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Speaker 1: Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: it's Saturday. It's October. It's time to go into the vault,

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Speaker 1: and this time we were going in for our exploration

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Speaker 1: of the First Monster. This was originally published on October.

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Speaker 1: I remember really enjoying this episode. Yeah, this one, This

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Speaker 1: one really gets into some fun territory and is I

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Speaker 1: think legitimately creepy at times when we try we look

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Speaker 1: back and we just try and consider these what maybe

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Speaker 1: the first monsters that humans ever dreamed up? And where

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Speaker 1: this combination of bestial and human body parts comes together

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Speaker 1: and what it means. So let's get right to it.

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Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind on the First Monster. Welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks dot com. Hey you

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

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And of course it's October,

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Speaker 1: so we are still doing some of our favorite stuff

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Speaker 1: of the year. Monster content. That's right, God, did I

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Speaker 1: just say content. I'm the monster. I'm the content creating monster.

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Speaker 1: Let's think of it as is monster cargo, monsters cargo.

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Speaker 1: I think that we're delivering to the listeners years, yeah,

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Speaker 1: to create a cargo cult of our listeners. So I

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Speaker 1: was wondering, just recently, you know what is the oldest monster,

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Speaker 1: Because as you go back in time, monsters become in

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Speaker 1: a way, they become less uniquely scary, and they become

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Speaker 1: more elementally scary. They become less like I don't know,

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Speaker 1: the Girl in the Ring and all that kind of

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Speaker 1: recent popular monster fad stuff, and they become more like

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Speaker 1: a dragon or a beast with a bull's head or something.

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Speaker 1: And so I was wondering, like, you know what, what's

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Speaker 1: the earliest thing in recorded history? There there are some

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Speaker 1: things in ancient Sumerian, Assyrian Babylonian texts. I just wanted

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Speaker 1: to read one sort of monster passage I came across

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Speaker 1: from an ancient Assyrian text called the Seven Evil Spirits.

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Speaker 1: This is translated into English by R. C. Thompson in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o three, and it's this ancient Assyrian poem. It

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Speaker 1: goes raging storms evil gods. Are they ruthless demons who

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Speaker 1: in Heaven's vault were created? Are they workers of evil

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Speaker 1: are they? They lift up the head to evil every day,

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Speaker 1: to evil destruction, to work of the seven. The first

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Speaker 1: is the south Wind. The second is a dragon whose

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Speaker 1: mouth is opened that none can measure. The third is

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Speaker 1: a grim leopard, which carries off the young. The fourth

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Speaker 1: is a terrible shibou. The fifth is a furious wolf

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Speaker 1: who knoweth not to flee. The sixth is a rampant

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Speaker 1: thing is ill and which marches against God and King.

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Speaker 1: The seventh is a storm, an evil wind, which takes vengeance. Well,

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Speaker 1: that those that al sounds remarkable, But I'm instantly thinking

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Speaker 1: some of those are just animals. Like the wolf is

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Speaker 1: just like a dumb wolf, Like it's just not smart

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Speaker 1: enough to run away. Right. I wonder about the grim leopard.

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Speaker 1: The grim leopard sounds kind of monstrous because it carries

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Speaker 1: off the young. Grim seems to that that implies some

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Speaker 1: kind of human affect. Yeah, well, you know, I guess

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Speaker 1: you get into definitions of monster. Right. Is a monster

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Speaker 1: something that is a combination of things? Is it something

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Speaker 1: that is entirely unreal or is it just something real

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Speaker 1: that is exaggerated in size? Yeah, well, I mean if

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Speaker 1: it's an evil creature that works destruction upon the earth

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Speaker 1: and marches against God and King. I'd say that's probably

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Speaker 1: a monster or people, you know, But I feel like

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Speaker 1: we're we're actually already too late, because we're muddling around

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Speaker 1: in recorded history, and you can go much deeper. So

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Speaker 1: in August of nineteen thirty nine, a group of archaeologists

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Speaker 1: were doing field work at a Stone Age cave site

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Speaker 1: in southern Germany. And the cave was called Stottlehol which

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Speaker 1: means stable cave, and it was at Hollenstein near vogel Herd.

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Speaker 1: At this cave site, the researchers uncovered this massive collection

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Speaker 1: of ivory fragments, broken pieces made from the tusks tusks

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Speaker 1: of a Pleistocene mammoth and now it's Ice Age mammoth

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Speaker 1: of Europe, wooly mammoth. Unfortunately, something happened. Just a matter

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Speaker 1: of days after this initial discovery. World War two broke out,

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Speaker 1: not a great time to be digging in southern Germany,

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Speaker 1: and so the dig had to be quickly abandoned and

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Speaker 1: the dig was filled in and the broken pieces of

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Speaker 1: the mammoth ivory were laid in storage for decades, and

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Speaker 1: then about thirty years later, a German archaeologist named Joachim

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Speaker 1: Han started trying to fit the ivory shards together playing this.

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Speaker 1: You know, if you've ever seen these games, the three

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Speaker 1: D jig saw puzzle game him of artifactor reconstruction. It

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Speaker 1: looks like a nightmare of trying to see how all

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Speaker 1: these things because obviously some pieces are missing. It's like

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Speaker 1: trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with half half the puzzle. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so we had more than two fragments, and he

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Speaker 1: discovered that the pieces of ivory were originally part of

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Speaker 1: the same Paleolithic figurine. It was a statuette about thirty

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Speaker 1: one cimeters long, which is just over a foot, and

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Speaker 1: it was carbon fourteen dated to somewhere between thirty five

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Speaker 1: and forty thousand years old. And once the pieces were

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Speaker 1: put together, it became clear that you could still make

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Speaker 1: out representative features, features that appeared to be both human

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Speaker 1: and non human. And this is the central image I

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Speaker 1: want to talk about in today's episode. This is the

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Speaker 1: figure that would come to be known as the loan Minch,

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Speaker 1: which is German for the lion man. And if you

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Speaker 1: want to see an image of the Loan Ninch, we

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Speaker 1: will have a picture of it on the landing page

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Speaker 1: of this episode it's stuff to blow your behind dot

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Speaker 1: com it Uh, it's it's rather regal looking. Yeah, well

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Speaker 1: I would say it's regal like it's it's got this

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Speaker 1: upright posture, and it does look very stately, but also

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Speaker 1: in the spirit of the grim leopard of Assyria. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of grim. It's got this kind of like there

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Speaker 1: is no pity in the lionman's face. No, no pity.

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Speaker 1: I just looked in closer at it, and I don't

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Speaker 1: see I don't see a shred of pity, like it

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Speaker 1: would pass your sentence and and not not heed your tears. So,

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Speaker 1: after this original reconstruction and the following decades, there was

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Speaker 1: this long, multi stage process that led to the final

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Speaker 1: reconstruction of the artifact in fuller and fuller detail. So

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties there was a paleontologist named Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: Schmidt who added more pieces from additional re excavations of

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Speaker 1: the site, and she corrected some errors and previous reconstructions,

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Speaker 1: and the clear impression of this feline head began to emerge.

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Speaker 1: And then in the two thousands and other archaeologists named

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Speaker 1: Klaus Joachim kind returned to the Stytle Cave to uncover

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Speaker 1: more original piece is and it led to this amazing

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Speaker 1: version of the artifact that you can go see today.

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Speaker 1: I think it's usually at the Oom Museum in Germany,

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Speaker 1: but I believe it is currently on loan at the

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Speaker 1: British Museum. In fact, I believe it was the British

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Speaker 1: Museum tweeting about the acquisition that acquisition the loan that

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Speaker 1: made me think about doing this episode. So the lionman,

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Speaker 1: he stands like a human in this two footed bipedal posture,

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Speaker 1: back straight with human arms straped down to the side,

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Speaker 1: human torso maybe lion ish kinds of legs, but this

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Speaker 1: proud menacing head of a big cat. And you've got

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Speaker 1: to wonder. So this is thirty five to forty thousand

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Speaker 1: years ago there, long before recorded history. Nobody was writing

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Speaker 1: down what they were thinking. There apparently was no written language.

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Speaker 1: So what did this figure mean to the Stone Age

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Speaker 1: people who made it? Yeah, I mean, for the most part,

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Speaker 1: we can only we can only guess. We can certainly

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Speaker 1: look to more increasingly more complex ideals that came afterwards.

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Speaker 1: But you look at it and you think, was this

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Speaker 1: is this a deity. Is this a punishing creature? Is

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Speaker 1: this I've seen the term master of animals thrown around

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Speaker 1: in interpreting similar alleged figures from cave paintings and another

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Speaker 1: ancient remains. Yeah, there is a sort of intuitive sense

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Speaker 1: in which you could see an ancient person seeing an

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Speaker 1: apex predator like a lion or any any kind of

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Speaker 1: big cat as some sort of god of the wilderness

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Speaker 1: that would have power over other animals because it is

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Speaker 1: at the top of the food chain. But it's a

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Speaker 1: serious question to imagine why people wouldn't make this artifact,

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Speaker 1: because making an artifact like this would have been an

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Speaker 1: extreme sacrifice. Uh. These would have been people, I think

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Speaker 1: very likely living not always very far from the edge

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Speaker 1: of starvation. Uh. And an artifact like this took resources,

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Speaker 1: It took time, it took energy, It wore down your

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Speaker 1: sharp flint tools and the carving process. In fact, there

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Speaker 1: was a in recent years there was an ex peerman

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Speaker 1: by a guy named Wolf Heine that I watched a

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Speaker 1: video of online. And this guy specializes in replicating ancient

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Speaker 1: artifacts using the methods and tools that would have been

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Speaker 1: available to the people who made them. And his reconstruction

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Speaker 1: of the low and minch using these flint carving tools.

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Speaker 1: He says it took more than three hundred and seventy hours.

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Speaker 1: And in this video, if you sit and watch it,

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Speaker 1: like the unbelievable laborious nous of the project begins to

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Speaker 1: sink in. You just watch him going over and over

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Speaker 1: this ivory tusk with this piece of flint. And when

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Speaker 1: you look at the guy's hands, I started to feel

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Speaker 1: how working this flint rock over the ivory for hours

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Speaker 1: and hours would just turn your fingers into hot ground beef.

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Speaker 1: Just terrible. Yeah. And and to your point, these were

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Speaker 1: people that lived on the edge. They were they were wanderers.

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Speaker 1: They had not reached the point in the ascension of

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Speaker 1: human civilization where you had specialists who could set aside

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Speaker 1: time to create something like this. Uh. And if they

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Speaker 1: created something like this at obviously wasn't going to be

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Speaker 1: just a toy for a child to play with. It

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Speaker 1: was something important, right, And there are signs in the

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Speaker 1: artifact itself that seemed to signify that it had cultural importance, right. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The surface of the original artifacts seems to have been

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Speaker 1: smoothed from excessive handling, as if it were passed around

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Speaker 1: in a ritual for instance, Right, he said, yeah, so

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Speaker 1: it looks like this is something that was handled a lot.

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Speaker 1: It's got that worn down feeling to it um And

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Speaker 1: this is one reason that the Lowan bench is often

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Speaker 1: cited is perhaps the earliest evidence that exists of religious beliefs. Now,

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Speaker 1: who would the people that made this artifact have been, Well,

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Speaker 1: it was almost certainly modern humans living in the area

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Speaker 1: at the time. But but it's also worth noting that

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Speaker 1: modern humans and the under dolls um lived in this

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Speaker 1: area at this at the same time they coexisted. And uh.

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Speaker 1: I did find a quote from a Jeffrey Brantingham, an

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Speaker 1: archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and he

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Speaker 1: says that he doesn't think it's far fetched to think

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Speaker 1: that Neanderthal's uh, you know, could have made similar items.

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Speaker 1: But for the most part, everyone seems to be on

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Speaker 1: board with the idea that these were modern Homo sapiens

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Speaker 1: that created these artifacts, anatomically modern except not quite so

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Speaker 1: hunched over from watching YouTube, although right, uh yeah, but

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Speaker 1: there may be reasons to think that other members of

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Speaker 1: this this ancient culture or this you know, ancient what

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Speaker 1: would you call it, sort of a loose idea of

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Speaker 1: a culture if it was mostly small bands of people

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Speaker 1: rather than cities or nations, but that whatever, the people

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Speaker 1: of this time period were made artifacts like this in general,

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Speaker 1: because this isn't the only one, right, Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand three, another line was discovered in southwestern

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Speaker 1: Germany or what is now southwestern Germany, and this one

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Speaker 1: has carbon day to do around the same time period.

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Speaker 1: So by by some estimates, it kind of depends who's

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Speaker 1: doing the math and who's you know, doing the figure

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Speaker 1: in But by some estimates, these are the oldest statues

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Speaker 1: and the oldest examples figurative art. However, we do have

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Speaker 1: the Venus of the Whole Fells and uh, and by

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Speaker 1: some estimates this takes the title. But the estimates here

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Speaker 1: like thirty five thousand and forty thousand years ago, so

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Speaker 1: we're kind of placing it in basically the same time period.

