not really sure. I see the

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Speaker 1: comparison there, he doesn't really explain that idea further. I

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Speaker 1: wonder if you can make anything of that. Um. I

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Speaker 1: didn't read about that myself. It may, but I you know,

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Speaker 1: I instantly just think of of it looking like flesh,

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Speaker 1: kind of just just generic flesh, you know. So here

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Speaker 1: is like just a lump of the tissue of a god,

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Speaker 1: and now it has wings and feet. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: sprouted them. Um, you know John Carpenter's the thing style. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like hills with legs. Now, this doesn't really aid

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Speaker 1: in our understanding of all this at all, but it's

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Speaker 1: kind of neat. I was looking through my my normal

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Speaker 1: monster texts and in uh Jorge Louis boorhe is the

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Speaker 1: Book of Imaginary Beings. He does mention this creature in

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Speaker 1: passing Um, referring to it as as tai ching getting

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Speaker 1: at that that daijing um name, and he just says

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Speaker 1: that dia jing is a supernatural bird that lives in

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Speaker 1: the celestial mountains. It is bright red and has six

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Speaker 1: legs and four wings, but it has neither a face

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Speaker 1: nor eyes. Now I mentioned earlier that we would get

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Speaker 1: to an evil undun. Uh, so I just want to

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Speaker 1: read a section from Strasbourg. Here in in the d

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Speaker 1: Young entry, so regarding the potential malevolent Houndun, he writes,

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Speaker 1: there's another historiographical tradition and Zoe's narratives to the spring

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Speaker 1: and Autumn animals, which is a It's a late fourth

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Speaker 1: century BC text in which Hundun is the evil son

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Speaker 1: of the Arkkong also known as d Hong. He is

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Speaker 1: known as Houndun that is confusion because of his lack

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Speaker 1: of moral consciousness. As one of four evil offspring of

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Speaker 1: the arcs Undun is finally banished along with the rest

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Speaker 1: by Shun, who sends them all to the periphery to

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Speaker 1: quell demons. Now not really very familiar with this myth.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you know anything about the the

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Speaker 1: the bad deities here are sent off to the edges

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Speaker 1: of the world to fight demons. Um. Yeah, I've I've

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Speaker 1: I've read a little bit about this before. But also

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Speaker 1: the idea of there being four of them is kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting because I've read that those these these four

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Speaker 1: perils are sometimes presented as the opposing force to the

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Speaker 1: four benevolent animals, those being the Azure Dragon, the Vermilion Bird,

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Speaker 1: the White Tiger, and the black tortoise. Oh okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that sounds familiar. Strasburg also writes quote, following another line

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Speaker 1: of linguistic reasoning, Yuan Kay, who was born in nineteen sixteen,

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Speaker 1: conflated both traditions by identifying dij Young with the ark

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Speaker 1: Hong and also with the yellow the arc, the latter

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Speaker 1: considered the the arch of the center in Five Agents Cosmology,

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Speaker 1: I did five Agents cosmology come up in the previous episode.

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Speaker 1: I don't believe it did, but we did touch on

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Speaker 1: on yellow and the many different names for the yellow

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Speaker 1: whimper or the yellow yellow yellow the arc. I believe

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Speaker 1: that's what they're referring to here. Yeah. Now. Strasburg writes

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Speaker 1: that the idea of Hundun as a personification of confusion

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Speaker 1: or chaos that sort of went along that that that

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Speaker 1: carried on for a while. There's evidence of it into

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Speaker 1: the Han and the early six Dynasties periods and UH

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Speaker 1: and eventually in that period he was canonized as a god.

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Speaker 1: But then after that period he seems to have mostly

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Speaker 1: vanished from Chinese pantheons, though the concept of Hundun not

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Speaker 1: necessarily as a personified deity, but just as an abstract

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Speaker 1: principle survived in Chinese language and culture into later periods.

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Speaker 1: Uh And and Strasburg describes it as quote an abstract

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Speaker 1: term denoting an impersonal state of universal chaos before the

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Speaker 1: birth of the bipolar forces of Yin and Yang. And

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Speaker 1: Gopu also comments that the creature dij young is actually

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Speaker 1: cosmic confusion. Uh. Though in the end, it's funny because

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Speaker 1: despite all of these interpretations over the years, coming back

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Speaker 1: to what was meant in the original text, Strasbourg writes

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Speaker 1: that quote the textual basis in this passage of the

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Speaker 1: guide ways for identifying Dijng literally the arc long river

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Speaker 1: with the mythical figure Hundun is slim, and he can

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Speaker 1: simply be regarded as a strange creature in his own

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Speaker 1: right in a sense, like all these different attempts to

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Speaker 1: understand it, both from the academics and historians and ancient

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Speaker 1: people and even ourselves. I mean, we're all kind of

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Speaker 1: just drilling holes into the chaos deity, right, We're trying

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Speaker 1: to afflict a certain amount of order on the whole premise.

