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Speaker 3: You're right, it is okay?
Speaker 4: Well, what do you say we can win for a
Speaker 4: little food? Huh? Drink?
Speaker 1: Rest the slaughtered lamb?
Speaker 5: That's kind of strange.
Speaker 1: Where's the lamb?
Speaker 4: It's probably inside getting cold?
Speaker 2: Come on, no, really, what kind of ad is that
Speaker 2: for a pub?
Speaker 1: I don't know, would rather than Hilton.
Speaker 2: All right, but whatever happens, it's your fault, right, all right?
Speaker 1: Cool on, we'll find out if any of Ity's killings
Speaker 1: were on a full moon. Ok that's a lot of
Speaker 1: Hollywood Maloney.
Speaker 6: Ther classic were Wolf could change shape any time of
Speaker 6: want's day and night when every takes a notion to him.
Speaker 6: That's why I call him shape shift.
Speaker 4: This one.
Speaker 6: I got a dozen books on it.
Speaker 1: What about killing it with silver bullets?
Speaker 5: For sure?
Speaker 6: Silver bullets are fire. It's the only way to get
Speaker 6: rid of the day. Thinks they're worse than cockroaches. They
Speaker 6: come back from the dead if you don't kill him right.
Speaker 6: Plus they regenerate. You know what that is? Cut off
Speaker 6: an arm, cut off a leg, stick, a knife and
Speaker 6: a hot nothing. They may look dead, but bam, three
Speaker 6: days later they're as good as new.
Speaker 1: Do you believe in this?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: Am I an idiot?
Speaker 6: I'm making a buckhead? You want books? I got books,
Speaker 6: I got chicken blood, I got dog embryos, I got
Speaker 6: black candles, I got wolf band. Look at this silver bullets.
Speaker 6: Some joke added them thirty or six, never picked them up.
Speaker 6: I think back America, American Express visa. You're gonna buy
Speaker 6: it a what you have?
Speaker 5: These two?
Speaker 3: The wolf beon.
Speaker 5: You think I don't know the difference between a wolf
Speaker 5: and a man.
Speaker 4: Bail It became a wolf and you killed him. Aware
Speaker 4: a wolf can't be killed only with a silver bullet
Speaker 4: or a silver knife or a stick with a sailor handle.
Speaker 5: You're insane.
Speaker 1: I tell you I killed a wolf.
Speaker 5: I'm play in hard very wolf.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 5: A giant very creature in Part eight, Part Matt in Luckness,
Speaker 5: a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands
Speaker 5: of Scotland. It's a creature known as the Luckness, Monster.
Speaker 1: Monstert.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 2: Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 1: So it's been a little while since we've discussed where Wolves,
Speaker 1: and I know that they're one of Blake's favorite monsters,
Speaker 1: so we thought it would be fun to revisit them
Speaker 1: and to highlight the continuing controversies and confusion about where
Speaker 1: Wolf Law the Beast of Javadens, and perhaps even a
Speaker 1: science Fair project for someone to try. So welcome to
Speaker 1: the show, Blake.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: It's been a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited to be back.
Speaker 1: Well, this is a really fun topic, and I don't
Speaker 1: think we've talked about where Wolves for a while, have.
Speaker 2: We It might have had. You know, if I had
Speaker 2: to pick a favorite monster, where wolves have probably had
Speaker 2: more influence on my life than any other monster, so
Speaker 2: I'd have to go to this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a strange thing to say and to quantify
Speaker 1: with monsters, well more influence on your life.
Speaker 2: Well they have though, if you think about it. I mean,
Speaker 2: the first of all, I've loved them from my entire life,
Speaker 2: but also my current wife, who I expect to be
Speaker 2: my only wife.
Speaker 1: Unless she hears this.
Speaker 2: Are very for I don't know if I should call
Speaker 2: it a date. But when we think about, like when
Speaker 2: we met, the first movie we watched together that she acknowledges.
Speaker 2: Let me add that because I think we technically technically
Speaker 2: we watched the Kentucky Fried movie first, But the movie
Speaker 2: she wanted to watch was The American Werewolf in London,
Speaker 2: and we watched that romantic It's pretty awesome. I really
Speaker 2: liked that movie a lot. We watch it fairly frequently.
Speaker 2: We just rewatched it with our kids and it really
Speaker 2: does capture a lot of the lore. And I'm including
Speaker 2: I'm including a little bit of the audio in the
Speaker 2: intro to this episode.
Speaker 1: So what do your kids think of the movie?
Speaker 2: Oh, they liked it. Yeah, they liked it a lot,
Speaker 2: although my son was really annoyed that they didn't. Well
Speaker 2: spoiler alert so if you haven't seen the movie, maybe
Speaker 2: you want to skip a couple of minutes. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: my son was annoyed that the werewolf dies in the end,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, what did you think was gonna happen?
Speaker 2: I mean, turns into a monster that kills people? But
Speaker 2: he was like, well, maybe they'd find a cure, you know,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, well, he's a gentle soul.
Speaker 2: He is, He's wonderful, but he loves this kind of movies.
Speaker 2: I think he liked everything up to the point where
Speaker 2: they killed the werewolf and he was a little annoyed
Speaker 2: by that.
Speaker 1: So fair enough. So when we talk about were wolves,
Speaker 1: what are we going to be talking about today exactly?
Speaker 1: Because there are lots of lots of different law, lots
Speaker 1: of different claims and beliefs.
Speaker 2: There are it's a monster again. I mean, this is selfish,
Speaker 2: but I really like the monster. But there are factors
Speaker 2: around some of the coverage we've done before that keep
Speaker 2: coming up that are sort of the rubber ducks I
Speaker 2: think is the one of the metaphors people use for
Speaker 2: you try to sink them and they keep coming back. Yeah,
Speaker 2: these unsinkable rubber ducks. And one of them has to
Speaker 2: do with the allegation that the Beasts of Chevadon was
Speaker 2: actually hyena. I'd like to talk about that a little bit,
Speaker 2: but I'd also like to talk about I thought we
Speaker 2: should also talk about the origin of were wolves, the
Speaker 2: effect of the full moon. I know a lot of
Speaker 2: my research recently was about silver bullets, in the case
Speaker 2: of Chief Hodon. But I thought maybe we could talk
Speaker 2: about the full moon in association with were wolves and
Speaker 2: where some of the lore comes from, because I've been
Speaker 2: doing a lot of research and I got really focused
Speaker 2: on this silver bullet thing, and I still.
Speaker 1: Been working on that for a while.
Speaker 2: I think, I know you, yeah, I really I'm very
Speaker 2: interested in the magical qualities of silver, and I think
Speaker 2: there is some interesting things to discuss there. So let's
Speaker 2: talk about some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Sounds good. So I guess to begin with, what's the
Speaker 1: difference between a werewolf or the concept of a werewolf
Speaker 1: today and a werewolf in the early twentieth century and
Speaker 1: say a were wolf maybe four to five hundred years
Speaker 1: ago in Europe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I find this really interesting how the story
Speaker 2: of where wolves have changed. So I guess one of
Speaker 2: the first werewolf stories people talk about, you know, people
Speaker 2: turning from a human into a wolf, has to do
Speaker 2: with a legend of I'm not sure if it's Lichen
Speaker 2: or Licen. I'm not sure how it was actually, Yeah, so,
Speaker 2: but this was a character and this was kind of
Speaker 2: a recurring motif in Greek legends and folklore, mythology, people
Speaker 2: would somehow get this opportunity to have a dinner party
Speaker 2: with the gods, and they were like, oh, I'm having
Speaker 2: a dinner with the gods. And I blame this on
Speaker 2: Martha Stewart for not being alive yet. But they're trying
Speaker 2: to plan their dinner and they're like, what should I
Speaker 2: serve to the gods? You know, you know what would
Speaker 2: be great? You know what the gods would be like, like,
Speaker 2: it's cool because it's an interesting dish and at the
Speaker 2: same time inviting us a test for the gods to
Speaker 2: see how how sensitive their palates are. And that would
Speaker 2: be if I killed my own child and served it
Speaker 2: to the gods as a main course.