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Speaker 1: They were just discoveries, key discoveries made in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and two thousand and sixteen. If you've if you've looked

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Speaker 1: at a lot of like really ancient human artifacts, you've

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Speaker 1: probably seen images of these. Uh. The venous images are

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Speaker 1: essentially a feminine figure like you know, kind of kind

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Speaker 1: of a round feminine figure with without a head or

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Speaker 1: or very little detail provided outside of like breasts and belly. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: It's often seen as having the what we're perceived as

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Speaker 1: the feminine figures exaggerated, so it would be in large

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Speaker 1: breasts and large tips and stuff like that. And for

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Speaker 1: that reason people often look at this and say that

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Speaker 1: they think it had some kind of fertility significance. Right now,

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Speaker 1: you know where in depending you can go back and

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Speaker 1: forth over which one could be older than the other.

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Speaker 1: It seems like they likely existed at the same time.

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Speaker 1: But the key difference here is that while the venus

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Speaker 1: is a depiction essentially of the feminine form of something

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Speaker 1: that exists of a human being right uh, that exists

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Speaker 1: in the real world, the loan mench is the human

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Speaker 1: fused with the beast. And in the words of Clive Gamble,

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Speaker 1: and archaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK, as quoted

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Speaker 1: in Nature quote, they depict the animal world in a

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Speaker 1: semi realistic way. It shows early man moving from his

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Speaker 1: immediate world to an imaginative world. Now this is interesting

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Speaker 1: because yeah, you have to imagine that I don't know,

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Speaker 1: there's no way to get inside, say a chimpanzees head

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Speaker 1: or a dog's head to some other mammal. But if

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Speaker 1: these animals have any kind of imaginative capacity, and there's

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Speaker 1: no proof, really, I guess that they have any kind

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Speaker 1: of ability to picture objects that are not in front

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Speaker 1: of them. If they do, you kind of have to

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Speaker 1: assume that they're sort of literal right that they'd be,

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Speaker 1: that they would be putting together ideas of images that

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Speaker 1: are from their direct experience. Yeah, I mean so in

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Speaker 1: this case, I mean, one example that comes to mind,

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Speaker 1: one possible and perhaps nitpicking idea, is that what if,

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Speaker 1: say thag, the member of your tribe, what a fag

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Speaker 1: likes to take a deer head or or a big

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Speaker 1: cat head, and he likes to just kind of hollow

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Speaker 1: that sucker out or get the skin, and they just

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Speaker 1: put it over his own head, and he's famous for this,

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Speaker 1: and he's so famous for this that one decides to

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Speaker 1: create a statue of it. Like, that's the only scenario

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Speaker 1: I think in which you could you could make the argument.

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Speaker 1: I don't see anybody making that argument, but I feel

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Speaker 1: like that's the only example you can make an argument

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Speaker 1: for this being an image of a thing that was

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Speaker 1: as opposed to an image of a thing that was not.

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Speaker 1: Let me throw a twist on your example, though, So

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Speaker 1: maybe Fag does put on the head dress or you know,

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Speaker 1: the remains of some of the predator, and to simulate

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Speaker 1: that in that sense, would that not be becoming another

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Speaker 1: kind of creature at least in symbol? That's true? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I mean you can certainly make the argument

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Speaker 1: that that if that did that and bothered to put

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Speaker 1: the beast's skin over his head, that you know, he

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Speaker 1: is pretending to be something else or or participating in

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Speaker 1: an experience that makes him feel as if he's something else.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, it all kind of amounts to the same thing,

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Speaker 1: doesn't it. Right. So, whether it's Thag inspiring this this

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Speaker 1: lionman carving, or whoever carved it depicting some kind of

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Speaker 1: being that they had never seen in nature, what's going

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Speaker 1: on is a kind of fusion into unreal creatures. And

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Speaker 1: according to Jill Cook, a curator at the British Museum

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Speaker 1: who has a good blog post about the Loan Minch

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Speaker 1: for the British Museum's acquisition, the Loan Mench is the

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Speaker 1: oldest known representation of a creature that does not exist

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Speaker 1: in nature, not necessarily the oldest piece of art, but

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Speaker 1: the oldest evidence of fantasy, quite literally, the world's oldest monster.

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Speaker 1: Now by monster, of course, we've got to clarify the

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Speaker 1: way we use the term, I mean an imaginary creature

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Speaker 1: that does not occur in nature, not necessarily a bad

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Speaker 1: or evil creature. So this isn't to say that the

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Speaker 1: people who imagine the loewen men should necessarily would have

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Speaker 1: thought of it as antagonistic. Though I feel pretty strongly

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Speaker 1: that even if whatever this being was was treated with reverence,

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Speaker 1: I suspect it would have been the kind of awe

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Speaker 1: in the classic sense of awe, not like oh, here's

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Speaker 1: my friend the lionman, but like a solemn blend of

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Speaker 1: wonder and fear. Well, if you try and imagine what

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Speaker 1: life was like at the time, I mean, every every

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Speaker 1: day would have a certain amount of uncertainty. You're you're

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Speaker 1: depending upon your ability to find the food, to follow

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Speaker 1: the patterns that lead to food, to to hunt prey

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Speaker 1: that will feed and clothe you through the harsh winter

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Speaker 1: months especially, so there's a certain amount uncertainty. There's a

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Speaker 1: certain amount of chaos and therefore we you know, you

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Speaker 1: might expect to find those elements in imagine beings. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can see that. So let's look at the ingredients

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Speaker 1: of this imagine being. Obviously it is one part human.

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Speaker 1: We know about the the upright bipedal human pretty well.

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Speaker 1: But what is the head of this creature and possibly

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Speaker 1: the inspiration for the muscly legs. Yeah, this is this

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Speaker 1: is a great question because I imagine a lot of

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Speaker 1: people are thinking, Okay, southern Germany lions. Lions are in

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Speaker 1: Africa and and or India, so what are they doing

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Speaker 1: in Europe. Well, given the time frame in the location,

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Speaker 1: experts believe that we're seeing a human or humanoid body

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Speaker 1: with the with the head of a now extinct cave lion.

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Speaker 1: Cave lion. Yeah, now, I think that's that's interesting, isn't

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Speaker 1: it though, because you have a partial likeness of one

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Speaker 1: extinct animal in the very tusk of another ivory. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's created by a species that probably played a

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Speaker 1: role in the extinction of both species. Oh, I hadn't

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Speaker 1: thought about that. Yeah, there's there's actually there's not a

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Speaker 1: lot of evidence for lion hunting, but a two thousand

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Speaker 1: extin Spanish study published in p. Los One. They looked

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Speaker 1: at fossilized cave lion toe bones and they found human modifications,

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Speaker 1: possibly made with stone tools that were made for skinning.

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Speaker 1: So they think that the ancient peoples might have hunted

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Speaker 1: them for their pelts. But of course we know even

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Speaker 1: if they didn't directually hunt these lions, they could have

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Speaker 1: contributed to their extinction by encroaching on their habitat, by

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Speaker 1: competition for large fauna and food sources. Now, there were

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Speaker 1: different varieties of cave lion. One was found in America

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Speaker 1: and there were two in Eurasia. There was a Panthera

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Speaker 1: leo of Fossilus, and this was first. This one first

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Speaker 1: appeared in Europe seven hundred thousand years ago and evolved

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Speaker 1: into Panthera leo Spellia. And this cave lion is the

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Speaker 1: one that continued on. That's the one we're seeing here.

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Speaker 1: And this is the one that they went on to

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Speaker 1: go extinct, probably by fourteen thousand years ago. But so

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Speaker 1: thirty five to forty thousand years ago when this thing

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Speaker 1: was made, they were still around. Yes. Now I've also

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Speaker 1: read I don't know how much stock we can put

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Speaker 1: in this, but I've also read in the past that

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Speaker 1: some people think it may have survived in the Balkans

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Speaker 1: up to two thousand years ago, But again I don't

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Speaker 1: know to what extent we should buy into that. Then

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Speaker 1: they get into cryptic territory, the grim leopard of the Balkan. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but to be clear, Panthera leo Spellia was probably the

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Speaker 1: largest cat that ever lived. It was probably twenty five

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Speaker 1: larger than modern lions and also bigger than today's largest tigers.

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Speaker 1: So we're talking up to eleven feet six inches or

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Speaker 1: three point five meters in length. That is a crazy thing,

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Speaker 1: because something you might not have experienced if you haven't

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Speaker 1: been to a zoo recently. I noticed that I don't

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Speaker 1: really have a correct vision in my head of how

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Speaker 1: large the big cats are, like a lion or a tiger.

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Speaker 1: I think of them as I don't know, like maybe

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Speaker 1: large the size of a great Dane or a little

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Speaker 1: bit larger. I really but if if you go to

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Speaker 1: a to a zoo and you get like it up

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Speaker 1: against the glass where these things are, you realize like, oh,

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Speaker 1: oh man, this is like as big as a horse.

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Speaker 1: These things are gigantic. Well they're they're I mean, they're

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Speaker 1: smaller than a horse, but but it seems like a horse,

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Speaker 1: but it does seem that big if you're in the

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Speaker 1: right position to observe them. For instance, here at Zoo Atlanta.

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Speaker 1: I go to the zoo a lot with my son,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes we get there early. And when you get

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Speaker 1: there early, sometimes you're the only person close to the

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Speaker 1: lion enclosure and they're still kind of active because it's

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Speaker 1: the morning. And I've had some really creepy experiences walking

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Speaker 1: up there with my you know, small snack size child

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Speaker 1: next to me. Delicious, Yeah, And the way the lion

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Speaker 1: looks at you, you just feel this this primal feeling,

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Speaker 1: and you get a sense of what this this beast

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Speaker 1: is and how I'm supposed to view this beast outside

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Speaker 1: of the artificial confines of the zoo environment. Isn't it

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Speaker 1: funny that we've got spider fear but we don't have

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Speaker 1: lion fear. Well, it might be very different if you

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Speaker 1: live in proximity to lions, But I feel no natural

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Speaker 1: fear about lions in the same way I do when

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Speaker 1: I see the image of like a spider crawling towards

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Speaker 1: my face. Well, I usually don't, but I feel like

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Speaker 1: in these moments, I'm willing to buy that there's something

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Speaker 1: they're like, like there's something situationally and environmentally that has

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Speaker 1: to be in place and such. It's so standing, you know,

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Speaker 1: beside a small child in in a situation where the

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Speaker 1: lions attention is on me. It's very creepy, and I

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Speaker 1: can I can buy into an idea that there's something

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Speaker 1: ingrained in me to to to fear them. It is

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Speaker 1: terrifying itself to fear the predatory gaze, like when you

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Speaker 1: when you just see the eyes of the creature that's

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Speaker 1: large enough to eat you and maybe wants to. That

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Speaker 1: comes through a lot in one of our favorite books

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Speaker 1: to talk about in here in Blind Site by Peter Watts,

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Speaker 1: where he talks about the vampires gaze. Uh, you know,

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00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:51,840
Speaker 1: they usually keep their eyes covered because people like they

394
00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:54,119
Speaker 1: wear the sunglasses because if they don't, people can just

395
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:57,640
Speaker 1: constantly feel themselves being looked at as prey. So it's

396
00:21:57,680 --> 00:22:00,600
Speaker 1: it's easy for I mean, it's it's relatively easy for

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Speaker 1: us to lock eyes with a predator like the lion

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Speaker 1: if you go to zoos and whatnot. But but try

399
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Speaker 1: to imagine living in this ancient time like the rare

400
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:14,399
Speaker 1: situations where you would make eye contact with this creature

401
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:16,760
Speaker 1: and lift to tell about and how powerful that would be.

402
00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:19,119
Speaker 1: Like that that would have to play a role in

403
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Speaker 1: the creation of of this lion man. You can imagine

404
00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:25,359
Speaker 1: it was a religious experience, like if you came face

405
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Speaker 1: to face with a cave lion and did not die,

406
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Speaker 1: that this would make you feel like you had entered

407
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Speaker 1: a higher plane of existence, you had communed with some

408
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Speaker 1: with the grim leopard of the skies. Yeah. Now, of

409
00:22:36,040 --> 00:22:38,760
Speaker 1: course it's worth noting that this this may have been,

410
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Speaker 1: This may well have been the first lion man lion

411
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Speaker 1: humanoid hybrid in human beliefs, but we would go on

412
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Speaker 1: to have many more. Of course, some of the some

413
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Speaker 1: of the key examples of the Egyptians had several or

414
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Speaker 1: at least four may He's pequette segment and tef nut.