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Speaker 1: Thank thank But I did want to take a brief digression. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So what if you assume Strasburg's final comment here is correct,

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Speaker 1: and that the real author of this text would have said, no, no,

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Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the primordial personification of chaos

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Speaker 1: and confusion, nothing to do with it with a malevolent god.

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Speaker 1: This is just a beast that has no face and

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Speaker 1: has four wings and six legs. I wanted to see, Okay,

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Speaker 1: are there animals without faces? In an interesting way? Because

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Speaker 1: of course we know there are animals that everybody is

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Speaker 1: aware of the fact that they have no face, like oysters, sponges, starfish.

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Speaker 1: These are part of the kingdom of the animals, and

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Speaker 1: they don't have faces because that's just not how they evolved.

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Speaker 1: It's not part of their body plan, it's not what

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Speaker 1: they need. I was wondering, could you find something like

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Speaker 1: a deer without a face? I didn't find that, But

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Speaker 1: there are animals with more recognizably face bearing body plans

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Speaker 1: that nevertheless have evolved to have no face. And the

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Speaker 1: coolest and creepiest example I came across I was reading

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Speaker 1: about in a blog post from the Australian government's Natural

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Speaker 1: Environmental Science program Marine Biodiversity Hub. There's a blog post

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Speaker 1: by a researcher named Diane bray from Mate that was

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Speaker 1: about a creature that they had discovered during a deep

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Speaker 1: sea expedition. Uh so, so, the author of this blog

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Speaker 1: post writes, quote, a large, weird, faceless fish landed on

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Speaker 1: the deck a couple of days ago. By faceless, I

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Speaker 1: mean it had no eyes, nothing, not even tiny spots

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Speaker 1: or modified areas indicating eyes beneath the skin. It came

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Speaker 1: from four thousand meters below the face, where pressures are huge,

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Speaker 1: the water is a mere one degree celsius, and the

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Speaker 1: seafloor landscape is pretty barren. Everyone was amazed, so she

400
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Speaker 1: writes that they thought maybe they discovered a new species.

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00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:15,879
Speaker 1: They took tissue samples for analysis. They started trying to

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Speaker 1: come up with a name for the fish. But then

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Speaker 1: one of their colleagues, a researcher named John Pokanowski of

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Speaker 1: the c S I r O S Australian National Fish Collection,

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Speaker 1: quote found something similar while working his way through various

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Speaker 1: scientific publications. There it was a cusk eel with the

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Speaker 1: scientific name ty Flonus and nassis. The word ty flonus

408
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Speaker 1: is apparently derived from the Greek ty flos meaning blind,

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Speaker 1: and on nos meaning hake, A blind hake now I've

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Speaker 1: attached a picture of this animal for you to look at. Here, Rob,

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Speaker 1: the large ones of these animals really have no externally

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Speaker 1: visible eyes at all. They do actually have eyes, but

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Speaker 1: this is even creepier than not having eyes. They have

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Speaker 1: eyes that are completely covered underneath the skin of the head.

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Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah, that the picture. It looks interesting. I

416
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Speaker 1: don't know how grotesque it actually looks, because you can

417
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Speaker 1: imagine it just just emerging from the water and just

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Speaker 1: flopping onto some rice and it's like instant sushimi. Yeah,

419
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Speaker 1: except I don't know, the tail part of it looks

420
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Speaker 1: a little bit kind of hairy or stringy and and unpleasingly,

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Speaker 1: but I see what you're getting at. Yeah, it just

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Speaker 1: looks like a big old lump of lump of fish meat. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: no eyes to concern the the customer or anything. Right

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Speaker 1: that it just naturally settles your stomach. It quells any

425
00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 1: concerns you may have about eating it while it's still wriggling.

426
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: But so, Yeah, the eyes are covered by the skin

427
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,359
Speaker 1: on the head. Apparently in the younger ones you can

428
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:48,600
Speaker 1: see the eyes through the skin a little bit better.

429
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 1: And it has a tiny mouth on the underside of

430
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:53,040
Speaker 1: its head. But it doesn't you know, it's not something

431
00:24:53,119 --> 00:24:55,639
Speaker 1: that's obvious just from looking at it from the front

432
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: or from above. And now apparently, uh, like I said this,

433
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: this creature had actually been cataloged before it was previously

434
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: caught and described during the trawling of the Challenger expedition

435
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 1: in the eighteen seventies. I think it was pulled up

436
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four. And we've discussed the Challenger Expedition

437
00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: on the show in the past in previous episodes. You

438
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: can check out the archive and searched through it to

439
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: find more. But and this was a a research project

440
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 1: that took place on the HMS Challenger in the eighteen

441
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:30,159
Speaker 1: seventies where they would use piano wire to drag these uh,

442
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 1: these trawling samplers along the bottom of the ocean as

443
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:36,200
Speaker 1: this ship was sailing and then trying to pull things

444
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: up and see what was alive down there. And apparently

445
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 1: they found one of these things, this cusk eel that

446
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: is entirely without a visible face. And you know what,

447
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 1: when I look at it, I do see a kind

448
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 1: of chaos, at least intuitively, because what is chaos? I mean,

449
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 1: at its heart, I think chaos is randomness. It's the

450
00:25:55,040 --> 00:26:00,320
Speaker 1: implied lack of any purpose or direction or intent, and

451
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:04,640
Speaker 1: the implied lack of senses here suggests a random rather

452
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: than an ordered relationship with the environment. But again, that's

453
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 1: just you know, our sort of like ignorant observation of

454
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 1: its face. Officially, this certainly is not without senses in reality.