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So these these people, more than one myth
Speaker 2: revolves around this idea. They they bring the gods in,
Speaker 2: they have a wonderful dinner, and the gods eat the
Speaker 2: meat and they're like, whoa dude, is this your son?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm like, yeah, but what do you think
Speaker 2: of the vegeta spice? Right? Am? I? Right? So, but
Speaker 2: they never care about the vegeta spicce. They get all
Speaker 2: hung up over the fact that you killed your kid
Speaker 2: to serve to the gods. They get really mad about that, so.
Speaker 1: That was some kind of proof of deity as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know, because we did an episode about
Speaker 2: eating flesh. You remember that that was they called it
Speaker 2: long Long Pig. It's been a long time, but we
Speaker 2: did an episode about ghouls and I.
Speaker 1: Remember doing an episode on that cannibalism.
Speaker 2: With We talked to Carol Travis Heinkoff, who wrote A
Speaker 2: Dinner with Cannibals, the Complete History of Mankind's Oldest Taboo,
Speaker 2: and they called it long pig. Apparently we taste like pork.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well I think it's still done in some cultures.
Speaker 1: I think in New Guinea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's curry.
Speaker 2: I think her curry cree is the disease. There's there's
Speaker 2: a there's a prion disease, which is where you get
Speaker 2: a recurring or repeating uh protein and it can cause
Speaker 2: like uh mad cow disease. But it's a human born disease.
Speaker 2: And that's the main reason I think that. Well, there's
Speaker 2: obviously a social taboo.
Speaker 1: Didn't salvad Or Dally want to eat his wife after
Speaker 1: she died? Reading that somewhere?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing about
Speaker 2: salvad Or Dolly. There's a fantastic museum of salvad Or
Speaker 2: Dally in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Speaker 1: And oh, I love to say that.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it's amazing. First of all, the painties
Speaker 2: in general are amazing, but I had no idea how
Speaker 2: big they are. I mean, most of the stuff he
Speaker 2: painted is probably ten by twelve I mean, and that's feet.
Speaker 1: You've never been able to see anything in personal.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, if you get a chance to go to
Speaker 2: Saint Petersburg, you should definitely go to the museum. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: And then if you're a naturalist, go outside the museum
Speaker 2: and look out into the bay and it's just all
Speaker 2: these beautiful melting clocks. I was gonna say, there's that.
Speaker 2: There's melting clocks on the inside, and then horseshoe crabs
Speaker 2: on the outside. The bays is full of horseshoe crabs
Speaker 2: and it's really cool. But yeah, yeah, Dolly's amazing. The
Speaker 2: whole surrealist movement is really impressive. But yeah, why are
Speaker 2: we talking about Dolly because I've lost my track.
Speaker 1: Yeah we've gone off track a little bit. But yeah,
Speaker 1: just talking about the differences between where wolves across time
Speaker 1: and space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do tend to change over time. Oh so
Speaker 2: the point was, Yeah, back in the Origin story, you
Speaker 2: start out with the gods cursing people and turning them
Speaker 2: into wolves, which is a transformation. I think, so as
Speaker 2: a punishment, being turned into a wolf could be problematic.
Speaker 2: There's legends where people are turned into a wolf for
Speaker 2: a few days, there's legends where people are turned into
Speaker 2: wolves for a year, and there's legends where in the
Speaker 2: Satiric Con, which is an interesting play, there's a story
Speaker 2: in the Satiric Con told it like at a dinner party,
Speaker 2: and in that story, there's a character who's a soldier
Speaker 2: who's going with another guy. They're traveling across the country.
Speaker 2: They stop at a graveyard. The moon is full, and
Speaker 2: this character goes and he takes off all his clothes.
Speaker 2: He peas in a circle around the clothes, turns into
Speaker 2: a wolf, and then goes off in a tax livestock
Speaker 2: and later on he's wounded. It's one of those plastic
Speaker 2: werewolf stories where he's wounded, he's back in human form,
Speaker 2: and then people realize that the wound is identical to
Speaker 2: the one that was performed to the animal. That is
Speaker 2: a recurring theme. What's interesting, though, is that when he
Speaker 2: peas around his clothes, his clothes turned into rocks, And
Speaker 2: I guess the idea is that when he's done, he
Speaker 2: can turn them back from rocks back into clothes again
Speaker 2: and put them on and then pursue the rest of
Speaker 2: his life. It's really unclear why he turns into a wolf.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's no explanation, like it's just a
Speaker 2: story told at a dinner party. But when Money Sommers
Speaker 2: Montague Sommers writes his story on the werewolfs in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, he mentions that story. He specifically mentions the
Speaker 2: satirra con.
Speaker 1: So it's a recurring theme, isn't it. With the clothing
Speaker 1: as well? That in some stories if the wolf or
Speaker 1: that the werewolf doesn't have the clothing to be able
Speaker 1: to transform, that he can't transport back into us exactly.
Speaker 2: Some of the stories involve them hiding their clothes. In
Speaker 2: the original The wolf Man, it seems like his clothes
Speaker 2: are well, I guess not him, but the in the
Speaker 2: beginning of the story, Uh, you know, the term gypsy
Speaker 2: has changed, like like it's become sort of a slur,
Speaker 2: and I don't mean it as a slur. Yes, romany
Speaker 2: right in the movie, they're referred to as gypsies. But
Speaker 2: there's a character, Bayla, who's actually played by Baylor Legosi,
Speaker 2: I believe, and by a dog when he's turned into
Speaker 2: wolf form, but uh, he he has changed and when
Speaker 2: he's killed Lawrence Talbot, Larry Talbot beats him to death
Speaker 2: with a silver headed cane and he changes back into human,
Speaker 2: but he's wearing clothes. And when when Lawrence changes, he
Speaker 2: changes into a wolf man, he's like, not, it's not
Speaker 2: a full transformation. There's no explanation for why that's the case.
Speaker 2: But we'll talk about that later. But again, yeah, we'll
Speaker 2: get we'll get the silver reference right out of that movie.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that. But but he is he is
Speaker 2: cursed in this Obviously this is fictional, but Kurt's the
Speaker 2: oddmach the guy that wrote it said he was, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to be as historically accurate as possible. But somewhere
Speaker 2: it's become a curse. But yet in between, in the
Speaker 2: Middle Ages, there was a time when if you wanted
Speaker 2: to be a were wolf, you had to have a
Speaker 2: deal with the devil. So you would you would get
Speaker 2: a witch's potion and you would smear yourself with salv
Speaker 2: you would put on a belt made out of wolf skin,
Speaker 2: and then you would become a werewolf. And it was
Speaker 2: a deliberate act of magical evil. It would right, right.
Speaker 2: So that's quite a change. So it goes from being
Speaker 2: a curse of the gods to being a deliberate act.