415
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Speaker 1: And then in Hindu is Um you have Nara Sima,

416
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:06,160
Speaker 1: which literally means manline in Sanskrit. I've seen people online

417
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Speaker 1: commenting that they believe that the lowand minch is and

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Speaker 1: is a depiction of Nara Sema. Huh, Well, I mean,

419
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:15,919
Speaker 1: it's it's essentially like visually the same idea. It is

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Speaker 1: that it is a humanoid with the lions head, and

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Speaker 1: this is in Hinduism. It's an avatar of Vishnu and

422
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Speaker 1: it's often seen. It's often depicted slaying the demon Harran

423
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Speaker 1: yak a shippoo, and it's always a grizzly scene in

424
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Speaker 1: which the lion avatar with its multiple arms is if

425
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Speaker 1: this rating like ripping this this human oid demon apart

426
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Speaker 1: at the stomach. I'm looking at an image right now.

427
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:46,479
Speaker 1: It is. It is rough, yeah, in trails flailing and

428
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:49,879
Speaker 1: you know their in trails wrapped around the god's head.

429
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: It's it's it's wonderful. Now. The vision of the lion

430
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:56,920
Speaker 1: headed man in the Lowan mench is, as we said,

431
00:23:56,920 --> 00:23:59,640
Speaker 1: it's kind of stately, it's kind of serene, it's kind

432
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,680
Speaker 1: of pit list, but it's not doing anything overtly threatening.

433
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: It's more like that that distant predatory gaze that it

434
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:09,639
Speaker 1: makes you uneasy. This depiction is roaring, it's got the

435
00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:12,879
Speaker 1: teeth beard, it's ready to bite you in half. Now,

436
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:17,119
Speaker 1: there of course creatures in the myth and legend that

437
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:19,639
Speaker 1: are the reverse of the lion man. Oh yeah, how

438
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,359
Speaker 1: about the sphinx, right, it's the exact opposite body of

439
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:24,399
Speaker 1: a lion with the head of a human. Yeah, and

440
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:27,080
Speaker 1: you have you also have similar scenarios with of course,

441
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:31,480
Speaker 1: the manticore, the chimera, and some depictions of of dragons

442
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:38,240
Speaker 1: are essentially lion headed entities. Now, another creature that came

443
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:40,919
Speaker 1: up for me in my research, and this is one

444
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't know much about, and luckily this

445
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: is one that actually nobody knows a whole lot about.

446
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 1: It's still rather enigmatic. But the leonto Cephaline a creature

447
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: of myth Reism, which is a mystery religion centered around

448
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: the god Mithress in the Roman Empire from around the

449
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 1: first of the fourth centuries se. Mythriyism is great because

450
00:25:01,560 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 1: it's got all these intriguing artifacts and artistic descriptions, but

451
00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: people are not descriptions depictions from the ancient world, but

452
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:10,800
Speaker 1: we don't know that much about it, where there's a

453
00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 1: lot of mystery about what the content of this religion was. Yeah,

454
00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:15,840
Speaker 1: and this is a great example of it, because you

455
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:19,640
Speaker 1: have a naked man with a lion's head. He's winged,

456
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: has like four wings. It looks like there's a serpent

457
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:26,200
Speaker 1: entwined around him, much like a caduceus, and it's. Yeah,

458
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: it's it's. It's also the lion's head seems like it

459
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 1: might be screaming or crying aloud and anguish. It's it's

460
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,640
Speaker 1: been their additional cryptic details in the image as well,

461
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:40,680
Speaker 1: but uh, it's very poorly understood. Well, whatever it's, it's

462
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 1: a lot of its secrets have have been lost to time.

463
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: Can you imagine if that happened to existing religions today? So, like,

464
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: imagine you are an archaeologist of the future and you're

465
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 1: digging through our artifacts of the twentieth century and you

466
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 1: can find some religious art, some religious art, I guess,

467
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 1: and some very is depictions and descriptions of what's going

468
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 1: on and say Catholicism or modern Hinduism or something like that,

469
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 1: but you're mostly unable to discern what the like textual

470
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 1: contents of the religion were. Wouldn't that be fascinating, like

471
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,520
Speaker 1: trying to piece it together? Yeah? Yeah, I mean you

472
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:20,920
Speaker 1: could probably are probably various examples of just fashion shoots

473
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 1: and popular imagery from today. And if you didn't know

474
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:26,600
Speaker 1: what the various icons were, I mean, how would you

475
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: figure it out? What's this hand sign that jay Z

476
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: is making in this image? What does it mean, you know,

477
00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:35,800
Speaker 1: it must have some kind of religious significance. Now, speaking

478
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:39,439
Speaker 1: of no earlier, you mentioned what happens when Thag puts

479
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 1: on the the like lion head on top of his head,

480
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: and does that represent itself as some kind of alternate

481
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 1: creature or are we just looking at Thag wearing his clothes.

482
00:26:49,880 --> 00:26:53,480
Speaker 1: There is some debate about whether other ancient depictions of

483
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: hybrid creatures are in fact hybrids, or whether we're looking

484
00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: at somebody wearing an animal garment, right, yeah, yeah, Like

485
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: what instantly comes to mind is is something that is

486
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: at times referred to as the Hornet God, which of

487
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 1: course I like, but also known as the Sorcerer. Nice.

488
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: So this one is from the Sorcerer. The most famous

489
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,640
Speaker 1: sorcerer here is from a cavern known as the Sanctuary.

490
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:24,160
Speaker 1: And this is from a cave in France, the Cave

491
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 1: of Troy fresh ri Age, and this is from around

492
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: estimates thirteen thousand BC. Now the cave itself discovered was

493
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 1: discovered in nineteen fourteen, so it's it's interesting how a

494
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: lot of these discoveries are occurring in the early part

495
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. And the cave was found to

496
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,399
Speaker 1: feature mostly cave art of animals, but also a couple

497
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 1: of these half human half animal figures. And the dominant

498
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:53,719
Speaker 1: figure is the small humanoid again that is known as

499
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:56,679
Speaker 1: the Horned God or the Sorcerer. And it's this humanoid

500
00:27:56,720 --> 00:28:00,679
Speaker 1: figure loosely with with with the head of of an animal,

501
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: looks like with it with antlers, with the head of

502
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:08,120
Speaker 1: a stag or an elk or something like that. Robert, Yeah,

503
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:11,639
Speaker 1: and uh. And the interpretations vary sometimes again there's this

504
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:15,520
Speaker 1: masters of animal argument, or that it's a divine figure

505
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: priest and archaeologist Henry Bruel drew and the sketch of

506
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: the figure, and I have to say it looks a

507
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 1: little bit more elaborate than the the actual photographs. So

508
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 1: I think sometimes, you know it a lot of it

509
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 1: falls to interpretation, you know, how do you make sense

510
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 1: of this image? And I've also read some some criticism

511
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: of of interpretations of the Sorcerer, saying that look, what

512
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: we could be looking at here just just it is

513
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 1: just the result of overlaps between depicted forms or cases

514
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 1: where one image was painted over by another. Now that

515
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:54,240
Speaker 1: being said, you can you can make those kind of

516
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: criticisms regarding some of these cave paintings. But the lion

517
00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: man is most deaf. Only a line, right, there's no

518
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 1: room for like, oh goodness, I went to just carve

519
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 1: this image, to painstakingly spend four hours making this image

520
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:13,000
Speaker 1: of a fag here, and then I accidentally gave him

521
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 1: a lion's head. It's just it's not gonna happen, right.

522
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: So when I was reading about this whole thing the

523
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 1: other day, about the loan manch, I thought, Okay, he

524
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 1: might be the oldest known evidence of a monster on earth,

525
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 1: but it's probably not the first monster that ever existed

526
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:34,280
Speaker 1: in somebody's imagination. And then it hit me, at some

527
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: point in time, there had to be a first monster.

528
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: There had to be the first time a human or

529
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 1: maybe some other previous animal human ancestor, was able to

530
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: form a mental picture of a horrifying creature that was

531
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,360
Speaker 1: not just some known predator or even some known predator

532
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: made a little bit bigger, but an unholy being that

533
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 1: did not exist in nature. You know, the clause of

534
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 1: a crab on the of a lion or something. Yeah,

535
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 1: I mean there's a there's a cognitive step involved here.

536
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 1: This is there's a cognitive first step that is that

537
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: you can't just gloss over, you know, because even you know,

538
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 1: if you were to drag in say that you know

539
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 1: the content of the bicameral mind episodes that we did,

540
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: you know, even in that case where you have have

541
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: you know, something drastically different taking place with the human mind,

542
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: it would still need to draw that image from somewhere

543
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, it would have to get put together somehow. Yeah,

544
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:32,920
Speaker 1: so at some point the bicameral mind would have to stop.

545
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: Suddenly it's not just speaking through humans or animals, but

546
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: it is speaking through a human animal hybrid And what

547
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 1: is causing that? Where does that come from? As much

548
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: as I love it, we we can't keep coming back

549
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: to the bi cameral mind because people are going to

550
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: start to think that, yeah they are, but but I

551
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 1: know people, people, listeners, minds are going there. So I

552
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: had to I had to dip in for a second. Well,

553
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: I appreciate you doing that, Robert, but I still hold

554
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: out my skepticis on the bicameral mind. But yeah, so

555
00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: I want to come back to this question for the

556
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:02,959
Speaker 1: rest of today's episode. Are there any clues about where

557
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: this first monster came from? Obviously, it's lost to prehistory.

558
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: We can't know when that happened and what the monster

559
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 1: consisted of, but we might be able to look at,

560
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: or at least suppose some things about human monster creation,

561
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 1: monster fear that we give us ideas about the circumstances

562
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: in which this monster might have arisen. And I guess

563
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: we'll start on that journey when we come back from

564
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:30,200
Speaker 1: a break. Thank alright, we're back. So, Robert, what is

565
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 1: a monster? Well? You know, I love this question because

566
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: the answers tend to vary depending on who's thinking hard

567
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:42,200
Speaker 1: about monsters. Give me Jessup's answer first, and Jessup has

568
00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: a more literal interpretation of these things. But uh, one

569
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: example that I love is that the idea that the

570
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 1: word monstrosity originates from the Latin uh monster ary, which

571
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,480
Speaker 1: means to show or illustrate a point. This is a

572
00:31:57,520 --> 00:31:59,560
Speaker 1: good point. I mean, very often, if you think about

573
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: monster legends, they come with the moral, don't they. Yeah,

574
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:06,360
Speaker 1: Or there's some idea wrapped up in it, like I'm

575
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 1: afraid of this, but why this thing exists? But why?

576
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 1: And he can very you know, it can involve various symbolism,

577
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 1: it can involved just very simple metaphorical extrapolations. But yeah,

578
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: very often there is a there's a message, there's an

579
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: idea there, And you know, I think this falls in

580
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 1: line with what St. Augustine had to say about monsters.

581
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 1: He said, the monster is part of God's plan, an

582
00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: adornment of the universe that can also teach us about

583
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: the dangers of sin. But other medieval commentators also they

584
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: just define a monster is a thing that's against nature. Now,

585
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: for people who believe that nature was thoroughly populated with monsters,

586
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: what gave them the like? What made the distinction? Right?

587
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: It's against nature, but nature is full of them? Where

588
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 1: did that come from? Well? I mean the other thing,

589
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 1: of course, is that even how can it be if

590
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 1: it's it's if it's against nature, but it's also it's

591
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: made of nature. I mean, that's one of the whole

592
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: things we've been hitting so far, is it's a cave

593
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: line plus a man. It's a combination of things that exists.

594
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,600
Speaker 1: So it's not just whole cloth, you know, because I

595
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 1: mean virtually no monster out there is completely removed from

596
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:23,120
Speaker 1: our biological world. Most of them have some analog in

597
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 1: in the natural world, and there's there's something to be

598
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 1: said there about our connection with nature. I mean, even

599
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 1: when people try to come up with monsters from the

600
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 1: outer dark, some kind of you know, the cosmic kind

601
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:36,440
Speaker 1: of monsters, there's still it's like, well, it's a human

602
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: with a squid head and it's really big. Yeah, Or

603
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: you're just struggling to come up with something that doesn't

604
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 1: have an analogy in nature, right, Or if you think

605
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: you've created something that has no analogy in nature, you're

606
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: just recreating like a Cambrian era organism that you just

607
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: didn't know about. Hey, if you haven't listened to our

608
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: Cambrian Monsters episode, you should go back to the I

609
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 1: guess it was last week or whenever this air is.

610
00:33:58,040 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: Check out the Cambrian monster mash though, as were some

611
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: monster with the monsters. Now, speaking of of monsters, particularly

612
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 1: sea monsters, thirteenth century theologian Thomas of contemporary he devoted

613
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 1: an entire book to see monsters and another to the

614
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: fish of the sea. So his dividing line here, but

615
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: you know what goes in which book? This is answering

616
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:22,359
Speaker 1: my question, right, nature is full of monsters. How can

617
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:24,880
Speaker 1: you tell what the monsters are? Yeah? Yeah, his answer

618
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:27,480
Speaker 1: would be what it all comes down to. Rarity in size.