455
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: In fact, most deep sea organisms have senses that would

456
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:22,679
Speaker 1: boggle the human mind, like extreme sensitivity to subtle changes

457
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:26,320
Speaker 1: in water pressure or electric fields or things like that. Right,

458
00:26:26,359 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: I mean, it's highly evolved to thrive in its environment.

459
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 1: And if you kind of if you came along and

460
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:33,399
Speaker 1: you're like, I need to help this thing. I need

461
00:26:33,440 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: to start drilling some holes in its head, you know

462
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 1: you would, you would do a great harm. Um. And

463
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:40,640
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of the plot of the third

464
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 1: Creature from the Black Hole, good film, right, the creature

465
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 1: walks among us. It's just you know, scientists taking the

466
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,760
Speaker 1: creature and trying to turn him into something that he is, not,

467
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,000
Speaker 1: like applying order to him, trying to make him a

468
00:26:53,119 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: human with disastrous results. Of course, yes, of course that

469
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: is a tragic film. Uh yeah, I think we should

470
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:01,320
Speaker 1: all take the Uh we we should all take a

471
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: page from the Book of Do No Harm, right, I

472
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:07,399
Speaker 1: mean you don't. Don't just assume somebody needs holes drilled

473
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:10,720
Speaker 1: in their face, right, Wait until if they ask you

474
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 1: to drill holes in their face. Okay, but you know

475
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:18,439
Speaker 1: this is not the time for initiative. So certainly one

476
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 1: of the more thought provoking creatures in the book in

477
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:26,159
Speaker 1: the classic Uh. But but it's absolutely just filled with

478
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 1: with creatures that are certainly the modern readers just instantly

479
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 1: bizarre and uh. And some of them were even just

480
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 1: mentioned in passing. And that's certainly the case with the

481
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: one we're gonna look at next, which is known as

482
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: look meat or thing or shiro, which can mean looks

483
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: like meat or simply this is the one I like

484
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: the best, the look flesh creature. Look, mom, it's flesh basically.

485
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: So the look flesh creature actually pops up numerous times

486
00:27:56,880 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 1: in the book, often just casually listed along generic things

487
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:05,400
Speaker 1: like green birds or weeping willows, and as am Barrel explains,

488
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:09,440
Speaker 1: the look flesh creature is essentially a denizen of the

489
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: global timeless Big Rock Candy Mountain. Uh. You know, this,

490
00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 1: of course is the old hobo song about you know

491
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 1: the the utopia of hobos right where they hung the

492
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,479
Speaker 1: jerk who invented work. Uh yeah, the cigarette trees. Uh,

493
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: the cigarette trees. The dogs all have rubber teeth, and

494
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: the cops have wooden legs. Right. So she describes the

495
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 1: look Flesh creature as quote a fable creature, the recurring

496
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 1: animalian motif of numerous utopian passages in the text, usually

497
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: associated with the burial place of deities. So it's been

498
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 1: described as a as being a mass of flesh that

499
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: looks like the liver of an ox, but with two eyes.

500
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 1: And if you take some meat off of it, you

501
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:53,240
Speaker 1: cut some meat off of it, and you eat it.

502
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: What more, meat instantly grows back on the look flesh creature.

503
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 1: So it's essentially the utopian idea of never ending meat.

504
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: It's all you can eat meat right there on the creature.

505
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:10,200
Speaker 1: And this would have especially resonated with impoverished rural people's, uh,

506
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: you know, the ancient world. This reminds me of something

507
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,240
Speaker 1: that I didn't understand when we first discovered it from

508
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: Russian folklore about last October, when you were talking about

509
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: that artifact that was the self setting tablecloth, like, it

510
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: didn't sound all that interesting until you realize, like, oh,

511
00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: maybe what it's talking about is that it will magically

512
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:32,800
Speaker 1: replenish food automatically. Yeah, yeah, I mean the idea of here,

513
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:35,360
Speaker 1: here is something I can count on all the time

514
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: to give me sustenance, to give me a meal and

515
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: and drink, or in this case, just flesh, just some

516
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: straight up meat. Here is this marvelous creature that once

517
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 1: you find it, you have meat for life. It just

518
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 1: regenerates all the time. It's the goose that laid the

519
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:55,320
Speaker 1: golden meat. Yeah. I couldn't find an image of this,

520
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: but Joe, but for just for us, I included a

521
00:29:57,560 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: picture of a cow's liver which you can look at

522
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 1: and just imagine like two googly eyes staring back at you.

