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12 - Thomas Browne - Renaissance Mythbuster
19 Plays9 days ago
Seventeenth-century author Sir Thomas Browne was a true Renaissance man: a doctor, a scholar, a scientist, and… a mythbuster! In this episode, Jen will delve into Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Browne’s 1646 compendium debunking hundreds of ancient legends, myths, and old wives’ tales.
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Transcript
Introduction and Concept of 'Wonder Camera'
00:00:26
Speaker
And with that lovely theme song, we're all dancing along too. that We are the Wonder Camer. My name is Jennifer Rumpel and here with... Dave Powell and and Tracy Anderson Powell. And we are excited to bring you another episode of the wonder camera. Again, we are three dilettantes who open up a cabinet of our wonder camera, our cabinet curiosities and share something interesting and fun with you.
00:00:53
Speaker
Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes it's scary. Sometimes it's interesting, but it's always good. didn' play It's always camera. It's always involving a cabinet.
00:01:05
Speaker
It's always the camera. It's always the cabinet.
Human Fascination with Myths and Falsehoods
00:01:07
Speaker
And what I'm bringing you guys today, because it's my turn, is I'm going to discuss with you. I'm actually going to tell you what it is right away. I'm going start off with a little cold open here. So I would argue that since the dawn of recorded time, humans have loved our bullshit.
00:01:28
Speaker
We love to believe in stupid crap that is not true and for a variety of reasons. Usually these reasons revolve around protecting our emotions and preserving our biased worldviews.
00:01:39
Speaker
Some bullshit is relatively harmless and fun. Although for myself, I know like I think teaching kids that Santa Claus is real as child abuse. so I'm very like literal anti-bullshit.
00:01:55
Speaker
But we all have these little like sort of quote unquote facts that we've picked up in our daily lives that we're like, we're pretty sure they're true, but we've never bothered to actually investigate. So you've heard the rumor, oh, we only use 10% of our brains.
00:02:06
Speaker
ah Elephants never forget. i don't know if they forget or not, but something I learned as a kid. That's right. that The 10% of the brain is a good example because that is unbelievable bullshit.
00:02:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
Debunking the Lemmings Myth and Disney's Role
00:02:20
Speaker
um There's no one that we lose 90% of our body heat through our heads. that's why you have to wear a hat when you go outside. That's basically like, yeah, if you go outside without a hat on, the heat's going to come out from your head.
00:02:34
Speaker
It's not like you're your is a cooling center. i learned that swimming about hypothermia. And I think the real reason is just surface area. You do lose heat through your head faster but because it's round.
00:02:47
Speaker
That's true. That's a good point. More surface area. But not yeah pretty round. I lose heat. Round is a shape. That's all good. Round's a good shape. But you probably, I'm sure you've heard the idea that lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off of cliffs.
00:03:04
Speaker
right Or pushed off by Disney. Yeah, that's right. Yes, because we all thought that that was true. Although but by now, this is one of those ones that's been so thoroughly debunked. The debunking has become the myth in a way.
00:03:17
Speaker
oh yes, Dave, you were correct. Before I get to my real topic, I do want to talk about some little fun little bullshit here. Because the lemming thing indeed was myth created by the east evil Disney Corporation in the 1958 so-called documentary White Wilderness.
00:03:32
Speaker
So I'm going to quote from the website of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. So according to a 1983 investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC represents, producer Brian Valley, so c according to the producer, the lemming scenes in White Wilderness were faked.
00:03:48
Speaker
The lemmings, supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean, were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. The epic lemming migration was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles, and a few dozen lemmings running on snow-covered, lazy Susan-styled turntables.
00:04:05
Speaker
so I didn't know about the lazy Susans. Oh my god. No, no I didn't. It was to make them dizzy. oh it's been la using this pack anyway but They had to make the dizzy.
00:04:21
Speaker
A living merry-go-round. Oh my goodness.
00:04:26
Speaker
Filmed, guess where? Our very own Alberta, Canada. Oh, really? Yeah. So the producers... God bless. They point out that Alberta's a landlocked province.
00:04:38
Speaker
I'm not going to jump off coast into the sea. It's not even the lemmings' natural habitat. So there's about 20 lemming species. Yeah. There's 20 lemming species found in the circumpolar north, but not in the area of Alberta where it was filmed. So...
00:04:52
Speaker
this is according to the producer, Brian Fowley of the CBC. The Disney people bought lemmings from
Animal Abuse in Films and Historical Context
00:04:58
Speaker
Inuit children. What these says a couple of provinces away in Manitoba and staged the whole sequence. So they bought children's pets off them and pushed them off a cliff. Yes.
00:05:08
Speaker
Oh, that's great. We call this Milo and Otis-ing the lemmings. Yeah. Oh, God. my sister told me about Milo and Otis. I'm like, I am traumatized. We had a cat where we got a cat and I wanted to call him Milo because he was a little orange cat. And Dave happened to look up on Wikipedia about all of the horrific animal abuse and we couldn't name him Milo. So now he's munched.
00:05:32
Speaker
They went through a lot of Milo's. Munch is a good name. Munch is a great name. Yeah. Anytime you name anything, you have double check. Right? Like, was this person cancelled?
00:05:43
Speaker
Are they a... Should this person be cancelled? Yeah, exactly. It's why we couldn't keep that gerbil we called Hitler. It was just a odd. ah It's too bad, man. What a cute little name for a gerbil!
00:05:56
Speaker
More I was about that guy, the less I liked him. It's unfortunate, you know? The name... Heard the name first... I think it's now controversial to say that, you know, he was a bad guy, but more I learned about him.
00:06:09
Speaker
Sir, you done wrong. think so. I should have told him, you know, huh not doing the right thing. Bad man. ah Business Insider weighed in on the lemming controversy for some reason, noting that during their migrations, lemmings sometimes do fall off cliffs or if they wandered into an area they're unfamiliar with.
00:06:32
Speaker
So they lemmings don't always any animal. Yeah. Thanks for that, too business insider. Cause you gotta have both sides of the story. Sometimes it's fall off cliffs, fall off cliffs. Disney's not lying.
00:06:44
Speaker
Oh, I get it. It is the, we need to represent both sides of the dual lemmings throw the hurdle themselves off of cliffs for no reason. Argument. know i go both finds it Fun thing about lemmings is, ah because I am,
00:07:00
Speaker
ah What's the best way to say it? I find zoology fun. I wouldn't say I'm a zoology nerd because that would imply I have any education in it whatsoever. But you can just go look up videos of lemmings and they love to stand and try to stand off with people and scare them off. And it's the cutest thing in the world because they are you know basically Arctic mice, right? They're just little critters. They're adorable.
00:07:24
Speaker
They are just... Back off or Walt Disney is coming over here and kicking you off this ledge. Okay. Our episode is not about lemmings. I think it would be funny if that's what lemming parents told their children.
00:07:38
Speaker
do If you don't go to bed. Well, Dizzy's going to shove you off a cliff. Yeah, exactly. After getting you real dizzy. Lazy Susan for you. I did see a brief clip of Lemmings falling off a cliff and I was horrified and I didn't include the link because it was very sad. Yeah. i little guess I'm like, that's awful. But yes.
00:07:58
Speaker
So I would say bullshit is fun. Kind of. Not to me, but to some people. But it can also be dangerous. I mean, look at RFK Jr. We're dealing with yeah those poor lemmings.
00:08:10
Speaker
Right? So now we come to the true core of my tale. So again, as long as we humans have believed in our bullshit, there have been those who have done their best to debunk said bullshit.
Sir Thomas Browne: The Original Myth-Buster
00:08:21
Speaker
For example, Sir Thomas Brown. Brown with an E. Have you heard of this guy? Either of you? No. kind of rings a bell, but I'm going to say no. Maybe since rings a bell. Or you might know him as Thomas Brown Knight, MD, as he's entitled on the French's piece of his work called Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
00:08:42
Speaker
Oh, boy. That sounds official. Yeah, I'm going send you a link to this work online. um Just real quick. We can probably cut this from the record, but I will just send you that link real quick in chat.
00:08:58
Speaker
So you can just take a look. It's pretty, you can see this is the online version by one James Eason, I believe created it. Incredible work of typing and layout. This is an entire, I, okay. So pseudodoxy epidemica, I'll get into the webpage a bit more later on, but essentially ah this book, we're going back to, okay, let's cut all this.
00:09:20
Speaker
Sorry. We'll start back at now. So this bullshit can be fun, but can also be dangerous. ah Sorry. I lost my step. So we're going to just stop.
00:09:34
Speaker
And I'll start again. Okay. We're keeping all of it in. No. We won't. Okay. So Pseudodoxia Epidemica was, is okay. Stop that. right Sorry.
00:09:46
Speaker
Now we're starting. Okay. Inhale. Outhale. Inhale. to the right spot the script. You've got this. don't You've got this. Okay. we We believe you. Yay! So for this episode, we're going back to the 17th century in Europe again. Again, this is a very fascinating time of scientific and political revolution. We went back there my episode about anatomical specimen specimens. So Sir Thomas Brown, knight, medical doctor, was born, just plain old Thomas Brown, with an E, in 1605.
00:10:17
Speaker
He was born on October 19th, to be precise, and which is kind of funny because i started writing this essay on Sunday, October 19th, which I did not know was his birthday. Coincidence?
00:10:28
Speaker
Kind of spooky. Anyway. yeah Thomas Brown was born in London, England. So a middle-class merchant family. He attended Winchester College, then Oxford University, continuing his studies in Padua, which we know about. That's where our poor, punished suicide was scalped in Padua Medical School there.
00:10:48
Speaker
And guess where else he studied? Leiden. Yep. I'm not doing this on purpose. I'm not doing this on purpose to brag about my Leiden connections, but really, um he did go to Leiden University. I didn't know that when I started working on this. I knew about this work, but i didn't know his connection to Leiden. Anyway, Leiden is just a very old university with a lot of weird people who studied there.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah. You are a spectacularly skeptical and non-superstitious person. And right now, everybody who believes in the woo-woo stuff is screaming at you that ah the omens are calling and that the ghosts are circling you and you just refuse to deal with it. You're ah just you're just scullying the hell out of this.
00:11:29
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, to me, it's it's mere coincidence. That's all. Boring. Even though, yeah, October 19th, started working on it. Oh, I'll be damned. kind of interesting Oh, Leiden. Interesting. Although that one, yes. i said a lot of weird A lot of weird people studied at Leiden, especially in the medical professions in the 1600s. Leiden was important as a medical center. So, yeah. So, yeah, there's there's coincidence, but I kind of get it.
00:11:53
Speaker
So Brown receives his medical degree from Leiden in 1633, and he ends up returning to England. So he moves to Norwich. i don't know if you've ever seen Alan Partridge.
00:12:06
Speaker
I was thinking of Radio Norwich. Anyway, so he goes to Norwich for his ah medical profession. He stays there until his death in 1682. He married one Dorothy Milam, or Milham, with whom he had 10 children.
00:12:22
Speaker
Four of whom... ah Settle down there. Yeah. Well, you had to have because six of them died. Yeah. yeah Ten kids, four of them outlived their parents. You gotta hedge your bets.
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. day Like I say, if I lived back then, I'd be a nun. Nah, just end up in dioramas. Terrible. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Medical diorama, too. Okay. So during this time, Rick, not really distinguished in terms of getting out there. He's living in Norwich for, what is that, 50 years, right? But he had a very successful literary career. So his first work was Religio Medici, or The Religion of a Doctor.
00:13:00
Speaker
was quite popular in Brown's own day. This book was reprinted several times and in various translations, including into Latin, because he's writing in English. which is a break sort of from the past.
00:13:13
Speaker
um Religio Medici, not read the whole thing. I've skimmed it. i don't find this topic interesting, but basically with this book, Brown is arguing that religious faith is not incompatible with the practice of medicine, nor more broadly with science itself.
00:13:31
Speaker
Everyone has different opinions on that, but I would say at the time Brown was writing, probably a pretty important message, But hey, you don't got to pick either or um Here's what Brown writes in Religio Medici.
00:13:45
Speaker
He says, thus, there are two books from whence I collect my divinity. Besides that, what besides sorry, besides that written one of God, another of his servant nature. that Okay, I got to start this again. Sorry.
00:13:58
Speaker
I did the thing where I didn't plan. i was going to say it. Brown writes that thus, there are two books from whence I collect my divinity. Besides that one written of God, another of his servant nature.
00:14:10
Speaker
So the book of God, the Bible, and the book of his servant nature. That universal and public manuscript that lies expensed unto the eyes of all. So basically, thanks.
00:14:22
Speaker
Go ahead. ah This is an early ah example of the sort of the you can be religious and, ah for example, believe in evolution at the same time. It wasn't a concept back then, but that the natural world and religion are not at odds with each other or religious beliefs. You just have to accept that the natural world is what it is. And this is the hand by which God ah you know works creation.
00:14:45
Speaker
but's Yeah, good summary, Dave. That's pretty much exactly it. So he's saying, look, I learned from the holy books, but I also learned by observing the world around me. So which was, after all, created by God, right? Brown also did believe in angels and witchcraft.
00:15:00
Speaker
So this is actually quite an easy compromise. As we shall see, we get more into pseudodoxia epidemica. Pseudodoxia epidemica basically means an epidemic of false knowledge.
00:15:11
Speaker
This is the first Snopes. I'm just glancing at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. So Brown, here wrote a couple of other works, a hydrotafia or urn burial, a brief discourse of the sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk.
00:15:23
Speaker
So it's about there. They found some ancient urns. And so he wrote about it, which I tried to read. This one is a little bit dull. I didn't bother, frankly. Sorry. this isn but I'm a dilettante. What can I say? I'll probably read it later. Because I did read all of Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
00:15:37
Speaker
During the pandemic, mainly the early parts. But this is a revisit. But yes, did not go into that one. Same with his book, The Garden of Cyrus. Or The Quincoxial Lozenge. Or Network Plantations of the Ancients. Naturally, artificially, mystically considered.
00:15:55
Speaker
So this book, I am not touching because... I know what the fuck it's about, frankly. I don't think anybody does. So this latter book, it's really strange. It's about the quincunx. Quincunx is the name given to the five points in the shape of a cross. So think of five dots on the ice. on on honest Five dots on dice. Okay, right. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. yeah So it's like the shape is mystical. You can plant trees in that shape in a garden. It's about numerology. It's extremely esoteric.
00:16:25
Speaker
And i don't care about numerology. His writing style is very dense. I didn't read it. And I'm never going to, frankly, because it's not for me. And I'm a dilettante and somewhat lazy. And I have other podcast scripts to write. But back to Brown.
00:16:38
Speaker
so If you want to talk about stuff you didn't read, I haven't read most books. So there. Yeah, well, there we go. We can have a podcast, Things We Didn't Read. Yeah. Yeah. yeah and Name a book. I probably haven't read it.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah. and I've read a lot of books. There's just more books than the ones that have been read. Yeah, that's right. That really makes sense. But yeah, back to Brown. So yeah, his works made him famous in England. And he was a correspondence of our other Renaissance man from another episode, John Evelyn.
