Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Monster House Presents.
Speaker 2: Monster Talk is proud to be a part of the
Speaker 2: airwave media family, home of such shows as Fork in
Speaker 2: the Road, Small Things Often, and Therapist Uncensored. If you'd
Speaker 2: like to advertise on the show, contact sales at advertisedcast
Speaker 2: dot com. I'm going to read a little excerpt from
Speaker 2: The Satiricon by Petronius. Now, this story dates from the
Speaker 2: end of the first century, but I think you'll find
Speaker 2: it pretty familiar to the modern ear a man named Trimalchio,
Speaker 2: who was a freed slave who'd made a big success
Speaker 2: of himself. He's hosting a party and most of the
Speaker 2: guests are other freed slaves. Tremalchio complains that Necros, who's
Speaker 2: normally quite entertaining, as being too quiet, and so Necros
Speaker 2: tells a strange story.
Speaker 3: Now he thinks the other guests.
Speaker 2: That the party are going to laugh, but he swears
Speaker 2: the story's true and that it took place years ago
Speaker 2: when he was still in a state of servitude. It
Speaker 2: seems that he had fallen in love with the wife
Speaker 2: of an innkeeper, and her name was Melissa of Tarentum.
Speaker 2: Fortune had it that her husband died, and Necroes decides
Speaker 2: that he needs to rush to her aside while he
Speaker 2: has the best chance to beat out any other suitors.
Speaker 2: But then things turned quite odd. I seized my opportunity
Speaker 2: and persuaded a guest in our house to come with
Speaker 2: me as far as the fifth Milestone. He was a
Speaker 2: soldier and as brave as hell, so we tried it
Speaker 2: off about cock Crow. The moon shone like high noon.
Speaker 2: We got amongst the tombstones, and my man went aside
Speaker 2: to look at the epitaphs, and I sat down with
Speaker 2: my heart full of song, and began to count the graves.
Speaker 2: Then when I looked around at my friend, he had
Speaker 2: stripped himself and put all his clothes by the roadside.
Speaker 2: My heart was in my mouth, but I stood like
Speaker 2: a dead man. He made a ring of water around
Speaker 2: his clothes and suddenly turned into a wolf. But please
Speaker 2: do not think I'm joking. I would not lie about
Speaker 2: this for any fortune in the world. But as I
Speaker 2: was saying, after he had turned into a wolf, he
Speaker 2: began to howl, and he ran off into the woods.
Speaker 2: At first I hardly knew where I was, and then
Speaker 2: I went to take up his clothes, but they had
Speaker 2: all turned to stone.
Speaker 3: No one could be nearer dead with the terror than
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: But I drew my sword and went slaying shadows all
Speaker 2: the way until I came to my love's house. I
Speaker 2: went in like a corpse and nearly gave up the ghost.
Speaker 2: The sweat ran down my legs, My eyes were dull.
Speaker 2: I could hardly be revived. My dear Melissa was surprised
Speaker 2: at my being out so late, and said, if you
Speaker 2: had come earlier, you might have at least helped us.
Speaker 2: A wolf got into the house and worried all our
Speaker 2: sheep and let their blood like a butcher.
Speaker 3: But he did not make fools of us.
Speaker 2: Even though he got off or our slave made a
Speaker 2: hole in his neck with a spear. When I heard this,
Speaker 2: I could not keep my eyes shut any longer. But
Speaker 2: at breakup day I rushed back to my master Gaius's
Speaker 2: house like a defrauded publican. And when I came to
Speaker 2: the place where the clothes had been turned to stone,
Speaker 2: I found nothing but a pool of blood. But when
Speaker 2: I reached home, my soldier was lying in bed like
Speaker 2: an ox, with a doctor looking after his neck. I
Speaker 2: realized that he was a werewolf. And I could never
Speaker 2: sit down to a meal with him afterwards, not if
Speaker 2: you had killed me first. Other people may think what
Speaker 2: they like about this, but may all your guardian angels
Speaker 2: punish me if I am lying.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 4: A giant, hairy creature part apes part mass in Luckness,
Speaker 4: a twenty four a mile long bottomless lake in the
Speaker 4: Highlands of Scotland. It's a creature known as the luck
Speaker 4: Ness Monster.
Speaker 1: Monster tal.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 2: Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. This week we're talking
Speaker 2: with doctor Tanika Kuzman about ancient werewolves. I try to
Speaker 2: spread my monster love across the entire monster spectrum, but
Speaker 2: werewolves definitely rank among my most favored monster topics. So
Speaker 2: I was excited to dig in on a bit of
Speaker 2: deep history of stories about people being transformed into wolves.
Speaker 2: Ancient history is fragmentary because we don't have a contiguous
Speaker 2: body of texts going back into deep antiquity. For most
Speaker 2: of human history, oral transmission was how stories were kept alive,
Speaker 2: and while spoken stories are very entertaining, they are as ephemerals.
Speaker 3: Moths fart.
Speaker 2: So studying the scattered fragments of human history and finding
Speaker 2: stories about werewolves and then trying to figure out not
Speaker 2: just what they say, but where they existed in the
Speaker 2: cultural framework of their historical context is a challenge, but
Speaker 2: it's the sort of challenge that can really turn on
Speaker 2: the mind of.
Speaker 3: An obsessed researcher.
Speaker 2: Says an obsessed researcher. I'll put links to Tanika's work
Speaker 2: in the show notes, so be sure and check those out.
Speaker 2: And at one point we do talk briefly about the
Speaker 2: idea of wild or feral children, and it turns out
Speaker 2: that this topic will be coming up on another Monster
Speaker 2: House podcast, the in research of show that I do
Speaker 2: with Jeb Kard. As we alluded to in this episode,
Speaker 2: the romantic idea of children raised by animals seems to
Speaker 2: hide a much darker story that's less about altruistic wildlife
Speaker 2: and more about parents unable to deal with kids with
Speaker 2: challenges and impairments. We may dig into that further, but
Speaker 2: I can attest that the folklore is far more fun
Speaker 2: than the reality. But this is an episode about werewolves,
Speaker 2: and it is packed full of fun information. So let's
Speaker 2: dive in monstrutal.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: This week on Monster Talk, we're welcoming doctor Tanika Kuzman
Speaker 2: is all right. Doctor Kusman's academic research specializes in the
Speaker 2: development of the man to wolf metamorphic tradition in the
Speaker 2: Greco Roman corpus and its impact on modern werewolf fiction.