523
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: I find it interesting that it has eyes, Like, like,

524
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: what is you know, going from a creature that has

525
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 1: no face and no eyes to this creature which doesn't

526
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: really have I mean, all it does is exist to

527
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 1: be eaten and to regrow the meat that you eat.

528
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: But it has eyes like you have to I guess

529
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: make eye contact with it the entire time. Well that

530
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: reminds me, Okay, so what are eyes for? Eyes are

531
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: for navigating one's environment? For for you know, sensing your

532
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 1: relationship to other objects, for being able to detect prey

533
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:35,040
Speaker 1: or detect predators. But yeah, does this thing not want

534
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 1: to be eaten? Does it need to try to get

535
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: away from you when it sees you? Yeah, I don't,

536
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: or maybe the eyes are there so you do have

537
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: to make eye contact with it, so you can't completely

538
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 1: forget that it's a living organism. I don't know, Uh,

539
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 1: it's uh. I have no idea. So I was trying

540
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 1: to find examples in nature of wild organisms that mimic

541
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: raw meat in reality, and it did find a few

542
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: that are that are very interesting. Now, and I don't

543
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: know if it mimics raw meat for any reason, but

544
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: it does look very cool. There's a species of fungus

545
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: that is known as Fistilina hepatica. It's a fungus with

546
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: a fruiting body that's often said to look like beef steak,

547
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: or like beef liver, or like ox tongue, And it

548
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: really really does look a lot like raw liver meat,

549
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 1: especially sometimes when you cut it open. That the name

550
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,880
Speaker 1: hepatica in the species name comes from the word for liver.

551
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:30,720
Speaker 1: I've read that it's found in parts of Europe, in

552
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: Africa and North America. I think I've mainly seen it

553
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: referred to as growing in like the British Isles. But

554
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,479
Speaker 1: I included a cross section for you to look at here,

555
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 1: Rob And I don't know. When you cut it open,

556
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: it looks like wag you beef. Yeah, it does look

557
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: like meat. Yeah, it looks like flesh. Look flash if

558
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:49,560
Speaker 1: you will, yes, And when you cut it, apparently it will.

559
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 1: It will have a red juice that runs from it,

560
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 1: just like the myoglobin running out of a you know,

561
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: a raw steak that you've cut open. It is edible,

562
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: at least in some growth stages, and sometimes has been

563
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: used in cooking. But I don't know. I've seen differing

564
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 1: accounts on different websites. I was looking at some I'm saying, yeah,

565
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a good mushroom. It's a it's

566
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: a choice product. I've seen other things kind of negging

567
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: its taste and texture, saying that it's kind of tough

568
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: and sour, acidic tasting. I'm a pretty adventurous eater, by

569
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: the way, and it does look like like something I

570
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: would be hesitant to to bite into. Um. Well, I

571
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: mean when with all things mushroom related. Um, you know,

572
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:31,240
Speaker 1: I would want somebody to vouch for it that it isn't,

573
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: you know, to me personally and make sure I'm following

574
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: some sort of instructions on preparation. But I mean, I'd

575
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: give it a shot. I would like to try the

576
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 1: meat of the look flesh creature sure, whatever reality it takes. Now,

577
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: as I said a minute ago, I could not find

578
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: any evidence that it's resemblance to raw meat is at

579
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: all adaptive. It seems like it's probably just a coincidence

580
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: that it looks like we're all meat. This is a

581
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 1: parasitic fungus that grows on living or dead woods such

582
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: as oak um. But there are organisms that resemble raw

583
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 1: a meat that absolutely do so four evolutionary reasons where

584
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:10,480
Speaker 1: it is not just a coincidence. Probably the most exciting

585
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: example is the genre of plants that are widely known

586
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: as carrion flowers that probably the most famous of which

587
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: is the titan aurum also known as the amorphophallus or

588
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: a morphophilus titanum, which parts that name from an It

589
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: basically means like huge, weird fallus. And then these are

590
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 1: very impressive looking flowers yeah, amazing. So the Amorphophallus titanum

591
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 1: is a giant, gigantic flowering plant that's native to Sumatra.

592
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 1: It only blooms usually once every two to ten years

593
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 1: in the wild, and each bloom only lasts about a

594
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:51,320
Speaker 1: day in the wild, so it's reproductive window is is

595
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: extremely narrow compared to its total lifespan, and when it opens,

596
00:33:56,400 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: it unfurls this giant ring of something that looks like

597
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: flower petals, but they're not actually petals. It's a type

598
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: of modified leaf tissue called a space, but it looks

599
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 1: almost exactly like glistening raw beef. And the blooming corpse

600
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 1: flower here emits a smell of rotting meat. It actually

601
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 1: emits a complex bouquet of smells, but one of the

602
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:23,080
Speaker 1: dominant aromas within that is the smell of rotting meat

603
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: in order to attract insects that are normally either carryon

604
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 1: feeders or would be flies looking to lay their larvae

605
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: and a rotting corpse of something in the forest. These

606
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: are the plant's pollinators. So by emitting the smell of

607
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 1: meat and looking like meat, it draws in things that

608
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 1: are trying to find some dead meat in the forest.