00:17:04
Speaker
So John Evelyn was a courtier in the court in the court of King Charles the second So the king visited Norwich in 1671. And both men paid a visit to Brown at his home.
00:17:16
Speaker
and At this point, Brown was granted a knighthood, so then he becomes Sir Medical Doctor, to you. Okay, so get moving on a bit, he died on his 77th birthday, coincidentally too, in 1682.
00:17:30
Speaker
So he's considered by some scholars, literary scholars, to be a great literary stylist. So he's been called an exemplar of erudition and stately eloquence. What I would say is, in his own time, when he was writing scholarly works in English as opposed to Latin, he would have been seen as maybe a a unique and compelling author.
00:17:50
Speaker
Certainly, his subject matter is such. It's unique and compelling, mostly. i would say, though, to the modern reader, the run-on sentences... And frequent Latin citations can be very trying to get through. It's a very dense book. I don't know how I read it. I was like supremely bored to to have read the whole thing at one point.
00:18:09
Speaker
There is a lot of interesting things in this book, but it is dense. Also, it's very funny. Brown just kind of made up a shit ton of words. so Oh, I love that. I will give you example. i'm going to read some excerpts later to get you a flavor, but he just makes words up all the time. So according to Wikipedia, he has Brown has 775 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary of first usage of a word.
00:18:34
Speaker
Oh, wow. So the first time he has 775 entries of words he's made up. Well, and what's impressive is that they stuck after making them up because anybody can make up a word, but it's making up a word that actually persists enough to show up in the OED.
00:18:48
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. I think people might be because the OED is very much a catalog. And I got to say, we don't use so many of the words that he uses in this book. Like he's just I don't know. He's just making them up. And not some of them didn't stick. Oh, fair.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah. they're Just cataloged rather than yeah that goes. ah That then ignores my diction. You know, language is defined by use kind of thing. Well, it is and it didn't. the The OED is very particular because the OED is like, this is the definitive catalog of the English language. They look for the first usage of a word.
00:19:23
Speaker
Got it. There's a whole saga about how that book was written because it was a huge group effort to get those documentations because people are reading books and finding first usages. So it's very interesting. So he's quoted in a total of 4,131 entries of first evidence of word.
00:19:39
Speaker
entries of first evidence of a word so So 4,000 entries in the OED quote him the first time we've seen this. And he's quoted 1,596 times as first evidence of a particular meaning of a word.
00:19:52
Speaker
So maybe he's using it. I don't know exactly how they're defining this, but basically he's made up fuck ton of words. Some of them we use to this day and some of them we don't. I'm going to try and do a really quick rundown. Some of the words that he invented.
00:20:06
Speaker
So,
00:20:14
Speaker
cryptography cylindrical disruption electricity ergotisms exhaustion ferocious follicle generator gymnasticucation herbaceious holocaust indigenous andsec security jocity literary locomotion medical imprint mucus prairie precocious polarity prostate pubescent suicide therapeutic ulterior ultimate and veterinarian Wait, you were just trying to argue that his the words he made up do not are not currently used. Some of them. I was about to say, that was a very impressive list of words he made Yes.
00:20:44
Speaker
It's very impressive. He has 775 entries. I also thought you were about to break into Tom Lehrer's The Elements song. Oh, no. That was impressive. How many times did you practice that?
00:20:56
Speaker
Not once. My God. I just... hoped I could do it. And yeah, thank you. What the hell, Tracy? Join me in the applause. There we go. can breathe again.
00:21:09
Speaker
okay So now, after all that, finally, we're, what, 20 minutes in?
Browne's Philosophical Arguments and Impact
00:21:13
Speaker
We're going to get to the book and some of the words that he made up that we no longer use or understand. So, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, you can go to the website, again, created by a one, I believe, James Eason.
00:21:24
Speaker
Type this out manually. says from the 1672 edition and carefully proofread quite some time ago. But yeah, you can read the whole thing online. And ah reading it online is better than the print book. i had a print copy that was basically just...
00:21:39
Speaker
ah digital printout and it was like up to so upwards of 600 pages, I think maybe 700. So this is kind of ideal to read it online because you can look at the different subsections and find out what's interesting to you. So this book, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, is divided into seven separate so-called books.
00:21:56
Speaker
seven parts, each further subdivided into chapters. So I'm goingnna give you a quick outline of the topic of each one, and then I'm going to go into some of the fascinating highlights from each book. So we have book one is a general introduction.
00:22:08
Speaker
Book two is about minerals and vegetables. Book three concerns animals. Book four, man, humankind. Book five is things you see in pictures or paintings that are neat explaining. Book seven, sorry, six is geography and history. And then book seven deals with some scriptural and historical ah myths or common beliefs.
00:22:31
Speaker
So book one, pretty boring. It's just called the general part. And it's sort of about the reasons why people believe in things that aren't true. not going to go into it that Because with Brown, it's tricky because he obviously believes things that aren't true.
00:22:46
Speaker
So Brown is arguing that humans make mistakes because we're not infallible like God is infallible. I was i i was wondering what his argument would be there because I've got my own about why people believe bullshit.
00:23:00
Speaker
And, I mean, even if ah even if we accept that god ah that God doesn't exist because this is not a particularly religious podcast, you know, it's not like the ideas of the religious or are ah worth discarding either.
00:23:13
Speaker
Yeah, there's ideas, but then there's, like, actual, like, belief. So... In this introduction, he tells a story, a true story, about some talking snake that tricks this lady, Eve, into eating a fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And then she convinces her dummy husband, Adam, eat the fruit tree, eat the fruit of the tree too. So they both get banished from the Garden of Eden. And that is why humans have been fallible fallible and error prone, as I am, obviously, ever since.
00:23:45
Speaker
So this, in my opinion, is not a strong start for a book that seeks to debunk common popular errors. You see what I'm saying? Like, it's tricky. Because, like, dude, you're so close to getting it, right? Well, and he's not going to independently invent psychology at that point either. He's a couple hundred years out from that, which is part of the trick here is the only thing he can do is understand the world with the...
00:24:11
Speaker
ah with what he has in front of him. And there is a basic contradiction. And I think it's a useful contradiction for us to keep in mind because it's something you said early on.
00:24:22
Speaker
Stuff that we are raised with and just inherently believe to be true is the stuff that we are the least likely to question. And what I find is I'm more likely to look up something I learned that's new than something i've I just assumed to be true.
00:24:41
Speaker
That's true. That could be most most people as well. So and he so he hears ah some sort of fantastical story about an animal from another from another continent. He's going to be skeptical.
00:24:53
Speaker
But just because everyone knows the Bible is true, so therefore it's true. yeah it's it's Right? It's sort of how we psychologically but you know internalize these things differently. Yep, that's basically right. And think about the time period he's in. like He probably did believe in God, right? But at a certain point, you read a lot of these authors, you're like...
00:25:12
Speaker
did they though? Religion at this time is pretty much forced upon you on pain of death, right? Like at the very least you do the external activities, right? You need to express your devotion in the proper way at all times, basically to avoid suspicion from the authorities. So this is 1650s, 60s, 70s in England at the time, sort of an uneasy...
00:25:34
Speaker
peace with Catholics and Protestants not very... You know what I mean? like the The official Church of England, which you have to basically say you believe in, and then people with their internal beliefs. right So you kind of cannot, at this time in history, go on and say God does not exist.
00:25:51
Speaker
Look at the evidence. If we're actually debunking everything, right he would probably get sent to prison or execute be executed. right So you kind of can't do that. right And so you could have... ah Part of the thing is that the understanding of religion was in flux a lot of that time with the Enlightenment incoming. And what you'd have is people who are deists, for example. That's right. ah And which a lot of Enlightenment thinkers were, I believe.
00:26:18
Speaker
And so, for example, everybody likes to canonize the American founding fathers. They should not. But nonetheless, very famous figures who were notably not devoutly religious, yeah but ah they were for the most part, you know, they weren't atheists or even agnostic.
00:26:36
Speaker
They were, however, not placing the supremacy of the church and the literal fact of the Bible foremost. They were just kind of deist to my understanding. There's a they study to death. Other people know more. That sort of thing. But I get what you mean, which is it doesn't no matter what beliefs he had here, he has to forefront the religious beliefs because he ah were under Charles II right now. Everyone is ah things aren't exactly stable in England. get it.
00:27:05
Speaker
yeah So, you know, it's a tricky time. You'd be very, very careful. um I do get that. So again, like I say, reading a lot of these early modern sort of Renaissance authors, it it does seem like, reminds me, they're afraid of atheism the same way liberals are afraid of Marxism, to be honest.
00:27:20
Speaker
Like... It's objectively correct, but, you know, acknowledging the fact can give you an existential crisis. It's easy to pretend it's wrong, pretend you don't get it, you know? can get complicated on my opinion zone if Marxism is correct, but however, I get your points. Oh, I know. Oh, I know. I wasn't opening the kettleworms, but...
00:27:39
Speaker
The objective science of Marxism. Okay, moving on. So Brown argues also that people, man is fallible as an individual. So they're really fallible when you get a bunch of them together in a culture. Okay, so we're gonna get to the fun parts now. Even in a bar. If you get a bunch of them together in a bar, they are extremely fallible.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing. you know, we're all lemmings. Hmm? No, I'm just kidding. that's basically his argument. It's you humans just are not, we're not infallible like God. Bunch of them together. we all These bad ideas will percolate. about But the fun parts. Okay, so second books. We're getting into kind of fun. This is sundry popular tenants concerning mineral and vegetable bodies filled rocks and plants.
00:28:23
Speaker
Do you guys know any urban legends about rocks and plants? Boogtales? You might know some. I'm sure I think anything off the top of my head. What's an urban legend about rocks and plants? ah I am blanking, but there's going to be stuff like ah poison ivy cures Oh yeah, I didn't saw that.
00:28:44
Speaker
urban think of any yeah i' i being i know they exist I know they exist, but they're not the urban legends that dominate our sort of yeah current milieu. What about Leaves of Three, Let It Be?
00:29:00
Speaker
he Leaves of Four? Eat some more. he's four some more yeah What does he mean by that? Does he mean like strawberries or raspberries or... I think the point is, is that they mindlessly eat plants and probably get fed. Yeah, I guess. Right, but I assume, yeah, yeah. So, i'm trying these are kind of folk ideas. Yeah, there are some, i can't really think of any, the main thing is going to like cures and stuff, right? So, I started off, like I'm going to do a pretty close summary. I'm going to each little myth he mentions.
00:29:28
Speaker
I can't, it's impossible. I want it this to be a one-part episode light and kind of fun, so I'm going to just pick out some of the more fascinating highlights. Again, this is all very easily available online, very conveniently packaged.
00:29:40
Speaker
We can click on all of the headings and read about all the bizarre things he debugs. ah As I said, Brown's writing style to the modern ear is extremely dense, quite Baroque.
00:29:51
Speaker
And again, I'll read a few excerpts to get a better flavor of that. So, Some of these myths here in the rocks and minerals section, or rocks and plants section, are some interest to modern reader.
00:30:02
Speaker
So again, a lot of these, and this is true for most of the book, a lot of these have been so thoroughly debunked or forgotten about, they're just not on anybody's radar anymore at all. But a good grifter could revise some of these ancient beliefs if they want to make some money. Look, ancient Thomas Brown says... Is there anything in here on raw milk and beef tallow?
00:30:21
Speaker
Unfortunately not. about There's stuff about like eating drinking bad milk. me There you go. But yeah. i'm Again, I'm just hearkening back to RFK and how ah the only thing that people are allowed to eat is that as a cattle products for some godforsaken reason. Oh, probably because the cattle industry. I'm sure the cattle industry is like... It's got you. There's also... This ties in with very Jordan Peterson style...
00:30:49
Speaker
philosophy of manhood and how beef is just the manliest thing you can possibly eat. And so if you want to embrace masculinity in this sort of ah pseudo fascist ah return to form, get away from the soy boy thing, obviously, what's the opposite of being a soy boy? It's eating beef. And then you end up with RFK pushing um raw milk on grocery store shelves, which will kill people, particularly children. And then beef tallow because seed oils are apparently bad for you. Because Lord knows all of human civilization is based off of eating seeds and we can barely live till 90.
00:31:30
Speaker
Like, Jesus. Beef towel is fine. It's delicious. I'm happy that it's a ah that it's more available now, but the notion that it is the only cooking product you can use because saturated fat is... like We know saturated fat is worse for you. Anyways, rant rant, rant, rant, rant. People are going to clog their arteries. They're going to be like 45 and dropping dead of heart attacks. What happened? I just ate beef every day for every meal.
00:31:54
Speaker
That's currently Jordan Peterson's, he's not 45, but he's currently dying of not cleaning his room and is eating beef to get better and it's not working for some reason. Yay! Imagine that.
00:32:07
Speaker
ah Back to rocks and crystals. you youre your belt you You all know that their crystals are not made up of really, really cold hard ice, right? that was something I do understand that. oh good. Back in the day, they didn't. You know, i can kind of see why if you saw a crystal. Crystals, ice, same shape, sometimes, same color, sometimes. They're very cold in your hands if you you're handling them until your hand warms it up.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it doesn't melt, though, because it's so cold and hard. So this is apparently a popular myth. This is passed down even from Pliny. Pliny comes up a lot. It's like, Pliny this, Pliny that. Pliny... My understanding is that Pliny's writings...
00:32:51
Speaker
created so much brain poisoning throughout the middle ages into the Renaissance that pretty much everything he he he ever wrote had to be debunked. yeah And again, it's not necessarily that, you know, we want to go beat up Pliny. He was doing his best, I'm sure, but his writing survived and just got passed into conventional wisdom in a lot of different ways. And yeah, it's it's just wild how,
00:33:20
Speaker
Particularly with medicine, all sorts of wacky stuff came out of that guy. anyone's going yeah and Yeah, and we had to sort of, again, they were very deferential to authority. And you really could not question it because this this is how we do things.
00:33:31
Speaker
Kind of interesting, too, is this is, what I'll point out a little bit more later, is what is interesting about Brown's time in this work is it's straddling this time of... figuring out how the world works by thinking about it and using logic, so-called, and actually doing empirical investigations, actual scientific. So, of course, you know, the scientific method is just kind of being developed at this time. So this is back in the day, like the Greeks were impressive in that they logic themselves into into discovering atoms, for example, right? Like they thought about it until, oh you realize this is, you know, but you can't use logic for everything and you can't use mental exercises for everything. And this is,
00:34:08
Speaker
Straddling this time where Brown relies a lot on ancient sources for the myths and some of the debunking, but also trying to later on, as we'll see, incorporate some experimentation into what he's doing.
00:34:19
Speaker
to prove decision So he's a medical doctor. He's done experiments. He went to university, you know. Leiden, one of the greatest universities in the world. And so obviously, he's a genius. For the viewers at home, I'm making the air-jerking motion. I know. Just to be clear, I don't think I'm better than anybody. I know. I can see you. I can see you.