Speaker 2: Her research delves into the symbolic meanings behind transformation, examining
Speaker 2: how evolving concepts of human and nonhuman influenced the depiction
Speaker 2: of werewolves and folklore fiction and history. Her research interests
Speaker 2: span folklore studies, posthumanism, and changing perspectives on the body
Speaker 2: in the modern world, and she's currently a casual academic
Speaker 2: at the University of Newcastle in Australia.
Speaker 3: So welcome to Monster Talk.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Thank you so much for having me on. This
Speaker 1: is going to be fantastic.
Speaker 5: So, Tanika, we should probably start with how you got
Speaker 5: interested in werewolves? And I have to say I'm very
Speaker 5: jealous of your PhD topic. What a fantastic subject to
Speaker 5: to devote a PhD too. So how did you get
Speaker 5: interested in were wolves enough to tackle them academically?
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, Well, I took a fantastic course as an
Speaker 1: undergraduate student at the same institution that I'm currently working
Speaker 1: at even and it we sort of talked a little
Speaker 1: bit through some of these sort of changing myths and
Speaker 1: myths of transformation and how the body adapts and adjusts
Speaker 1: in all of these like ancient Greek and a few
Speaker 1: Latin mythological structures as well. So I ended up getting
Speaker 1: very obsessed with this ancient text called of its Metamorphoses,
Speaker 1: which is so many different episodes of transformation. And I
Speaker 1: was writing my honors thesis after my undergraduate degree was
Speaker 1: finished on of its Metamorphoses and the amount of sort
Speaker 1: of different ways that women in particular were being utilized
Speaker 1: as all of these different sort of warning stories and
Speaker 1: all of these stories about power. But I got so
Speaker 1: invested in this one episode, the tyrant king la Chaeon,
Speaker 1: who is the very first transformation of a human being
Speaker 1: in the entire minimal foces, right after all the cosmological
Speaker 1: stuff about the creation of the universe, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to know so badly why why it was a werewolf
Speaker 1: transformation that was the very first human being being transformed
Speaker 1: in this entire book about all of this historical and
Speaker 1: mythological material, and I just got so obsessed with this
Speaker 1: one story. It really expanded from there. I wanted to
Speaker 1: see how this specific type of transformation was being used
Speaker 1: in all these different kind of genres of writing, and
Speaker 1: that was where the obsession truly started.
Speaker 5: I can imagine that happening. There's just so much material there.
Speaker 5: But I've always had a question. Maybe I'm jumping the
Speaker 5: gun too much with this, but was the king transformed
Speaker 5: into a where wolf obviously transformed into a wolf?
Speaker 1: Oh, this is my favorite question. The difference is all
Speaker 1: down to this idea of So in theory and in
Speaker 1: sort of philosophical inquiry, we talk about something called the
Speaker 1: human animal binary and the difference between humans and animals
Speaker 1: and how those boundaries are really drawn. And a lot
Speaker 1: of the time in the ancient material you find that
Speaker 1: this binary is being developed, so it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of strict boundaries just yet. So the way we
Speaker 1: approach a lot of transformation material, especially coming from a
Speaker 1: contemporary error where we have all of these really cool
Speaker 1: werewolf stories that have a tendency to show the werewolf
Speaker 1: in much the same as that sort of there's a
Speaker 1: human being and then there's a monster. It's two parts
Speaker 1: of the same whole, but a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: it's kind of dichotomy sort of thing. It's a binary
Speaker 1: there's two pieces, but when you get to the ancient material,
Speaker 1: when you travel all the way back, there not a
Speaker 1: lot of that binary thinking. So for like Chaon in particular,
Speaker 1: in a couple of his different literary appearances, they talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that like Chaon's transformation came because he
Speaker 1: was already a wolf, if not in form, then in
Speaker 1: function and in action. So of its in particular, it's
Speaker 1: such a beautiful, such a beautiful myth to put together,
Speaker 1: but it talks a little bit right at the end
Speaker 1: afterwards that he's still got his sort of human mind
Speaker 1: within him, because that was always the monstrous part of him,
Speaker 1: that was always the animalistic part of him, was that
Speaker 1: he was the wolf. Because they never really have creatures
Speaker 1: or people or gods or any sort of beings in
Speaker 1: these ancient mythological structures that have different forms as opposed
Speaker 1: to their mind sort of thing. So while he might
Speaker 1: have transformed into a wolf, it is like a big, hulking,
Speaker 1: proper monstrous kind of wolf that they describe. It is
Speaker 1: a where wolf in the sense I think that we
Speaker 1: take from the contemporary from the modern era where he
Speaker 1: really is that sort of figure.
Speaker 5: Okay, I see, So now that I've leapt forward, could
Speaker 5: we possibly backtrack and could I ask you to summarize
Speaker 5: the myth because some of our listeners might not be
Speaker 5: familiar with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so, also to Ovid's version of events, because
Speaker 1: they can be just a little bit varied in between
Speaker 1: ancient sources. Especially. So the king like Chon is one
Speaker 1: of the first human beings, one of the really early
Speaker 1: Arcadian human settlements in this sort of mythological structure, and
Speaker 1: he is a king who has many, many sons and
Speaker 1: this big old family. And when Jupiter or Zeus comes
Speaker 1: down from the heavens and wants to test human kind
Speaker 1: and see if they're kind of beings that can inherit
Speaker 1: this sort of this kind of worship of the gods,
Speaker 1: if they're good people and if they deserve to sort
Speaker 1: of inherit the earth this way, he comes down and
Speaker 1: he sends signs to the people, these sort of omens
Speaker 1: and little like divine sightings and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: he's in his disguise as an old man, and he
Speaker 1: wanders into this kingdom and all the people start to
Speaker 1: pray and worship for Jupiter to be walking among them,
Speaker 1: and like Chaeon, gets maybe a little too big for
Speaker 1: his breeches and tells everybody, no, there can't possibly be
Speaker 1: a god walking among us. I know best, I am
Speaker 1: your king. And he decides that instead of providing offerings
Speaker 1: and being pious in the way that the gods expect
Speaker 1: of their kings, He's going to test the God in disguise.