Speaker 2: And then with a few exceptions, there are there's some
Speaker 2: French folklore in the Middle Ages where like the children
Speaker 2: of vicars, like the children of pastors or church leaders
Speaker 2: would sometimes become were wolves, and so that existed in
Speaker 2: the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, that sort of legend. But
Speaker 2: in general it wasn't a curse for much of European history.
Speaker 2: It was an act where you wanted to become a
Speaker 2: were wolf. You wanted to have the power of the wolf,
Speaker 2: so you would make it packed, you'd make a postion,
Speaker 2: you do all these things, and you'd become a wolf.
Speaker 2: We talked before on an episode about Peter Stump and
Speaker 2: that famous story about him being a convicted wolf, and
Speaker 2: that exactly that sounds like a serial killer story, although
Speaker 2: because of the religious elements. It's possible that he wasn't
Speaker 2: really a killer. It was sort of a religious persecution.
Speaker 2: I really don't know, but I do know that his
Speaker 2: finish was spectacularly horrible.
Speaker 1: Horrible, and that was a form of torture. I mean
Speaker 1: that was done to many people's terrible, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: a on that time in Europe? Did you have the
Speaker 1: equivalent of the Witch Praze and the witch Trials for
Speaker 1: were wolves as well? Yeah, yeah, I think in Spain
Speaker 1: and soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, no, the Inquisition and the witch trials,
Speaker 2: and then you know, people have written a lot about
Speaker 2: the motivations for the witch trials and the idea that
Speaker 2: they were.
Speaker 1: We've discussed them before, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have, and you can go back to our
Speaker 2: show notes.
Speaker 1: Debrah Hyde's right, that was kind of recent.
Speaker 2: Austairly recent, right, But I'll mention, no, I.
Speaker 1: Think that was I think that was Halloween last years,
Speaker 1: almost a year ago.
Speaker 2: Tempt fugit right. I mean, time does fly, absolutely, But
Speaker 2: I will mention that as the legends evolved, by the
Speaker 2: time we get up to nineteen forty one to the
Speaker 2: Wolfman movie, you've got the where Wolf turned into effectively
Speaker 2: doctor Jackel and mister High. Right. So, in fact, Stephen
Speaker 2: King in his book Dance Macabb he talks about the
Speaker 2: types of monsters there are, and he talks about the vampire,
Speaker 2: the Frankenstein Monster, and then Doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde.
Speaker 2: And so he says, by the time you get to
Speaker 2: the wolf Man, you've basically turned this monster into a
Speaker 2: Doctor jekylin Mister Hyde story, wherein you have a character
Speaker 2: who is, on the one hand, when he's one way,
Speaker 2: he wants to be good, he tries to behave well
Speaker 2: and then eventually he turns into an evil force against
Speaker 2: his will, but you're you're empathetic for him, like you
Speaker 2: kind of want him to overcome this in some way.
Speaker 2: I think that's fairly out of the parallels. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your research into this is included trying to
Speaker 1: figure out when the Beast of Jividin got or became
Speaker 1: associated with a silver bullet. And so you've mentioned the
Speaker 1: story a couple of times, but it's probably worth summarizing again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'll put a link in the show notes
Speaker 2: to our episodes previously covering this. But in France between
Speaker 2: seventeen sixty four and seventeen sixty seven, there was a
Speaker 2: period of time when France's countryside in the Sevadon region
Speaker 2: was being terrorized by attacks. So when I first started
Speaker 2: looking into this, one of the questions I had was
Speaker 2: is this even real? Like, is there any evidence this
Speaker 2: really happened? And it turns out that yes, it absolutely
Speaker 2: really happened. And we talked with the author of a
Speaker 2: book on the beast named Jay Smith, and we'll put
Speaker 2: a link to his book in the show notes, but
Speaker 2: he talked about how this was not the first case.
Speaker 2: So what happened was this kind of pattern of wolves
Speaker 2: attacking the citizenry. It happened numerous times before. But what
Speaker 2: had changed is that, first of all, the scale was
Speaker 2: a little bit bigger because of a lot of economic
Speaker 2: and political conditions in the country at the time. And
Speaker 2: the second thing that had changed was the broadsheet newspaper
Speaker 2: had been developed, and so now there was this tabloid
Speaker 2: newspaper type story that was popularizing these rural, provincial tales
Speaker 2: of beast attacks, and they were highlighting all these amazing,
Speaker 2: sort of supernatural or weird qualities about the attacks in
Speaker 2: the same way that any kind of rumor could be
Speaker 2: propagated today in social media. So in a very real sense,
Speaker 2: this sort of parallels the way stories take off today.
Speaker 2: It was the early case of like an advance in
Speaker 2: the way stories could be shared through this sort of
Speaker 2: quick printing of newspapers, and the newspapers themselves were in
Speaker 2: competition trying to increase sales by having salacious and interesting.
Speaker 1: Stories like tabloids today.
Speaker 2: Like tabloids today exactly. And so what happens is now
Speaker 2: it becomes an international story because these papers can be
Speaker 2: spread across the Europe, and you know, anybody who can
Speaker 2: read French can read these stories. And ultimately, spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: if you listen to our coverage or read Jay Smith's book,
Speaker 2: you'll discover that there's really really good evidence that what
Speaker 2: was happening was mundane wolf attacks being blown out of
Speaker 2: proportion by media coverage.
Speaker 1: But even still, you mentioned the scale of events and
Speaker 1: whether it was I think some sources say that it
Speaker 1: was up to about two hundred attacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely more than a yeah, yeah, definitely more than
Speaker 2: eighty people killed by wolves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whether whether it was on the higher end or
Speaker 1: the lower end, that's just a staggering amount of people
Speaker 1: to die in that way it is.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to dismiss the value of life
Speaker 2: at the time, but it seemed like, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: even at the time, but that it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a shame, but other your peasants, you know, so
Speaker 2: like even back then, well maybe it's especially back then,
Speaker 2: but sadly still now, if you're poor, it's very easy
Speaker 2: to turn into a news story of a momentary tragedy
Speaker 2: and it's almost like a well, thank god, I'm not poor, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, it's yeah, it really is. But
Speaker 2: the French government was called in to try to deal
Speaker 2: with it. They sent military forces and then eventually they
Speaker 2: sort of had to bring it to a close, and
Speaker 2: so they're like it actually breaks out into about two chapters.
Speaker 2: So basically part one is the military brings it to
Speaker 2: a close when a guy named Antoine kills a wolf
Speaker 2: that they decide was the beast. And then later on
Speaker 2: another frenchman kills a different monster beast also just a wolf,
Speaker 2: but a big one. His name is Jean Chastell, and
Speaker 2: so it's like two competing stories about who killed the beast.
Speaker 2: But if you really look past that, the evidences, it
Speaker 2: was packs of wolves all over the region, and what
Speaker 2: really stopped it was the sort of improvement in the
Speaker 2: economic area and then improvement in the amount of food
Speaker 2: that was available because the peasants and military were killing
Speaker 2: wolves all over the place, which meant that the wolves
Speaker 2: would have been able to have enough game to survive
Speaker 2: because there have been smaller numbers, and so eventually you
Speaker 2: would basically just beat the wolves to death until the
Speaker 2: point that their population decreased so that they were able
Speaker 2: to be sustained without killing humans.
Speaker 1: So, and those are usual factors for things like a
Speaker 1: decrease in superstition as well just economic improvements, Yeah, things
Speaker 1: like insurance even but you.