00:34:45
Speaker
So, Pliny's wrong about this. Crystals were not formed by the cold, Brown asserts, but by a mineral spirit and lapidifical principles of its own lapidifical related to rocks that's probably a word he invented i i did type that out phonetically so again he's saying this is not true they're they're formed by some kind of mineral liquid according to its own principles. Doesn't know what they are, but that's how it is. So he points out... we fine so It's closer.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And he says he goes into a pretty long spiel. Yeah, he he finds, you know, how he proves this. Well, you can find crystals in rivers that don't freeze. He goes into pretty long spiel about the differences between ice crystals, which are pretty obvious. concludes that by you know He concludes by affirming that crystals, the stones, are made of concretions of even tinier crystals, which is basically correct. So he's thinking he's but himself into, well, they're obviously made of stone.
00:35:43
Speaker
how does it How does a stone get formed? By pieces of other little stones. Okay. But he's not really explaining it. He's sort of saying it's they're not ice. Crystals aren't ice. they're rocks, and they're formed by some mechanism we don't we're not sure of yet. this It's really interesting to see how the scientific method slowly evolves out of this kind of thinking.
00:36:05
Speaker
Because what he's done here is he's using, not experiments, but at least observations, and obvious ones such as, well, crystals don't melt and ah it melt don't melt in water.
00:36:18
Speaker
And then he is just rationalizing and creating of his own mind the best he can do, which is how, you know, medicine worked for quite a while until we got to the until, you know, we got to germ theory and stuff like that. hmm.
00:36:35
Speaker
But it's very interesting to see how half of this is based on observation and the best you can approximate to a fact. and everything and but So it's observation plus speculation, basically.
00:36:51
Speaker
oh yeah. and other yeah and then yeah Rather than purely folk wisdom. Yeah, that's right. it's and this is this is Again, he's not afraid to sort of challenge the conventional wisdom, you know, and he's doing it This is why he has to be so dense and go into all the sources because this is part of his scholarly his scholarship, right? He's obviously reading tons and tons of material, you know, he's doing all the scholarship, but he's using that and his own thoughts. And again, the you'll see a bit later on some some experimentation on his own, right? Yeah, you're right. It's this the move from...
00:37:24
Speaker
Speculation to natural scientific method. Yeah. So he goes on to talk about magnets and how do they work? I to disillusion Lost knowledge now, according to Trump. Amazing. Yeah.
00:37:36
Speaker
I don't disillusion you both. Garlic does not, in fact, hinder the working of a magnet. Oh, I had no idea. garlic Garlic and magnets clashing, killing its power. Don't worry about it.
00:37:49
Speaker
I love that. I want to know how that came about because clearly somebody was trying to do some alchemy and their magnets didn't work and he had garlic on his hands or something. You you'd have to think. Yeah, I don't remember. i got to look into that one again and see why why did he... How does this... It's like when you see a weird warning sign. Don't atop to stop chainsaw with hands or genitals. Well, who's the person who's responsible for that warning sign?
00:38:14
Speaker
Who fucked their magnet with garlic? know. Whenever I see a warning sign, I'm like, you know, this is here for a reason. the sunshade on your car, do not do not put the shade on the car while it's moving. yeah Safety regulations are written in blood and warning signs are written in dumbass.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yes, exactly. That's why I offer regulation. They're there for a reason. So... so That said, insane clown posse may be smarter than we think.
00:38:41
Speaker
For Brown, like the ICP, did believe that magnets were a gift from God. Maybe a future Wonder Camera will be strongly defending juggalos as a force for good in the world. But anyways, we'll move on to that. There was a time, during during again during COVID, where i was like, I could be a juggalo. Whoop whoop. You know?
00:38:59
Speaker
Don't like the music. Don't like wearing makeup. But they seem like a decent, chill people, to be honest. But yeah. Who's stupid now? Thomas Brown didn't know how magnets worked.
00:39:10
Speaker
that eight A friend told me a story about, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to get um i do more on Juggalos. A friend told me a story about how a man was bragging to people about how his daughter was really moving up life in life because she was coordinating all the parking for the gathering of the Juggalos.
00:39:31
Speaker
You know what? I love that. You know what? I think good for her. I was about to say, it's both extremely funny and also good for her. I'm glad you're proud of your daughter. And that actually seems like a good gig because it's a very, very big, big festival, but also inherently funny.
00:39:50
Speaker
It is some sort of one. Moving up in the world yeah includes Juggalos, but hey, you know what though? and yeah Where did you start from? Yeah. Well, yeah.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, geez. Kind of don't want to know. Hopefully they're okay now. But yeah. So yeah, Brown couldn't explain magnets at the time. So basically they were a miracle. Leave it at that, right?
00:40:13
Speaker
um Also, goat's blood can't break diamonds. Oh, that's good to know. Pretty easy to test. Tested it. Doesn't work. These are all... if They thought goat's blood was... Someone just bragging at a bar?
00:40:29
Speaker
How does that one come about? ah yeah He does provide sources for where these myths came from, right? Or like, oh, this is just some kind of general idea.
00:40:40
Speaker
Pretty easy to test. It had been tested. Speaking of testing, you guys know glass is not poison. Well, if you eat enough of it, I can see why you might think it is. Well, here's the thing.
00:40:54
Speaker
Sometimes glass is not poison. And you know how we know? Because Brown ground some up and fed up to his dog. Oh my God. Oh. He ground the glass up very, very finely. Because he does admit.
00:41:11
Speaker
It's a step up from feeding it to his servants, I guess. That's true. Because he admits, okay, okay, it was very, very finely ground up, the dog was fine, but if the gro glass is too coarsely ground, then it's going to kill you.
00:41:25
Speaker
But not because it's poison. Not because it's poison. oh but get your guts up His turn of phrase is fantastic. I'm going to quote from your source, Jen. Yeah, go ahead. the conceit has surely grounded upon the visible mischief of glass of glass grossly or coarsely powdered for indeed i'm going to start again the conceit has surely grounded upon the visible mischief of glass grossly or coarsely powdered for that indeed is mortally noxious and effectually used by some to destroy mice and rats
00:41:56
Speaker
For by reason of its acuteness and angularity, it commonly excoriates the parts through which it passeth and solicits them onto continual expulsion.
00:42:08
Speaker
Lovely. death Very nice way to say it's going to cut you out I love the run-on sentences from early writing. Love it. I mean, you... It's hard to read, but it's delightful.
00:42:20
Speaker
At first. It's fun. No, that's true. You read all of this. Yeah. yeah After a couple of pages, it gets kind of old. Yeah, it does. And this took me... Again, it was early pandemic. i had a print copy kind of in the evening, sit down, read for an hour, half an hour. took me a while.
00:42:38
Speaker
Didn't remember a lot of it. Got a level with you guys. so when I came back to it, I was like, oh yeah, I remember i remembered some of them, but I really had to ah to us get back into it. But these are it's again very fun to just dip into.
00:42:49
Speaker
ah The translation here is, no, glass will not make you shit yourself to death. As I scan through this, this is interesting because here's a good ah piece of folk bullshit that's commonly believed.
00:43:04
Speaker
Daddy long legs or harvest men could kill you with their venom. However, their fangs cannot puncture human skin. I both are wrong. I heard that. ah harvest men ah have minute amount of venom to the point that humans would not notice it. And they can actually bite you enough for you to feel it. They're just uninclined to bite. And they're so leggy that they're kind of hard to like pin down in a bitey position. They're not like, and they're not spiders either.
00:43:34
Speaker
But the thing here is that they are, Mythbusters actually did one on this where, no, they're fine. They're they're just fine. They're just little guys hanging out. Yeah. But it's like the glass thing where, you know, this window, if you were going to eat that window, bro, you'd shake yourself to death.
00:43:51
Speaker
Yes. And no one's eating the window. no one's get But maybe the window breaks and some like glass gets in something. It's like, I guess I'm not going to eat these shards of glass, which fair, you shouldn't. But you get where, because no one's eating glass, this idea suddenly kicks in. And maybe again, you've got alchemy going on at this point. And it's just wild bullshit. Yeah. What if glass was the Tide Pods of the past?
00:44:17
Speaker
All the kids are doing the eating glass to own atone my parents' challenge. yeah Yeah, they would die the past. Although I do believe the Tide Pods thing was wildly... that was That was also fake. I think one person ate a Tide Pod. yeah Everyone else was just kids thinking it's hilarious to talk about how the Tide Pods look like delicious candy. And so the teens thought it was funny because it is. And then a moral panic rose up with all the kids reading Tide Pods when they were not.
00:44:46
Speaker
But what happens is to become such a big thing is some kid is actually dumb enough to go, I'm going to actually eat one. And then he goes to the hospital. But it was yeah it was like one person. It's yeah ah razor blades and Halloween candy. Same deal.
00:44:58
Speaker
Well, people never happened. Yeah, no, I know. Yeah, that's right. People love the kids today are stupid angle. So they go with it. Like I say, people love. Again, don't get me started on my rants about misinformation, but people love to confirm their priors. This is entire podcast is a rant about misinformation. That's the point of this episode. subtle I know. i know. We did get you started.
Myths and Misconceptions About Animals
00:45:20
Speaker
That's what you're doing here. get you started That's my new podcast. Don't get me started. It'd be just me bitching. like every day my life gen That's just the wonder camera.
00:45:29
Speaker
That's right. so go i realize I probably sound so like, her i I'm fun to hang out with. Trust me. You are. You're a lot of fun to hang out with. I'm not just like Santa Claus is abuse, which I think you can make a case for because you're lying to your child. It's going to deficit them anyway. Yeah, it's true. the I've never recovered from finding out that Santa Claus was real. I wake up screaming every night. I mean, fake, fake. He's fake.
00:45:58
Speaker
Move along, C-sus. You can never sleep in a room with a chimney in it. Yeah. yeah get yeah Okay.
00:46:09
Speaker
Time for a digression on mandrakes. Brown spends lot of time on the mandrakes. Do you know what this plant is all about? No, I don't. I know it is a fictitious plant.
00:46:20
Speaker
Interesting. I know. I know. I think there's a real plant called a mandrake, but I just kind of know the ah because I've played a lot of fantasy role playing games and also I'm aware of Harry Potter, that context of mandrake.
00:46:34
Speaker
And yeah, but I don't really know about its properties as an actual plant. Okay, so this is an article ah by Natalie Lawrence from the Public Domain Review. and This discusses the history of this plant in Eurasian folklore and medicine. I went into detail on this because this one is one that's a little bit more well known.
00:46:51
Speaker
i So I'll just send you this. You can see what some mandrakes were thought to look like. I actually have look it up just glanced at ah Thomas Brown's ah heading on mandrakes, and suddenly I remembered why mandrakes have mystical significance. yeah Oh, yeah. yeah this is Yes, mandrakes look like people.
00:47:12
Speaker
That's right. Yep. The root of the mandrake is shaped like a person and so is imputed to have many magical or healing properties. This is from the Lawrence article, public domain review. The mandrake or mandragora described by ancient Greek physicians was most likely the Mediterranean species mandragora officinalis, part of the solanacea or nightshade family. think I got that right. These plants produce tap roots that thicken to create the appearance of subterranean humanoids.
00:47:38
Speaker
So apparently Mandrakes are hallucinogenic and they were thought, sorry, they were used throughout the ancient world to treat various ailments, including anxiety and depression. Honestly, hallucinogenics, they help with that.
00:47:51
Speaker
Just my opinion. They were also considered to have magical properties. If that's not magic enough, anyway. So Mandrake roots look cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The art in your ah source here is beautiful too. Yeah. but yeah it's really Yeah. We'll post this. ah This is going to be a link in the sources too. And I'll may post some of these pictures too. mean, you can see what this looks like. So they were considered to have magical properties. So Mandrake amulets or figures were used from the medieval period to bring good fortune and happiness, even to cure sterility.
00:48:19
Speaker
So they were thought to grow under the, this is where it gets growth. Mandrakes were also thought to grow under the bodies of hanged men and became associated with incontinence and rigor erectus.
00:48:30
Speaker
So, can't get that boner to go away. One 18th century writer described how, at the foot of the gallows on which a man has been hanged, and where a urine has been voided at the time of death, there springs up a plant with broad leaves and a yellow flower.
00:48:45
Speaker
The root of the plant exactly represents the human form, from the hair of his head to the sexual organs. Mandrakes were thus often seen as tools of witches, used in their hallucinogenic flying ointment, and in various brews and spells, including love potions.
00:49:00
Speaker
So, Gross, that theory of where they came from. But I want to get into some more details a little bit more because may not be exactly accurate. So mandrakes were thought to scream when pulled out of the ground. Yes. And that's where dangerous for humans to collect because the scream would make you die.
00:49:18
Speaker
So I didn't know that part. No, apparently. So what do we do when we want to see if something's dangerous or not? Eat it. Get a dog to do it. Oh, yeah.
00:49:29
Speaker
Get a dog to do it. Just throw a dog in a room with a bunch of roots. So, again, this is a public domain interview article. Someone wanting to harvest a mandrake could apparently loosen the earth around the root, tie one end of a rope to it and the other end to a dog, and then move quickly away.
00:49:45
Speaker
The dog would follow, often coaxed by food, and drag the mandrake up, succumbing to its deadly cry and rendering the root safe to handle. So yeah, tie your dog to the root, have the dog pull it out. The dog is going to die, but you'll be okay.
00:49:58
Speaker
I just put a box over it. and Something. Plug your ears. They have the myth of the sirens. They can plug their ears. They know about this kind of thing. Anyway, yes, so... very bad and always testing things on dogs so brown of course proceeds to debunk many of these myths uh first of all a lot of plants are shaped like people unlike other animals and they're not magical right um there was a tendency at this time to really want the natural world to be organized according to specific categories so there was this belief that oh every animal on land has a corresponding animal on sea
00:50:34
Speaker
Well, just because a seahorse looks like a seahorse, there's no other correspondence. What's the land whale, right? Oh, no, that can be a really mean joke about somebody. i'm not going to say anything. It's the land whale. It's me. Shout out to seahorses for ah being the ah true sonic empreg of the animal kingdom.
00:50:52
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah, the males get pregnant seahorses. Oh, that's nice. Oh, they do. That's right. But yes, this idea that things were were corresponding. So if this root shaped like a man, other roots shaped like kidneys would cure your kidneys. This kind of stuff, right? Which obviously is not true, but there was this, ah they they really wanted this ability to classify.
00:51:11
Speaker
I'm going to read another section on the mandrakes here because I think this is lovely. A third affirmeth the roots of mandrakes do make a noise or give a shriek upon eradication, which is indeed ridiculous and falls below confute, arising perhaps from a small and stridulous noise, which being firmly rooted, it maketh upon devulsion of parts.
00:51:33
Speaker
Here's what I love. A slender foundation for such a vast conception. For such a noise, we sometimes observe in other plants, in parsnips, licorice, eryngium, flags, and others.