Speaker 1: And so what he does is he violates quite a
Speaker 1: few of the the laws of Xenia, so the laws
Speaker 1: of hospitality that Jupiter is in charge of, and instead
Speaker 1: of offering the God in disguise at a feast, he
Speaker 1: slaughters a hostage, a protected person's and cooks the corpse
Speaker 1: and offers that for the feast for this God in disguise,
Speaker 1: and very very unhappy about this, he decides this is
Speaker 1: the trigger point for Ovid's version of events, especially this
Speaker 1: is the point in which he decides that humanity cannot
Speaker 1: be saved and they must be rebuilt and recreated. So
Speaker 1: Avid raises the kingdom to the ground, he kills all
Speaker 1: of like Chayon's suns, and he transforms, like Chaon, into
Speaker 1: this huge, hulking monstrous is punishment for not knowing and
Speaker 1: for not following the rules that he should have followed.
Speaker 3: Does he get redemption later?
Speaker 1: It would have been nice, I think, to bring him
Speaker 1: back in the story. But like Yon's story especially is
Speaker 1: one of those really special things that weaves in and
Speaker 1: out of a lot of different ancient texts, so's he
Speaker 1: comes up quite often. There's a few constellation myths that
Speaker 1: concern him because one of his children was supposedly the
Speaker 1: nymph Callisto, who is transformed in there later on, so
Speaker 1: she has a whole different mythic cycle, but she she
Speaker 1: has links back to like Chaon as the daughter of
Speaker 1: like Chaon sort of thing, and Plato in particular, So
Speaker 1: he writes political philosophical texts, all this fun sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and Plato is one of the earliest references to literary references,
Speaker 1: at least to the like Chaon myth cycle. And he
Speaker 1: actually mentions like Chaon in this teeny tiny little paragraph
Speaker 1: on tyrants and tyrant leaders, and he doesn't even mention
Speaker 1: him by name. He just says the tyrant will they
Speaker 1: will consume their people, like the mythical the King of
Speaker 1: Arcadia did to his people. So there's all these tiny
Speaker 1: little references and to that for that, to a classic
Speaker 1: scholar or someone who's familiar with ancient history, means that
Speaker 1: there was this huge oral tradition where people knew exactly
Speaker 1: what Plato was talking about just by that one little line,
Speaker 1: and we might not have it recorded in its sort
Speaker 1: of ancient form the way that they knew the story,
Speaker 1: and we have to piece it together from all these
Speaker 1: little bits and pieces from the literature later on.
Speaker 3: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: So there's no official canon of the classics, I guess.
Speaker 2: So the reason I found your work was because I'm
Speaker 2: I'm obviously obsessed with were wolves, as listeners will know.
Speaker 3: But we talk about all kinds of monsters.
Speaker 2: But I really have spent a lot of time really
Speaker 2: doing a lot of research on this topic. And I
Speaker 2: came across an article that you had published on The
Speaker 2: Conversation about the ancient history of werewolves, and I thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: here's someone working from the oldest stories forward and I'm
Speaker 2: working for modern stuff backwards. This is really great. We
Speaker 2: can kind of meet and somehow still exclude the middle.
Speaker 2: But I thought maybe we could walk through some of
Speaker 2: the history of werewolves. So I would like to ask
Speaker 2: you about what is the oldest werewolf story we've got
Speaker 2: preserved in text or imagery that you've you've come across
Speaker 2: so far.
Speaker 1: So it can be a little difficult for us as
Speaker 1: classicist and knowing full well that there's material that didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily survive all the way to the modern day. There's
Speaker 1: a really cool reference all the way back in the
Speaker 1: Epic of Gilgamesh, the little story of that Gilgamesh tells
Speaker 1: in response to the goddess Ishtar and her apparent proposition
Speaker 1: to Gilgamesh. One of my favorite parts of that text
Speaker 1: is the fact that the things that Ishta offers to
Speaker 1: Gilgamesh are actually a sort of reflection of their funerary rites.
Speaker 1: So Gilgamesh's re rejection of the goddess is on the
Speaker 1: basis of the fact that she's told him all these
Speaker 1: lovely things will happen to you, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a second, that's what we do when people die.
Speaker 1: So are you going to You're going to kill me?
Speaker 1: And he goes, okay, how am I going to get
Speaker 1: out of this? And he starts listing all of the
Speaker 1: things that she's done to her lovers in the past,
Speaker 1: and one of those is that poor shepherd who worshiped
Speaker 1: the goddess so well, and she still transformed him into
Speaker 1: a wolf to be chased around by his hunting dogs.
Speaker 1: Such a delightful little little reference, and it's definitely the
Speaker 1: earliest one that we have for wolf specific transformation.
Speaker 2: I'd say it's the for Gamma Thrones list readers, it's
Speaker 2: the Ramsey Bolton Finish, right.
Speaker 1: They do adapt it quite well.
Speaker 5: And do we see versions of this story in other
Speaker 5: cultures at all? Or is this a completely unique tale?
Speaker 1: This one in particular seems to me to be fairly unique,
Speaker 1: part because it's such a small like a small reference
Speaker 1: to it does sort of almost have echoes and a
Speaker 1: couple of later stories that talk about the There's one
Speaker 1: specific narrative written by I believe it is Petronius in
Speaker 1: the first century AD, in the satiricin which is actually
Speaker 1: it's a book on satire. It's quite literally a satirical story.
Speaker 1: But he has this great little folkloric story about a
Speaker 1: man who walks through a cemetery with a soldier and
Speaker 1: is terrified when the soldier starts tearing his clothes off
Speaker 1: and transforms a wolf under And this might be one
Speaker 1: of the first instances where we see the connection to
Speaker 1: the full moon is because as the moon is as
Speaker 1: it is on high noon. So this little tiny one,
Speaker 1: this little tiny story that doesn't get repeated anywhere else.
Speaker 1: It's this sort of folkloric, more personal or domestic kind
Speaker 1: of story. And that were wolf in particular is discovered
Speaker 1: because he hunts after a pack of sheep and the
Speaker 1: locals stab him in the neck as the wolf, and
Speaker 1: that wound is transferred to him when he transforms back
Speaker 1: into a human, and they discover that man is the
Speaker 1: were wolf because he has a wound on his neck,
Speaker 1: just as to the right it is.