Speaker 2: Know, if you go back to those links, I'll put
Speaker 2: this in the show notes as well. There's this weird
Speaker 2: thing that happens within the story where it's got these
Speaker 2: supernatural elements because the beast seems to be able to
Speaker 2: shrug off bullet shots. The idea that someone missed is
Speaker 2: is never really considered. I mean, we're talking about time
Speaker 2: when like rifling in a barrel was still a big deal.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the seventeen sixties we're talking about.
Speaker 2: From seventeen sixty four to seventeen sixty seven. This was
Speaker 2: not the height of the efficacy of gun barrels, right, So.
Speaker 1: People missing section as well.
Speaker 2: I didn't miss. The beast just shrugged off my shot, right,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: You know, is that powerful and strong?
Speaker 2: Right? It's amazing, right, So it's definitely the monster's problem,
Speaker 2: not mine.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So, but this, this idea that there was a supernatural element,
Speaker 2: or that a single beast was responsible for all the kills,
Speaker 2: is still cherished in cryptozoology today. It's crazy. Well I
Speaker 2: shouldn't say it's crazy, but it is outlandish to me
Speaker 2: that people would consider this to be a potentially supernatural
Speaker 2: or strange monster. Yet they do.
Speaker 1: Yep. And there's another theory that has been around for
Speaker 1: a while too, one that just keeps popping up again,
Speaker 1: and that is that the beast was a hyaena. So
Speaker 1: could a hyena have been involved in these attacks?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's it's really interesting. Jay Smith again, I'll
Speaker 2: put a link to this in the show notes as well,
Speaker 2: though this article is behind a paywall, so I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how easily it can be reached. But he wrote
Speaker 2: an additional article called Dreadful Enemies, The Beast, the Hyaena
Speaker 2: and the Natural History and the Enlightenment are in Natural
Speaker 2: History and the Enlightenment, and it's a really interesting article.
Speaker 2: It's about thirty pages long. But in that article he
Speaker 2: explains that he gives some context to this hyena idea.
Speaker 2: So like, if you're a modern person, you're reading this,
Speaker 2: you're thinking, oh, was a hyena the beast of Jividal, Like,
Speaker 2: look at the qualities of the monster, Like what what
Speaker 2: would make you think hyena? And the number one thing was,
Speaker 2: I guess in a lot of the victims there was
Speaker 2: disheart ticulation of the skeleton, so as these people were killed,
Speaker 2: their skeletons got disarticulated into pieces. And the hyena as
Speaker 2: an animal has probably the strongest bite force of any
Speaker 2: land mammal. It can bite into bones like they were
Speaker 2: candy right and get right to the marrow. And I
Speaker 2: think that's probably one of the reasons why people bring
Speaker 2: the hyena into this is or at least I did
Speaker 2: think that until I read this article. But what I
Speaker 2: discovered by reading his article is that the hyena already
Speaker 2: had an almost supernatural quality to it within Renaissance Enlightenment
Speaker 2: biological thinkers like the naturalists of the time, and the
Speaker 2: reason for that is there were all these really interesting
Speaker 2: historical documents related to hyenas, and they almost had supernatural
Speaker 2: qualities because Europeans who were really interested in sort of
Speaker 2: quantifying and explaining things in naturalistic terms at the time,
Speaker 2: we're looking into documents that were written hundreds or thousands
Speaker 2: of years ago and had been reprinted things to the
Speaker 2: Gutenberg press. And I guess I should take care of
Speaker 2: a little side moment. So when we think about the Enlightenment,
Speaker 2: in this period of so many interesting and important things
Speaker 2: came out of it. Historically speaking, I mean, we're talking
Speaker 2: about almost the verge of the birth of democracy. We're
Speaker 2: talking about the birth of science as it's understood today.
Speaker 1: At the same time, been away from religion to some extent.
Speaker 2: Exactly, people are moving away from biblical literalism to deism,
Speaker 2: where they like, I don't know if the Bible is
Speaker 2: literally true, but you know a guiding force, you know
Speaker 2: there's something out there. It wouldn't be until Darwin comes
Speaker 2: along with his theory of natural selection. There's always this
Speaker 2: question out there of like, well, if there is no God,
Speaker 2: then how do you explain the complexity of nature? Right, So,
Speaker 2: until that mechanism of natural selection came along. I think
Speaker 2: this period of deism was completely justified. You've got to
Speaker 2: explain the complexity of nature in some way, but they
Speaker 2: didn't have a mechanism for that yet. But what they
Speaker 2: did realize was that there were a lot of things
Speaker 2: that were really complicated that seemed almost supernatural. And they
Speaker 2: also had this thing that happened where you had the
Speaker 2: Gutenberg Press come out and it starts off by Gutenberg
Speaker 2: selling or helping promote or print indulgences for the church.
Speaker 2: That's like the first big killer app for the printing
Speaker 2: press is to basically help the church print indulgences, which
Speaker 2: are written documents where you can pay money and be
Speaker 2: forgiven for sins. Big deal, huge deal. But later on
Speaker 2: people take the printing press and they're like, well, what
Speaker 2: can we do with this? We can write books, but
Speaker 2: what's the cheapest thing to do is to take these
Speaker 2: ancient texts from Aristotle and Plato and all these people.
Speaker 2: We've got these manuscripts. We could turn these into small volumes,
Speaker 2: put them on the printing press, and this will be
Speaker 2: you know, great successes as printing efforts. Right. So they're
Speaker 2: printing these things in Greek, they're putting them in Latin,
Speaker 2: they're printing them in German, they're printing them in different languages.
Speaker 2: But they're basically taking old texts that have survived thanks
Speaker 2: to the preservation of monks and various other people, and
Speaker 2: they're taking this crewde knowledge and printing out in little
Speaker 2: volumes that you can carry around in your saddlebags or whatever.
Speaker 2: People are building libraries. People are sharing information. It's very
Speaker 2: much like the Internet. Suddenly you have this huge spread
Speaker 2: of information that was never available before. And if you
Speaker 2: are a gentleman farmer or a and you have a
Speaker 2: manor house, you got to have a library, right, so
Speaker 2: you're building the library. Sorry, excuse me. You're building these
Speaker 2: libraries and you're sharing stories about animals and far off
Speaker 2: places where you don't have the money to go investigate yourself.
Speaker 2: You're just reprinting something that was sent to you by
Speaker 2: people who took scrolls and other information and turned them
Speaker 2: into these early books. So this is where a lot
Speaker 2: of this information comes from. You get all these old
Speaker 2: stories about hyenas, and they themselves may be stories that
Speaker 2: were told by sailors or whatever. So and I'll tell
Speaker 2: you one more interesting thing is people believed Aristotle. Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh. So back in the day people believed Aristotle
Speaker 2: much the same way they believed in the Bible. Like
Speaker 2: you might write a criticism about the Bible, but it's
Speaker 2: going to be about, well, look at this text and
Speaker 2: look at that text. Here's a possible explanation that will
Speaker 2: sort of smooth things out. But you wouldn't say the
Speaker 2: Bible is wrong, right, and you would similarly, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: say the Aristotle was wrong. You just accepted it. You
Speaker 2: might write commentary or a lot of things, but you
Speaker 2: wouldn't write contradiction. And direct experimentation was a relatively new thing.
Speaker 2: So ideas about the hyena included the idea that it
Speaker 2: could implicate human speech, that it could bend backwards. Oh
Speaker 2: excuse me, that it couldn't bend backwards. But although that
Speaker 2: that legend got flipped around. That its eyes contain gems,
Speaker 2: I guess the eye color of hyenas is quite spectacular.