00:51:46
Speaker
I mean, get it. I'm doing the translation of like, yeah, the roots scream because when you rip plants roots out, they sometimes squeak. I like the notion of noisy parsnips.
00:51:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. think There is like, it is an interesting book to read. Like after a while, like, okay, look, I wrote this episode after like staring at it for weeks and weeks, I got sick of it, but it is lot of fun. a lot of interesting things. It's good to dive in and grab individual sentences, but it's a slog to read through front to back. I understand.
00:52:15
Speaker
Exactly. So yeah. So again, he also says a lot of people only think mandrakes are like man because man is the first syllable. But they have different etymology. I completely believe that.
00:52:27
Speaker
completely think that. This is exactly... it like It has the word man in it. It looks like a man, therefore... It is man. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So, he also... So, Brown debunks the rumor mentioned above about hanged men's urine being the source of the mandrake. So, I think the Public Domain Review article was citing a 17th century author who was being a little bit delicate, right? They're not talking about urine, right?
00:52:52
Speaker
These drops, in Brown calls them drops of fat or urine. What he's actually talking about is semen, which is pretty gross. He concedes there's some sense here. So he's like, semen begets little men.
00:53:03
Speaker
Therefore, semen on the ground should beget little man-shaped plants. That actually follows in... If you don't know how plants propagate and yeah that kind of stuff, yeah, okay, ah here's here's my lovely crop of jizz blossoms.
00:53:21
Speaker
yeah yeah Because i didn't know. And so now Brown's like, oh, no, this isn't true. There's no correlation between semen and bodily fluids in the mandrake because this goes against the rule that ah decaying animals actually generate specific insects.
00:53:40
Speaker
So bear with me here. Brown reports this fact. So oxen decay into bees, dead horses decay into hornets, et cetera. Oh, abiogenesis. I love this stuff. Yeah. So he's debunking it with something that's also totally been debunked, right? Well, actually bees come from oxen, you dummy. Yes.
00:54:00
Speaker
Love Yeah. So he's saying, oh, every dead animal body decays into a specific and unique insect. Therefore, these seminal productions, which are like other corrupt and excrementous humors, should turn into something else and not a human-shaped thing. Like, I don't even want to imagine what that kind of creature would come from excrementous humors.
00:54:19
Speaker
I thought... Think about this. They're gathering roots. You have a man who's been hanged. All is fluids are leaking out. A plant grows out of it. Yeah, let's eat that plant. Like, that's what they're doing. It's getting magical powers, I guess.
00:54:32
Speaker
I thought he was going to run off and jerk off on a gallows ah every night and see if a mandrake shows up. You know what, though? He might have tried.
00:54:43
Speaker
We just don't know. He's a man of ah many experiments on his dogs. you know? Hopefully not that one. He'd kill some chickens later. He'd kill off his dog at the gallows.
00:54:57
Speaker
Oh, God. You'd think little puppies would come out, which would be cute, but it would be like some kind of other hideous insect. Yeah, flying ants. These people are living in a nightmare when you think about it.
00:55:08
Speaker
They wonder why Hieronymus Bosch got his ideas. They're just in their fucking heads. Life is a nightmare. There's a body hanging over night and he hauls his dog over. Like... Come here, Fido.
00:55:23
Speaker
Yep. Oh, God. So, yeah, that's so that's the Mandrakes. Makes sense. And again, as Dave mentioned, he points out that Mandrakes don't scream the part of the ground. It's just roots squeak when you pull them apart.
00:55:35
Speaker
How simple is that, really? Yeah. It's not dangerous to dig up because lots of people have dug them up and have survived. Yeah. So, yeah. What he also points out that is interesting, though, is he points out that rumors surrounding the Mandrake tend to persist because it's seen as so dangerous and scary that most people are not willing to test their luck or their dog's lives, which is nice of them.
00:55:59
Speaker
Yeah. and Same deal with why glass is poison and why ah daddy long legs have ah deadly venom. Nobody gets bit by dad daddy long legs and nobody eats glass aside from the light bulb enthusiasts.
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. Seen some of those. Not in real life, but I've seen x-rays. Yeah. So, um where were we? Moving on a little bit from the Mandrake. Kind of an interesting one to debunk there in a little bit more detail. He does debunk some myths related to insects. Again, a lot of these are things we don't even know about anymore. But apparently, people used to fear something called the dead watch.
00:56:36
Speaker
This was, you're in a silent room, a person is ill, and you start hearing a ticking sound. Ticking sound. People would say, oh, it's the death watch. The spirit of the dead or something, are watching, they're counting down the person's life.
00:56:50
Speaker
ah Pretty fascinating because watches would only have been like a couple hundred years old at this point. Anyway, death Watch. Apparently what this was, was a little bug. Death Watch beetle. It's a little insect that lives in wood and makes a little clicking or ticking sound.
00:57:04
Speaker
which there's nothing to be afraid of unless you're afraid of bugs. Oh, and so quiet. Yeah. So he points out, Oh, it's in the dead person's room. People would be so quiet. You'd actually be able to hear stuff.
00:57:16
Speaker
And you hear this tick tick. Oh my God. It's your life ticking away. i That is the most plausible superstition ever where yeah I just believe that if I was, you know, a Renaissance era peasant who's just wander up who's just showing up for a wake and then everyone's quietly staring at the body and there's click, click, click, click click click click click sound, i would shit myself and then a beautiful mandrake would grow.
00:57:44
Speaker
That's right. Lovely. ah He also debunks, he talks a little bit about wheat showers, wheat showers. So this is grains of wheat falling from the sky. So this one's a little more common. Well, it's been around for a long time, longer than I thought. These kind of falls of weird rainfalls. You see frogs. You hear about frogs falling out of the sky. the Kentucky meat shower. Exactly.
00:58:09
Speaker
There was the great spider rainfall in Brazil, I think. god Oh, That sounds terrific. I saw pictures from Australia of these like tent spiders.
00:58:21
Speaker
A lot of things fall out of the sky and it looks very scary. So he's not debunking every single report, but he notes a local case in which it turned out that the wheat, the wheat fallen from the sky it was actually just ivy berries.
00:58:34
Speaker
being released by birds so presumably they're puking or pooping on people's heads i'm like oh my god it's raining wheat or just dropping stuff and yeah yeah yeah yeah or being blown off a roof he points out like oh yeah wind sometimes yeah so many different ways this can happen it's not nothing scary again you mentioned the famous kentucky meat shower which was caused by a vomiting a bunch of vomiting vultures because birds will also I think the quantity is alarming but birds apparently if they see one puke the rest of them will because it's like oh something's wrong with this get it out so vultures if one pukes the rest of them will puke so you get the shower one vulture puke in Kentucky or the ivy berries from the little sparrows is little bit more pleasant and cute or the great WKRP turkey drop yes oh god god is my witness horrible
00:59:24
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to move on now to book three. was make this a one-parter, but we'll see how fra how good we do. Book three gets into some animal myths. through line here with a lot of these again i am only picking out some of the more interesting ones is basically that many ancient sources sort of misunderstood what they're looking at and they invented a mythological creature that would explain it right so i would say this is much in common with today's cryptozoologist so i might do an episode on this but i'm pretty sure i'm very convinced that all sasquatch sightings are
00:59:58
Speaker
Just brown bears on their legs. yeah Oh, 100%. Looks like person. And I'll just send you a link. it I'll have this link in the notes. But basically, it's correlating.
01:00:08
Speaker
For some reason, all Bigfoot sightings happen in massive brown bear hangouts and habitats, right? So I'm pretty sure the whole Sasquatch thing, that's that's a a black bear. But you see a lot of animals or people were seeing the wrong thing and thinking it's something else, right? So he debunks the existence of creatures like basilisks. Griffins, phoenixes.
01:00:31
Speaker
Comes to unicorns, he does throw a bit of a curve ball because he does not deny that unicorns exist rather, but asserts that in fact many different kinds of unicorns exist. Which is where I question his logic here. He's saying certain kinds of fishes with the narwhal, guess, horned beetles have horns. Sure.
01:00:48
Speaker
And mammals have horns, including the Indian ox, the Indian ass, the rhinoceros, the oryx, and that which is more eminently termed monoceros or unicornis. So except for the last one, monocornis or unicorn, those are real.
01:01:04
Speaker
They're basically just different kinds of antelope. Yeah. Yeah. but they have more than one horn. do not believe narwhals were... understood to exist by sort of Western European sort of culture at that point in time, but their horns could be found. And I think that's why unicorns exist as a fact was so rooted because if you recall the Humphrey Gilbert episode, there was him writing down how he owned a guy in the argument by demonstrating that unicorns are not indigenous to Russia.
01:01:38
Speaker
Right. And we laughed at that. yeah Right. and the And I'm speculating a little bit here, but I'm pretty sure narwhals were not described, which is the term for... Because clearly you've got Arctic peoples who have probably encountered them, but they're pretty far north critters. Right.
01:01:57
Speaker
And when you describe something, it means that it has been put into the taxonomy and given a scientific name. And it was not described until I think, oh, God, I could get this really wrong, but I think the late 19th century. So but if you find a horn, well, my God, there's a unicorn.
01:02:17
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. This is kind of what he gets into because he mentions fishes. I'm assuming he means narwhal. I can't remember if he brings it up specifically as like a fish with a tooth. Oh, so Draymond might get With a normal that actually is a tooth.
01:02:30
Speaker
Yeah. He says something about a fish with a horn or something like that. Yeah. But he's not really engaging with sort of the idea. We figure we we we picture a horse with horn. We're talking swordfish.
01:02:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah, or that. Yeah, he could be picturing that too, yes. So he Brown points out that no one can really agree with the monoceros. He calls it a monoceros. Monoceros, really? he They can't agree that it actually exists because he's going by ancient sources. And the ancient sources...
01:02:59
Speaker
None of them describe the same animal, right? So he's saying some ancient sources say that unicorns have the head of a horse. Others, the head of a deer. Oh, it's just a deer, right? Some unicorns say they, some say that unicorns have cloven hooves. Other people say they have solid hooves, et cetera. So basically you can't prove that an actual unicorn, whatever that may actually exists.
01:03:19
Speaker
And by the, yeah and by whether or not it's hooves or cloven, how closely related to whales it is. Oh yeah. Because whales are on gillots. Right. And they are related to cows, right? with or Yeah. Hoofed mammals are ungulates and ah whales are, oh God, I oh god i forget the phylogeny, but either way, whales are descend are from the same clade that anything with a hoof comes from. And they're the ones who just fucked off back into the water.
01:03:49
Speaker
The cloven hooves? Well, ah cloven hoofs, I believe, i' I'd have to look at it, but forget what's... you the And it's actually not cloven or uncloven. It's... Well, clove cloven is a two-toed, even or odd-toed ungulates, right? And I think whales count as even-toed ungulates. An odd-toed ungulate would be like a horse because it has one toe.
01:04:11
Speaker
That it stands on. That's right. It is basically a toe. I used be in a horse. It is a toe. It's so weird. I'm looking for a two episode on ungulates because I need to learn more about these creatures. um i i will definitely want to do some biology stuff down the line because I'm nerding out about it all the time, which I'm sort of doing next episode, ah but not really.
01:04:32
Speaker
ah It's not going to be about ungulates, but nonetheless, it'll be about, you know, create relatives distant. Anyways. Interesting. I'm already excited.
01:04:42
Speaker
So where was I? um Yeah. So basically he's saying you can't prove what this mythical unicorn actually is. So basically he's saying when it comes to medicine, medicines made from supposed unicorn horns were a quack therapy in Brown's day.
01:04:57
Speaker
So he says, look, you go, all kinds of horns are sold as such, even though the animal from which it came cannot be known. So even seeing horns, some of them are red, some of them are black, of them are white. What are they? Where are they from? So he's basically saying, you can't ascribe healing powers to random different kinds of animal horns, basically.
01:05:15
Speaker
And he says the ancients did not actually ascribe medicinal powers to the horns. So we probably shouldn't either. So makes sense.
01:05:25
Speaker
Kind of came out later. so he goes on to really lambaste those who believe the ancient myths that elephants have no joints. So again, I'm... love that because it makes immediate sense. Because yeah it's not like you can see their knees.
01:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. But he's like, hey, animals can't move without joints. So we have a lot of reports of animals working, or elephants rather working, performing tasks that require movable limbs. And moreover, Brown points out, an elephant was displayed in England recently.
01:05:57
Speaker
And a lot of people saw it standing, kneeling, and lying down. So there we are. He says, yeah, the legs look like pillars without a joint, but they're not. I love that. Yeah. And then they see the trunk moving around. Fun elephant fact. If they want to kill somebody, they will step on you and pull off your head.
01:06:15
Speaker
That is a fun fact. That's... It's so gruesome. Don't piss off elephants. They're so sweet and I love elephants, but I'm like, well, if they did somebody, they probably deserved it. But my God, can you imagine? Oh, that's going to haunt my dreams. Yep.
01:06:32
Speaker
little bit for your sticky brain there. Anyways, continue. I have ah many fun animal facts. That's amazing. That's good to know. Fascinating. um Next time I'm around an elephant, which I don't i don't want to be around them. going to leave them alone. I'll remember that, though. They were also... So he doesn't address their whether they never forget or not.
01:06:49
Speaker
i don't know if we interacted with elephantphad the elephants enough to know their wrath, that they will remember you and they will follow you and trash your funeral if you're mean to them. I was about to say the elephant who trashed ah that woman's funeral because it just hated her. um Elephants are extremely smart. I don't think that they never forget, but I do think they are capable of holding a grudge.
01:07:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're pretty much brains are pretty comparable, I think, to toddlers and smart people. Or not smart people, but you know what I mean. Smart children. um Yeah. Funnily enough. so the Elephants were also rumored to be able to speak.
01:07:27
Speaker
And Brown concludes and says, actually, it's not impossible because we know that the serpent in the garden spoke to Eve and dogs and cats. Cats are always speaking to witches. So we can't rule that out.
01:07:40
Speaker
Love it. Makes perfect sense. They can't speak, but maybe, you know, those witches. And unfortunately, Brown did testify in a witch trial against the women who were burned at the stake.
01:07:54
Speaker
Oh, so he has some moral failures there when it comes to actually his beliefs. And that's where we see harmless beliefs can lead to bullshit. Well, he's cancelled.
01:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately, woke king will he know he'll be proven to be a woke king later on. But in that instance, i mean, you can't be a woke king if you're burning women to death. I'm sorry, but I do joke. He, you know, has good qualities.
01:08:19
Speaker
He also he debunks apparently famous myth in his day that beavers will bite off their testicles to escape hunters. I've heard that. Have you? I have never heard that. I've heard that. And and it's bullshit. But it's i I don't know why I'm suddenly saying I've heard that. I can't remember the last time I did. But I swear it's something that floated around. and Yeah.