Speaker 2: That is such a classic motif of all the werewolf
Speaker 2: floor and a lot of the witchlore that comes up
Speaker 2: in medieval times. Yeah yeah, yep, no, absolutely. Now we
Speaker 2: lost gilgrimesh for thousands of years, but the idea of
Speaker 2: a werewolf didn't die out. So where does it pop
Speaker 2: up next?
Speaker 3: Is is it Greek? I guess next? And then rollman
Speaker 3: or how does that flow?
Speaker 1: So definitely Greek first and foremost. The really interesting part
Speaker 1: about were wolves I think in Greek culture, ancient Greek
Speaker 1: culture specifically, is that that edge of animality, that animal
Speaker 1: sort of in heritance that the were wolf has means
Speaker 1: that it's so often associated with monstrous races that exist
Speaker 1: outside of the Greek borders. So in particular in the
Speaker 1: Greek literary history. One of the next ones we have
Speaker 1: is from Herodotus in the histories, and this is Herodotus
Speaker 1: is sometimes called the father of history. He sits down
Speaker 1: and he says, I'm going to write about historical events,
Speaker 1: and then manages to include a whole bunch of mythical
Speaker 1: material as well. But he's the first one to do it,
Speaker 1: so it's a little practice involved in taking it all out.
Speaker 1: But Herodotus's story concerns tribe of people called the Nurians
Speaker 1: who exist in the sort of Black Sea region that
Speaker 1: they're absolutely really convinced has got a whole host of
Speaker 1: monstrous races that exist beyond these borders. And the Nurians
Speaker 1: in particular are men who transform into a wolf for
Speaker 1: a couple of days out of the year. And this
Speaker 1: teeny tiny little refference to these sort of nomadic people
Speaker 1: that exist to the north is couched in all of
Speaker 1: these really cool descriptions of all of these monstrous races
Speaker 1: that occur, these people that might have human flesh included
Speaker 1: in all of their feasts or who have like strange
Speaker 1: customs and weird rituals and stuff like that, and it
Speaker 1: does it might signify to us as sort of further
Speaker 1: connection into Baltic mythology and like sort of that huge
Speaker 1: Siberian region that had wolves to contend with as actual predators.
Speaker 1: So the likelihood of folding that into their folkloric beliefs
Speaker 1: and sort of religious structures is so much higher when
Speaker 1: they have that interaction in person with the wolves.
Speaker 5: So we get where wolves in both Roman and Greek mythology.
Speaker 5: But did both cultures look at where wolves the same
Speaker 5: way or did they have different beliefs or was there
Speaker 5: a lot of crossover between the the two mythologies.
Speaker 1: There is a bit of crossover. I think fundamentally. The
Speaker 1: Roman mythological structure does inherit quite a bit from the Greeks,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those attitudes tend to get sort
Speaker 1: of mixed in together. It's interesting to see when we
Speaker 1: do have the instances where these sort of little stories
Speaker 1: that might be more concerning to say Greek culture that
Speaker 1: had more interaction with people and those monstrous races like
Speaker 1: the Scythians. And then when that specific myth might be
Speaker 1: adapted into a Roman text. It's interesting to see the
Speaker 1: way that that interaction might change or might stay the
Speaker 1: same for us, and a lot of the times it
Speaker 1: does stay the same, which is an interesting thing. Given
Speaker 1: Rome's own association with wolves. It's a whole different angle
Speaker 1: on it. Like they're founding narratives, they're founding.
Speaker 3: Volved what was the founding myth?
Speaker 1: So Rome's founding myth is centered around the brothers Romulus
Speaker 1: and Remus and their birth story specifically, so is so
Speaker 1: held under prophecies. The prophecy is that these these children
Speaker 1: will will not be not be kind to the line
Speaker 1: of inheritance specific to their I believe it's their grandfather.
Speaker 1: So the birth of the children who are apparently they
Speaker 1: are born to Rhea Sylvia, I might be mispronouncing that
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I've gone back.
Speaker 3: Over my room and founding there she won't mine.
Speaker 1: Let's cross our fingers. Yes, So she is put into
Speaker 1: a cult for protection, effectively, so the vessel virgins. She
Speaker 1: is introduced to this specific worship practice in order to
Speaker 1: keep her away from men, so she can't have children ever,
Speaker 1: and they can't usurp their grandfather and prophecy solved, but
Speaker 1: as as it goes, that never really solves anything in
Speaker 1: the ancient stories and mars or areas, if we're going
Speaker 1: with the Greek name comes down from the heavens and
Speaker 1: still manages to impregnate Ria Silvia with the children that
Speaker 1: inevitably fulfill the prophecy, but they are sort of they
Speaker 1: are still in danger for it, so they're abandoned by
Speaker 1: a river and rescued by a she wolf who feeds
Speaker 1: them and nourishes them and make sure that they still
Speaker 1: survive to adulthood in order to fulfill the promises. And
Speaker 1: there's lots of nonsense that happens in between. And the
Speaker 1: founding of Rome is so inherently there's such a big
Speaker 1: mythic cycle, so much information involved in it. But when
Speaker 1: Romulus murders's brother Remus and establishes establishes Rome, they still
Speaker 1: carry that wolf, that wolf imagery. It's so inherent in
Speaker 1: their image going forward. So it's surprising for especially academics
Speaker 1: that look through these sort of history of images and
Speaker 1: the way that the this iconography is adopted. It's so
Speaker 1: interesting to see the Romans repeating folklore that might insist
Speaker 1: that the wolf, the were wolf is this sort of
Speaker 1: like monstrous creature or their animal law. Sometimes it's an
Speaker 1: inherently like foreign connection these people who are not Roman
Speaker 1: or who are not Greek and sort of see that
Speaker 1: involved in a culture that is so obsessed with the
Speaker 1: wolf imagery beyond the specific transformation context.
Speaker 2: So narratively, I mean, I think it's pretty easy to
Speaker 2: hop into the idea of these are stories about people
Speaker 2: turning into wolves, but why or how they turn into wolves,
Speaker 2: whether it's on purpose, which seems to be really common
Speaker 2: by the Middle Ages, or whether it's as a curse,
Speaker 2: which was in the source material that seems to get changed.