619
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: That's what's make that's what makes a sea monster. Um

620
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:34,799
Speaker 1: so so like blue whales would be ce monsters, Yeah,

621
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 1: because they're just so big. It's I mean, it's quite

622
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:42,080
Speaker 1: literally monstrous, and it's it's essentially rare, especially I guess

623
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:44,279
Speaker 1: if it's yeah, if it's like an apex predator, so

624
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 1: like a megalodon would have been a sea monster. They

625
00:34:47,920 --> 00:34:49,840
Speaker 1: didn't exist at the time, right, or you know, or

626
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 1: say a horse is a rather large creature, but it's

627
00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: not a rarity, so you know, it's not a monster.

628
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:57,440
Speaker 1: But if you had a dog the side of a

629
00:34:57,560 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: size of a horse, that would be a rarity. That

630
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: would be an Okay, I feel like this is a

631
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:07,800
Speaker 1: really dumb and unimaginative I don't think that's good at all. No,

632
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: it doesn't really help us out here. But regardless of

633
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 1: how you define monsters, we of course have countless monsters,

634
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: and not just of course the ones that we've dreamt

635
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: up to, you know, recently to entertain us. Though I

636
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:24,880
Speaker 1: think that in many cases we're not simply entertaining ourselves

637
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: with monsters. We are we are creating something that speaks

638
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:32,319
Speaker 1: to two deeper fears that speaks to, you know, some

639
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 1: level of anxiety about our lives or the modern world.

640
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: And of course religion and myth and legend folklore are

641
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 1: just just totally populated with creatures that are that are

642
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:46,440
Speaker 1: hybrids of various forms. Yeah, I like what you said

643
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:48,360
Speaker 1: that we I think I've said this on the show before,

644
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: but one reason. Sometimes people ask me, like, what what

645
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: do you like about horror movies? I mean, they're so dumb.

646
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: It's true that the horror genre has a lot of

647
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:00,879
Speaker 1: really really bad movies in it, But think horror movies

648
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: are interesting because even when they're bad, they sort of

649
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: show you something. They're instructive about the anxieties of the

650
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,360
Speaker 1: age in which they're produced, and they they tap into

651
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:15,839
Speaker 1: something primal about what our what our deepest fears are,

652
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 1: what's occupying occupying our minds when we're in the dark alone.

653
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: And I like that about them. I like, even when

654
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: they're not good stories and they're not told well, they're

655
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: still instructive about the society and the people that made them. Well,

656
00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:33,280
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes down to symbols, right, if

657
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:35,680
Speaker 1: you can have somebody who has no clue what they're doing,

658
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 1: And if you're taking existing symbols and you're combining them

659
00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: one way or another, you're going to inevitably make a statement.

660
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 1: You may be completely deaf to that statement, completely blind

661
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: to that statement, but that's often when it's the most interesting.

662
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 1: Like oh, my goodness, you accidentally created something brilliant. Uh,

663
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:57,239
Speaker 1: Like you made that the killer's mask, and you you

664
00:36:57,280 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: didn't even think about all of the ramification of of

665
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:03,319
Speaker 1: that symbol. Yeah, what does it mean that the killer

666
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 1: wears a hockey mask? Yeah? Or a baby mask or

667
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:10,320
Speaker 1: a or you know, an obviously store bought ghost face mask.

668
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:11,920
Speaker 1: I mean, you can you can kind of go wild

669
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: with any of these these examples, and uh and and

670
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 1: try and tease out a big academic paper on what

671
00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: the what the meaning of the film is. Obviously it's

672
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:22,839
Speaker 1: that hockey will kill us all in the end, fear

673
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:25,399
Speaker 1: of Canadians. I think, yeah, all right, Well, to keep

674
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,319
Speaker 1: chasing this question about where the first monster might have

675
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 1: come from, I think maybe we should take a detour

676
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 1: and look at this one paper that I found that

677
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: that I thought was really interesting. It doesn't directly answer

678
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:39,280
Speaker 1: the question we're talking about, but it comes really close

679
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 1: and goes along similar pathways of thinking. And it's a

680
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: paper by a scholar called Steven T. Asthma, and the

681
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 1: paper is titled Monsters on the Brain and Evolutionary Epistemology

682
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:54,360
Speaker 1: of Horror published in Social Research and International Quarterly, And

683
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: that's a social science journal that has a lot of

684
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:01,280
Speaker 1: different social science genres in it. And basally, what Asthma

685
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,239
Speaker 1: is trying to do in this article is trace what

686
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:10,319
Speaker 1: the biological origins of the experience of horror are and

687
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: I think if we look at that, that might provide

688
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: some insights about where monsters could emerge in our anthropological history.

689
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: And Asthma starts with an interesting question one that's very

690
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:24,240
Speaker 1: common with all kinds of studies about behavior. Our fear

691
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: responses modular or conditioned. In other words, are our fear

692
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: responses and our monster fears instinctual, born into us or

693
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: they just learned and conditioned by culture and experience. And

694
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 1: just to rephrase from the beginning, I think one thing

695
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 1: we can eliminate is that it's quite obvious that at

696
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,920
Speaker 1: least some of our fears are conditioned or learned, Like

697
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:47,959
Speaker 1: there is no way you were born with a fear

698
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: of airplanes. That's not part of your revolutionary heritage. So

699
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: though you might have, you know, you might have an

700
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: inborn fear of heights, you could see how that could

701
00:38:56,680 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: be part of evolutionary herit not like silver machine is

702
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: filled with other humans barreling through the sky. Right, So

703
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: there might be instinctual elements that go into that fear,

704
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:08,879
Speaker 1: but the fear itself, the content there, is clearly conditioned

705
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:12,359
Speaker 1: or learned. But the real question is are any of

706
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 1: our fears modular or instinctual or are they all conditioned

707
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:21,359
Speaker 1: or learned. So Asthma kicks off this favor by by

708
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: pretty much stating the obvious fear exists in our bodies

709
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 1: and minds. Fearful stimulized stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. So

710
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 1: perhaps you'll freeze in the face of fear, maybe you'll flee,

711
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:35,879
Speaker 1: maybe you'll you'll suddenly have this burst of bravery, you'll

712
00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:38,799
Speaker 1: turn around and fight. But the object of terror gives

713
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 1: us a physical jolt, and it demands reaction. And he

714
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,840
Speaker 1: also points out that there's a strong hormonal component entailing

715
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:51,280
Speaker 1: the corticotropin releasing hormone or c r H, cortisol and adrenaline.

716
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 1: Asthma points to a study in fact, in which scientists

717
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 1: inserted a gene in mice that makes CRH, resulting in

718
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: more fearful mice, or removing it to make quote an

719
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:06,960
Speaker 1: extremely fearless mouse. I would I would venture to say

720
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: that both prospects are horrifying. So Asthma argues that these

721
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: are all old brain systems. So this is the basement

722
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: of horror, and we advanced organisms. Well, we have an

723
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 1: entire haunted house built atop these ancient brain stem ruins. Okay,

724
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:25,920
Speaker 1: I like this analogy you're going with. Yeah, you have

725
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 1: all the limbic emotional circuits here. You can think of

726
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: this neural mammalian haunted house containing seven key rooms. You

727
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: got your fear room, your care room, your lust room,

728
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: your rage room, your panic room, your your seeking room,

729
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: in your playroom. In each room commands specific neural pathways

730
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 1: through the brain pipes, wriggling around and diving down into

731
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: the haunted ruins beneath. So we'd be saying that when

732
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:53,279
Speaker 1: you have these different types of affective reactions, so like

733
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 1: you're engaged in play behaviors or you're engaged in lust

734
00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 1: behaviors or fear behaviors, they don't look the same the brain.

735
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:03,759
Speaker 1: They take different avenues through your different brain regions and

736
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: excite different types of tissue. Now, the million fear is

737
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: rooted in the amigola, and we can talk about some

738
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: direct evidence of this later, but this is a pretty

739
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 1: well evidenced proposition, right, And we can think of this

740
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 1: is a haunted laboratory, and it's probably right next to

741
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:25,719
Speaker 1: the memory lated haunted library of the hippocampus, and they

742
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: work together to enable conditioned learning. Right, So the amygdala

743
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,279
Speaker 1: is what regulates fear, and the hippocampus supplies the information

744
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:37,120
Speaker 1: content of the fear uh and the and this is

745
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:40,960
Speaker 1: condition learning. So the simple version is, let's say somebody

746
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: puts you in a lab and they keep showing you

747
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 1: episodes of TV shows, and every time they show you

748
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,440
Speaker 1: an episode of Seinfeld you get an electric shock and

749
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:50,480
Speaker 1: it goes for the duration of the episode. You will

750
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: probably develop a conditioned seinfeld phobia, which is an avoidance

751
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:59,080
Speaker 1: or aversion reaction to Jerry Seinfeldt's face. And this is

752
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: this is a standard accounting of how conditioned fears are developed. Alright,

753
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:06,120
Speaker 1: So we have our haunted house here. What's a haunted

754
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: house without a few ghosts and the ghosts come to

755
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: us via evolution. This is what ASMA refers to as

756
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:16,399
Speaker 1: the heritable disposition a levels of fear or timidity. Now,

757
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:18,319
Speaker 1: refer back to what you mentioned a minute ago, which

758
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 1: is those mice, right, You can you can inherit different

759
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:24,799
Speaker 1: levels of fear disposition, So you can have these really

760
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:27,840
Speaker 1: brave mice that you artificially select for, or these really

761
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 1: scared mice that you artificially select for. But also, could

762
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: the contents of our fears be heritable? That's sort of

763
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: part of the question. We're asking, not just how likely

764
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:39,359
Speaker 1: you are to become afraid, but what you're afraid of?

765
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: Can you get that from your parents through your genes? Well,

766
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 1: there's some there's some interesting supporting evidence for this. And

767
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:49,360
Speaker 1: I imagine a number of you have encountered videos online

768
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: of cats reacting to cucumbers. You know, they turn around,

769
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: they see a cucumber, they freak out the ideas that

770
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 1: they have this this uh, this ingrained response to something

771
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:01,400
Speaker 1: that is snake like. And they have been experienced experience

772
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: to show similar reactions in chimps as well. Uh. We

773
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 1: also see this along with spider fears in humans. Yeah,

774
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 1: one example showing this was in the nineteen forties, the

775
00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: psychologist Donald Hebb found that even infant chimpanzees were terrified

776
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 1: of images of snakes, even if they'd never been exposed

777
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 1: to images of snakes before. Now there's an interesting update

778
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 1: to that, which is that heb found that chimps weren't

779
00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:28,399
Speaker 1: just afraid of snakes, but of any quote. And this

780
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:33,440
Speaker 1: is Asthma's wording extremely varied morphology, as they encountered so

781
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: like really odd shapes that weren't part of their normal

782
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: day to day life. But for more evidence of of

783
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:44,440
Speaker 1: the brains conditioning toward reaction to snakes, I found one

784
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 1: recent study. It was about neural pathways for evolution of

785
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: rapid detection of snakes and it was by Van le

786
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 1: Quan at All and it's called Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological

787
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 1: evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes in

788
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: p N A s U. And basically it found that

789
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 1: there are neurons in the primate medial and dorsolateral pulvinar

790
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:11,200
Speaker 1: that responds selectively to snakes, seeming to indicate that there's

791
00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: something hardwired in the primate brain to cause this rapid

792
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: detection of snakelike shapes as opposed to images of other

793
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: things like monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometric shapes. And

794
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:27,360
Speaker 1: so Asthma in his paper he wonders, quote some of

795
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 1: our deep seated monster fears may be rooted in real

796
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 1: predators or environmental threats from our prehistory. So we're talking

797
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 1: about cognitive model shaped in the Plistocene era, genetically engraved

798
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: archetypes that continue to resonate, Uh, you know on up

799
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: into modern times. Now you can totally see why that

800
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:51,840
Speaker 1: would be the case. Right, It's clear that some types

801
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 1: of fears could be adaptive. Uh, if you are born

802
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:59,280
Speaker 1: with a natural fear of lion shaped things, you're probably

803
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,959
Speaker 1: going to survive have more often than people not born

804
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 1: with the fear of lion shaped things. Right. And so

805
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,680
Speaker 1: the question is, is is the image of a snake or

806
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: a spider or anything that conforms to a to a

807
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 1: common part of monster imagery somehow encoded deeply in your biology.