01:08:43
Speaker
It's coming up somewhere. Yeah. And probably comes from situations where beavers escape traps and maybe their nuts don't. Because the exploitation of the new world is in swing at this point, as is the obsession with beaver trapping, which I don't think went full full bore until later. But nonetheless, they're trapping beavers and beavers are getting out of traps and leaving parts behind. So I can see where that would come from.
01:09:13
Speaker
That reminds me, though. Have you seen hundreds of beavers? I mean... mean... You've seen a few beavers. Oh. It always sounds bad. Have you seen hundreds of beavers? The film Hundreds of Beavers? No.
01:09:26
Speaker
You have to watch it. going to take my advice. Smoke a bunch of weed. Take some edibles. Watch this movie. You might actually die from laughing. Beautiful. That's my advice. My advice All right.
01:09:38
Speaker
Yes. Take it. Take it from me. Don't want to die. i would be very sad if you guys died. But... The weed makes it a lot. it's ah It's a lot of fun. It's a fun movie. But yes, so they do escape hunters, but maybe not in the way you think.
01:09:51
Speaker
Again, you're picturing, like Dave here, beaver balls in a trap. But you would not be correct. So he doesn't specify, Brown, but he does note that beavers were hunted in part for their castor sacks.
01:10:05
Speaker
Oh, right. Castor sacks. And these are probably mistaken for testicles. So the idea here is that a beaver would rip off and throw away scent gland to appease the hunter.
01:10:18
Speaker
Now, you can see this little emblem. This is from an emblem book. They like to do and what emblem books were were. I don't think beavers drop their castor glands in the same way a lizard drops its tail.
01:10:30
Speaker
No, no. So this emblem you can see here became a sort of a popular sort of idea, though. So this is a lesson. Emblem emblem books were basically just books of images, right?
01:10:43
Speaker
or mottos, like little sort of vignettes that describe the moral. So here you can see, if you see this woodcut, i I know exactly what that... ah Yes, I understand that intrinsically. this I love this little beaver just mischievously grabbing his balls. ripping his nuts off. Yeah, it's pretty mischievous. The dogs are your afoot.
01:11:03
Speaker
The emblem. yes I also love the size of the beaver compared to the dogs. i mean, beavers are pretty big, but... But not quite that big. that And I'm pretty sure the dogs they're using for hunting are not smaller than beavers.
01:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, they have problems with them. You know, it's woodcut technology. Like Jackson's jaw hunting beavers. It's going to be a weird fight. It would be, yes. Yeah, it'd be very strange. So this is from the 16th century emblem book, Liber Emblemata by Andreas Alciat. So anyway, yeah, the caption reads, Despite its slowness, the beaver escapes the hounds that pursue him by ripping out his own genitals for which he's pursued.
01:11:38
Speaker
From this, learn that sometimes you must give money to the enemy to ransom your life. Great advice. really Really? were mugged, give him your wallet. That way you won't get stabbed.
01:11:52
Speaker
You know what? Yeah, that's that's the lesson. yeah Okay, okay. I'm just picturing my random enemies out there. I'm like, what am I going to do? How am I going to stop them, right? You know, how am I going to stop? Always negotiate with terrorists. Well, that's kind of what it's saying, too. go not Just give them Greenland. It'll be fine. No.
01:12:09
Speaker
Right. This is. Yeah. So again, sometimes, OK, if it's a mugging situation. yeah sure. I mean, they kind of did so that they clearly have learned the aphorism here. Yeah. Yep. That's right. So, you know.
01:12:23
Speaker
Brown says this is a myth. They don't actually rip off their own sacks of either variety, but the moral makes sense. Yeah. He also ah disputes the notion that bear cubs are born as shapeless lumps, which their mothers must lick into the shape of a bear.
01:12:42
Speaker
That's the cutest thing I've ever heard. Isn't that amazing? I wish that was true. and So here's how he... is Brown basically assumes that like probably at some point somebody saw a bear club. Bear club.
01:12:55
Speaker
I wish I was a bear club. he saw a bear club being born and it was covered in placenta. it's this membrane. So it looked like a blob. And so when the bear ripped it away, he's like, oh, wow. She licked that bear right into shape.
01:13:10
Speaker
Wow, look at that. That's how he assumes this myth came about. But no, they don't. Bears aren't born as blobs. You can go out and look at them. You can see this. And you'll see a mother bear grooming her cubs and go, ah, there you go. More evidence that the myth is true.
01:13:27
Speaker
Oh, well, that's true. It's hard to, you got to be right right from the beginning and see. yeah um These animals are fun. and His debunkings are kind of fun too because a lot of are common sense. So like, apparently the ancients believe that if you run into a wolf, and the wolf laid eyes upon you first, it would render you unable to speak through supernatural power.
01:13:47
Speaker
Or you're scared of the wolf. Yeah. Which is exactly what Brown says. Actually, he seeing a wolf is pretty scary. He probably just frees up in fear. Yeah. No supernatural mechanism involved. So yeah, he's usually scared. That's the parable of the boy who cried wolf.
01:14:00
Speaker
Saw wolf and then couldn't cry. He couldn't cry? That's how it worked. That's exactly what was written in the story. Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. The boy who... then he gets eaten. The boy who sees Crying Wolf.
01:14:11
Speaker
and that was The boy who sees Crying Wolf from Tarot. But yeah, Wolf is scary. He's like, oh, he can't talk. That's very funny. Okay, so with the animals, okay, I'm going to wrap up book three here. He debucks a couple other myths. There's a myth that badgers was badger's legs were longer on one side, i guess.
01:14:31
Speaker
Snail's eyes are not actually at the end of their horns. Good to know. Those are just horns, eyes are elsewhere. um Just some random animal myths here. You can check them out if you like. But he includes a bunch of chicken and egg myths.
01:14:44
Speaker
And I'm going read this paragraph because by the end I'm like, you fucking kidding me. What are you talking about? Okay. Here's what he writes. About chickens and eggs. Why the hen hatcheth not the egg in her belly, or maketh not at least some rudiment thereof within herself by the natural heat of inward parts, since the same is performed by incubation from an outward warmth after?
Exploring Human and Religious Myths
01:15:05
Speaker
Why the egg is thinner at one extreme? Why there is some cavity or emptiness at the blunter end? Why we open them at that part? Why the greater end is first excluded? Why some eggs are all red as the kestrels? Some only red at one end as those of kites and buzzards? Why some eggs are not oval but round as those of fishes, etc. Our problems. Whose decisions would too much enlarge this discourse?
01:15:27
Speaker
What are you talking about? Herein I ponder about eggs. He's been enlarging the discourse the whole time. You know what? I appreciate this guy's got us some wonder camera energy. He's just a curious little guy.
01:15:41
Speaker
You know? Why are he even eggs? He could he could be our mascot. He's like, you know what? It's like me doing this. I could have reread the whole thing in its entirety, but I just went the good parts, all right? I'm sorry.
01:15:53
Speaker
but read it before. But yes, so yes, it's too much enlarging on the discourse. Funnily enough, he never asks what came first, the chicken or the egg. kind of That's what I thought this part was going to be about.
01:16:04
Speaker
This book is 600 pages of this. like he's not How is he afraid of enlarging the discourse now? The answer is the egg. That's actually, I think that's probably true. but dis Of course it's true.
01:16:16
Speaker
has to have been. Eggs were, yes. He does, I think, mention it later on. If you believe evolution exists, then eggs came before chickens. That's not a conundrum. I mean, it's true. Yes.
01:16:28
Speaker
In this case, he doesn't even go there, surprisingly. Because he knew better. He knew it's a dumb question. It is a dog question. That's true. that's true But yes, it's kind of funny that all these questions he has, but doesn't go on to consider, you know, I guess, eggs. Enough of eggs. This isn't the fucking egg book, alright? This is what it means. Also, the notion of something coming first before a chicken or an egg ah is probably, well God just put a chicken there, obviously.
01:16:57
Speaker
That's right. so yeah, would have been chicken. dog was ah God was like, kapow, chicken, and then you go from there. Yeah, myth busted. Okay, so we're going on to book four, myths about man. And again, it's got a bit of a panty where, yeah, man means humankind, but not really because they really just mean men. Let's be honest here. Didn't i think about women's lives that much. But feminist caveat aside, the first myth that Brown considers here is the notion that only man hath an erect figure and for to behold and look up toward heaven.
01:17:34
Speaker
This is pretty silly, obviously. and This is like childlike on the level of, oh, the sound of thunder is God of the bowling alley, right? So the idea here, only humans stand upright because that's how we can look up to God. now Meanwhile, lot problems yeah, kangaroos, i don't know, whatever. don't know kangaroos existed when he wrote this, but there's lots of animals that can look up.
01:17:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So and Brown has to consider both the idea that man is the only erect animal and the idea that we stand upright in order to look to heaven. So two two parts of this myth. So he takes his time thinking about the definition of being erect or of sitting. like He really is like, well, the angle of the thigh is perpendicular to... i'm like, buddy, we we get this. He really goes into the angles here about bones. But comes to conclusion, yeah, some animals can sit like dogs, but not many can stand like a man.
01:18:24
Speaker
That said, some animals, they're partially erect because they stand up a little bit. He also defines erectness as standing straight up and notes that penguins, praying mantises can do this.
01:18:36
Speaker
Not special, right? And besides, you know, looking up our eyes are blocking our view. Like we're not looking up anyway. Our eyelids block our view. Even a lot of other animals can look to heaven. Even fish can look up to heaven because some of them have eyes on top their heads. Or they can swim upwards.
01:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, so he totally yeah he pretty much totally debunks this one. What was that myth about the penguins looking... Was it penguins look up at airplanes and fall over her backwards? Oh, know if I heard that one, but I can it being true. heard that too. And there was a Bloom County about it, of all things. I'm not sure if it's true or not.
01:19:09
Speaker
or there's a I don't think it is. Turkeys are so dumb, they look up into the sky when it's raining and they drown. Yeah, that's that's a good one. Yeah, it's kind of like that, yeah. I've never heard that one. Basically saying this whole idea is dumb. Like, this is childlike. He takes it seriously, a lot of effort into it, you know. lot of problems with that idea. Okay, i'm getting on to some more myths. so people Hey, you guys are married. i Do you guys wear rings? i don't know if I've actually noticed.
01:19:39
Speaker
no I lost mine pretty promptly. Thankfully, it wasn't expensive. We got you vaguely have ideas about getting another ring. But right now, we are ringless. yeah Fair enough. But have you heard the legend that the reason we wear rings on our left ring finger is because there's a blood vessel that runs directly from that finger to your heart? Oh, I have heard that. Yeah.
01:20:02
Speaker
Yeah. Not true. So don't worry about it. Okay. Basically. so he's pointing out again our hands are symmetrical we have lots of veins and arteries that are connected to your heart they all run directly to your heart in some way yeah that's that's how but that's how circulation so vessels work yeah and also like he also does another chapter on the heart actually isn't exactly in the left side it's more in the middle of your chest not really in the left not really connection there either so yeah debunks that one but that's a pretty common one i think i've heard that one i i had heard that one actually
01:20:35
Speaker
So he also considers the notion that men weigh heavier dead than alive. Oh, dead weight. Yeah, which is interesting. Yes, because this is sort of the opposite of that. You've probably heard the 21 grams myth. Yes.
01:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's going to be another episode for me, I think, because that guy was fucked up. But apparently 21 grams is also total bullshit. This is the idea that when a person dies, their body loses 21 grams of weight, which is the soul leaving the body.
01:21:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Very much bullshit. Yeah. So this crackpot, early 20th century Duncan McDougall, Killed a bunch of dogs trying to prove this. Oh. ring Great guy. Yep. They love to experiment on their dogs. but Where was the RSPCA then?
01:21:16
Speaker
Honestly. Bunch of bullshit. It was just... You can't even... Because you can't... I've listened to other podcasts on the New Bucket where you literally... You kind of can't prove that. What do you do? Set up a scale on somebody's deathbed? Like, it just doesn't... Like, there's not...
01:21:27
Speaker
There's no way to test it, really. You're going to go how do you know when someone's going to die? What's the definition of death? Are they in a coma? It's not really measurable. And the whole thing is stupid. He just killed a bunch of dogs for no reason. The 21 grams is kind of perfect bullshit because the bullshit that really gets people going nowadays sounds plausible in some kind of precise scientific way. Mm-hmm.
01:21:53
Speaker
while being complete horse shit. And so you, and so, well, it's 21 grams, which means that, oh, well, a gram is the most scientific of measurements. it it like It triggers that kind of lizard brain response, right?
01:22:07
Speaker
ah And so the soul weighs precisely 21 grams is exactly the kind of thing you could see someone doing a Facebook meme share on. Oh, totally. Because it just feels right.
01:22:20
Speaker
Yeah. And this is how that kind of myth gets circulated. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, it it sounds nice. and It's comforting. Oh, we do have a soul after all. Like, it's people want to believe it. Yeah. So basically, Thomas Brown, though. So this guy, Duncan McDougall, he kills bunch of dogs.
01:22:35
Speaker
But basically, it turns out that Brown had ah walked so McDougall could run. So Brown tested this opposite myth that men are heavier dead than alive by strangling some chickens.
01:22:47
Speaker
ah he compared it god He compared the weight before and after death, and there was no difference immediately. Left the chicken for a few days, and the body was actually lighter than heavier. Well, yeah, because it's dehydrating and rotting. So, yeah. Yeah.
01:22:59
Speaker
He did the same thing with a bunch of mice, just to be sure. again... Doing the animal testing early on. So he pointed out that dead bodies are perceived to be heavier than living ones because dead body is dead weight, like you say. A living person or animal is actually in some way using its own power to aid in being elevated.
01:23:18
Speaker
so if a guy's drunk and you're carrying him, he's doing some kind of movement. sohow a Dead weight is just dead weight and it just seems heavier. yeah So, total myth. oh He also devotes a chapter to Sternutation.
01:23:32
Speaker
or as it's more commonly known, as sneezing. Again, we still do this. We say gesundheit, we say bless you, after you sternutate, which I'm going to use from now on. What a great word. Yeah. Again, one of those ones you don't use anymore. Again, this goes back to Greek and Roman times, according to Brown, maybe, you know, sort of earlier. He's like, basically all cultures do this. The idea basically is he's kind of just just trying to figure out, you're not really testing this. It's not really a testable thing, right? So he's basically like, well, probably just indicates somebody sneezes, maybe they're sick.
01:24:05
Speaker
So danger of death. is possible. So you just give them a bless them, bless the sneezer to prevent the outcome. Because we don't ah bless people after they cough, which usually is more of an indication of like a you know tuberculosis in the Victorian era. Somebody coughs, you know they're going to die in the next couple of acts of the play. Yeah.
01:24:26
Speaker
But yeah, interesting. um Unfortunately, he does... Well, not unfortunately. this This is where the woke king stuff comes in, kind of. ah There is a rather anti-Semitic myth.