Speaker 2: So like ultimately you come out in the twentieth century
Speaker 2: with the were wolf is a is the primary narrative,
Speaker 2: but they also i guess in the twentieth century and
Speaker 2: also a lot of people want to turn it to
Speaker 2: being a superhero because they look at all the advantages
Speaker 2: where wolves have over humans and they're like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is awesome. But it's also kind of like Jacqueline Hide
Speaker 2: or The Hulk, where most of the stories you become
Speaker 2: a ravenous beast and don't have control. I'm curious in
Speaker 2: the ancient world were their story. Did you run into
Speaker 2: any stories where the.
Speaker 3: People intentionally became wolves?
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously the metamorphosis when sounds like it might
Speaker 2: be that's the case, but it's a little unclear it is.
Speaker 1: There's a really cool tradition that sort of almost spans
Speaker 1: from the like Hayon story. So the region that he
Speaker 1: was a king in in Arcadia is sort of treated
Speaker 1: in a lot of mythological sources and historical ones as
Speaker 1: the original place in which the Greeks were this sort
Speaker 1: of almost like indigenous area of Greece, the oldest sort
Speaker 1: of kingdoms come from. And I think because of that,
Speaker 1: and because of that link, there was this really cool
Speaker 1: cult dedicated to Zeus, like Chaos so Wolf Zeus effectively
Speaker 1: in this region where they believed Zeus was birthed in
Speaker 1: these caves and sort of grown up in these caves,
Speaker 1: and there there was a really extensive cult that had
Speaker 1: all these really cool practices, the Arcadian Cult, and they
Speaker 1: in particular developed these sort of rituals and stories about
Speaker 1: where wolf transformation for the members of this group. It's
Speaker 1: spoken about in a couple of different sources, and a
Speaker 1: few have some different details to provide and sometimes conflicting details,
Speaker 1: which is the way, but a lot of the sources
Speaker 1: tell us that the ritual as it proceeded, was a
Speaker 1: young boy, usually an adolescent boy, was chosen by lot
Speaker 1: from all of the families that were involved in this
Speaker 1: this worship in this cult, and he would be taken
Speaker 1: to a lake where he would shed his clothes and
Speaker 1: swim across the lake and then transform into a wolf
Speaker 1: that he would have to live as a wolf for
Speaker 1: anywhere between I think it's seven and ten years. They
Speaker 1: don't give us specific numbers or corresponding numbers at least,
Speaker 1: and he would so go and live his life as
Speaker 1: this wolf, and then when he was done with his initiation, right,
Speaker 1: he would come back to the lake and he would
Speaker 1: swim back across the lake, and he would pick up
Speaker 1: the clothes that he had hung on a tree and
Speaker 1: they would still be there, and he would transform back
Speaker 1: into a human being, but with the age that he's
Speaker 1: spent as a wolf. The years he spent added to
Speaker 1: his age and to his appearance, and that was the
Speaker 1: big initiation right for this specific passage passage cult. Rather,
Speaker 1: so this was I think one of the only instances
Speaker 1: that we can sort of point to in antiquity in
Speaker 1: which this is an active choice to be made by
Speaker 1: the person who was transforming ah Neat.
Speaker 5: It seems to me, I don't know how much you
Speaker 5: know about medieval history and mythology, but it seems like
Speaker 5: that story is played out a lot by the Middle
Speaker 5: Ages are in kind of French stories and English stories
Speaker 5: about were wolves. That seems to be a similar kind
Speaker 5: of story.
Speaker 2: It does feel like those elements get carried forward absolutely.
Speaker 5: But I wanted to ask you, I don't know if
Speaker 5: you'd know this, but from all of your research, do
Speaker 5: you get a feel for how the average person felt
Speaker 5: about were wolves in these times? In ancient Greece, in
Speaker 5: ancient Rome, how did they feel about were wolves?
Speaker 1: Actually? Yeah, it's there's a couple of different threads that
Speaker 1: come together, and I think it really speaks to how
Speaker 1: many different genres of writing are included. These are including
Speaker 1: these sorts of myths and folk tales and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Is that we almost want to see a sort of
Speaker 1: like more domestic narrative coming through. In a lot of
Speaker 1: the later texts, especially, they talk about this specific term
Speaker 1: and it's used as an invective, and I'm probably going
Speaker 1: to mispronounce this. I think it is syphilis. It's certainly
Speaker 1: how I was how I have been pronouncing it. Goodness knows.
Speaker 1: The Australia.
Speaker 3: What does it mean?
Speaker 1: It means skin changer. And the fantastic thing about this
Speaker 1: is it's associated with a couple of different werewolf figures
Speaker 1: and talked about in in reference to or in relation
Speaker 1: to werewolf transformations. But a lot of what of the time,
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of the time it's being
Speaker 1: used as an invective to sort of mean like two
Speaker 1: faced or someone to not be trusted because they change
Speaker 1: their skin. And it's so connected to this mythology that
Speaker 1: it would make us think that this implication that someone
Speaker 1: is a werewolf or someone transforms into a were wolf
Speaker 1: means that they're not to be trusted. And that's something
Speaker 1: we did get from. So Pomponius Mela's rather Petronius is
Speaker 1: Satirican that did that was a part of the story.
Speaker 1: Right at the end, he has a little line that says,
Speaker 1: I knew now that this soldier was a werewolf, and
Speaker 1: I could never sit down to a meal with him
Speaker 1: again ever, because he was evil and he's it's this
Speaker 1: intrinsic belief that these people are terrible people because the
Speaker 1: transformation indicates that's what they are.
Speaker 5: Have the god Janis who Janus is just thinking that, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It's funny because Janis is like he's two face, but
Speaker 2: he's also the god of entrances and like, so I
Speaker 2: don't think he's universally negative, but the whole Janus two face, yeah,
Speaker 2: two face, now for sure he's So did you did
Speaker 2: your research take you into any sort of post Roman
Speaker 2: Empire era?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely so I I did, Uh, for some reason,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be a very interesting thing to
Speaker 1: go through a whole bunch of French philosophy, because everybody
Speaker 1: knows how easy French philosophy.