609
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 1: They crawl all over it. They get the pollen of

610
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 1: the flant on their little legs and bodies, and then

611
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,320
Speaker 1: they carry that off to another big old flower that

612
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:53,360
Speaker 1: smells like meat. So it's rotten meat sex. But you know,

613
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 1: one can imagine that if you encountered something like this,

614
00:34:57,280 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: you you might think, well, this is limitless neat, this

615
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,719
Speaker 1: is eat growing like a plant. Um, so and and force.

616
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:05,880
Speaker 1: This makes me think of of all of our various

617
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: modern enterprises involving um, you know, artificial meat, synthetic flesh,

618
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: synthetic flesh, um, but also um, you know that grown meat, etcetera.

619
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:19,360
Speaker 1: Like it's it's kind of all an attempt to to

620
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 1: make the look flesh creature a reality. I wonder if

621
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: every time we say synthetic flesh, that's gonna drop that

622
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: that doctor x Q in their synthetic flesh. I hope

623
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 1: so UM. I also have to say, as far as

624
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: like weird mushrooms go, there's a lot of mushroom descriptions

625
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:42,399
Speaker 1: in the shanhaijing uh. For instance, the mushroom people show

626
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: up in the borough translation. There are a lot of

627
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 1: different types of people, but there's also a mushroom dog

628
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 1: at one point, which I don't think I kind of interested.

629
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:54,839
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's in there, mushroom dog. Tell me about

630
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,880
Speaker 1: the mushroom dog. Um, I think it was more it

631
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: was one of these things where it's not I think

632
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: it's actually a dog that's made out of mushrooms or

633
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: is like a or grows like a mushroom. It's something

634
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: to do with like the description of the of the animal.

635
00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 1: I was gonna try to see, can you get a

636
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:14,520
Speaker 1: shelf stable like dried mushroom dog that you reconstitute? No, no,

637
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 1: but that would be that sounds like I would be

638
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 1: in line with the look flesh creature for sure. Than

639
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:27,879
Speaker 1: all right, let's look at another creature. This next one

640
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 1: is called the zoe wo um, which Barrel translates as

641
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 1: escort my. But here's the Strasburg translation for this description.

642
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 1: In the Land of the lynn Klan is a rare

643
00:36:39,560 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 1: beast as large as a tiger, five colored, and with

644
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:44,800
Speaker 1: a tail longer than its body. It is called the

645
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:48,280
Speaker 1: zoe wo when writing it, one can cover one thousand

646
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 1: lee in a single day. Uh so, and then Barrel's

647
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,239
Speaker 1: translation is virtually the same, except with a different term

648
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:59,080
Speaker 1: for it. So this is a fabulous animal in the

649
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: in the old strations that Strasbourg provides, it looks kind

650
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 1: of like a a fierce horse. I guess you would

651
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: say it looks kind of like a horse with a

652
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: with a dog like face. Yeah, it's a It's a

653
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: fabulous animal that pops up in other texts as well,

654
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: including the Ancient Book of Songs, and it's sometimes described

655
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 1: as being white with black stripes, as being a righteous

656
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:26,640
Speaker 1: animal that is either strictly vegetarian or is only eating

657
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 1: the meat of animals that have died of natural causes.

658
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:32,359
Speaker 1: And so there's apparently been some discussion that this could

659
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:35,359
Speaker 1: have been in some way connected to the panda. They

660
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: could have been based on descriptions of the panda, or

661
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: you know. It kind of then takes on a life

662
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 1: of its own in the same way that the kailin

663
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 1: has been linked to giraffes. And interestingly enough, one of

664
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:49,799
Speaker 1: these magical creatures is depicted in one of the Fantastic

665
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: Beasts movies. Um, I don't think it looks particularly panda

666
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:56,919
Speaker 1: ask in those, but uh, they made it look otherworldly

667
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,040
Speaker 1: and weird for sure. Now, in the last episode I

668
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: mentioned in Passing the Land of Google, which which Barrel

669
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 1: mentioned so of course I had to read more and

670
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: find out what's up with the land of of Google,

671
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: which is also known as May. Uh So this is

672
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,000
Speaker 1: what Beryl has in her translation the Land of Ghoul.

673
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:20,439
Speaker 1: The beings there have a human body with a black head,

674
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: and their eyes are said vertically in their face vertical eyes. Yeah,

675
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:28,279
Speaker 1: and she she writes that A parallel passage in a

676
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,400
Speaker 1: fifth century BC text describes the inhabitants of Ghoul as

677
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:34,799
Speaker 1: having poor sign has the heads of pigs with vertical eyes,

678
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:38,839
Speaker 1: but also loose hair, which I'm guessing means like wildish hair,

679
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 1: and Strasburg discusses them as the May hobgoblins, sometimes associated

680
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:47,879
Speaker 1: with other creatures the Chai hob goblins and the wang

681
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 1: Ling the wang ling goblins. Uh So, they're all dangerous

682
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 1: creatures that lurk in the wilds, and if you happen

683
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:57,840
Speaker 1: to be an unwary traveler, they might jump out and

684
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,520
Speaker 1: attack you. Uh I think i've before. Like you know, obviously,

685
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:05,240
Speaker 1: the words goblin and hobgoblin are are English language words

686
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:09,440
Speaker 1: and Western words that have been um put into you know,

687
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 1: we're engaging in transliteration here, but but still there's something

688
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 1: about there's something that a goblin is that feels universal.