01:24:38
Speaker
I'm not going to say what he says, that Jewish people naturally stink. So obviously bad. i'm not goingnna go into this too much. But to say that Brown totally dismisses the idea that people of different ethnicities, as it were at the time, all smell the same way or smell bad at all.
01:24:54
Speaker
He's like, went to a synagogue and didn't smell. Basically, he's what he said. I sniffed so many Jews. They were fine. Yeah. Like it's icky, but it's like, well, at least. You know what? I appreciate the spirit and energy of it. And also it's inherently funny, which I also appreciate.
01:25:12
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I don't want be accused of being anti-Semitic. don't think what you're saying here is anti-Semitic. No, no. he He comes down very hard against stereotyping. He says, could be a dangerous point to annex a constant property unto any nation.
01:25:29
Speaker
Again, woke king. want details, you can read this on your own. Very interesting. Moving on to book five. Do we have comments? Moving on to book five. I was about to say, i bet his final opinion was anti-Semitism is still valid, but they don't smell bad because that's preposterous.
01:25:46
Speaker
Yes. He's like, oh, well look, nobody, you can't just say any one group. Like he's very against stereotype. And like I say, and he says, I went to synagogue. It's fine. Nothing noticeable. There's nothing in their way of life that would make this. Like maybe some people smell because they wear different clothes or eat different foods. We don't know. But you can't just say this group of people stinks. Like, that's just not. Yeah. So basically he's woke king for the era. Yeah.
01:26:07
Speaker
um Yeah. Book five is sort of interesting. yeah This is kind of where the book to me loses a bit of structure because he's going into sort of kind of a grab bag of things. So many things questionable that are commonly described in pictures. So these are like, oh, you see this portrayed a certain way. Why?
01:26:27
Speaker
And then some random myths kind chucked into the end. I'm going to talk about a few these, because a lot of these images, like the modern reader wouldn't be familiar with them, right? Like, I don't care about the Scutcheons of the 12 tribes of Israel. Like, i don't I don't even know what that is. I don't care about this, whatever. I mean, I read it before. I'm sure was something, but we don't have a reference point for a lot of these, right? And some of these, so I'm going to focus on some of the common images that might still be familiar to us, right? Right.
01:26:52
Speaker
Very classic. People still to this day ask, why do Adam and Eve have belly buttons in all those paintings? If they're created by God, hmm? What they need a belly button for?
01:27:02
Speaker
did he So he actually asked the naval question about Adam and Eve. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. And his answer is, well, because that's how God made them. he knows that That's what you do, right? Yeah, and that's the answer. Or...
01:27:16
Speaker
i i like I would even argue, we don't know what they looked like. We drew them with belly buttons because that's what we know people look like. Yeah, he's just saying. this is not a like This is not evidence of what, like, yeah we don't know. There's no pictures of them.
01:27:32
Speaker
that is Yeah, isn't that interesting? He doesn't do that. he He just says, no, that's because God made them. like he made them whole and complete, perfect, all the parts they need. In fact, he says, well, the navel was Adam and Eve's link to God.
01:27:46
Speaker
Which, again, sounds like a lot of the myths he's debunking, right? Like, it's kind of falling into the same trap of, like, well, if I have to use this overarching, I'm trying to explain this in whatever way I can, using the knowledge I have available. Part of this is scriptural, so I can say this is true. So, actually, that is similar to, like...
01:28:05
Speaker
oh God just bowling up in heaven. that's why This is so useful for understanding how your own biases work, because, you know, we're not better or smarter than this guy. we just have ah well We just have stack, like a stockpile of books, scientific theory and various different changes in society throughout the past several hundred years. But the way he thinks in the way that if he doesn't know something, but he has the certainty about because here's the reason why I think he is religious. He wouldn't have to make these kinds of arguments if he was a secret atheist.
01:28:44
Speaker
Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. He could just avoid talking about this entirely. yeah And no, I think he was probably devoutly religious and that most people were. And because it is a fact, he does not question or interrogate in any serious way.
01:28:59
Speaker
He can use it to bridge these gaps and knowledge and the God of the gaps kind of thing. And so this notion that why do Adam and Eve have navels? Well, because God made them that way. And also, but then he asserts to the fact that it was God's connection to Adam because he...
01:29:18
Speaker
Asserting this kind of religious fact with certainty when you don't fucking know. yeah Yeah. There's no way to know. And you just made that up. And I don't think he even realizes that because of how his brain works with just accepting this truth about the world that, of course, Adam and Eve existed.
01:29:38
Speaker
And again, not going to the, these aren't like, we don't know what they look like. People are just doing their best job, which is the actual answer. Yes. It doesn't matter if they had navels or not. We don't know.
01:29:50
Speaker
you know and It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. that That's right. That's, that would be the answer. Cause what's the next question he asks about religious figures and paintings. Why does Jesus have long hair?
01:30:03
Speaker
He also asks that. People still ask that one too. i I do love that George, goes in George Carlin, I think he's like, oh, conservatives always complain that about these long haired, sandal wearing hippies. Oh, it's okay when Jesus does it. Like, yeah. Why does he have long hair? Well, and then this is a little bit more realistic. and he here he says, well, Jesus lived in Nazareth and long hair was a style at the time there.
01:30:27
Speaker
a trendy guy yeah he was a fashionable fellow well really realistically he's like he just wanted to fit in right or he's just that's not even that it's just no like they just had long hair people looked back then as style yeah time where's jesus's frill my god he's not even wearing a white wig ha it's a century later but anyways yeah jesus from anyways from this guy but you know but basically western european artists have presumed as much at least because again they probably don't really know right he's going by some sources and he can get again he he goes on about well he was a nazirite but not exactly of their faith but coming down to it yeah they're just assuming that's what they their style was at the time right here's another one how did cleopatra die ask what'd you say dave
01:31:19
Speaker
i know as ask worry I know the I know the
Persistence and Power of Historical Myths
01:31:23
Speaker
Asp story. Yeah. And i I know how she died, but I don't actually recall it. I'm fairly sure the Ash story is apocryphal.
01:31:35
Speaker
as mom bying because the notion that But but the notion that the notion that she killed herself. yeah And she killed herself by smuggling in a snake because she had become a prisoner of the Romans under probably ah probably Octavian. I don't remember.
01:31:51
Speaker
Yeah. Better than I could do. Cause I was like, Oh yeah, she got bit by a snake. That is again, to this day, what people believe or a lot of people do. But now again, back then it it was, and kind of is still common knowledge that she committed suicide by a snake bite. Right. And the art of the era and you know, who knows, maybe now people are painting Cleopatra these days. um The art of the air commonly portrays her with a snake or an asp, as Tracy said, held to her breast to bite it. Yeah.
01:32:17
Speaker
Brown notes, though, that the earliest sources to describe her death could not affirm the cause, actually. So he quotes, this is a quote from Brown, Plutarch, in the life of Antony, plainly delivereth that no man knew the manner of her death.
01:32:31
Speaker
For some affirmed she perished by poison, which she always carried in a little hollow comb and wore it in her hair. oh So Wikipedia, it's likely that she died by poisoning, but the exact manner and substance will probably be unknown. But that's, that was a new one to me. i was like, Oh, did not know that.
01:32:46
Speaker
Cause that story, isn't that funny? 600 years after this guy debunks it. No, 400 years, 400 years after the debunking, it's still, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's the notion. Yeah. is it Well, and part of the reason for that is, ah and again, part of my problem of being podcast educated rather than than book educated is I choose my podcasts well, but nonetheless, there's still podcasts is I listened to the history of Rome podcast in its entirety twice because it's brilliant.
01:33:13
Speaker
Check it out. And ah it was Octavian and, and Cleopatra and Mark Anthony committed suicide. And, like current I forget that ah contemporaneous sources claimed it was the ASP, even though there wasn't actual evidence of it. That's why people believe it, is people at the time were spreading the rumor.
01:33:37
Speaker
So that is a very persistent rumor. Yeah, she was they they almost certainly committed suicide through poison and likely just had poison handy for such things so they wouldn't get captured and then hauled through Rome in a triumph.
01:33:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah, makes sense. Like, that's, yeah. But it's interesting that the mechanism is still, like, considered to be that. Like, that's what I thought. Like, I still was like, yeah that's what the common knowledge is, right? So, what's the show? Gotta question these things.
01:34:01
Speaker
So, book five, again, he kind of wraps up with a companion of popular customs, opinions, pictures, practices, and observations. He's getting more succinct here. He's kind of just like listing some off. So things like, it used to be considered bad luck if a hare or a rabbit crossed your path.
01:34:17
Speaker
He's like, look, yeah, they're running away from a predator. So be careful. you should run too. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And in the ominous science department, likewise, Brown sort of debunks the idea it's bad luck to spill salt. This one you've probably heard, right?
01:34:32
Speaker
Yep. Oh, yeah, it's supposed to fall over your shoulder. Yeah, yeah, the throwing over the shoulder one must be new because because he does debunk the salt thing. He's like, well, basically there's no material reason why falling salt would be a bad omen.
01:34:46
Speaker
Nothing to fear from that. It did cost money, and this is more in the notes. I think that the... ah James or Jason Eason did the notes notes that yeah actually salt was kind of expensive hideously you don't want to waste it yeah it was a well not necessarily hideously but salt was a commodity and it was a pricey commodity and it was to be used seriously so why would you throw it over your shoulder then well they didn't then oh that right entirely new that must be after salt became plentiful yeah I do not know the origin of the throw salt over your left shoulder but I still do it
01:35:21
Speaker
That's funny. I don't. And I wonder I did it in a restaurant once because someone told me to, but I wonder yeah that's why you complain so much, Jen, you're haunted. Could be. um so i cur I complain because I'm cursed. Actually, maybe that's where the curse came from. I'm complaining legitimately.
01:35:37
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. And this is no, it's because as I stated earlier, The auspices, the omens, and the supernatural world is screaming at you all the time, and you just refuse to let it in. And that's why you're cursed. I won't listen. no exactly Yeah, That's my own fault. The curse. The curse of the salt demons. um But maybe because like throwing salt at your salt, there was maybe a later thing where it was like oh we can waste this shit now. He gives a fuck. Yeah, true. Better not do. This is how plentiful salt is. um But yeah, he also says, he points out the superstition traces back to the ancients. They saw salt as a sign of friendship.
01:36:19
Speaker
So if you spilled salt at your friend's house, this is a sign that the friendship would not last. Oh. Like you waste, because maybe fight over the salt. Yeah, you're wasting salt. You know how that fucking costs?
01:36:30
Speaker
You wasted my salt. Get the fuck out of here. Okay, I'm coming to the end, but I want to ask you guys a personal question. I'm coming up to the end in a bit. we Ways to go. But when you peel or crack an egg, do you make damn sure that you crush that shell into bits and pieces? I do. Into dust? Do you? Not into dust, but I do like to crush Crush it up? So that is... I think it's just because I like the feel of crushing eggs.
01:36:54
Speaker
It's not because you think witches are going to take the shell and curse you with it? Oh, no. I never thought of that. Just for fun. Yeah, just for fun. okay I just back in the day crack it. And if I crack the shell into a bunch of pieces, I get mad because now there's eggshell fragments of the egg.
01:37:10
Speaker
Exactly, went the opposite, yes. This is ah Brown, he says. Yeah, apparently you want to crush the shell into bits. Everyone did. He says, to break the shell after the meat is out, we are taught in our childhood and practice it all our lives, which nevertheless is but a superstitious relict, according to the judgment of Pliny. Again, Pliny. And the intent thereof, I'm skipping the Latin, the intent thereof was to prevent witchcraft, for lest witches should draw or prick their names therein, and beneficiously...
01:37:40
Speaker
whatever that means, mischief their persons. They broke the shell, as Delicampia has observed. So he says he believes in witches, but he doesn't believe in this thing. He's like, yeah, it's actually superstitious. you don't need to crush the shells. But we all do it, which is kind of interesting because like, it's like back in the day, that was just what they did.
01:37:57
Speaker
Crushed up the shells. Can't have any witchcraft happen to me. yeah Some people, i think to this day, it's like a superstition of like, you're going to throw out your nail pairings and burn them so you'll get cursed. But, oh, yeah, not addressed. I've never heard that.
01:38:10
Speaker
But avoid those curses. Yep. And again... so much worth not getting cursed. It really is. just there Again, a lot of these myths are dispensed with pretty quickly because they don't make sense to Brown. So basically he's like, oh, when our cheek burneth or ear tingleth, we usually say that somebody is talking of us. We still said our ears are burning. Like we still, my ears are burning. Like we still say that. Yeah. And so again, it was ranked amongst superstitious opinions by Pliny. So Pliny documented this too.
01:38:37
Speaker
But the reason this doesn't work, he's like, look, this would require a universal mercury, universal messenger that was always working to deliver sounds to our ears. So like that wouldn't really work. He's like, we would have to actually have a mechanism for that to work. So here he's saying, there's just no mechanism. We don't have a we we don't have a god or a creature that does this. So yeah doesn't make sense. so um This one...
01:39:03
Speaker
right before we get to the sixth and penultimate book, ah some people did think that tis good to be drunk once a month. So, again, pretty brown pretty quickly clocks this as a common flattery of sensuality, supporting itself upon physic and the healthful effects of inebriation. So you know how like every few years a study comes out saying drinking wine is good for you? Yeah.
01:39:28
Speaker
It's like that. It's bullshit. It's any amount of alcohol is actually bad. um Brown does refute this. You know, he says ancient physicians were split.
01:39:38
Speaker
Some think it's fine to drink, some think it's not. But in Brown's opinion, Christian morality and the doctrine of Christ will not allow inebriating effects of alcohol. So if alcohol just cured you fine, but because it makes you drunk, it's not allowed. So good Christians shouldn't drink.
01:39:55
Speaker
in his opinion. But I thought this was kind of funny. um He claims that some people drink wine nor in order to gain the benefit of vomit. If you want to puke. You want to puke for some reason? You got to do that.
01:40:09
Speaker
But Brown says, look, there's medicines for that, okay? And he says, the ancient Egyptians purged both ways twice a month. Without this perturbation. Without drinking. So you can do that too. So I'm just imagining like ancient Egyptians shitting and barfing at the same time. oh Into whatever. Total barf-o-rama. They loved it. Whole or whatever. Twice a month. You gotta do it. Oh man. The ocean you have to get the bad stuff out of your body has been Oh, yeah. It's still around. i've Again, leeches and expectorants are a whole thing. And Lord knows people love putting quack medicines up their ass.
Medical and Geographical Myths Through Time
01:40:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah. after Yeah. Why? They do. They think up the ass is somehow like extra special. It's extra medicinal. I believe strongly. it's It's like how the placebo effect works, right? Where if you take a white placebo, it works, let's say, one point. If you take a red placebo, it works three points. And if you inject saline, it works five points in terms of the placebo effect. So the more alarming the medicine The stronger the placebo effect. So if it feels like something is really being done to you, which Lord knows putting weird stuff up your butt is going to feel like something is being done to you. The placebo effect is going to be incredible.