Speaker 3: Dozens of people have followed that path.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 6: At least, yeah, sure, absolutely, And I sort of found
Speaker 6: my way to a bunch of contemporary where wolf stories
Speaker 6: and adaptations and sort of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And what I was finding in part, I think because
Speaker 1: I skipped over a lot of this medieval era material
Speaker 1: on were wolves because I knew how connected it ended
Speaker 1: up being to that witchcraft and like witch trials and
Speaker 1: all of that sort of stuff, and it ended up
Speaker 1: sort of not necessarily corrupting, but maybe changing the narrative
Speaker 1: quite a bit, and it's not what I really wanted
Speaker 1: to focus on. So I jumped all the way into
Speaker 1: the modern era, and I was finding all of these
Speaker 1: examples of were wolf stories that almost mimicked the context
Speaker 1: or the themes of the stuff I was reading in
Speaker 1: the ancient world, and it was the coolest thing to
Speaker 1: be able to go through and just I mean, I
Speaker 1: was a huge fan of This might be a bit embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but I love it so much, the Hugh Jackman Van
Speaker 1: Helsing movie.
Speaker 3: It is a fun ride.
Speaker 2: But you're the first person I think I've talked to
Speaker 2: who's also liked it so yeah.
Speaker 1: So much. It's so awful and it's so beautiful, and
Speaker 1: I think I can appreciate it so much.
Speaker 3: I love their patchwork man too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, they're sort of Frankenstein character too.
Speaker 3: A lot of fun.
Speaker 1: You just throw so many different creatures and monsters right
Speaker 1: in there, with no concern about the fact that those
Speaker 1: are completely different historical Ay ye exactly.
Speaker 3: It's just that put it in the blender and see
Speaker 3: what it tastes like.
Speaker 1: Here's Dracula just for fun, and it's so good. But
Speaker 1: the web of transformation in that film. It's actually one
Speaker 1: of the things that convinced me to go on this
Speaker 1: big right because in that in that specific narrative, the
Speaker 1: we wolf tears the skin of the human often reveals
Speaker 1: the wolf underneath. Yes, really, it's a really cool I mean,
Speaker 1: for its time, it's such a fantastic cgi example. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: it was such a cool thing for me to see
Speaker 1: growing up, especially like all of this sort of monster
Speaker 1: obsession that I had as a child and to see
Speaker 1: it sort of depicted that way, and it started me
Speaker 1: on this really interesting journey through some contemporary examples to
Speaker 1: try and see all the ways that we've shown the
Speaker 1: werewolf transforming in a really physical sense. And Van Helsing
Speaker 1: did it so well, that tearing of the skin off
Speaker 1: and they're crawling up the walls, and all I could
Speaker 1: think was, is there, does that mean that they have
Speaker 1: a limited life cycle? Is there a certain number of
Speaker 1: moments that they get to tear that skin off and
Speaker 1: eventually it'll run out and they don't transform anymore. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to know more about the structure around something
Speaker 1: like that, because that sort of like infinite movement, the
Speaker 1: back and forth and the implication that there's no two
Speaker 1: sides to the creature. There's no two sides to the werewolf.
Speaker 1: It is one whole thing that is like full and
Speaker 1: complete within itself was something that I just I really
Speaker 1: wanted to delve into because it felt so so much
Speaker 1: more true to the ancient material than anything I'd sort
Speaker 1: of seen before, and that led me right through. So
Speaker 1: I talked about the MTV adaptation of teen Wolf, the
Speaker 1: TV series Wow, which is fantastic, fantastic example of how
Speaker 1: morality gets folded into the werewolf narrative so often.
Speaker 3: I never watched that because I got old, but.
Speaker 1: It is delightful. It's such a cool, almost close bracket
Speaker 1: to the ancient stories of like chaon the way that
Speaker 1: they sort of manipulate morality and authority and their idea
Speaker 1: of the true alpha, which is the alpha that can
Speaker 1: that can take power without needing to kill for it.
Speaker 1: It was such a cool, almost like superhero version of
Speaker 1: events that still referenced all the way back to the
Speaker 1: like Hay mythology that they sort of used as their
Speaker 1: inaritance in the TV series. They talked about it.
Speaker 2: See you mentioned the Van Helsing movie. I would like
Speaker 2: to mention for our listeners as a fan. Steven Sommers
Speaker 2: was the director, and you would probably know him from
Speaker 2: The Mummy, the n eighty nine Mummy with Brendan Fraser,
Speaker 2: but he also did a movie called Deep Rising, and
Speaker 2: if you like creature features, that one's really good.
Speaker 3: I'd say it's a treat.
Speaker 2: But since the hero is treat William's rest in Peace,
Speaker 2: that's too much of a puny even for me.
Speaker 5: Well, and also talking about that movie, talking about the
Speaker 5: tearing off of the skin is kind of making me
Speaker 5: think of the Inquisition and the werewolf Trials. So, Tanika
Speaker 5: have you has your research taken you into the were
Speaker 5: wolf Trials? I know that's a leap away from ancient
Speaker 5: Rome and Sumerians.
Speaker 1: But so in a very sort of tangential way. I
Speaker 1: did so. As I mean, as a part of a PhD.
Speaker 1: One of the big things you do is a big
Speaker 1: literature review and you go through in your mind all
Speaker 1: of the little places where your sort of background information
Speaker 1: may lie. And I did a little bit of work
Speaker 1: in and around medieval uses of ancient texts to provide
Speaker 1: a sort of sense of authority to the sort of
Speaker 1: developing narratives, especially around the literature that was being published
Speaker 1: as a part of witch trials and this huge sort
Speaker 1: of call to identify creatures and identify witches especially, so
Speaker 1: there isn't a huge reference, but there is one small
Speaker 1: one in the big main witch hunting manual, the Malleus Malafakaram,
Speaker 1: which is white texts, those big ones that sort of
Speaker 1: kick off quite a lot of the events that do occur,
Speaker 1: and there is one small one, but it's sort of
Speaker 1: filtered through a couple of different religious like early religious
Speaker 1: Christian texts, so it doesn't necessarily follow. But there are
Speaker 1: a whole lot of especially sixteenth century demonological texts. There's
Speaker 1: a couple written by There's one Reginald Scott writes one
Speaker 1: the Discovery of Witchcraft. I think it is the title
Speaker 1: for that one. And I want to say there's a
Speaker 1: king that writes a specific demonological texts as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's King James, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's the one. So when I was going
Speaker 1: through and doing my literature review, I think it's in
Speaker 1: Reginald Scott's text where there's this really cool line that
Speaker 1: sort of draws back to the epic poets, to the
Speaker 1: Homeric texts, all the way back some of the earliest
Speaker 1: sort of literary examples that we have, and one in
Speaker 1: particular was that people could turn into were wolves or
Speaker 1: could be transformed into were wolves because the witch Circe
Speaker 1: who trapped Odysseus on his island, on her island rather
Speaker 1: had all of these animals around her and could transform
Speaker 1: pil into animals, and that was there, that was their
Speaker 1: sort of authority of transformation and how that sort of functions.