689
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:20,839
Speaker 1: There's something like a goblin in every culture. Now would

690
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 1: that extend to the fact that there's a troll too

691
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:28,040
Speaker 1: in every culture? I don't know, but I mean troll ogre.

692
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,080
Speaker 1: These are other terms you often find in translations of

693
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: of of mythic and folklore at texts from you know,

694
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:38,920
Speaker 1: from from various Western uh cultures, but also from from

695
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: Eastern cultures. You know, when when describing things like there's

696
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,160
Speaker 1: the they're they're these, there's the ogre, there's the giant,

697
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:46,800
Speaker 1: there's the dragon. Like these are kind of the the

698
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 1: basic forms that a lot of our stories revolve around. Now,

699
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: just briefly, there is, uh, there's one creature that, in

700
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: Strasbourg's translation was referred to as the brave pig. And

701
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,320
Speaker 1: I really like that name. Yeah, yeah, this one so

702
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 1: um Apparently how ch it literally means hero pig. Uh,

703
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:11,400
Speaker 1: so brave pig, hero pig um. But as to what

704
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: it actually is, it seems like it's a porcupine. There's

705
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion that is just a porcupine. This

706
00:40:18,760 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: is the barrel translation. There is an animal on this

707
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:23,959
Speaker 1: mountain which looks like a hog, but it has white

708
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: hair that is as long as a large hairpin and

709
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:30,799
Speaker 1: black at the tips. Its name is the porcupine. Um.

710
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 1: So yeah, I like that the brave pig the porcupine.

711
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:37,400
Speaker 1: I can see it, you know. Strasburg mentions in his

712
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: commentary on the Brave Pig that it has been regarded

713
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,279
Speaker 1: by many commentators as just a porcupine. This is like

714
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:47,800
Speaker 1: the mundane animal of porcupine being described here. Um. But

715
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: he does mention that go pu in his early commentary

716
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 1: on the Classic Road about this, and said that the

717
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 1: Brave pig was several feet in length and that it

718
00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 1: shot its quills things. Uh. Now this is interesting because

719
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:05,879
Speaker 1: I was still under the mistaken impression that the porcupine can, yeah,

720
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 1: shoot its squills from a distance. But apparently that's not true.

721
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:12,800
Speaker 1: Strasberg mentions this, and I looked it up. There's apparently

722
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: not actually evidence that the porcupine can shoot its quills

723
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:18,719
Speaker 1: from a distance. A lot of things, I think just

724
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:21,280
Speaker 1: run up to a porcupine and get its squills stuck

725
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 1: in their snout or their nose or something, and then

726
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 1: you know, run squealing off, but it doesn't actually shoot

727
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 1: them like a projectile. Huh. Yeah, I wonder where that

728
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 1: exactly comes from. If it's is it based in just

729
00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: people winding up with with porcupine quills stuck in them

730
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 1: and and and needing to alter the story so they

731
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: don't know. I didn't try to touch it. No, it

732
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:44,360
Speaker 1: shot at it jumped out of the out of the

733
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: edge of the woods. It shot me with quills, and

734
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:48,440
Speaker 1: then it ran away. I mean, it does kind of

735
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 1: remind me of how you ever seen the phenomenon of

736
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 1: a kid is being overly rough with a pet and

737
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:56,279
Speaker 1: then the pet kind of lashes out at them, and

738
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: then the kid immediately starts saying, like it jumped at me,

739
00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:03,000
Speaker 1: it was being mean, you know, like they're they're all like,

740
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:05,759
Speaker 1: within seconds trying to change the story to the pet

741
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:10,719
Speaker 1: being the aggressor yeah, yeah, children, children versus pets. That

742
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:15,200
Speaker 1: old that old rivalry, you know, just by association, thro're

743
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:17,520
Speaker 1: talking about the porcupine. This also made me want to

744
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: briefly mention another creature that Strasburg translates as the thoroughly

745
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: odd like thoroughly hyphen odd or chung chi, And so

746
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 1: the translation goes two hundred sixty lee farther west stands

747
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: Mount Gui. There is a beast dwelling on its heights,

748
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: whose form resembles an ox with the needles of a

749
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 1: way porcupine. It is called chung chi, and it makes

750
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:43,359
Speaker 1: a sound like a dog howling. It is a man eater.