01:41:32
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, because it does relate to sort of something, the notion of like, what was it called? the heroic medicine. Where back in the day, they doctors, it was better if they just did nothing most of the time. They've got to be seen to do something. So they just bleed you until you fucking die, basically. Or they would just give you weird things because they want to be seen to be doing something. Right.
01:41:49
Speaker
This is also why quack cures persist nonstop and they're impossible to get rid of. Because most things that you get ill from just get better on their own.
01:42:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. And because of, you know, current law is not kind of banning that shit outright. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But here we are. yeah So again, don't need to drink for that, though. Take some Mipicac, get some Exlax. You're purging both ways without getting drunk.
01:42:19
Speaker
Fun? Sound fun? purge both ways just the so he says that that's fun to me okay he sick and a row if you just on unbalance yourself and you just spin around rapidly and then get pushed off a cliff by walt disney ahs Here's what else have. Hold back!
01:42:36
Speaker
Yes! That's right. Good one. ah So we're getting to our penultimate book, second to last. And I'm getting you tired. when We're maybe getting tired. This is a long podcast. Trying to one up episode. Sundry Tenants, Geographical and Historical. And frankly, a lot of these are very boring. They're about astrology, calculating the date and time. so Most of these have been solved by modern physics. And he had no way to...
01:42:59
Speaker
know about a lot of these myths. So I'm not they're not that interesting because it's like, no, we just know this isn't real. Interesting here. Think speaks. i I focus on this part too, because it speaks to the attitudes at the time and how sometimes things change for the worse when science gets involved. So here is the most interesting chapter is about why Africans are black.
01:43:21
Speaker
Now he uses outdated language, outdated terms, not the really, really bad term. But he calls them Negroes, just so you know. But he did not have the distinction of black and white in this time. So this part is fascinating because Brown, again, he's writing at a time where the like race like wasn't a concept like it is today, right? You're classifying people as he does, according to things like religion, your class, or your nation.
01:43:48
Speaker
So Brown uses the nation a lot, right? notions of real The notion of a Jesus. The notion of a racial hierarchy is later invention, right?
01:43:59
Speaker
By racists. So Brown describes Africans as he would any group of people, not disparaging of black people, does not reveal any particular prejudices here. You know, and again, this is well before scientific racism was invented to justify racist practices and to justify shadow slavery, right? They invented scientific racism later on. so This is kind of interesting. So,
01:44:23
Speaker
Also, we're talking about color. So Brown is writing this around the same time that Isaac Newton is experimenting with optics. So Isaac Newton, I believe, publishes around the same time as the last edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica, publishes his book about color and prisms. so he's Brown is writing this chapter before anyone even knew the color or what. They didn't know what color was as like a thing. So he says, this is Brown, thus of colors in general, under whose gloss and varnish all things are seen, few or none have yet beheld the true nature or positively set down their incontrullable causes.
01:44:58
Speaker
Again, goldmine of fake words here. But he's saying nobody knows what color is. And he says, like with the eggs, he has more questions than answers. Why is anything any color? He asks the reader, why is grass green?
01:45:11
Speaker
Why are garlic, mollies, and porrits, why do they have white roots, deep green leaves, and black seeds? Why do several docks and sorts of rhubarb have yellow roots, but they have purple flowers?
01:45:24
Speaker
We probably know why now, but I haven't looked into that. But basically, he's not sure why are people different colors then, right? So the idea at the time was that black skin was caused by the sun.
01:45:35
Speaker
Basically, like, cooking white people until they dark. Which is, you know, somewhat... It's not horribly far from the truth in terms of how melanin works and why we have it. Yeah. Yeah, so what we know now, it's actually the opposite. It's hominids, I guess, or whatever we call them. i'm not Again, I'm not a paleontologist or expert here, but as early men, humankind, including women, moved out of Africa, we got paler.
01:45:57
Speaker
We lost millennia, actually. i think there's some Twitter joke about like white people. Oh, how long did it take them to oh how long it take for your ancestors to become white after moving out of Africa? like It takes a long time. I mean, like we actually turn white.
01:46:10
Speaker
Yes. White people. It's not people. This is not the natural. Anyway, so he's thinking about this again before Darwin and before anyone even knew how old the Earth was. He addresses that earlier on in that boring chapter. We don't know how old the Earth is, whatever. But so he obviously he's misunderstanding also the mechanism of long term species evolution because he does know like, look, people with dark complexions, when they move to cold climates, they don't change color.
01:46:34
Speaker
And people, he says, people of, he says he has dark and fair complexion. He's not using black and white here. People with a fair complexion, when they move to warmer places and they don't get darker, probably missing out on the tanning because they actually probably do but basically they're not changing their so-called race so he notes when black people have children the children have the same complexion as their parents so it's passed along as it is with the same mixed race couples which he notices so he's imagining again a white person being cooked by the sun which is like the opposite of how it worked and it does take millennia of evolution of course for changes to manifest which brown would not even be comprehend at this point right so he's like 200 years too early
01:47:13
Speaker
So, but essentially he's right. He you he kind of wraps up by saying like, oh how did the camels of Bactria have two hunches instead of one, like the camels of Arabia? Why why is anything any shape really?
01:47:24
Speaker
So here he's admitting like, look, we don't know. I love someone who says, i don't know. Yeah. He says, like because he does say like, we, we don't know. Is it all of this?
01:47:35
Speaker
Cause he's describing, he also believes in the flood and that these animals came or descended from the animals that were in the flood too. So he's saying like, how did this happen? Like, did God create them like this? We don't know.
01:47:47
Speaker
So he's just saying like, we just don't know who the unknown originals are, as he says. So again, that's the turn. Yeah. So he's basically saying like, like there's no racism. It's very interesting. He's basically saying like, this is just how people are. there are people Yeah. what And it's curious why it is. Let's think about it and let's explore the ideas with the available information we have in front of us.
01:48:08
Speaker
Yeah. Which is, and I think the first sort of treatise about trying to argue, ah trying to argue the superiority and inferiority of races was somewhat contemporaneous because the transatlantic slave trade is ongoing at this point, but it's very, very early days. It's not how people think at that point.
01:48:31
Speaker
And so he is asking much more innocent and um frankly, more interesting questions. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say so. Yeah. And yeah it's
Cultural and Racial Misconceptions
01:48:40
Speaker
interesting too, because he returns to the question of sort of blackness in general in the next chapter. So again, common belief at the time, though, that black people were descended from the supposedly cursed Ham or Shams, he called refers to him. Ham was one of the sons of Noah. So Ham was cursed. I think the Mormons believe this or something. Ham was cursed because he actually saw his dad naked, which not his fault. Oh, well.
01:49:03
Speaker
And again, but Brown's- Legitimate reason to be cursed. Yeah. Well, is that why you're cursed, Jen? Thankfully not. I'm cursed for other reasons. s Seeing other men naked that I'm cursed from.
01:49:14
Speaker
Absolutely. You know, which is, I guess, better. but Yeah. I'm still cursed. No, it's fine. um but so He says, like, he's disputing this. He's like, he basically says, if this was true, like, a huge percentage of God's own creation would be cursed. Right.
01:49:32
Speaker
Like, come on. And he says, look, no one even knows who you mean when you say the nation descended from Ham. Like, nothing is provable here. So basically, long story short, he's saying this is ridiculous. He dispenses with the notion that the color black is a curse as well. So some people think that color is a curse, but he notes that other people think white is a curse. So whereas men affirm this color black was a curse, I cannot make out the propriety of that name, it neither seeming so to them nor reasonably unto us.
01:50:00
Speaker
For they take so much content therein that they esteem deformity by other colors, describing the devil and terrible objects as white. So he's saying other people think white is an evil color. i As you say, this man is definitely a woke king. And like most woke kings, he's also an incredible misogynist. But we'll take what we get.
01:50:18
Speaker
Yes, yes. You burn one grit and then suddenly, yeah. I mean, it's the misogyny of just... the general environment, right? So, interestingly- Right, but there is sort of arguments against sort of anti-Semitic parables, and I'm sure the notion that, and he is taking a stance that, no, these are just people who look different from us, but they're basically just people, and there's no inherent inferiority. It's just a curiosity as to why their skin is different. And so, you know, their physiotomy is different. But ah the one thing is certainly not questioning is, you know, the burning of witches, which is not, you know, although this was conventional wisdom, it's not necessarily ancient conventional wisdom. It was very much the style of the time.
01:51:06
Speaker
Yeah, and i do feel like this is in inside too, that misogyny is just a much more fully ingrained bias in our culture than is racism. Thanks, Romans. i mean you can look at I mean, it's not just Romans, but ah when you base everything off of the Romans, which all the Enlightenment folks do, Roman misogyny is a huge influence in ah Enlightenment thinking.
01:51:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And a lot of our modern thinking, too. The Romans really messed up a lot of stuff. Not saying that misogyny is unique to the Romans, but that the various quote-unquote barbarian groups definitely had different ideas about gender.
01:51:48
Speaker
Mm-hmm. That's right. So we end up in the world we're in, right? But it's interesting because he does say, he does go on to discuss physical beauty, right? And he does say beauty is determined by cultural practice. So he talks about like nose shapes and different costumes, hair colors. And he says, humans find many types of physical features to be beautiful.
01:52:10
Speaker
Color does not determine beauty. And black is also beautiful. ah He is a woke king yeah in this one. section, sort of. yeah man still that's That's pretty interesting interesting arguments to hear from the mid-17th century. yeah Yeah, because people really think, I think people think racism is much more ancient than it actually is. The whole notion we have of like black versus white, oh this is like invented 200 years ago. like This is not the scientific racism. like There's been prejudice, prejudice bias, whatever. what But this the the racial hierarchy based racism is relatively new. Yes. No, we've been saying that throughout the podcast, right? it's Yeah, it clear.
01:52:53
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. And i'm and i' this is one of those things where everything that we think has been around forever, so much of it is fairly new. Like most of the food we eat was invented in like 1950 or something like that. And we think of it as like these ancient traditional ways and our concept of tradition takes these mythologized fixed point in space that never probably existed.
01:53:18
Speaker
And it doesn't have to be this way is really the big lesson. It doesn't have to be this way for better and for worse. Exactly. Yeah. So I'm going to, this is getting a bit long. So finally, I'm going to wrap up with book seven. Again, i did a very high level, like this is a jam packed book of this kind of stuff. Right. But this is concerning many historical tenants generally received and some dedu deduced from the Holy, sorry, from the history of Holy scripture. I'm going to skip most of these because frankly, I don't care. i don't care if Tamerlane was a Scythian shepherd.
01:53:50
Speaker
Doesn't matter to me. There's some goodies here. going to touch briefly and then we'll be done with this. So one of the interesting things is, again, we've all heard the urban legend about the girl who gets pregnant because she's in a hot tub or swimming pool. And ah somebody had jerked off in there earlier and the girl gets pregnant. I'm sure we all heard that one growing up. Yes. Yeah. Well, they all heard that one back then, too.
01:54:12
Speaker
a Popular one Brown's Day as well. This is funny. I quote Brown. And I quote, the relation of avero just the ancient doctor and now common in every mouth of the woman that conceived in a bath by attracting the sperm or seminal afflection of a man admitted to bath in some vicinity unto her i have scarce space to believe scarce faith to believe and had i been to the jury you should have hardly thought that i had found the father and the personest to invite her tis a new and unsiconed way in history to fornicate at a distance
01:54:43
Speaker
and much offendeth the rules of physic, which say there is no generation without joint emission, not only a virtual, but corporal and carnal contuction. Oh, amazing.
01:54:54
Speaker
yeah Yeah. That that was fornicating at a distance, and that was very funny. That's great. yeah, he's saying, like, this is not impossible. This is not possible, right? There has to be some kind of physical contact. And he says, he basically says, men's penises are long,
01:55:12
Speaker
some of them are, in order to help the seed reach the egg. No shade, I don't care. Surely the distance of place with the commixture of an aqueous body must prove an effectual impediment and utterly prevent the success of a conception. So basically, like the penis has to be long to be as close as possible to the egg.
01:55:28
Speaker
It's not going to happen if there's all this water in between. i like Yeah, that's basically right. That's, how I mean, genuinely when you're looking at the ah way human bodies are made and making that argument, yeah.
01:55:42
Speaker
makes perfect sense. I do wonder if the Mythbusters... There's a reason we don't do cloacal kisses. It doesn't work that way. oh no yeah Anyway, I hope the Mythbusters tested that one. ah You know what? The Mythbusters
Myths in Religious and Historical Context
01:55:57
Speaker
actually... The Mythbusters tested a different one, which is that... ball?
01:56:03
Speaker
and Yeah, where you shoot. Yeah, yeah exactly. Where a musket pellet shoots through somebody's testicle and into a woman's womb and thus impregnates her. And they tested to see if this was at all possible using a sharpshooter with a musket and a dog's testicle.
01:56:21
Speaker
I'm kidding about the dog. Yeah. Obviously, it doesn't work like that because semen is a compound made of a bunch of stuff. The testicles just create the sperm. Anyways. Yeah. But obviously, myth busted, but it was a fun way to... Mr. Ball's expert. I'm just kidding. Lonnie does have a degree in testicles.
01:56:43
Speaker
Mr. Fancy Man who's all about seminal vesicles. Anyway. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You know more about them than me, which I would hope so.
01:56:54
Speaker
All right. Finally, moving on. Kind of finally. Brown corrects the notion that our savior, Jesus, never laughed. I heard him. It was great.
01:57:04
Speaker
He's got a weird seal laugh, though. but That's how Jesus laughs. He's like Jimmy Carter. He laughs in reverse. Ha ha ha ha Yeah, but basically people believe this because in Holy Scripture, i can't talk today, Holy Scripture, it is recorded that he sometimes wept, but never that he laughed.
01:57:26
Speaker
And Brown is like, he lived for 30 years. You think he's never lived laugh he never smiled and laughed in 30 years? He said he lived regularly among the people, so he probably did smile and laugh.
01:57:37
Speaker
Someone told him Norm Macdonald's moth joke and it was so long they didn't put it in the Bible. It's simple. That one, I don't know. No, don't don't don't start. Don't start, Dave. We'll save that for a... The grin on my face. I am going to spare you, but look it up afterwards.
01:57:53
Speaker
Oh, I will. You can tell him when I can take my headphones off. just fell asleep. He's just a regular guy, you know? have just walked away. I don't know where fell asleep came from. they could have just stopped paying attention to him. Okay, this is the last one. Many more books in Myth 7.
01:58:08
Speaker
But again, geography, history, pretty obscure. It has to be uninteresting. did the carth I think all of this is super interesting, but it will require so much context and deep dive so we know what to spend on it.
01:58:21
Speaker
How dare you be uninterested, Jen? This was threatening to become... This this could be a whole podcast podcast. That's exactly it. So let's get let's let's stick with the highlights. I get it. Highlights, yeah.
01:58:33
Speaker
Finally, did the Carthaginian General Hannibal use vinegar to carve his way to the Alps? Absolutely not. I'm saying it sounds like it would take a long time. Really?