Speaker 1: So the ancient texts really did have a lot of
Speaker 1: influence on the way that people would believe, people would
Speaker 1: sort of create these medieval texts and these understanding of
Speaker 1: how it happened. The witch trials themselves, I know, are
Speaker 1: very very focused, I think, on the connection between witchcraft
Speaker 1: and Satanism, which is a whole different area of inquiry,
Speaker 1: and how sort of like how witchcraft practices and some
Speaker 1: of them inherited from the ancient Greek and Roman cultures,
Speaker 1: tended to interact with sort of introducing and sort of
Speaker 1: really strong Christian and Catholic developing sort of doctrines, and
Speaker 1: the were wolves that get caught up in that have
Speaker 1: a tendency to either be demonized by way of their
Speaker 1: connection to magic, which is something that happens quite often,
Speaker 1: or even potentially on the other side of that, saved
Speaker 1: by the fact that a lot of this was really
Speaker 1: really very invested in women and femininity, so the fact
Speaker 1: that they were masculine figures can sometimes sort of shift
Speaker 1: that identification or accusation of witchcraft from them. So there
Speaker 1: are occasions in which there's a couple of accusations of
Speaker 1: where wolves in particular, that did end in those sort
Speaker 1: of trials. It didn't happen very often, and it is
Speaker 1: sort of once it does happen, it's only a very
Speaker 1: short period of time in which the trials are occurring
Speaker 1: and then they completely stop. And it does have quite
Speaker 1: a few interactions with the area of inquiry concerned with
Speaker 1: feral children as well, So the kids that sort of
Speaker 1: get caught up in or running away I guess from
Speaker 1: parents from growing up in these wilderness contexts and stuff
Speaker 1: like that and trying to be reintegrated into society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, raised by wolves Malgli kind of storyline, right, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: So there's a surprising amount of cross there for the
Speaker 1: witchcraft trials and the were wolf trials.
Speaker 3: That's really it.
Speaker 2: I will probably dive deeper into that topic soon, because
Speaker 2: it's anytime I run into it something where I have
Speaker 2: a role hole in my knowledge, my first impulse is
Speaker 2: to find fill it with lots of information.
Speaker 5: So children, feral children, well, oh.
Speaker 2: I met the Werewolf trials versus the Witch Trials, but
Speaker 2: also well, yeah, yeah, yeah, the feral children thing I'm
Speaker 2: very interested in, largely because it seems like much like
Speaker 2: we did some work on change links in fairy lore,
Speaker 2: and it turns out that there's a pretty strong case
Speaker 2: to be made that a lot of the changeling stories
Speaker 2: are about autistic children or people going through dementia, so
Speaker 2: it's like a sort of a supernatural way to deal
Speaker 2: with real world problems or to explain them. And I'm
Speaker 2: curious about the Werewolf Trials versus the Witch Trials because
Speaker 2: in my head, I see those as a masculine versus
Speaker 2: feminine thing, and I'm not sure that's really true. So
Speaker 2: I need to find out, you know, I need to.
Speaker 3: Actually go back to the source material. But we have
Speaker 3: one more serious.
Speaker 2: Question before we get to our fun closer, and that
Speaker 2: is this is kind of a broad survey question, but
Speaker 2: in your research, it seems like some of these stories
Speaker 2: have a really strong moral component, but some of them
Speaker 2: seem more like accidents of fate. So did you find
Speaker 2: a lot of moral content in the mythology in the
Speaker 2: ancient world around these these cases or these these examples.
Speaker 1: There was definitely a good amount of connection there between
Speaker 1: the were wolf stories that I was studying and that
Speaker 1: sort of moral, ethical kind of edge I ended up
Speaker 1: for my dissertation specifically, I sort of separated the ancient
Speaker 1: material into four different streams of sort of thematic inheritance
Speaker 1: that we like inevitably find and it made it a
Speaker 1: lot easier to connect to the ancient to the contemporary
Speaker 1: as well. So I talked about the developing humanist traditions
Speaker 1: race and species, and then morality, and also individualism and multiplicity,
Speaker 1: and then magic and technology, and so those were my
Speaker 1: four sort of areas of inquiry in the way that
Speaker 1: I sort of drove the research and could discuss the
Speaker 1: ancient texts specifically. And the moral one especially was absolutely
Speaker 1: such an embedded part of the ancient material that it
Speaker 1: was sort of drawn into those other examples. But it
Speaker 1: really did come through with Ovid in particular that like
Speaker 1: Hayon story, is so inherently connected to this sort of
Speaker 1: moral obligation and the moral responsibility of a leader to
Speaker 1: their people. That that was the contexts that we were
Speaker 1: seeing like Hayon come up in again and again. And
Speaker 1: the best part about that in particular was that I
Speaker 1: got to connect it all the way down to Stephen
Speaker 1: King and the where Wolf, the way wolves he has
Speaker 1: in his particular brand of fiction, which is so often
Speaker 1: a really moral journey. There's this this implication that by
Speaker 1: way of I don't want to quote Spider Man, but
Speaker 1: it's almost Spider Man. It's the with great power comes
Speaker 1: great responsibility, and it seems to be that's the that's
Speaker 1: the inheritance of the moral story from the werewolf stories
Speaker 1: of of ancient recent Rome. It's this real, this really
Speaker 1: insistence that with that sort of power and with that
Speaker 1: sort of like physical end and in a sort of
Speaker 1: metaphorical sense as a leader, that there needs to be
Speaker 1: more responsibility or it turns you into this like monstrous creature.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The story of like Ian reminds me a little bit
Speaker 2: of King Saul and David, you know, where he sort
Speaker 2: of he turns into a beast, but it describes him
Speaker 2: as being more of a herbivore, so it's not quite
Speaker 2: the same, but yeah, that's that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting comparison made in a couple of ancient texts,
Speaker 1: king like Chaon to the first king of Athens, and
Speaker 1: I do not know how to pronounce his name. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to try, I butcher it properly. But this,
Speaker 1: this this Athenian king was the one that helped his
Speaker 1: people and fed his people and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: the comparison that's made is while while this Athenian king
Speaker 1: was taking that responsibility, like Chaon brought the body, the
Speaker 1: body of a child to the altar for worship and
Speaker 1: sacrificed the child sort of thing. So it's a really
Speaker 1: common theme, this idea that you're not protecting the people
Speaker 1: who are under your protection. It's really really deep ebedded well.