Speaker 2: Hyenas have strange genitalia too. The female hyena. The female
Speaker 2: hyena has a pseudo penis, and there win are explicit
Speaker 2: tag so instead of like a very obvious vagina, she
Speaker 2: has something that sort of sticks out. It's a little peculiar.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'll put a picture in the show,
Speaker 2: but if you want to look at it, probably, but
Speaker 2: people thought strange things like hyenas might change gender, or
Speaker 2: they were all males because of this strange pseudo penis,
Speaker 2: and like when she has her first pups, I don't
Speaker 2: know if their pups or kittens. I'm honestly not sure
Speaker 2: about that. But whenever she has her first babies, I
Speaker 2: think that whole thing gets kind of torn apart as
Speaker 2: the babies come out. It doesn't sound very pleasant to
Speaker 2: be a hyena. I'll be honest, no it doesn't.
Speaker 1: But just with you talking about the increase in scientific thinking,
Speaker 1: do you think that this hyena theory in a sense
Speaker 1: was a kind of example of scientific thinking gone wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, what seemed to happen, according to Smith's research is
Speaker 2: that people, I guess it's actually started with a wolf
Speaker 2: killing outbreak in the Lyon region before she Adon, about
Speaker 2: ten years before, and people thought because very similarly similarly,
Speaker 2: there were people thinking that a hyena was responsible because
Speaker 2: of its bite force and a few other factors. So
Speaker 2: when people were writing about it, they were writing about
Speaker 2: the possibility that it was a hyena, And so when
Speaker 2: Jevadon had its outbreak, the hyena story comes up again,
Speaker 2: and it just it doesn't fit exactly because there's no
Speaker 2: explanation for why they would be a hyaena. So what
Speaker 2: happens is Smith's not meaning, obviously, but Jay Smith his
Speaker 2: hypothesis is that because it was happening at the same
Speaker 2: time as the Enlightenment, and people wanted a naturalistic explanation
Speaker 2: for why these killing stories, you know, were happening. Rather
Speaker 2: than pose it that the people who were witnessing peculiar
Speaker 2: qualities to the kills, rather than idea that people were mistaken,
Speaker 2: they said, what naturally existing animal most closely matches the
Speaker 2: qualities and characteristics we're seeing. And the answer is hyena
Speaker 2: because it a lot of the stories and legends about
Speaker 2: it matched up very nicely. But that's all based on
Speaker 2: folklore and a naturalistic tendency and a sort of interest
Speaker 2: in preserving the sort of dark and mysterious and romantic
Speaker 2: qualities of nature. So it's a long article. Again, I'll
Speaker 2: post a link to it in the show notes, but
Speaker 2: I'll say that he makes a very compelling case that
Speaker 2: what we're really seeing is an example of people looking
Speaker 2: for naturalistic explanations at the same time wanting to accept
Speaker 2: all the peculiar reports, and in that sense, the hyena works.
Speaker 2: But Smith's book has really, really well researched and explained
Speaker 2: book makes a better case. I think that what's really
Speaker 2: going on is wolves in conjunction with sort of conflated
Speaker 2: stories and peasant based folklore, are are expanding the qualities
Speaker 2: of the wolf in a sort of narrative thread that
Speaker 2: makes it supernatural that it's not really warranted. So, you know,
Speaker 2: wolves make a better explanation for the whole case.
Speaker 1: So why do you think that that theory is still
Speaker 1: around today that has been debunked. How come people are
Speaker 1: still saying, oh, well, we need to look at the
Speaker 1: hyaena as possible.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I think it's because in the short run, like
Speaker 2: if you're not really digging deep, the hyena does have
Speaker 2: the bite force to do a lot of the things
Speaker 2: that happen, But you don't have to have that bite
Speaker 2: force if you've got multiple wolves pulling a person apart.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot, you know, So it's just
Speaker 2: it's cool. It's way more interesting to have some rogue
Speaker 2: animal like a lion, like in the movie Brotherhood of Wolves,
Speaker 2: they have like a lion wearing armor or something, which
Speaker 2: is really it's a great movie, by the way, but
Speaker 2: that's not really historically accurate movie, and Wolves is kind
Speaker 2: of boring. I mean, there's multiple breakouts of this exact
Speaker 2: thing happening, and Wolves explain it completely naturalistically, but that's
Speaker 2: not nearly as fascinating and creepy. I mean, at what
Speaker 2: point Smith points out that by the time they get
Speaker 2: to the point where they've got actual hyena examples that
Speaker 2: they've brought into the National Museum, they even when they
Speaker 2: put them up on display, they write like placards for
Speaker 2: it that talk about the case of Java, Dawn and
Speaker 2: Lyon and the sort of supernatural qualities. Because in the
Speaker 2: same way that you have Jurassic Park. Now, so twenty
Speaker 2: five years ago, Jurassic Park comes out, they give like
Speaker 2: the best dinosaurs they possibly can, and then later on
Speaker 2: we realized no, no, no, these dinosaurs would have feathers,
Speaker 2: they would look way different, but they never update them
Speaker 2: because that's the community story. The community story is they
Speaker 2: look like this cool scaled thing and changing him into
Speaker 2: feathered doesn't make any sense or whatever. So hold on
Speaker 2: to the legend, because that's what's going to get people
Speaker 2: to pay their you know, Franks, to come in here
Speaker 2: and look at these examples, right.
Speaker 1: And Leah, there's definitely truth to that. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: Brotherhood of the Wolf, and so with that movie, how
Speaker 1: did that affect the folklore more recently?
Speaker 2: Obviously, you know, I haven't seen a lot of fallout
Speaker 2: from that. It's a fantastic movie. It's it's all in French,
Speaker 2: and it's got spectacular choreography, good fight scenes, and a
Speaker 2: cool premise. I really like it a lot, But I
Speaker 2: haven't seen that that's bled out into the folk floor
Speaker 2: very much, which I'm honestly thankful for. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: like a sudden absurge and lions being the the the candidate.
Speaker 2: But what I have seen is a continuous resurgence of
Speaker 2: the idea that it might be a hyena, and I think,
Speaker 2: I think realistically now.
Speaker 1: To be fair, even recently, yeah, very.
Speaker 2: Recently, just a few weeks ago, I saw a really
Speaker 2: interesting online discussion about this and on Facebook, and.
Speaker 1: It was you said it was in a skeptical context
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's it's it's brought up again and
Speaker 2: again because you know, would it make sense that it
Speaker 2: was hyenas.
Speaker 1: I don't know, honestly, the ones with gemstones for.
Speaker 2: Well, I just think the hyena in general, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's got an incredible bite force. But humans are
Speaker 2: not as primary prey, and I don't like the idea
Speaker 2: of a one, you know, one or more making their
Speaker 2: way to Europe and and existing is very unlikely, like
Speaker 2: for to migrate from Africa. They did have them brought
Speaker 2: over on ships for menageries, but that doesn't really account
Speaker 2: for it. And there were prehistoric hyenas that would have
Speaker 2: been great candidates, but they weren't alive at the time
Speaker 2: of this case. So, but wolves were, and wolves could
Speaker 2: account for everything. So you know Occham's razor, and everybody
Speaker 2: loves to have me bring that up. Wolves fit nicely
Speaker 2: without requiring any supernatural elements or.