808
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 1: Is it an inherited fear response that you get from

809
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 1: threats faced by your ancestors, or are these all things

810
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:26,720
Speaker 1: we learned to fear from culture and experience. So Asthma

811
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: site some lines of thinking against heritable fear content. Like,

812
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 1: one thing he asks is how does the content itself

813
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: get transmitted? You know, like, if you're afraid of snakes,

814
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 1: how could that image of a snake literally come down

815
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 1: through the generations. Now I'm not sure I buy that

816
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 1: objection so much, because I do think it seems likely

817
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 1: that we can inherit some types of image re recognition.

818
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:56,479
Speaker 1: I mean, here's one example. If you can't inherit any

819
00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:00,800
Speaker 1: kind of image re recognition from your parents, how would

820
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: animals know what visual cues to look for in mating?

821
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: You could say with humans, you could say, well, maybe

822
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: it's all culturally conditioned and that's how But what about

823
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 1: non human animals, what about non social, non human animals?

824
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: There seem to be I would think that you can

825
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:22,480
Speaker 1: transmit some types of imagery across generations through heritable predispositions.

826
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,440
Speaker 1: And of course it's important to wonder what kind of

827
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: content is actually getting transmitted here. Yeah, and that's one

828
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:33,080
Speaker 1: objection that Asthma doesn't really go into is deeply, but

829
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 1: I think actually does matter why snakes and spiders, like

830
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 1: I can think of animals that are generally much much

831
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: more dangerous and probably much more dangerous to our direct

832
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:48,520
Speaker 1: ancestors on the African savannah than spiders and snakes, and

833
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 1: yet they don't inspire nearly the same visual revulsion, Like

834
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: a hippopotamus is ten thousand times more dangerous than the

835
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:58,760
Speaker 1: average snake or spider, and yet it does not present

836
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:01,719
Speaker 1: as a universal phobia. You don't see humans all over

837
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: the world being terrified of hippopotami. Yeah, so, or at

838
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:08,960
Speaker 1: least it's certainly not outside of a direct contact with them,

839
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:12,400
Speaker 1: like environmental contact with them. Yeah, unless you've learned to

840
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: be afraid of them because they're actually dangerous. Otherwise, I

841
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: think we all have that point growing up where we're told, oh,

842
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 1: actually hippos are exceedingly dangerous, and they're more dangerous than

843
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:24,240
Speaker 1: the crocodiles. Yeah, as always take that with the caveat

844
00:47:24,280 --> 00:47:27,480
Speaker 1: that we don't want to demonize animals, So those are wonderful, right,

845
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 1: don't go killing hippos. I can't watch enough hippo videos

846
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 1: on line of their of what of their their viral

847
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 1: explosive defecation. No, well that I think that's a fabulous

848
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: topic as well. There's a lot to that actually, Um,

849
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: I've read papers about the way that they spin their

850
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: tails to distribute the fecal matter and the different theories

851
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 1: as to why. I mean, it gets into parasides and leeches.

852
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 1: It's fabulous stuff. But their babies are super cute, That's

853
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:56,320
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at. You ever watched the baby babies

854
00:47:56,719 --> 00:47:59,440
Speaker 1: someone with their their their mom's amazing. Yeah, they'll grow

855
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 1: up to bite your legs off, but they're they're very

856
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:04,319
Speaker 1: cute as babies. But yeah, no demonization of hippos. Don't

857
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:08,240
Speaker 1: go killing hippos or anything anyway. But back to Asthma. Okay,

858
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 1: so we do have these potential pitfalls and the idea

859
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 1: that our fears are predatory fears are inherited directly and

860
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 1: biologically from our parents. But Asthma thinks he sort of

861
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: has a solution to this dilemma, right, Yeah, he gets

862
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:28,640
Speaker 1: into this topic of specific versus generic pattern recognition systems.

863
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 1: So he points to the universality of snake and spider

864
00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: phobias as we've been discussing, but also to studies by

865
00:48:35,560 --> 00:48:41,719
Speaker 1: ethologists Wolfgang Schleet who he carried out these experiments where

866
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 1: he took bird chicks and he exposed them to fly

867
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:49,319
Speaker 1: over silhouettes of both hawks and goose and geese the

868
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:53,719
Speaker 1: hawk caused fear, but seemingly not the goose. But if

869
00:48:53,719 --> 00:48:57,560
Speaker 1: they were exposed to repeated hawk fly over shapes very

870
00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: earlier in the development, they feared the goose but not

871
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:06,120
Speaker 1: the hawk. So it's it's curious. So you basically it

872
00:49:06,160 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 1: was about what they were exposed too early on. And

873
00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 1: by the way, I have to add the fact these

874
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 1: were turkey chicks, your your butterballs were being experimented on

875
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:18,080
Speaker 1: a little bit in infancy. By the way, I love

876
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:20,200
Speaker 1: that idea of of fearing the goose. I think we

877
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 1: should we should incorporate that into our discussions of fear.

878
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:25,239
Speaker 1: If you have an unfounded fear, you can say, oh,

879
00:49:25,239 --> 00:49:27,719
Speaker 1: you're really fearing the goose on that one. So that's

880
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,800
Speaker 1: like when you're afraid of something that isn't really dangerous,

881
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:32,920
Speaker 1: but it's because you had a bad experience with it

882
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: as a child. Yeah, I mean, but you know, as

883
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:37,960
Speaker 1: we're discussing the development of fears, like that's kind of

884
00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:40,160
Speaker 1: that's how we work. That's how you survive in the wild.

885
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: You the person who fears the lion that is not

886
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:45,960
Speaker 1: there has a better chance of surviving than the person

887
00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:48,480
Speaker 1: who does not fear the lions. That may be there.

888
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:51,799
Speaker 1: It's true you'd rather have false positives than false negatives.

889
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:55,760
Speaker 1: I should correct myself there, because fearing the goose wouldn't

890
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:57,959
Speaker 1: be that you had a bad experience with the goose,

891
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 1: would be that you never had an experience with a goose.

892
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:02,839
Speaker 1: Un Thus, you're afraid of them because they don't they

893
00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: don't fit into your your picture of the world. Maybe

894
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:08,640
Speaker 1: it's a good expression for like when your kid won't

895
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:11,480
Speaker 1: try some new food or something's like, stop fearing the goose.

896
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:18,240
Speaker 1: Don't just go for it, baby, tryan Oh, I should

897
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:21,320
Speaker 1: stop laughing at my own jokes. Okay. Uh. So slights

898
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 1: work focused on replications of older experiments originally carried out

899
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: by Lorenz and ten Bergen in the nineteen thirties, And

900
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:34,319
Speaker 1: to quote from Asthma, this is quote corroborating Hebb's idea.

901
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:38,080
Speaker 1: Remember Donald Hebb from earlier idea that some discrepancy between

902
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 1: a new perception and previous background stored experiences causes the

903
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:45,759
Speaker 1: fearful response. Remember how the chimps were frightened by any

904
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 1: unfamiliar morphology shapes they weren't familiar with. So Asthma continues quote, Theoretically,

905
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 1: one could condition an animal to be unresponsive to snakes

906
00:50:55,920 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: and hawks but utterly terrified of fluffy bunnies. So this

907
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: is Asthma's position. Um, he's sort of working towards this thing. Well,

908
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: let's let's let's get there on our own time. Yeah.

909
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: He says that all of this makes sense though if

910
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:12,439
Speaker 1: you look at it in the light of Darwin. Right,

911
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:16,280
Speaker 1: he's talking about the generic conditioning idea, right, Yeah, because

912
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 1: he talks about the quote fearful reaction to categorical mismatch. So,

913
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:23,760
Speaker 1: as Asthma puts it, quote, the local environment will condition

914
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:27,359
Speaker 1: the infant animal, and then the cognitive development will lock

915
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: in the categories, creating a software program that recognizes some

916
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 1: animals and mismatches novelties. So Asthma is sort of proposing

917
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 1: a hybrid model of the origins of fear imagery. Not

918
00:51:39,440 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 1: necessarily that it's that it's received imagery from your ancestors,

919
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:46,279
Speaker 1: and not necessarily that it's all learned in life, but

920
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:49,600
Speaker 1: it's one that combines elements that are automatic and instinctual

921
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: along with elements that are modifiable and learned. Yeah. He

922
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: calls it a quote content free recognition system. And so

923
00:51:56,640 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 1: the basis of this is that we whatever we are

924
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: exposed to an early childhood becomes part of our okay category,

925
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 1: and whatever we're not exposed to become as part of

926
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:11,239
Speaker 1: the fear category. Exactly, And in fact he points to

927
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:14,799
Speaker 1: a specific study. This is the studies, uh that we're

928
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:18,800
Speaker 1: conducted by Mary Ainsworth in the nineties seventies, the strange

929
00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 1: situation experiments, and uh, these these backed up the notion

930
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:27,160
Speaker 1: that there's a window of opportunity for template formation and

931
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 1: it closes after six months. This is great, This is

932
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:33,560
Speaker 1: part of the freaking out your children genre experiments. Everything

933
00:52:33,640 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: is stored as normal in those first six months, the

934
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: argument goes, and only after that are the new experiences

935
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:43,759
Speaker 1: initially stored a strange and novel and judged in light

936
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: of existing templates. That's why if you encounter a child

937
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:50,720
Speaker 1: that is less than six months, they're looking at everything

938
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:53,400
Speaker 1: the same. You're not going to get those shifty baby

939
00:52:53,440 --> 00:52:56,200
Speaker 1: eyes and those shifty toddler ized till later, you know,

940
00:52:56,239 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 1: because we've all encountered those kids that like instantly distrust you.

941
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:01,320
Speaker 1: They look at you and you can tell they distrust you.

942
00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:03,680
Speaker 1: You're like, what are you doing? Yeah? I just got here?

943
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:05,640
Speaker 1: What are you basing this on, and they're basing it

944
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 1: on the template that they have. You were not in

945
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:09,680
Speaker 1: that template. So this would seem to back up his

946
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:12,720
Speaker 1: idea of the fact that there's a sort of content

947
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: free recognition system. Uh. And it also would would help

948
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:19,799
Speaker 1: answer this question of how come infants, if this is

949
00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: the case, don't become terrified of every new image they

950
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:26,879
Speaker 1: encounter right right now, it's it's uh, it's worth noting.

951
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 1: Asthma in all this, he points out some of the

952
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 1: obvious that many of our monsters are hybrids of threatening creatures,

953
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:37,040
Speaker 1: and specifically he points out the alien face hugger because

954
00:53:37,080 --> 00:53:41,400
Speaker 1: this is essentially a spider and a snake fused together

955
00:53:41,520 --> 00:53:46,160
Speaker 1: into one awful crab like entity. You know, is the

956
00:53:46,200 --> 00:53:48,239
Speaker 1: worst parts of the spider and the worst parts of

957
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:51,520
Speaker 1: a snake and the worst parts of an oyster. Well yeah,

958
00:53:51,600 --> 00:53:53,479
Speaker 1: once you start cutting into it, for sure, but there's

959
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:56,279
Speaker 1: no worst part of an oyster. It's all good. Uh.

960
00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 1: So Asthma says that this what we have here is

961
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: the phylogenetic memory of ancient danger and monstrous hybrids allow

962
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: us to to further strengthen, augment, and transmit those fears, right,

963
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:10,719
Speaker 1: and that would seem to go to this like instinctual

964
00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: fear read but Asthma has this other interesting hypothesis. He

965
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 1: discusses about what what contributes to what makes spiders and

966
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: snakes specifically scary, And this might answer some of my

967
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:26,279
Speaker 1: problems with why them and not hippopotamus? Is uh, if

968
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:29,839
Speaker 1: you assume that babies are generally carried and kept off

969
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 1: the ground outside for their first six months of life,

970
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 1: they won't be seeing many spiders or snakes, but they

971
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:39,080
Speaker 1: will be able to see people and other larger, non

972
00:54:39,080 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 1: threatening animals. So Asthma seems to think this sort of

973
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:46,439
Speaker 1: fits the category violation model. That would make sense. Yeah,

974
00:54:46,440 --> 00:54:50,840
Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of adults even today taking

975
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:52,600
Speaker 1: their baby well, I mean uns you're taking to the zoo,

976
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:56,239
Speaker 1: I guess. But even then they're not they're encountering them

977
00:54:56,239 --> 00:54:57,799
Speaker 1: in the zoo. And I've already talked a little bit

978
00:54:57,800 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: about the differences between encountering an anim in the wild

979
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:03,439
Speaker 1: and encountering them in an artificial environment right now. Of course,

980
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:07,000
Speaker 1: another way to violate these categories is to present beings

981
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:12,719
Speaker 1: with totally nonsensical ontologies, creatures that could never be conditioned

982
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:15,239
Speaker 1: in a natural environment. Or sorry that you could never

983
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,640
Speaker 1: be conditioned to accept in a natural environment because they

984
00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:22,360
Speaker 1: don't exist in a natural environment. Here, maybe the origin

985
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 1: of our hybrid monsters, our lion headed humans, and the

986
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 1: grim sentient leopards and other beasts. All right, well, on