Speaker 2: In so many ancient stories. The rules of hospitality being
Speaker 2: violated just bring down the God's wrath upon those who
Speaker 2: do it. And it's it's really interesting because you know,
Speaker 2: if it was it was a really tough.
Speaker 3: Time to survive.
Speaker 2: You know, there wasn't a safety that and it's like
Speaker 2: if you didn't give people hospitality or support them, yeah,
Speaker 2: moral condemnation from your peers is one thing, but it's like,
Speaker 2: it's so satisfying to know that the gods will smite
Speaker 2: you if you don't.
Speaker 3: That's way better, right.
Speaker 5: Well, Tanika, it's just been fantastic to chat with you,
Speaker 5: and yeah, I've really really enjoyed this conversation. But we've
Speaker 5: got one final question that we like to ask our
Speaker 5: first time guests, and that is what's your favorite monster?
Speaker 1: My favorite monster? Oh, it would be so easy for
Speaker 1: me to say were wolves in this instance, very very
Speaker 1: easy for me to say it, but I have to
Speaker 1: be honest. A lot of the work that I've done
Speaker 1: around monstrosity and humanity and the connection between those two
Speaker 1: means that there's one person, one figure in particular that
Speaker 1: sort of is my absolute all time favorite creature. And
Speaker 1: her name is a Rick though she's actually a Roman witch,
Speaker 1: a fictional Roman witch that comes up in an epic
Speaker 1: called Fossalia written by Lucan and it's sort of this
Speaker 1: fictional retelling of the historical era of civil war in
Speaker 1: Rome between Caesar and Pompey. And she is this absolutely
Speaker 1: horrifying creature, this witch figure who prowls battlefields and collects
Speaker 1: pieces of corpses to perform her magic so she can
Speaker 1: see the future. And she's so incredibly terrifying that when
Speaker 1: she speaks, the gods give her whatever she wants because
Speaker 1: they're so scared of her. Wow, And she's delightfully powerful
Speaker 1: and so horrifying that she's my absolute all time favorite.
Speaker 1: She's just so cool.
Speaker 3: That's neat. We've a new one for me, exactly, definitely.
Speaker 2: But I love that because you know, that's the sort
Speaker 2: of dichotomy and we've talked about so many times on
Speaker 2: the show. There's there's the Witch as a human who
Speaker 2: does magic, which is I guess more of the modern conception.
Speaker 2: There's the Witch who's clearly some kind of a creature
Speaker 2: slash monster, you know, the Baba yagas, you know, these
Speaker 2: sort of creatures, and that that.
Speaker 3: Is so blurred throughout folklore and history.
Speaker 2: And I just it's fascinating. I can't stop thinking about it.
Speaker 2: And you know that's why.
Speaker 3: We do this show. So there you go.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 2: talk with us today.
Speaker 5: Thank you. It was really cool.
Speaker 1: I'm here. This has been fantastic. I love a good
Speaker 1: chance to ramble about my area of expertise, and it's
Speaker 1: so exciting that I get to it gets to be
Speaker 1: my area of experctise.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is.
Speaker 2: Anybody absolutely if you managed to get a degree in
Speaker 2: doing doing so with monsters is the basis, you're definitely
Speaker 2: winning in my mind. So if if people want to
Speaker 2: read your work, what's the best way to find it?
Speaker 1: Oh so, a good old Google search is usually the
Speaker 1: best way. I have a couple of publications coming out,
Speaker 1: but good I'm not too good at timelines in terms
Speaker 1: of stuff like that. But my work, in particular my
Speaker 1: thesis can be found on just on the web. The
Speaker 1: University of Newcastle, Australia has a good online repository that
Speaker 1: has my digital copy of my thesis there too, for
Speaker 1: anybody willing to breathe the madness.
Speaker 5: And will be people.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll see if I can get a link straight
Speaker 2: to it or real close to it, and I'll put
Speaker 2: a link to your article at the conversation as well.
Speaker 2: Those were great monster You've been listening to Monster Doc,
Speaker 2: the science show about monsters.
Speaker 1: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 2: You just heard an interview with doctor Tanika Kusman discussing
Speaker 2: her research into the history of ancient werewolves. You can
Speaker 2: find links to her research and to the books and
Speaker 2: movies that we mentioned by checking the show notes that
Speaker 2: accompany this episode. And remember you can always search up
Speaker 2: past episodes easily over at MonsterTalk dot org, where there's
Speaker 2: a full archive of all our content. We hope you've
Speaker 2: enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Each episode we strive
Speaker 2: to bring you the very best in monster related content,
Speaker 2: with a focus on bringing scientific skepticism into the conversation.
Speaker 2: If you enjoy Monster Talk, we now have a variety
Speaker 2: of ways to support the show, all with convenient links
Speaker 2: at MonsterTalk dot org forwarge slash support. That's monster talk
Speaker 2: dot org forwarge Slash support. We have links there to
Speaker 2: our Patreon page as well as a donation button. Another
Speaker 2: great way to support the show is to buy books
Speaker 2: from our Amazon Monster Talk wish List, which directly helps
Speaker 2: us with our research. We love used books very much,
Speaker 2: so don't feel compelled to buy new ones, and we
Speaker 2: love kindles so we can share our digital libraries with
Speaker 2: each other. And finally, without spending any money at all,
Speaker 2: you can support us by leaving a positive review at
Speaker 2: iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Positive reviews help
Speaker 2: keep us visible in iTunes, which is a great way
Speaker 2: to help. Let's find you listeners, and please share our
Speaker 2: show on your favorite social media platforms. Monster Talks theme
Speaker 2: music is by Pete Stealing Monkeys and you can trust
Speaker 2: us to be your companion when you have to walk
Speaker 2: past the cemetery to get to your lover's house. We
Speaker 2: may not shut up the whole time, but we definitely
Speaker 2: will not turn into wolves.
Speaker 1: This has been a Monster House presentation