Speaker 1: They do absolutely So I guess we should get back
Speaker 1: to the silver reference. So in your research, did you
Speaker 1: figure out when silver bullets became the go to method
Speaker 1: for killing rebels?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, surprisingly, it seems like it was around eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty two, eighteen eighty three, somewhere in the eighteen eighties
Speaker 2: that silver bullets became part of the folklore were killing werewolves.
Speaker 2: The idea of silver killing shape changers had existed before that.
Speaker 2: We've talked a little bit about that before. It tied
Speaker 2: in closely to witch folklore. So witches were primarily turning
Speaker 2: into hairs or cats. A few of them would turn
Speaker 2: into dogs and very rarely into wolves. But the folklore
Speaker 2: around shape changers was if you wanted to kill a
Speaker 2: shape changer, a silver bullet would kill a witch. And
Speaker 2: I suppose the reason for that is because silver typically
Speaker 2: doesn't corrode like apparently, if my research is accurate, the
Speaker 2: fact that silver corrodes readily now has more to do
Speaker 2: with the Industrial Revolution. All the changes in the atmosphere
Speaker 2: that have happened in human lives since humans have started
Speaker 2: burning coal and other things has changed the atmosphere to
Speaker 2: make it more cidic and make it so that silver
Speaker 2: turns dark quicker. But apparently in ancient times silver tended
Speaker 2: to stay more silvery because the air didn't have those
Speaker 2: elements in it. The silver is associated with purity because
Speaker 2: it typically didn't change form. Now people have to polish
Speaker 2: a silver to keep it clean, but that may be
Speaker 2: representation of the or maybe an effect of the changes
Speaker 2: in the atmosphere related to the Industrial age.
Speaker 1: So I was going to ask a side question. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know, but you've heard of the
Speaker 1: science or supposed science of alchemy of changing or people
Speaker 1: who attempted to change base metals into gold. Was there
Speaker 1: ever any kind of equivalent like that for silver or
Speaker 1: was it just not worth enough?
Speaker 2: I don't think it was worth enough. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: silver is valuable, and people like that valuable, right right exactly,
Speaker 2: But it was people typically didn't have silver bullets. What
Speaker 2: would happen because back in the day, right before they
Speaker 2: made rifled barrels, which was the time when people were
Speaker 2: shooting silver into wolves, people would take a button off
Speaker 2: of their coat and they would fashion that into a
Speaker 2: bullet and fire it. Or they would make something like
Speaker 2: a shotgun blast where they would take, you know, anything
Speaker 2: they could find of silver. I think by the time
Speaker 2: you get to the Werewolf of Paris, which is a
Speaker 2: novel by Guy or maybe Gee Indoor, Yeah he has
Speaker 2: in that story, they take a silver crucifix and melt
Speaker 2: it and have it blessed by an archbishop. You know,
Speaker 2: but even that is not what actually kills the werewolf
Speaker 2: in the story, and that's nineteen thirty three. The idea
Speaker 2: that a silver bullet would kill a werewolf was the
Speaker 2: eighteen eighties. But what really cemented it, even though that's
Speaker 2: not the method that was used in the movie was
Speaker 2: The Wolfman in nineteen forty one, And in the introduction
Speaker 2: to this episode, I have a little excerpt where we're
Speaker 2: talking about the Okay, so by the time we get
Speaker 2: to The Wolfman in nineteen forty one, Kurtsey Admak, who
Speaker 2: actually writes that show, he makes it explicit that the
Speaker 2: silver bullets required, although he also mentions, well, he doesn't mention,
Speaker 2: but in this case, the gypsy tells Lawrence Talbot that
Speaker 2: only a silver bullet or a silver knife or like
Speaker 2: in his case, the head of a silver cane such
Speaker 2: as he carries, will kill a werewolf.
Speaker 4: A wearer wolf can be killed only with a silver
Speaker 4: bullet or a silver knife or a stick with a
Speaker 4: silver handle, and so.
Speaker 2: The silver cane kills the were wolf. But that's not
Speaker 2: in the folklore until the eighteen eighties. Even so, it's
Speaker 2: not until eighteen eighty three I think that we find
Speaker 2: a case where the silver bullet specifically shoots a were wolf.
Speaker 2: So it's really a relatively recent introduction into the folklore.
Speaker 2: It ties into the witchcraft, but it's really just not
Speaker 2: part of the actual normal legends. So in the sense
Speaker 2: that legends are theoretically based on true stories, this is
Speaker 2: a pure fiction, and I mean it's sort of incorporated,
Speaker 2: but Mac adds it explicitly into the Wolfman, and then
Speaker 2: by the sequel to that, which is well, one of
Speaker 2: the sequels to that is Frankenstein Versus the wolf Man,
Speaker 2: and that one adds in the element of the full moon.
Speaker 2: Going all the way back to satirra con they mentioned
Speaker 2: the full moon, but it's not until Frankenstein Versus the
Speaker 2: Wolfman that you actually explicitly have a story where the
Speaker 2: full moon is responsible for the transformation. So that's and
Speaker 2: I just find that fascinating because basically, by the nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: when you get si Id Mac involved, wolfman, lore or
Speaker 2: werewolf floor is completely transformed by fiction because movies reach
Speaker 2: out to people in a way that folklore simply doesn't
Speaker 2: have the speed. I mean, you know, movies can spread
Speaker 2: folklore faster than anything.
Speaker 1: So before that period that you were talking about where
Speaker 1: the silver is introduced as being the material weapon of choice.
Speaker 1: Were there any other materials that were ever specified as
Speaker 1: being suitable for killing a werewolf?
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Prior to the introduction of silver being required, it seemed
Speaker 2: like a sword, a bullet. I mean, if you look
Speaker 2: at it, even as I mean, as you think about this,
Speaker 2: you've got The Wereolf of Paris was nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 2: and in that story, which is set earlier than nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty three, it's set I think in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: The werewolf even though they feature a silver bullet in
Speaker 2: the story, that's not what kills the werewolf. The werewolf
Speaker 2: actually jumps out of an insane asylum and tries to
Speaker 2: land on a mattress like which is the Wiley Cote method,
Speaker 2: and he misses the match as you do, right, and
Speaker 2: so he falls to his death. So no silver required,
Speaker 2: Just don't hit the mattress and off you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it says that, yeah, killing rest button or something.
Speaker 1: Lots of potent Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, like you know, by the time you get
Speaker 2: to modern times, you get things like the classic the
Speaker 2: uh uh the Monster Squad, which I love. They have
Speaker 2: a scene in that movie where they blow the monster
Speaker 2: they blow the wolfman up with dynamite and all the
Speaker 2: pieces reassemble because it wasn't a silver bullet, but that
Speaker 2: that sort of it's kind of like Warreolves are actually
Speaker 2: much better off than say, vampires, because vampires him any Christmas.
Speaker 2: They've got a lot of ways to kill them. I mean,
Speaker 2: they've got a lot of week Like you romanticize it
Speaker 2: all you want. You don't want to be a vampire
Speaker 2: because everybody's got a way to kill you or stop
Speaker 2: you or stall you.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's nuts.
Speaker 1: We should go back to the moon and to the moon.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say the moon, like I say all
Speaker 2: the way back into the satiric con was a full
Speaker 2: moon was mentioned, but it's not until Frank Time means
Speaker 2: the Wolfman that you get the the full moon being
Speaker 2: required for the transformation. In that movie, he also explicitly
Speaker 2: mentions that the full moon is required to make the
Speaker 2: shape shift. But while I was researching this episode, I
Speaker 2: got curious about this whole idea of like barking at
Speaker 2: the moon or howling at the moon. So I did
Speaker 2: little research and I was able to trace the phrase
Speaker 2: bark at the moon all the way back to sixteen
Speaker 2: sixty three. It may go back further than that, but.