751
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 1: So like that's the last line there. It's yeah, it's

752
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:50,880
Speaker 1: got needles. It's like an ox, needles like a porcupine,

753
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:53,880
Speaker 1: howls like a dog, and it eats people. And so

754
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:58,080
Speaker 1: Strasberg says that the thoroughly Odd is said to eat

755
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:02,880
Speaker 1: people who wear long hair untied, which he says is

756
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,360
Speaker 1: culturally interesting because that is the style that was believed

757
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:10,640
Speaker 1: at the time to be characteristic of demons and of shamans. Yes,

758
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: I read that. Yeah, yeah, and that's interesting because of

759
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 1: the thing we talked about in the last episode. Uh

760
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: or actually no, I guess we didn't really get into

761
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 1: this in depth. But the idea that uh or the

762
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:24,800
Speaker 1: question of where a lot of this knowledge that's recorded

763
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 1: in the Classic of the Mountains and Seas comes from.

764
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: Some of it may have been collected from traditions that

765
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: were part of the sort of the smaller, more localized

766
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 1: shaman leadership culture of ancient China that was over time

767
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:44,440
Speaker 1: replaced by by more central or imperialist rule. Yeah. I

768
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: mean you can imagine someone traveling out to these different

769
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 1: areas and saying, okay, well, what do you guys believe

770
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: out here? Which gods do you worship? And sometimes they're

771
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:54,800
Speaker 1: the same gods or some of the same gods, but

772
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: with you know, different twists and turns and how they presented.

773
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,880
Speaker 1: Other times they're they're different into is entirely, and then

774
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 1: asking well, what kind of creatures are out here? What

775
00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:05,279
Speaker 1: kind of strange creatures are out here? What do they do?

776
00:44:05,480 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 1: What do they look like? Uh? Yeah, and apparently this

777
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: one it likes to eat people with the hairstyle that

778
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 1: would have been common of shamans and of demons. Uh. Also,

779
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: Strasburg says that sometimes the victims are consumed beginning with

780
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: the head. Some sources start with that, other versions say

781
00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: that they are consumed beginning with the feet. Um, which

782
00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: he says, you know, that could be a result of

783
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 1: differences in early translations, like one translation of the classics

784
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: says one way and other translations is a different way. Um.

785
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: But then there are several interesting things here. So he

786
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:42,800
Speaker 1: says the thoroughly odd was historic sized as another untalented

787
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: son of a the Arc, the lesser Brilliance in a

788
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 1: passage in Zoe's Narratives, the same passage that mentioned the

789
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:53,320
Speaker 1: hounda and remember the idea of the evil version of

790
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 1: the Honda, and as this like bad offspring of the

791
00:44:56,040 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 1: the Arc. Well here we've got the thoroughly Odd as

792
00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 1: the untalented son of the the Arc, Which makes me

793
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:03,800
Speaker 1: think of the comparison to the Gnostic demiurge or the

794
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: Gnostic you know, like Yaldaba Oath, the bad god who

795
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: created the world, who was like the the crappy son

796
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:14,040
Speaker 1: of a higher being. Right, and of course you can't

797
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:18,279
Speaker 1: help but compare that to um to the human world, right,

798
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 1: like the like the good for nothing prints in any

799
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: given scenario, right the guy to the new CEO of

800
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:27,960
Speaker 1: the company taken over for his dad, and as everybody's

801
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:32,680
Speaker 1: just like oh no. And then finally, Strasburg just notes

802
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:35,120
Speaker 1: that there are other descriptions of the thoroughly Odd in

803
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 1: different sources and places throughout his history. There's a place

804
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 1: where he's referred to as a tiger with wings. There

805
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: are other places where the thoroughly Odd is said to

806
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 1: be quote a perverse creature who devours those who are

807
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:54,239
Speaker 1: loyal and trustworthy, but offers freshly killed meat to the

808
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:58,400
Speaker 1: evil and rebellious, perhaps because an alternate version of this

809
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:00,960
Speaker 1: text describes him as having a human body with the

810
00:46:01,080 --> 00:46:03,719
Speaker 1: dog's head and it's making a sound like a dog

811
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:08,880
Speaker 1: go poo. In an encomium pronounced him a divine dog. Mhm.

812
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:11,560
Speaker 1: But yeah, I like this idea of he's a pervers

813
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:14,400
Speaker 1: deity who goes out and he like eats good people,

814
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: but if you're bad, he'll bring you meet oh man,

815
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 1: that is indeed thoroughly odd. Alright, Well, we have I

816
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: think one more to discuss here, and that is um.

817
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: And again, the book is filled with with creatures that

818
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:28,880
Speaker 1: are mentioned with a fair amount of a little bit

819
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 1: of depth or otherwise just in passing. It's it's God's

820
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:39,319
Speaker 1: it's fantastic creatures, it's fantastic descriptions of commonplace creatures. It's uh,

821
00:46:39,520 --> 00:46:42,719
Speaker 1: it's passing references to things like the uh like like

822
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 1: the synthetic flesh creature that we talked about earlier, synthetic flesh. Um.

823
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: So there's just all sorts of stuff in there, things

824
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: that that were animals, things that might have been animal,

825
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: real life animals. And then everything else you can imagine.