01:58:44
Speaker
Kind of, yeah. Weird. oh spirits The spirits are coming at us I will call back to using vinegar to carve your way through the Alps. And what what what a weird coincidence. Anyways, continuing on, Jan is cursed. Go on.
01:59:00
Speaker
So many weird coincidences? Or blessed? No, you're cursed.
Fears and Morality in Legends
01:59:05
Speaker
Damn it. Well, I don't know if can. But yes, he says even an ocean of vinegar would be too little for that effect.
01:59:11
Speaker
You're only really going that from earthquakes and massive floods. So, fair enough. Makes sense. Brown ends Pseudodoxia Epidemica with a short chapter on things that he fears are true, but hopes are false. Oh, I love that. And I'm actually going to i going talk about all four of these, actually, because it's kind of interesting.
01:59:30
Speaker
These are the things he fears are true. to Number one, he fears... that what is true is the tale of an evil queen who had had her father killed. She then had sex with her father's assassin and even drank wine out of her dead father's skull.
01:59:45
Speaker
Wow. so He's afraid this is true. Scared. Scared. Now, I love the fact that this, it is it it says so much about how stories meant things differently back then.
02:00:02
Speaker
Because the notion of just fiction for its own sake Probably not as much. Everyone's telling folk tales and parables and stuff like that. Fiction is in its very earliest infancy.
02:00:14
Speaker
So the notion that he hears this and it unnerves him and scares him. Just such a different place in time. I love that. Yeah. But here's the thing.
02:00:25
Speaker
This is a true story, but it's. Very different. Because get this, in the notes, you took go on the notes to find this he doesn't mention the Queen, he just tells this really brief story. The notes, I believe James Eason did the notes. They reveal that Brown is actually referring to the tale of the Lombard King Albuin,
02:00:43
Speaker
who was killed by his wife, Rosamund, in the year 572 CE. So here's the backstory. King Albowin had killed Rosamund's father, King Cunimond. This is in France somewhere, Lombards. And then he took Rosamund for his wife. So he kills ah he kills this guy and says to his daughter, you're marrying me now.
02:01:01
Speaker
During the wedding feast, Albowin forced her to drink from a goblet made out of her father's skull. Oh, so it's the exact opposite. This is not some you see the twisting, the misogynist twist, right? where Yeah. All of sudden it's an evil woman going back to Roman thinking, because you look at every single bit of Roman myth making. It's always the evil stepmother who does it. It always is. Yes.
02:01:24
Speaker
Women and the whole it goes back to ancient Greece where women are just flawed men. Which, if you look at biology, we're all female in the womb. So that's maybe a bit debunked, but still, it's all bullshit anyway. But yeah, so you see this interesting misogynist twist. Rosamund apparently got her revenge by having King Albuen killed by some Lombard general. So, yeah.
02:01:45
Speaker
Interesting. But you see that he's so afraid. It's true. And it's actually misogyny on his part. I love the fear that it's true. that Yeah. Yeah. It's so pure and it speaks so much of the way he thinks about monarchy and the sanctity of monarchy. Yeah. particularly when you're alive at the time of King Charles II, because no that would that went well.
02:02:06
Speaker
Anyways, yeah, and just the psychological horror it must have been for how everything went with him, you know, with the choppy choppy and then Cromwell. Anyways. But yeah because he was during that time. And also, though, he specifically says, oh it's scary for parents, with a parental thing, like to have your own child would do this.
02:02:24
Speaker
So it's kind of interesting. um The second one, actually, weird coincidence. Do you remember we' we're talking about our anatomical specimens and how a lot of those guys were probably necrophiliac freaks? yeah Yes. Well, interesting, because so I forgot about this, what he fears. And we I said, oh, I'm if I'm I was afraid the rumor about Marilyn Monroe's corpse was true. I still haven't looked into that again because I don't have a stomach for it. But I was afraid that was true.
02:02:47
Speaker
Brown's afraid that ancient Egyptians that were tasked with that were tasked with mummifying corpses would sometimes have sex with the dead bodies. that's He's afraid. It's very interesting. So Brown writes that while we laugh at the story of Pygmalion, this is the guy who sculpted a statue, fell love with it, and receive as a fable that he fell in love with the statue, we cannot but fear it may be true what is delivered by Herodotus concerning the Egyptian pollinators, or such as anointed the dead, that some thereof were found in the act of carnality with them.
02:03:20
Speaker
So he's afraid that this is true. Right. Yeah. And which is interesting. And the notes again by the author or by the note by the the website runner editor, James Eason, the notes do state that Herodotus, the historian did say specifically that the bodies of women were held three or four days to prevent any such occurrence.
02:03:42
Speaker
yeah That I completely believe. And there's the whole funeral homes to ah prefer not to hire men, that kind of thing. I think this might be an episode. And this is interesting. And Brown is very, very horrified the thought of this as he should be. And he notes that this is a corruption so foul that it had no real name then. And he didn't invent the name for it. Isn't that funny? He invented so many names. if It bothered him so much. Yeah. And yes and again, what what gets me is he could pick anything of his imagination.
02:04:13
Speaker
and But what it means is he heard this and this kept him up at night. Yeah, that's right. Yep. Yeah. And yeah I've had, yeah, you know, stories, they do that to you, right? I'm being kept up at night by some of stories out of the States right now, right? So, again, it's such a horrifying thought to him. Again, the the term necrophilia wouldn't even come into use until the 19th century. Like, it's such a horrifying thing that they had no word for it, right? Yeah. Again,
02:04:36
Speaker
This is really funny, though. I don't know. The editor put in a very funny note, quite random. I'm going to go there anyway because it's worthwhile. This is a a quote from bill clinton Bill Clinton quoted in Time magazine. You know, if I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out. That's a good looking mummy.
02:04:54
Speaker
Bill Clinton, NGM6, quoted in Time magazine. Oh, my comment Provoked outrage. my God. In Peru, where there had already been opposition to the shipment of the mummy Juanita to the United States. One Peruvian anthropologist remarked, maybe it would have been better if a man as public as Clinton had not handled the thing in such a tacky manner so crudely. This guy is such a pervert, he's hitting on a fucking desiccated mummy. Yeah.
02:05:20
Speaker
Oh, guess what? you know what else is worse? You know how old that mummy was?
02:05:27
Speaker
13. 13-year-old girl mummy. And he's like, this article I found, I didn't look into it. was about to say 2,000, 3,000 years old, also 13. Yes. But hilarious. talking about the hot...
02:05:39
Speaker
pubescent and gummy. What a fucking guy! she Just disgusting. yeah I didn't find that a girl who's quitting, but I found this one from UPI News. It was May 23rd. You're being horrified, and I can't stop laughing at this. It's so absurd and so, like, palpably unwholesome and evil.
02:06:01
Speaker
God, what a cartoon of a man who did this all. oh Yeah, this article has said you, Clinton admits crush on mummy. This is sort of like a lighthearted take. This isn't the original one that quotes the Peruvian researchers, but this is really bad.
02:06:15
Speaker
Like, it's pretty fucking gross. The lighthearted admission, he too is smitten by the remains of the 13-year-old girl. What a sentence fragment. My God. It's funny until you think about it.
02:06:27
Speaker
Yeah. Like, it really sickens me.
Conclusion: The Importance of Pursuing Truth and Wisdom
02:06:30
Speaker
There's that case of this man who... You've probably heard of this. This man who, like, oh ah he was in he wass in love with a woman who didn't love him. She died. he stole her corpse. And, like... kept it as a mummy in his house.
02:06:39
Speaker
People are like, look at this. is Such a devoted love story. It's like, no. He's a rapist stalker who stole a corpse. The fuck are we all talking about? Yeah, guy. It's not joke, yeah.
02:06:51
Speaker
That's not funny. That is deeply disturbing and ah and shows the the notion of possession being the way that his concept of love works. It's about ownership.
02:07:04
Speaker
The Bill Clinton thing actually is funny because he's just like a... Oh, it's hilarious. It's just such a weird, creepy thing to say. Because whose mind goes like... I've never thought a mummy. I can't wait to fuck that mummy. I know! It's like, what? I had include that just because it was so bizarre. Okay.
02:07:25
Speaker
Third thing, brown fears. Third fear. Yeah. He fears the story of this evil Italian who promised to spare a man's life if that man renounced his god. When the man did so, the Italian killed him anyways, thus damning his victim's soul for all eternity. So yeah, this guy was a true believer. like yeah He wasn't a secret atheist, like maybe some of them were, but he is...
02:07:47
Speaker
No, this is a deeply religious man yeah who is trying to rationalize his very deeply held religious beliefs with these newfound enlightenment kind of yeah kind of thoughts.
02:08:00
Speaker
He's a doctor. hes studied in Leiden of all places, for God's sake. He's obviously smart. I'm just kidding. I'm doing that as a joke. I don't really think. The fact you had to point out you're doing it as a joke means it's clearly not.
02:08:16
Speaker
Oh, see, gotta stop putting up my own jokes, too. I gotta just let it... But i don't want people to think I'm a piece of shit, even though I am. Anyway, I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. If I say I'm not. I'm going to get a spray bottle for you, Jen. No self-deprecating. Go on. Really do. I'll stop apologizing for my existence. Okay, so the reason this horrified Brown is because this is the type of villainy of the worst kind.
02:08:37
Speaker
So not even the heathens, according to Brown, would destroy a man's soul. And even the worms that eat our bodies after death leave the soul in peace. So a man who would do this to another man is even worse than Lucifer, in Brown's opinion. So he's very afraid that kind of evil.
02:08:54
Speaker
He also fears, the final fear, he fears the truth of the rumor that the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VII, was poisoned by a monk in a draft of the Holy Eucharist. So, body and blood of Christ, and there's poison in it.
02:09:08
Speaker
The poisoning is bad enough, so to do so in a drink that is meant to ensure salvation is even worse. And he points out as a Church of England guy, even worse, if you're a Catholic and believe in transubstantiation, that's poisoning a man with the very blood of Christ. So this is actually pretty, if you, in the mindset of a Catholic individual or Christian person, that is extremely decadently evil.
02:09:33
Speaker
Yeah. Right? Like, if you're in that mindset, to me, it's like, oh, well, practical. Yeah, sure. He's to drink it, poison it. It again speaks to be it's like when you, what you were talking about earlier, which is the fear this would happen to me or my child. And that kind of, when you hear a horrifying story and then you think about how that can affect you and that's what makes it upsetting.
02:10:00
Speaker
And in this case, because, ah is he is so He takes this so deeply seriously and it is so precious to him. The notion that the Eucharist could be used as a way to murder ah to murder a king is the most ah just blasphemous evil act you could possibly think of. yeah And it is, again, fascinating to me because of how I just think that's kind of cool.
02:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, I know, me too. I guess I did found a bad ass. Kind of heavy metal. and Yeah. You know, like all heavy metal goes. And yeah, and rather it is it actually and this is actually when you think about the concepts of blasphemy and this sin and this horror, this troubles him in a way that almost nothing else can. And again, i i love that kind of insight to his his mind and beliefs and where he's coming from. I think that's fascinating.
02:11:01
Speaker
hu Because think the scariest thing is like, I heard someone got eaten by a wolf and I hope I don't get eaten by a wolf. And no, it's far more existential and dark.
02:11:12
Speaker
Yes, because, the yeah, the there's the you know the betrayal by your child, apparently, which is, again, not a true story, but there's also the tale, again, of the, you know, the i sex with corpses is just horrifying. to that Because that's just something that they wouldn't even have a... I don't know about the conception of that, even, of Necrophilia, because there's a lot more dead bodies around that time.
02:11:32
Speaker
But still, like, in just the very horror of it, yes, is more of a real fear. And then this one, again, it's the one of the Italian man is... the the threat to your soul. And then I would say same thing with this poisoning one too, is it a religious person, a monk killing a king with poison. Yes. and's Yeah. Like existentially, like you say, horrifying, but thankfully for Brown, that story is probably not true. Henry VII probably just died of malaria. Probably wasn't poisoned. wo It's one of fear down. And in short, what Brown most fears is the truth that human beings can be so evil and depraved,
02:12:08
Speaker
as these legends would suggest. So Brown notes, and I quote, "...many other accounts like these we sometimes meet in history, scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity, whose verities not only but whose relations honest minds do deprecate.
02:12:24
Speaker
Therefore, he will provide no further examples of such behaviour." The vicious examples, and I quote, of ages past poison the curiosity of these present, offering sorry affording a hint of sin unto seducible spirits, and soliciting these unto imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely principled as to invent them.
02:12:44
Speaker
So basically he's saying, I don't want corrupt my audience with these examples. Because if you do think about it, where would where else would you read it read about this stuff? He's a scholar. He's probably read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tales of humans being depraved and horrible. So he's like, I'm not going to show you those because people who are more weak-minded might take it as an example. So it's kind of interesting.
02:13:04
Speaker
It's sort of like, is this accurate? So he doesn't want to corrupt his audience with the examples and he exhorts his fellow scholars to omit them as well. So he says, in things of this nature, silence.
02:13:15
Speaker
Silence. Sorry. And things of this nature, silence commendeth history. Tis the many of the heart of things lost, wherein there must never rise a Pansarolus, nor remain any register but that of hell.
02:13:30
Speaker
Confusing. Pansarolus was an Italian scholar who wrote a book cataloging ancient inventions that had been lost over the ages. So basically he's saying, I don't want this book to become a catalog of vicious behavior.
02:13:43
Speaker
right? So he's saying tales of evil should be forgotten to be recorded only in the annals of hell itself. So he concludes this work with the hope that evil men will be punished one day. So perhaps they'll be reincarnated as snakes.
02:13:56
Speaker
Or if there's not enough bodies to go around for all the souls or whatever, they'll spend their eternity as souls in naked habitations. And finally, he leaves the reader with these words.
02:14:09
Speaker
Prima sapientia, greatest est. Falsa intelligere. Or, the first step of wisdom is to understand falsehoods. Finis. and Lovely.
02:14:20
Speaker
Wow. Thank you. That was great fun. I had no idea where this was going. wonderful Yeah, was wonderful. Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And that's what I wanted. I wanted it be a little bit lighter, a little bit more fun episode, because doing some heavy shit lately, as we all have been. Only a dabble of necrophilia. We're good. I mean, little do yeah like why is this coming up in all my episodes almost? but Like I said, it's an interesting topic. We are dilettantes interested in the weird and the strange sometimes too.
02:14:47
Speaker
Yes. So yes. um Thank you again to our audience for listening to us. We hope you enjoyed our trip into the wonder camera today. and Tracy, I think you might have some contact information for an outro for us. We're going to throw a tag on the end of the episode anyways.
02:15:05
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So in that case, take care. Bye. All right. by Bye. Bye. we can cut up my earring clapping. Bye everyone. And scene.
02:15:16
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the wonder camera. Find us under the wonder camera on blue sky, YouTube, and Instagram.