Speaker 1: In a slightly different forms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I was only searching English. But bark
Speaker 2: at the moon goes down to cry a phrase from
Speaker 2: an article. It says, cry down ceremony and reverence as
Speaker 2: dogs bark at the moon. And then in seventeen seventy
Speaker 2: six I saw a phrase we need not like dogs
Speaker 2: bark at the moon. Well they don't, no, no, not really,
Speaker 2: So this this folklore goes back at least to the
Speaker 2: sixteen hundreds. Though, this idea that that wolves or dogs
Speaker 2: would howl at the moon. Some people speculate that this
Speaker 2: is because they lean their heads back and point to
Speaker 2: the sky, but this appears to be not related to
Speaker 2: the phases of the moon, like, so they do this
Speaker 2: year round when they want to communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of iconic silhouette of the dog with
Speaker 1: the moon in the background. Yeah, as you say, the
Speaker 1: dog with its head back bocketing.
Speaker 2: Absolute, But that is that is not backed up by
Speaker 2: any of the actual biology or research. And in eighteen
Speaker 2: ten I saw this cool thing. It says there was
Speaker 2: a encyclopedia londonisis, which was is Encyclopedia Denisis or the
Speaker 2: Universal Dictionary of the Arts, and it talked about the
Speaker 2: phrase to bark at the moon, and it says, the
Speaker 2: design of this proverb is to expose the folly of
Speaker 2: those who were given to threaten or rail at their
Speaker 2: superiors or those who are out of their reach, to
Speaker 2: as little purpose as it is for a dog to
Speaker 2: pretend to insult and terrify the moon by barking. Now,
Speaker 2: I say that I found that interesting because that's eighteen ten.
Speaker 2: To bark at the moon was basically like, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, it's about as effective as shooting a bird
Speaker 2: at the guy in front of you while you're driving
Speaker 2: on the highway. It doesn't do anything, right a it
Speaker 2: means an ineffective, active defiance at a power who's over you. Right.
Speaker 2: But by the time you get to the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: bark at the moon means you're crazy, you know, howling
Speaker 2: at the moon, barking it's become a synonym for you know,
Speaker 2: you're barking mad, right.
Speaker 1: So yes, and I was I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: about that too. With the werewolf transformation transformation during a
Speaker 1: full moon, do you think that that goes back to
Speaker 1: the whole idea of terms like lunacy and lunatic and
Speaker 1: the belief that mental illness was some kind of periodic
Speaker 1: insanity that was based.
Speaker 2: On Yeah, yeah, I honestly do. I think it may
Speaker 2: tie you to that folklore. I wasn't able to find
Speaker 2: any specific like, you know, here's a clear example of
Speaker 2: how it changes. But that sort of urban legend mentality
Speaker 2: of that the moon can drive people mad, and the
Speaker 2: idea that lunacy literally has the word luna in it.
Speaker 2: It's a hard to kill a piece of folklore. I mean,
Speaker 2: perfectly or you know, fairly reasonable rational people still believe
Speaker 2: that the moon influences people's behavior, oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or there are more cases of people are going
Speaker 1: to the emergency ward and hospitals during full moons.
Speaker 2: And right, and just so in case our listeners haven't
Speaker 2: been made aware of this, that literally does not stack
Speaker 2: up to the empirical data. And there's a perfectly cool
Speaker 2: and you know, it's very logical rational explanation say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: with a full moon, you'd have more light. Therefore people
Speaker 2: would do more crazy things, or people might at timpt crimes.
Speaker 2: You know, but it seems like if you're a criminal
Speaker 2: you don't want to be seen. Maybe it makes more
Speaker 2: sense to do things in the dark. It doesn't matter
Speaker 2: which of those is true. The reality is there's no
Speaker 2: empirical explanation or there's no empirical data to support the
Speaker 2: idea that the moon causes an increase in bad behavior.
Speaker 1: And I think we've mentioned before Scott Lillianfeld and his
Speaker 1: other colleagues had put together a very good article about
Speaker 1: this in their book. I think it's fifty Myths and
Speaker 1: Mysteries about Psychology or I don't quote me on the title.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, if you can find that, we'll
Speaker 2: throw link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you also mentioned something about the Science Fair project,
Speaker 1: So can you tell us a bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I wasn't able to convince my kids to
Speaker 2: do the Science Fair project. But so while I was
Speaker 2: doing research on the magical qualities of silver, I read
Speaker 2: across some folklore that said that American pioneers when they
Speaker 2: were crossing the plains, they would put silver coins into
Speaker 2: their milk jug because the silver would preserve the milk longer,
Speaker 2: like the milk would last longer. Now, this isn't a
Speaker 2: time when this is before the invention of pastorization. I
Speaker 2: don't remember if I've covered this on Monster Dog, but
Speaker 2: I did a bunch of research into pastorization. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: basically the discovery of pastorization. So let me just back
Speaker 2: out just a second. We say pastorization because we're talking
Speaker 2: about Louis Pasteur. Louis Pasteur published his explanation about how
Speaker 2: pastorization works in the eighteen eighties, I believe, and his
Speaker 2: work came out of like beer research. So people who
Speaker 2: want to have a beer when their show, you know,
Speaker 2: this is a great time to drink it like a drink.
Speaker 1: So we should do a show on him because he
Speaker 1: was a fascinating guy.
Speaker 2: He really was. So what he did was not only
Speaker 2: did he figure out why pastorization works, but he did
Speaker 2: a lot of mathematical explanations so that people who were
Speaker 2: in the brewing business and wanted to preserve food could
Speaker 2: understand what temperatures to get the food up to and
Speaker 2: all that sort of thing. And he the germ theory
Speaker 2: of medicine to explain what was actually happening. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't Pasteur who really discovered how to preserve food through heating.
Speaker 2: It actually happened in the late seventeen nineties early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: Napoleon was looking for a way to preserve food for
Speaker 2: his troops, and there was a researcher who had discovered
Speaker 2: that by heating food in old champagne bottles, he could
Speaker 2: make the foods they preserved. He didn't know the mechanism,
Speaker 2: but he knew how to make it work, and so
Speaker 2: he was able to basically store food in bottles by
Speaker 2: heating it. And it lasted a long time, right, And
Speaker 2: so he effectively got a big prize from Napoleon. And
Speaker 2: so it took almost one hundred years for them to
Speaker 2: realize why it worked right. But in the meantime before that,
Speaker 2: there were folklore methods for making things work, and these
Speaker 2: silver coins. People put high silver content coins into the
Speaker 2: milk allegedly and it would make the milk glass longer. Now,
Speaker 2: I tried to track this origin of this myth down
Speaker 2: and I found some examples of this story in folklore
Speaker 2: in Europe, but it was talking about American pioneers. I
Speaker 2: couldn't find any American examples. But the question remains, does
Speaker 2: silver actually have an efficacious effect by putting coins in
Speaker 2: the milk? Will it actually last longer? And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: you could actually do a pretty easy experiment about this.
Speaker 2: You get some high silver content coins, probably from before
Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen in the US. If you get early eighteen hundred,
Speaker 2: it's even better because in more recent times the American
Speaker 2: silver coins usually aren't silver. That's the either here or there.
Speaker 2: But anyway, you go get these older coins, you put
Speaker 2: them into a petri dish along with some raw milk.