987
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take a quick break, and

988
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:33,880
Speaker 1: when we come back we will return to our discussion

989
00:55:34,080 --> 00:55:39,640
Speaker 1: of ancient monsters. Thank you, thank you. All right, we're

990
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 1: back now. Asthma invokes a concept in his paper invented

991
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:47,480
Speaker 1: by the philosopher Nuel Carrol, which is called category jamming,

992
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:50,359
Speaker 1: and in his two thousand three book The Philosophy of

993
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 1: Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart, Carol makes a distinction

994
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:56,719
Speaker 1: between what he calls the monsters of myth and the

995
00:55:56,760 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 1: monsters of horror. I thought this was pretty interesting. So

996
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:02,120
Speaker 1: he writes about, how, you know, there might be fearsome

997
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 1: creatures in the world of myths, but they are not

998
00:56:04,800 --> 00:56:09,120
Speaker 1: quote unnatural, and they can be accommodated by the metaphysics

999
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:12,040
Speaker 1: of the cosmology that produced them. All right, So this

1000
00:56:12,120 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 1: idea is that, say, the medusa, is that if you

1001
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 1: take the meduce and you put it in our real world. Yeah,

1002
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:21,560
Speaker 1: it's breaking all these laws of physics and nature. But

1003
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:25,560
Speaker 1: the Medusa encountered within the world of Greek myth, Well,

1004
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:28,040
Speaker 1: then she's just part of this world, like she's not

1005
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:31,160
Speaker 1: breaking any laws exactly. But then he says, quote, the

1006
00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:36,799
Speaker 1: monsters of horror breach the norms of ontological propriety presumed

1007
00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:39,960
Speaker 1: by the positive human characters in the story. That is,

1008
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:42,760
Speaker 1: in examples of horror, it would appear that the monster

1009
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:48,040
Speaker 1: is an extraordinary character in our ordinary world. I like

1010
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:50,959
Speaker 1: this because this is a distinction. I feel very much

1011
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:54,640
Speaker 1: like there are different kinds of monsters, and they even

1012
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:58,800
Speaker 1: the same monster, could be more or less terrifying given

1013
00:56:59,040 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 1: different context. Next, and so it makes me think back

1014
00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:05,440
Speaker 1: to the Loan Mench, which one was the Loan Mench.

1015
00:57:06,239 --> 00:57:09,879
Speaker 1: Was this a monster of myth that existed within some

1016
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:12,960
Speaker 1: kind of epic poem that these people, you know, recited

1017
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 1: orally or something like that, something outside the world that

1018
00:57:16,040 --> 00:57:19,880
Speaker 1: could be accommodated by its own cosmology. Or was this

1019
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,560
Speaker 1: the monster of horror, something that haunted the woods beyond

1020
00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 1: the cave. Yeah. To glimpse this creature, or to imagine

1021
00:57:27,040 --> 00:57:29,840
Speaker 1: glimpsing this creature, is it to see something broken in

1022
00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: the world or something that is just part of its

1023
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:34,880
Speaker 1: fabric and we have no way of knowing. Yeah, though

1024
00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:37,800
Speaker 1: clearly I think if it is part of that broken

1025
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: vision of the world, then there is a stronger fear

1026
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:45,560
Speaker 1: element to it. It's not part of a fantasy. It

1027
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: is a fantastical deviation from your day to day life.

1028
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:53,360
Speaker 1: But Carol also writes about this idea that monsters are

1029
00:57:53,600 --> 00:57:57,400
Speaker 1: jamming of categories. He says, quote monsters are repelling because

1030
00:57:57,560 --> 00:58:02,920
Speaker 1: they violate standing categories and another quote also elsewhere, um quote.

1031
00:58:03,520 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: If what is of primary importance about horrific creatures is

1032
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: that they're very impossibility visa v our conceptual categories is

1033
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:13,840
Speaker 1: what makes them function so compelling lee in dramas of

1034
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:19,760
Speaker 1: discovery and confirmation, then their disclosure, insofar as their categorical

1035
00:58:19,880 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: violations will be attached to some sense of disturbance, distress,

1036
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 1: and disgust. Consequently, the role of the horrific creature in

1037
00:58:28,800 --> 00:58:33,240
Speaker 1: such narratives where their disclosure captures our interest and delivers pleasure,

1038
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:38,439
Speaker 1: will simultaneously mandate some probable revulsion. That is, in order

1039
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:41,880
Speaker 1: to reward our interest by the disclosure of the putatively

1040
00:58:41,960 --> 00:58:46,600
Speaker 1: impossible beings of the plot, said beings ought to be disturbing, distressing,

1041
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:49,880
Speaker 1: and repulsive in the way that theorists like Douglas and

1042
00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 1: there is referring to Dame Mary Douglas predict phenomena that

1043
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:58,000
Speaker 1: ill fit cultural classifications will be So the idea is

1044
00:58:58,040 --> 00:59:03,640
Speaker 1: that creatures that holate our culturally established categories of existence

1045
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 1: we will find repulsive and distressing. And this is definitely

1046
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:11,520
Speaker 1: a very common way of explaining horrific creatures, right, the

1047
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:15,080
Speaker 1: category confusion model. There's a lion, there's a man, but

1048
00:59:15,120 --> 00:59:17,480
Speaker 1: a man with a lion's head that just that breaks

1049
00:59:17,520 --> 00:59:19,520
Speaker 1: all the rules. It's the thing that should not be

1050
00:59:19,560 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: exactly Yeah, but then again, I have so on one hand,

1051
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:26,480
Speaker 1: I'm attracted to this theory, and I find that lots

1052
00:59:26,520 --> 00:59:30,120
Speaker 1: of horror creatures very much seemed to fit this theory.

1053
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:32,959
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I wonder, is it really

1054
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:36,360
Speaker 1: possible that our experience of monster horror could be so

1055
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: thoroughly cognitive, because like, comparing these categories like this established

1056
00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 1: by culture that really would seem to be like it

1057
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 1: takes some kind of thought, Right, do you really have

1058
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 1: to think about a monster to find it scary? No?

1059
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 1: I mean, like we've been discussing with something like like Jason, say,

1060
00:59:56,960 --> 01:00:00,640
Speaker 1: Jason Vories from the Friday of their tenth series. You

1061
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:02,840
Speaker 1: don't have to think very hard in those films to

1062
01:00:02,840 --> 01:00:05,960
Speaker 1: find Jason terrifying. Though there's there's plenty of stuff going

1063
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:08,320
Speaker 1: on to make you feel tearor right down to the

1064
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: music and uh and and and other forms of priming. Uh.

1065
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:15,400
Speaker 1: But if you if you tease it apart, you can say, yes,

1066
01:00:15,400 --> 01:00:18,200
Speaker 1: this is an unnatural thing. It's what it's depending on

1067
01:00:18,200 --> 01:00:21,120
Speaker 1: your interpretation, is either a dead person that's walking around

1068
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 1: killing people, or at the very least, it is an

1069
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:30,760
Speaker 1: unrealistically relentless and unstoppable humanoid killer. And it's equally terrifying

1070
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 1: no matter how much thought you put into it. Right,

1071
01:00:32,680 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: and that whenever I feel monster fear, the initial pang

1072
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: of monster fear definitely feels deeper than cognitive category analysis,

1073
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:45,440
Speaker 1: Like I don't feel like I'm comparing anything in my mind.

1074
01:00:46,600 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 1: It hits me on the same level as like, you know,

1075
01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:52,960
Speaker 1: seeing something flying at my face. Anyway, Well, we'll come

1076
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:55,200
Speaker 1: back to the cognitive elements in a minute. I wanted

1077
01:00:55,200 --> 01:00:58,280
Speaker 1: to discuss one other tangent that's really interesting that asthma

1078
01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:00,480
Speaker 1: goes on, that might provide some kind of light on this.

1079
01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:04,479
Speaker 1: I loved his section about horror blindness. Oh yeah, I

1080
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:07,680
Speaker 1: don't think i'd ever read about this before. So here's

1081
01:01:07,680 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 1: how to get into it. A question that might help

1082
01:01:10,360 --> 01:01:12,800
Speaker 1: us understand the origin of monsters is why do we

1083
01:01:12,880 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 1: keep creating them? Like? Why can't we stop making monsters

1084
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 1: even if they make us feel the putatively negative emotion

1085
01:01:20,600 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 1: of fear. Well, I think that they're kind of like cocktails, right, Like,

1086
01:01:24,600 --> 01:01:28,680
Speaker 1: there's a there's a basic reason that humans consume alcohol,

1087
01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:32,240
Speaker 1: and there's a basic reason humans consume various other elements

1088
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:35,120
Speaker 1: that have specific tastes. But we can't stop coming up

1089
01:01:35,120 --> 01:01:39,760
Speaker 1: with new combinations, a new novel, combinations that will give

1090
01:01:39,880 --> 01:01:44,320
Speaker 1: us the same and then in increasingly varied experiences based

1091
01:01:44,320 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 1: on that original. We like to fear, and so we're

1092
01:01:47,400 --> 01:01:50,160
Speaker 1: going to continue to to tweak what makes us feel

1093
01:01:50,200 --> 01:01:53,280
Speaker 1: that that tear? But do well? Okay, So that's one theory.

1094
01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:56,360
Speaker 1: You could say that we like to fear. Yes, I

1095
01:01:56,400 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: think there's another possibility, which is that we don't actually

1096
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:03,120
Speaker 1: like to fear. We like something else that comes with fear.

1097
01:02:03,800 --> 01:02:08,680
Speaker 1: That fear has sort of a secret hidden cousin. Whenever

1098
01:02:08,680 --> 01:02:11,920
Speaker 1: the fear pathways in the brain are ignited. There's something

1099
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:14,800
Speaker 1: that happens along with that, and that's the thing we like,

1100
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:18,440
Speaker 1: and we mistake it for its cousin, the fear, the

1101
01:02:18,440 --> 01:02:21,919
Speaker 1: main emotion. So let's look at an example and see

1102
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:25,120
Speaker 1: what we think. One way to study the biological roots

1103
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: of horror monster, or of monster fear, would be to

1104
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:29,840
Speaker 1: look at the behavior of a person who is incapable

1105
01:02:29,880 --> 01:02:33,080
Speaker 1: of feeling that fear, and strangely enough, such a person

1106
01:02:33,160 --> 01:02:36,200
Speaker 1: does exist, Asthma points to the case of this person,

1107
01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:39,320
Speaker 1: known in the scientific literature only as s M, who

1108
01:02:39,360 --> 01:02:43,760
Speaker 1: is a woman with horror blindness. SM has a brain anomaly.

1109
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:47,360
Speaker 1: She has a focal bilateral amygdala, allegians, and because the

1110
01:02:47,360 --> 01:02:50,560
Speaker 1: amygdala is so bound up so important in generating the

1111
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:54,120
Speaker 1: brain's fear response, these allegions mean that SM has an

1112
01:02:54,120 --> 01:02:59,520
Speaker 1: extreme fear deficiency, sometimes characterized as the complete inability to fear,

1113
01:03:00,400 --> 01:03:02,880
Speaker 1: and researchers have tested her with all kinds of fear

1114
01:03:02,920 --> 01:03:08,120
Speaker 1: inducing stimuli like haunted houses, horror movies, snakes and spiders,

1115
01:03:08,160 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 1: and these experiments showed that for SM, what would normally

1116
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:15,920
Speaker 1: be horrifying stimuli were indeed attention grabbing, but did not

1117
01:03:16,120 --> 01:03:20,760
Speaker 1: cause avoidance behaviors in fact, and they found that this

1118
01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:24,760
Speaker 1: combination of attentional arousal, the attention grabbing nature of it,

1119
01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:28,440
Speaker 1: and the lack of fear response tended to manifest itself

1120
01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: as something like an attraction. So this study was there's

1121
01:03:32,840 --> 01:03:35,720
Speaker 1: one study by Justin S. Feinstein at All called the

1122
01:03:35,760 --> 01:03:38,840
Speaker 1: Human Amygdala and the Induction UH and the Induction and

1123
01:03:39,080 --> 01:03:43,600
Speaker 1: Experience of Fear and Current Biology INN. And what they

1124
01:03:43,760 --> 01:03:45,920
Speaker 1: what the researchers did is they took SM to a

1125
01:03:45,960 --> 01:03:50,040
Speaker 1: haunted house put together at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium, which

1126
01:03:50,080 --> 01:03:53,480
Speaker 1: is an abandoned medical facility in Louisville, Kentucky. And I

1127
01:03:53,480 --> 01:03:55,600
Speaker 1: want to read a quote about what happened when they

1128
01:03:55,640 --> 01:03:58,439
Speaker 1: went with s M through this facility, which had people

1129
01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:02,320
Speaker 1: addressed as monsters jumping out and scaring. They said, quote,

1130
01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:06,320
Speaker 1: the hidden monsters attempted to scare SM numerous times, but

1131
01:04:06,440 --> 01:04:10,880
Speaker 1: to no avail. She reacted to the monsters by smiling, laughing,

1132
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:14,480
Speaker 1: or trying to talk to them. In contrast, their scare

1133
01:04:14,520 --> 01:04:17,840
Speaker 1: tactics typically elicited loud screams of fright from the other

1134
01:04:17,920 --> 01:04:20,919
Speaker 1: members of the group more than showing a lack of fear,

1135
01:04:21,120 --> 01:04:27,840
Speaker 1: SM exhibited an unusual inclination to approach and touch the monsters. Ironically,

1136
01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:30,720
Speaker 1: SM scared one of the monsters when she poked it

1137
01:04:30,720 --> 01:04:33,680
Speaker 1: in the head because she was quote curious as to

1138
01:04:33,720 --> 01:04:35,720
Speaker 1: what it would feel like. Oh, you're not supposed to

1139
01:04:35,720 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: touch the actors that a haunted attraction. SM should have

1140
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:41,560
Speaker 1: known that, well, apparently she didn't. Now I thought this

1141
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:45,800
Speaker 1: was really interesting because what they're saying is that in

1142
01:04:45,840 --> 01:04:48,880
Speaker 1: this condition where you don't have the normal avoidance behaviors,

1143
01:04:48,920 --> 01:04:51,480
Speaker 1: because you've got a deficiency of fear, if you're amygdalus

1144
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:54,880
Speaker 1: damaged and you can't feel fear, things that would normally

1145
01:04:54,920 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 1: make you fear aren't just neutral. It's not like I

1146
01:04:57,200 --> 01:05:01,160
Speaker 1: don't care about that. You you find yourself attracted to it.