826
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:02,440
Speaker 1: But this last one here is the juyon the vermilion

827
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: yon beast, and it's described as an ape with a

828
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 1: white head and red feet, and it's an omen of

829
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:13,840
Speaker 1: great war if glimpsed by humans. Strasburg writes, the go

830
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:17,720
Speaker 1: Poo pondered that this was one of the beasts along

831
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: with the fushy bird. That quote marked the boundaries of reason.

832
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:26,239
Speaker 1: And so Strasbourg quotes the poet go pou here. Uh,

833
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 1: this is a nice little translation, has a nice flow

834
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,720
Speaker 1: to it. Quote the fushi and the vermilion yon beast

835
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:38,600
Speaker 1: you've seen mean war. Different species identical elect a cosmic

836
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: pattern one cannot ignore. It must be in their nature

837
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:46,400
Speaker 1: to be so. But their method is too subtle to explore. Okay,

838
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: so we know what they mean, but we can't say why.

839
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: Don't even ask. Yeah. An illustration that the Strasburg includes

840
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:55,719
Speaker 1: from the old text here, Um, it just looks kind

841
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: of like a monkey. I guess there's nothing that's not

842
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:01,239
Speaker 1: really one of the more elaborate illustrations. Uh, but it

843
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 1: is a monkey that you do not want to see,

844
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: because it's just a dire omen. Uh. And of course

845
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: that's something that pops up with a lot of these

846
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:09,800
Speaker 1: creatures described. You know, it's about what does it look like?

847
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:13,320
Speaker 1: What does it do? Um? If you can eat it?

848
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:16,560
Speaker 1: What that will do for you? Uh medicinally, but then

849
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:20,040
Speaker 1: also sometimes like just seeing them what that does for you? What?

850
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:22,239
Speaker 1: What is it? Is it an omen? Uh? Does it

851
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 1: mean something good will happen? There'll be a bumper crop

852
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:27,040
Speaker 1: or will there be a great war? As the Lost

853
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: Boys saying, I'm the monkey that you've always been afraid of? Yeah,

854
00:48:31,600 --> 00:48:34,800
Speaker 1: pretty much, Well, Robert, I have so enjoyed this journey

855
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 1: through the classic of the mountains and the seas. Yeah,

856
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:39,400
Speaker 1: this has been fun and uh yeah, I for anyone

857
00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:41,759
Speaker 1: out there who's interested, you can you can definitely get

858
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: English translations of the Shawan haijing Um. We mentioned the

859
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:49,800
Speaker 1: Strasbourg and the Barrel. Those are both definitely affordable texts,

860
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,400
Speaker 1: but there are other illustrated There are other illustrated versions

861
00:48:52,440 --> 00:48:55,719
Speaker 1: as well. There are other translations available. Uh so, yeah,

862
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:58,920
Speaker 1: dive into it. They're even some you know, good resources online,

863
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 1: people doing you know, creature breakdowns and lists and their

864
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:05,320
Speaker 1: own illustrations on some of these. And of course some

865
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:07,919
Speaker 1: of these names and entities have taken on New Life

866
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 1: and in fictions as well. I was running across some

867
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: of that when I was researching um in these various

868
00:49:14,120 --> 00:49:16,640
Speaker 1: entities that pop up. Now, obviously we'd love to hear

869
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:19,320
Speaker 1: from everyone out there. Uh, do you have anything additional

870
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:22,759
Speaker 1: to to add about about the shaan Haijing, about any

871
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: of the creatures and entities that we discussed in this episode. Uh.

872
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 1: Even so, we would love to hear from you, even

873
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: if you maybe you're an artist and you want to

874
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 1: give a give it a crack and draw the Hundun

875
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: or some other creature. Do so, we'd love to take

876
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: a look at it. Oh yeah, I wonder if we

877
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 1: can get a show t shirt with the Hundun or

878
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 1: the young that I would be That would be very interesting. Yeah,

879
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 1: I would be up for it. Hunding stickers to just

880
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:51,160
Speaker 1: put everywhere and nowhere, all right. In the meantime, if

881
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to

882
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, uh, you know where to find them,

883
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed. You can

884
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 1: find that wherever you get your podcasts and you get

885
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 1: your core pisodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind on

886
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:04,279
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursday's. Uh, Monday's we try to do a

887
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 1: listener mail Wednesday, usually an artifact episode. In Friday we

888
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:09,759
Speaker 1: do Weird House Cinema, which is just our chance to

889
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:12,800
Speaker 1: focus on weird films. Uh and wherever you happen to

890
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:14,400
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast. Wherever you get it, we just

891
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: asked the rate, review and subscribe if the platform gives

892
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 1: you the power to do so. Huge thanks as always

893
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

894
00:50:23,480 --> 00:50:25,440
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

895
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:27,879
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

896
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email

897
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,000
Speaker 1: us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot.

898
00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:43,320
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

899
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:45,719
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900
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:48,600
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902
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