Speaker 2: It can't be pasteurized milks. You're gonna have to have
Speaker 2: a cow. And basically the question is if you take
Speaker 2: some without silver and you take some with the silver coins,
Speaker 2: do the ones with silver coin cause a petri dish
Speaker 2: to be slower at developing bacterial growth. Now that may
Speaker 2: sound like something that's kind of nutty, but in reality,
Speaker 2: silver in its most pure form, especially in a microscopic form,
Speaker 2: actually can have an antibacterial effect. This is an actually
Speaker 2: known medical factor.
Speaker 1: That's known as colloidal silver.
Speaker 2: Well it's not actually colloidal silver. Yeah no, that's a good.
Speaker 2: That's funny if you want to turn yourself into a smurf,
Speaker 2: drink up. But coloidal silver has not been shown to
Speaker 2: have any real medical effect. But real silver threads is
Speaker 2: now used. You know, this is a long conversation. I
Speaker 2: probably it's probably outside the scope of what we should
Speaker 2: cover here. But in my research it gets really interesting
Speaker 2: because some of the early discoveries about the efficacy of
Speaker 2: silver involved some of the earliest gynecological research. Unfortunately, a
Speaker 2: lot of that research was done on Sleigh, and the
Speaker 2: guy involved is a very controversial figure and they're trying
Speaker 2: to pull down his statue and lots of other things.
Speaker 2: So he is, uh, you know, he's he's definitely being
Speaker 2: re evaluated because as he should like, silver really does
Speaker 2: have anti bacterial effects in certain forms. I'm very suspicious
Speaker 2: about the idea that silver coins could actually have this effect,
Speaker 2: but I could be wrong. Unfortunately, I've never had the
Speaker 2: time or the money. It's not a lot of money,
Speaker 2: but to actually do this experiment. It would be interesting
Speaker 2: to actually do this experiment and find out do silver
Speaker 2: coins actually affect the bacterial growth rate in milk?
Speaker 1: So yeah, that would be a fun project. But you know,
Speaker 1: the best way to preserve anything about you pyramid Put
Speaker 1: it a pyramid exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes, I did. Actually I did read your.
Speaker 1: Mind, I guess. To get back to the topic of
Speaker 1: were wolves anyway, are there any other new were wolf
Speaker 1: facts or folklore that you want to discussed before we
Speaker 1: end the interview.
Speaker 2: Well, we fit on some of it. I wanted to
Speaker 2: mention that the first explicit example of a full moon
Speaker 2: being required for transformation appears to be from Curtsey iMac
Speaker 2: and from Frank Sammy's The Wolf Man. And we've talked
Speaker 2: about bark at the moon and wolves don't howl at
Speaker 2: the moon. That was the main I want to make
Speaker 2: sure we hit those myths because the are very common myths,
Speaker 2: they really are. You hear those all the time, and
Speaker 2: I mean, what's more iconic than a wolf howling at
Speaker 2: the moon except that it isn't it's talking to its friends, right.
Speaker 2: So in my neighborhood, yeah, coyotes as well, coytes, dogs
Speaker 2: and wolves.
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh you say coyotes. I hear coyotes a
Speaker 1: lot around here.
Speaker 2: Well I am from the south, but we do have
Speaker 2: We've had them in my neighborhood, so they're all over.
Speaker 2: They are a seriously heart party and impressive species. And
Speaker 2: around my parts, these things, these things eat so well,
Speaker 2: they look like like you know, they look like scale
Speaker 2: down wolves. They're really impressive.
Speaker 1: So yeah, to close, we we always have a question
Speaker 1: that we close with, and I guess this is a
Speaker 1: modified version because it's us. But we're getting close to
Speaker 1: Halloween now, So are you going to be watching any
Speaker 1: were wolf movies this year to celebrate?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm definitely going to be rewatching the Howling we
Speaker 2: watched because again I mentioned my marriage, but we watch
Speaker 2: American World from London quite a bit around here. I
Speaker 2: haven't watched The Howling in quite a while. And then
Speaker 2: there's a couple of the House of Frankenstein, Frank Mee's
Speaker 2: The Wolf Man, and there's a few others that are
Speaker 2: these sort of iconic werewolf movies. I haven't had a
Speaker 2: chance to watch it in a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that sounds good.
Speaker 2: You're going to be busy, Yeah, no, I hope to
Speaker 2: be anyway. So all right, well let's want end up.
Speaker 2: It was great talking to you about where wolves. This
Speaker 2: was Yeah, this is.
Speaker 1: A fun topic and I think we our listeners love
Speaker 1: anything to do with were wolves. So this is a
Speaker 1: good one and I.
Speaker 2: Hope people find this information transformative.
Speaker 1: And pass it on. That one almost slipped.
Speaker 2: By almost all right, Okay, Karen, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: For Thank you so much. Have a good night.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Monster Talk, this science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith.
Speaker 1: And I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 2: You just heard a discussion about werewollfloor hyenas, silver and
Speaker 2: the moon. Links to our previous episodes about wolves and
Speaker 2: wearbell Floor are in the show notes at MonsterTalk dot org,
Speaker 2: along with more information about the real and legendary properties
Speaker 2: of silver. If you end up doing any science experiments
Speaker 2: around this legendary preservative power of silver coins, please let
Speaker 2: us know. Our contact information is on our website. Monster
Speaker 2: Talk is an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine, and the
Speaker 2: expressed in the show are those of myself and my
Speaker 2: co host and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of Skeptic
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Speaker 2: at crypti Con in Kentucky this weekend, so if you
Speaker 2: make it by, please drop by and say hello and
Speaker 2: hear my talk on Saturday, where I'll be discussing the
Speaker 2: Kelly Hopkinsville Goblin case. If you're going to be in Frankfort,
Speaker 2: Kentucky to September, you can catch me speaking at the
Speaker 2: second annual cryptid Con on the weekend of September ninth
Speaker 2: and tenth. This will be at the Capitol Plaza Hotel
Speaker 2: in Frankfurt and you can get tickets at Cryptidcon dot com.
Speaker 2: They've got quite a lineup with cryptozoology and UFO guests
Speaker 2: this year, including Cliff and Bobo from Finding Bigfoot, Glinda
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Speaker 2: the Patterson Gimblin film team, Seth Breedlove of Smalltown Monsters,
Speaker 2: and many more. Man of course, me Blake Smith, host
Speaker 2: of Monster Talk, where I'll be talking about the Kelly Hopkinsville,
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Speaker 7: Save the date for a colossal Siicon twenty eighteen. Bigger venue,
Speaker 7: bigger stars, bigger ideas, bigger fun, Las Vegas, October eighteenth
Speaker 7: to the twenty first. Twenty eighteen. Siicon is already one
Speaker 7: of the planet's premiere skeptical conferences, where hundreds of critical
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Speaker 7: twenty eighteen, we want Sikon to be bigger than ever.
Speaker 7: We've even booked a bigger hotel. Come to Las Vegas
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Speaker 7: Amazing Randy, plus New York Times science writer Carl Zimmer,
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Speaker 7: as Master of ceremonies, a magic show from Banachek, author
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Speaker 2: I want you to turn this into a silver bullet.
Speaker 1: If you want a silver bullet. Okay, nicest piece of
Speaker 1: work I've ever done. I think I ought to be
Speaker 1: pretty accurate.
Speaker 3: Take you're gonna shoot a forty four bullet at anyway?
Speaker 4: Been in a silver.
Speaker 5: How about it?
Speaker 6: Will?
Speaker 4: We'll