1147
01:05:01,160 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 1: It's like you love it, you want to touch it. Well,

1148
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:06,720
Speaker 1: I mean I totally buy into that, because I mean,

1149
01:05:06,720 --> 01:05:08,840
Speaker 1: there are plenty of examples, I think in our own

1150
01:05:08,880 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 1: lives where we see like a really cool monster design

1151
01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:15,040
Speaker 1: in a film or a book or some art and yeah,

1152
01:05:15,040 --> 01:05:17,400
Speaker 1: we're not thinking, oh my goodness, I'm so afraid right now.

1153
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:20,120
Speaker 1: We think, oh man, that's pretty gnarly, that's pretty cool. Yeah,

1154
01:05:20,360 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: And so I think that maybe what's going on with

1155
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:26,200
Speaker 1: fear now I I accepted that the opposite could be true.

1156
01:05:26,200 --> 01:05:28,680
Speaker 1: It could be true that in some way the fear

1157
01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:32,840
Speaker 1: itself is satisfying, is thrilling, is fun well, and of

1158
01:05:32,880 --> 01:05:35,880
Speaker 1: course the after effect of the monster not killing you,

1159
01:05:35,880 --> 01:05:38,760
Speaker 1: you get that that surge of relief as well, the

1160
01:05:38,840 --> 01:05:42,480
Speaker 1: endorphin and the adrenaline rush. Yeah, there's that hormonal element

1161
01:05:42,520 --> 01:05:44,920
Speaker 1: to it as well. But yeah, I do think that

1162
01:05:45,160 --> 01:05:48,040
Speaker 1: part of what the appeal must be is what's happening

1163
01:05:48,080 --> 01:05:51,240
Speaker 1: with s M. Here. It's that she's only getting the

1164
01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:54,280
Speaker 1: good half of the horror feeling. She's not feeling the fear.

1165
01:05:54,640 --> 01:05:57,400
Speaker 1: But when we experience horror in the good way and

1166
01:05:57,400 --> 01:05:59,760
Speaker 1: the pleasurable way that makes us keep returning to it.

1167
01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:02,960
Speaker 1: It's what's whatever is happening with her. They're except not

1168
01:06:03,320 --> 01:06:07,000
Speaker 1: tempered by by the normal kind of avoidance response we

1169
01:06:07,040 --> 01:06:11,000
Speaker 1: would have. So essentially what's being proposed is that is

1170
01:06:11,040 --> 01:06:14,960
Speaker 1: that fear and arousal are separate things, but they're deeply linked.

1171
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:18,880
Speaker 1: And and in in SMS case, she is attracted to

1172
01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:21,040
Speaker 1: the novelty of it. It is the novelty of this

1173
01:06:21,160 --> 01:06:25,040
Speaker 1: thing that is a hybrid creation or just an unreal

1174
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:29,080
Speaker 1: entity that doesn't match up with the existing expectations. Right,

1175
01:06:29,120 --> 01:06:31,640
Speaker 1: She's being excited by the neural pathway that says, look

1176
01:06:31,640 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 1: at this, this is worth your attention. You should pay

1177
01:06:33,880 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: attention to it. But she's not getting the part that says,

1178
01:06:37,040 --> 01:06:40,680
Speaker 1: get the hell away. Interesting Now, on the other hand,

1179
01:06:40,680 --> 01:06:43,280
Speaker 1: if you think this condition of having a fear deficiency

1180
01:06:43,320 --> 01:06:45,840
Speaker 1: sounds great, like like you're like, I wish I had

1181
01:06:45,880 --> 01:06:51,200
Speaker 1: an amygdala religion, Uh, think again. Asthma reports that researchers

1182
01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:54,240
Speaker 1: have repeatedly had to prevent sm from putting herself in

1183
01:06:54,280 --> 01:06:57,400
Speaker 1: actual danger because the fear that would have prevented her

1184
01:06:57,480 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 1: from endangering herself was simply not operative. Of in the

1185
01:07:01,040 --> 01:07:04,320
Speaker 1: same way, you might not enjoy pain, but you wouldn't

1186
01:07:04,320 --> 01:07:06,760
Speaker 1: actually want to have the condition that prevents you from

1187
01:07:06,760 --> 01:07:09,960
Speaker 1: feeling pain because pain is very useful for survival. Well,

1188
01:07:10,000 --> 01:07:12,920
Speaker 1: I mean that matches up with touching the actors at

1189
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:15,400
Speaker 1: a haunted attraction, Like it shows like a lack of

1190
01:07:15,720 --> 01:07:19,440
Speaker 1: boundaries and understanding of those boundaries. I mean, not that

1191
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:21,960
Speaker 1: the the actor is going to physically attack you, but

1192
01:07:22,360 --> 01:07:25,720
Speaker 1: you know she's she's breaking certain rules and expectations there.

1193
01:07:26,160 --> 01:07:29,400
Speaker 1: So yeah, I wonder what role these types of arousal

1194
01:07:29,840 --> 01:07:34,160
Speaker 1: play in what led somebody in the ice age to

1195
01:07:34,400 --> 01:07:38,480
Speaker 1: create a lionman figuring. I mean, assuming that this figure

1196
01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:42,520
Speaker 1: had some kind of fear or all inducing uh significance.

1197
01:07:42,560 --> 01:07:44,200
Speaker 1: We don't know that it did, but you think, you know,

1198
01:07:44,400 --> 01:07:49,800
Speaker 1: monsters usually have some kind of fear inducing properties. If

1199
01:07:49,880 --> 01:07:53,400
Speaker 1: that's what was part of the attitude towards this creature.

1200
01:07:53,480 --> 01:07:56,560
Speaker 1: Could it be that it was created for this attentional arousal,

1201
01:07:56,960 --> 01:07:59,160
Speaker 1: this feeling of like this isn't part of what I

1202
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:03,320
Speaker 1: normally see, you know, the stimulation of the imagination. Yeah,

1203
01:08:03,360 --> 01:08:06,120
Speaker 1: I mean, what if what if this thing was crafted

1204
01:08:06,120 --> 01:08:09,080
Speaker 1: and as it was passed, it passed around like they

1205
01:08:09,080 --> 01:08:12,680
Speaker 1: were just feeling the novelty of it. They were and

1206
01:08:12,960 --> 01:08:16,120
Speaker 1: maybe you know, engaging with with certain feelings of fear

1207
01:08:16,200 --> 01:08:18,080
Speaker 1: that came out of it. But they didn't have, say,

1208
01:08:18,120 --> 01:08:21,240
Speaker 1: a whole cosmology built up around it. Maybe it didn't

1209
01:08:21,280 --> 01:08:24,800
Speaker 1: have a name or a purpose in the in the

1210
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:28,240
Speaker 1: magical world around them, but it was it was almost

1211
01:08:28,320 --> 01:08:32,479
Speaker 1: like like doing shots of espresso. You know, it's it's difficulse.

1212
01:08:32,560 --> 01:08:35,519
Speaker 1: It's simplifying here, it's but it's it is very difficult

1213
01:08:35,560 --> 01:08:38,000
Speaker 1: to try and put ourselves in in the mind of

1214
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:40,439
Speaker 1: of of such people. Yeah, No, I mean I think

1215
01:08:40,479 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 1: that's worth considering. Like, we tend to assume it had

1216
01:08:44,360 --> 01:08:46,679
Speaker 1: something like what we would think of as a sacred

1217
01:08:46,760 --> 01:08:49,960
Speaker 1: or religious significance right now, where you'd you'd participate in

1218
01:08:49,960 --> 01:08:52,559
Speaker 1: a ritual with it. But what if it was much

1219
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:56,800
Speaker 1: more like us watching a horror movie or going to

1220
01:08:56,880 --> 01:09:00,280
Speaker 1: a haunted house. I think that's not impossible. Yeah, I mean,

1221
01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:02,920
Speaker 1: it's kind of like say an image of of of

1222
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:07,400
Speaker 1: the Hindu God that we were talking about earlier, Narasima, Like,

1223
01:09:07,439 --> 01:09:10,360
Speaker 1: you can look at that image without knowing anything about Hinduism,

1224
01:09:10,479 --> 01:09:13,800
Speaker 1: anything about the story that's being told, anything about the

1225
01:09:14,240 --> 01:09:16,719
Speaker 1: you know, the various symbols that are at play here,

1226
01:09:17,160 --> 01:09:20,040
Speaker 1: and you can still have a very this or reaction

1227
01:09:20,080 --> 01:09:22,360
Speaker 1: to it. You kind of a you feel something when

1228
01:09:22,400 --> 01:09:25,720
Speaker 1: you look at it, uh, And then you can you

1229
01:09:25,720 --> 01:09:28,679
Speaker 1: can feel something rather different when you have this additional

1230
01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:31,280
Speaker 1: information about it. So it could be that maybe the

1231
01:09:31,320 --> 01:09:34,840
Speaker 1: lionman was part of a religious ritual or religious belief,

1232
01:09:34,920 --> 01:09:37,240
Speaker 1: but it could also just be that for some people

1233
01:09:37,439 --> 01:09:40,040
Speaker 1: who had a shallower engagement, it was just a thrill.

1234
01:09:40,560 --> 01:09:44,280
Speaker 1: It was just facing the monster again, because how many

1235
01:09:44,320 --> 01:09:46,519
Speaker 1: we have so many unreal things in our world. We

1236
01:09:46,520 --> 01:09:49,840
Speaker 1: have so many monsters to turn to. But imagine living

1237
01:09:49,840 --> 01:09:52,840
Speaker 1: in a world where there's one unreal thing, There's one

1238
01:09:53,040 --> 01:09:55,360
Speaker 1: unreal image that's it, and you get to touch it

1239
01:09:55,439 --> 01:09:58,479
Speaker 1: once a week. That's given me the creeps man a

1240
01:09:58,600 --> 01:10:01,680
Speaker 1: world with only one months her. Yeah, all right, Well,

1241
01:10:01,720 --> 01:10:04,439
Speaker 1: I want to get on one more aspect of Asthma's

1242
01:10:04,439 --> 01:10:06,679
Speaker 1: paper before we finish out today. He actually talks about

1243
01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:09,360
Speaker 1: a bunch more stuff in his paper, like the second

1244
01:10:09,439 --> 01:10:13,640
Speaker 1: half of it is all about like xenophobia and the

1245
01:10:13,680 --> 01:10:16,439
Speaker 1: social implications of monster fear, And I want to talk

1246
01:10:16,439 --> 01:10:18,800
Speaker 1: about one more idea that he goes to, which is

1247
01:10:18,840 --> 01:10:21,679
Speaker 1: that monster horror is not just cognitive recognition but also

1248
01:10:21,760 --> 01:10:26,799
Speaker 1: an affective emotional state. So Asthma writes, quote, the emotion

1249
01:10:26,880 --> 01:10:31,000
Speaker 1: slash cognition complex in horror is a yannis faced experience,

1250
01:10:31,400 --> 01:10:35,160
Speaker 1: partly imperative as in I should run away, and partly

1251
01:10:35,200 --> 01:10:39,639
Speaker 1: indicative that creature is part man and part snake. According

1252
01:10:39,640 --> 01:10:43,360
Speaker 1: to some philosophers of mine, like Ruth Milliken, this yannis

1253
01:10:43,360 --> 01:10:47,639
Speaker 1: faced and representation is strongly coupled together in lower animals mice,

1254
01:10:47,760 --> 01:10:51,559
Speaker 1: for example, simultaneously recognized cats as a kind of thing

1255
01:10:51,880 --> 01:10:55,240
Speaker 1: in a category and as dangerous, So that's the fear

1256
01:10:55,280 --> 01:10:58,599
Speaker 1: affect I should run away. Humans, on the other hand,

1257
01:10:58,960 --> 01:11:03,000
Speaker 1: can decouple the two pathways indicative and imperative, and fear

1258
01:11:03,040 --> 01:11:07,759
Speaker 1: can be reattached to alternative kinds of creatures and perceptions.

1259
01:11:07,800 --> 01:11:11,760
Speaker 1: So here's where he's getting into the monster generative capacity.

1260
01:11:11,800 --> 01:11:14,880
Speaker 1: It's like, we've got these monster recognition pathways in the brain,

1261
01:11:15,320 --> 01:11:18,880
Speaker 1: but they're made for natural predators, and once we've got

1262
01:11:18,880 --> 01:11:22,400
Speaker 1: the power to put imaginative content on them, they can

1263
01:11:22,439 --> 01:11:26,360
Speaker 1: still be used in the same way. And in this way,

1264
01:11:26,439 --> 01:11:28,720
Speaker 1: Asthma seems to think, monster fear is caused by a

1265
01:11:28,800 --> 01:11:32,960
Speaker 1: system of what's known as quote somatic markers. Essentially these

1266
01:11:33,040 --> 01:11:36,759
Speaker 1: trainable neural pathways that can be filled with emotional content

1267
01:11:37,320 --> 01:11:40,240
Speaker 1: based on experience. One more quote of his quote. The

1268
01:11:40,280 --> 01:11:44,000
Speaker 1: point is that these emotional responses are not instincts in

1269
01:11:44,040 --> 01:11:48,320
Speaker 1: the sense of prewired or genetically engraved responses. The affective

1270
01:11:48,360 --> 01:11:50,720
Speaker 1: systems are ancient in the sense that they have many

1271
01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:54,599
Speaker 1: homologies with non human animals, but in our individual lives

1272
01:11:54,600 --> 01:11:59,559
Speaker 1: their idiosyncratically assigned and have significant plasticity. So you can

1273
01:11:59,600 --> 01:12:03,000
Speaker 1: fill up with whatever monsters happened to catch your fancy.

1274
01:12:03,840 --> 01:12:07,240
Speaker 1: And and the idea here is that imaginative monsters have

1275
01:12:07,439 --> 01:12:11,280
Speaker 1: this adaptive survival value. I mean, we talked in uh

1276
01:12:11,400 --> 01:12:14,919
Speaker 1: not to go again to the bi cameral mind episode.

1277
01:12:14,960 --> 01:12:17,679
Speaker 1: But one thing that apart from the whole bi cameral

1278
01:12:17,680 --> 01:12:20,439
Speaker 1: mind hypothesis just taking out the whole all of the

1279
01:12:20,439 --> 01:12:24,040
Speaker 1: bi camerality, one thing Julian Jaynes talked about was that

1280
01:12:24,120 --> 01:12:28,080
Speaker 1: he thought that the primary adaptive benefit of consciousness is

1281
01:12:28,120 --> 01:12:31,559
Speaker 1: that you could run simulations in your mind. When you've

1282
01:12:31,560 --> 01:12:34,479
Speaker 1: got conscious thought, you've got this mind space where you

1283
01:12:34,479 --> 01:12:39,240
Speaker 1: can experiment with things. And uh, Ultimately, Asthma talks about

1284
01:12:39,439 --> 01:12:42,680
Speaker 1: fear of monsters being a similar thing, monsters in your

1285
01:12:42,680 --> 01:12:47,479
Speaker 1: mind can provide a kind of mental training simulator, a

1286
01:12:47,479 --> 01:12:51,000
Speaker 1: place to work out emotional and behavioral responses to danger

1287
01:12:51,400 --> 01:12:55,839
Speaker 1: within the safety of the imagination. But because horror images

1288
01:12:55,880 --> 01:12:59,800
Speaker 1: have such strong access to our emotional reactions, he says,

1289
01:13:00,040 --> 01:13:03,040
Speaker 1: and this is an interesting bridge. They don't just train

1290
01:13:03,080 --> 01:13:07,800
Speaker 1: our behaviors, they train our values, which gives them great

1291
01:13:07,800 --> 01:13:11,200
Speaker 1: power for good and ill in conditioning our moral judgments

1292
01:13:11,240 --> 01:13:13,840
Speaker 1: and opinions. This takes us back to St. Augustine right

1293
01:13:14,160 --> 01:13:18,080
Speaker 1: that monsters instruct a point. Stories about monsters so often

1294
01:13:18,160 --> 01:13:21,720
Speaker 1: have a moral or they teach some virtue. They tell

1295
01:13:21,760 --> 01:13:24,639
Speaker 1: you what you should do in a certain situation and

1296
01:13:24,680 --> 01:13:28,320
Speaker 1: condition your responses to it. And they're much more effective

1297
01:13:28,720 --> 01:13:32,360
Speaker 1: than normal teaching and instruction because they get at you

1298
01:13:32,439 --> 01:13:34,960
Speaker 1: emotionally that you know that you don't have to be

1299
01:13:35,080 --> 01:13:37,439
Speaker 1: lectured about what you should do. If you see an

1300
01:13:37,479 --> 01:13:41,160
Speaker 1: illustration within a monster story, you just feel emotionally what

1301
01:13:41,280 --> 01:13:43,880
Speaker 1: you should do. Yeah, Because on one hand, they're simply saying, hey,

1302
01:13:43,920 --> 01:13:47,839
Speaker 1: kids don't go swim in that creek without the adults around.

1303
01:13:48,000 --> 01:13:50,000
Speaker 1: And then there's hey, kids don't go swimming that creek

1304
01:13:50,000 --> 01:13:53,600
Speaker 1: without the adults around, because there's electric turtle man drown you,

1305
01:13:54,120 --> 01:13:55,960
Speaker 1: you know. And yet we see that, of course time

1306
01:13:55,960 --> 01:13:59,280
Speaker 1: and time again in folklore's where there is some sort

1307
01:13:59,400 --> 01:14:04,320
Speaker 1: of ow creature who will drown you if you swim unattended. Yeah,

1308
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:07,120
Speaker 1: And so I think this could be a very plausible

1309
01:14:07,160 --> 01:14:11,040
Speaker 1: explanation for the emergence of monsters in human history, that

1310
01:14:11,120 --> 01:14:14,800
Speaker 1: they could have emerged around the same time as language

1311
01:14:14,960 --> 01:14:19,320
Speaker 1: as a social cohesion technique and as a social value

1312
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:23,960
Speaker 1: instilling technique. They're they're there to get people to believe

1313
01:14:24,200 --> 01:14:26,880
Speaker 1: things that would be hard to convince them to believe

1314
01:14:27,000 --> 01:14:29,719
Speaker 1: just by telling them. I like that. Yeah, I shouldn't

1315
01:14:29,720 --> 01:14:32,639
Speaker 1: go off the path. I shouldn't mess around with somebody

1316
01:14:32,680 --> 01:14:35,479
Speaker 1: else's spouse. I shouldn't you know all these things? Because

1317
01:14:35,600 --> 01:14:38,599
Speaker 1: why because a monster will get you if you do. Yeah.

1318
01:14:38,680 --> 01:14:41,439
Speaker 1: So many monsters are tied to boundaries. Cross the boundary

1319
01:14:41,640 --> 01:14:45,160
Speaker 1: and face the monster. Yeah so so Yeah, I guess

1320
01:14:45,160 --> 01:14:47,720
Speaker 1: that's the end that we We don't have ultimately the

1321
01:14:47,760 --> 01:14:50,320
Speaker 1: answer about when the first monster arose, But I think

1322
01:14:50,320 --> 01:14:54,080
Speaker 1: it's very plausible that they could have their their roots

1323
01:14:54,120 --> 01:14:58,360
Speaker 1: in social teaching. Yeah, I think so. I think I

1324
01:14:58,360 --> 01:15:01,000
Speaker 1: feel like we've given we've given everybody some tremendous food

1325
01:15:01,040 --> 01:15:05,840
Speaker 1: for thought in trying to unravel the meaning of that

1326
01:15:06,200 --> 01:15:08,679
Speaker 1: lion headed figure and what what it meant to people

1327
01:15:08,720 --> 01:15:11,559
Speaker 1: then and what the idea of monster of the monster

1328
01:15:11,640 --> 01:15:16,200
Speaker 1: has continued to mean for people in all subsequent generations.

1329
01:15:16,240 --> 01:15:18,040
Speaker 1: So what do you think, mab what what could the

1330
01:15:18,080 --> 01:15:20,720
Speaker 1: lionman have been teaching was the low and men's uh

1331
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:25,960
Speaker 1: a story about how don't go in strange caves? Or uh? Yeah,

1332
01:15:26,000 --> 01:15:28,840
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I'm will based on things I've

1333
01:15:28,880 --> 01:15:32,559
Speaker 1: read in the past, I'm more inclined to give it

1334
01:15:32,680 --> 01:15:35,800
Speaker 1: sort of a chaotic vibe, you know, like thinking of

1335
01:15:35,800 --> 01:15:39,160
Speaker 1: it in terms of ancient gods of the hunt and whatnot,

1336
01:15:39,160 --> 01:15:42,600
Speaker 1: that that this is some sort of an entity that represented,

1337
01:15:42,760 --> 01:15:45,160
Speaker 1: to whatever extent they were able to really think about it,

1338
01:15:45,520 --> 01:15:48,519
Speaker 1: this is a figure that represented the uncertainty of the

1339
01:15:48,560 --> 01:15:51,240
Speaker 1: wild world they lived in. Now, was it chaotic good,

1340
01:15:51,320 --> 01:15:54,839
Speaker 1: chaotic neutral, or chaotic evil? I think just chaotic neutral.

1341
01:15:55,000 --> 01:15:57,960
Speaker 1: Like the world has a certain amount of chaos in it,

1342
01:15:58,439 --> 01:16:00,519
Speaker 1: and some days you're gonna go to the cave and

1343
01:16:00,560 --> 01:16:04,840
Speaker 1: there's gonna be and you will face the lionman and

1344
01:16:04,880 --> 01:16:07,439
Speaker 1: then you know, maybe you'll lock eyes with it and

1345
01:16:07,479 --> 01:16:09,680
Speaker 1: walk away, but maybe not. Some days you eat the

1346
01:16:09,680 --> 01:16:13,479
Speaker 1: loan mench and some days the loan mench. It's you, amen, partner.

1347
01:16:14,360 --> 01:16:16,920
Speaker 1: All right? Well, on that note, hey, if you want

1348
01:16:16,920 --> 01:16:19,559
Speaker 1: to see an image of this fabulous statue and maybe

1349
01:16:19,560 --> 01:16:22,920
Speaker 1: some of these other critters we've talked about, head on

1350
01:16:22,960 --> 01:16:24,519
Speaker 1: over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's

1351
01:16:24,520 --> 01:16:27,400
Speaker 1: where you'll find the landing page for this episode, along

1352
01:16:27,439 --> 01:16:29,559
Speaker 1: with all past episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1353
01:16:29,880 --> 01:16:32,120
Speaker 1: and links out to our various social media accounts of

1354
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:36,680
Speaker 1: just Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler, and hay on Facebook. We

1355
01:16:36,760 --> 01:16:39,920
Speaker 1: have our main page there our main account, but then

1356
01:16:39,920 --> 01:16:42,599
Speaker 1: there's also the stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module.

1357
01:16:42,640 --> 01:16:46,360
Speaker 1: That's a closed group that you can apply to. Pretty

1358
01:16:46,400 --> 01:16:50,280
Speaker 1: much everybody gets in and then you can discuss episodes

1359
01:16:50,400 --> 01:16:54,720
Speaker 1: or unrelated topics with other listeners as well as the

1360
01:16:54,760 --> 01:16:58,080
Speaker 1: hosts themselves from time to time. And if you want

1361
01:16:58,080 --> 01:16:59,960
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly to give us

1362
01:17:00,040 --> 01:17:02,280
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1363
01:17:02,320 --> 01:17:04,640
Speaker 1: future episode topic, or just to say hi, you can

1364
01:17:04,680 --> 01:17:07,320
Speaker 1: always email us at blow the Mind at how stuff

1365
01:17:07,320 --> 01:17:20,240
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of

1366
01:17:20,240 --> 01:17:45,320
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com