Speaker 1: Monster House Presents.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant very creature party part.
Speaker 2: In Luckness, a twenty four a mile long bottomless lake
Speaker 2: in the Highlands of Scotland. It's a creature known as
Speaker 2: the Luckness Monster. Monster Talk.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 1: Blake Smith.
Speaker 4: And I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 1: In this two part interview with doctor Phillip Center, we
Speaker 1: will be looking at the evolution of dragons and how
Speaker 1: dragons are being used to battle against the concept of
Speaker 1: evolution and natural selection. In part one, we're going to
Speaker 1: be focusing on dragons and how they evolve from ancient
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman mythicized serpents into the quadrupedal, fire breathing
Speaker 1: monsters that populate fantasy and legend. And then next week
Speaker 1: in part two, we're going to dive in onto how
Speaker 1: creation is to arguing that the legends of dragons are
Speaker 1: rooted in real world human experience coexisting with dinosaurs. There's
Speaker 1: an assumption I usually make about our listenership that you're
Speaker 1: here because you love monsters and science, and many people
Speaker 1: rely on their religions a source of morality and spiritual guidance.
Speaker 1: But the narratives of religion ought to provide creation stories
Speaker 1: and explanations for how the world works and why. And
Speaker 1: as humans have developed science as a method for inquiry
Speaker 1: and discovery, a huge pile of logical inferences and material
Speaker 1: evidence that contradicts mythic narratives have emerged, and a lot
Speaker 1: of science directly refutes the literal interpretation of sacred documents
Speaker 1: and narratives. And when one has faced with this conflict,
Speaker 1: one has to ask oneself if it is possible to
Speaker 1: accept that the world we live in is one we
Speaker 1: can understand through these findings, or do we need to
Speaker 1: reject the evidence and rely on the stories of ancient
Speaker 1: myth as the only truth. I know many scientists who
Speaker 1: reconcile this, but taking these stories as instructive metaphors, which
Speaker 1: allows them to be beloved and meaningful, but doesn't require
Speaker 1: them to reject the evidence that suggests we live in
Speaker 1: a natural world subject to natural laws, which can, through
Speaker 1: rigorous inquiry, be understood or even manipulated. The other approach
Speaker 1: is to reject this evidence and lean hard into the
Speaker 1: stories as being literally true and a world that's full
Speaker 1: of misleading lives. These are the sources of cartoons showing
Speaker 1: a devil hiding dinosaur fossils to confuse the faithful, and
Speaker 1: narratives of people wrestling with dinosaurs and ancient Babylon culture.
Speaker 1: Wars are not new and they will never go away.
Speaker 1: But right this minute, I personally like science is on
Speaker 1: the ropes here in the United States, and I find
Speaker 1: it really disheartening. If you believe in a future where
Speaker 1: demonstrable facts should be treated more seriously than fiery but
Speaker 1: unevidenced faith, well then you have to keep fighting. Those
Speaker 1: who purport to support science owe it to themselves and
Speaker 1: that ideal to educate themselves and speak out when they
Speaker 1: see nonsense on the attack. Doctor Center's book is full
Speaker 1: of useful and fun information if you want to be
Speaker 1: armed for battle. It's also fun if you just like
Speaker 1: dinosaurs and dragons and like to read about how people
Speaker 1: have used these creatures for a variety of purposes across
Speaker 1: the ages. Check out the show notes to find links
Speaker 1: to the book and additional reading. But why are you
Speaker 1: listening to this intro when we could be having some fun.
Speaker 1: Listen to some good old fashioned dragon themed more obstrutal
Speaker 1: Hey on this two part episode, we're welcoming doctor Philip J. Center,
Speaker 1: who is the author of the Real Story of Dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and Dragons and it's a really interesting book. And I
Speaker 1: noticed that in the intro you think just to Mullis,
Speaker 1: who's a friend of the show, for some of his feedback,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's great. So he's been on several times
Speaker 1: and we actually correspond quite frequently.
Speaker 3: But welcome to the show, Phil, Phil Center, Welcome, thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you?
Speaker 1: Or is it Phillip Sitter?
Speaker 2: God?
Speaker 1: I messed it up.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it's okay. Yeah, Phil is fine.
Speaker 2: Bill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, most people call me Phil.
Speaker 2: Phil.
Speaker 1: Can you introduce yourself a little bit deeper than that
Speaker 1: shallow effort by me? I would really appreciate it for
Speaker 1: the listeners.
Speaker 3: Sure. Yes.
Speaker 2: I am a professor of zoology at Fable State University
Speaker 2: in North Carolina, where I've worked since two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: and my research specialties are paleontology with an emphasis on dinosaurs,
Speaker 2: zoology with an emphasis on reptiles, and biblical studies, for
Speaker 2: which I have right, I've got a master's degree in
Speaker 2: theology in addition to the doctorate in biology, so and
Speaker 2: in fact, I I earned those credentials, specifically so that
Speaker 2: I would have credibility doing biblical studies.
Speaker 4: Well, that's an interesting combination of fields and perfectly suited
Speaker 4: to your new book. So we want to start, I think,
Speaker 4: with just asking you what drove you to write this book,
Speaker 4: and then what kept you going.
Speaker 3: What drove me to write it.
Speaker 2: Began in class when well, at my first semester at
Speaker 2: Fayetteville State and I was teaching a comparative anatomy class
Speaker 2: and I mentioned something about evolution and one of my
Speaker 2: students popped off with, I think evolution is a hoax,
Speaker 2: and I was stunned.
Speaker 3: This was a.
Speaker 2: Biology major who was either a junior or senior, and
Speaker 2: I had thought, by the time you get that far,
Speaker 2: surely you're aware of the evidence of evolution, and if not,
Speaker 2: we need to fix this. So shortly thereafter, I was
Speaker 2: asked to teach an evolution class, and in preparation for that,
Speaker 2: I read a bunch of Young Earth creationist literatures so
Speaker 2: I could be up on counter arguments and know how
Speaker 2: to answer them. And then that ultimately just spun out
Speaker 2: into a book because I figured why keep this stuff
Speaker 2: to myself when there are other teachers out there who
Speaker 2: could use a database of the counter arguments, which the
Speaker 2: book is.
Speaker 1: Oh well put in that answers the question exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. Oh quickly, I just wanted to introduce interject
Speaker 1: that we switched from being like an hour long format
Speaker 1: to being a thirty minute format. So my plan here
Speaker 1: is to talk to you and split this in half.
Speaker 1: And so the first of our questions are going to
Speaker 1: deal with the history and mythology of dragons. You don't
Speaker 1: feel a need to steer away from evolution. But the
Speaker 1: second part of the interview is we're going to ask
Speaker 1: questions focused on creationism, dragons, cryptuzology, anti science, that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff.
Speaker 4: If that's okay with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2: In fact, even if all it was was just dragons,
Speaker 2: that that's still right up my alley.
Speaker 5: Perfect.
Speaker 1: Well, here we go. Then the next question is right
Speaker 1: on topic. Then your book opens up with Dawn of
Speaker 1: the Dragon, and can you walk us through some of
Speaker 1: the earliest known dragon myths and how they and we're
Speaker 1: going to use this word a lot, how they evolved
Speaker 1: across cultures across time, especially in the Greco Roman tradition.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, back in the days when Greco Roman culture
Speaker 2: was the predominant culture around the Mediterranean, or the days
Speaker 2: of the Greek Empire, the days of the Roman Empire,
Speaker 2: the words of which is Greek and draco in.
Speaker 3: Latin both meant serpent.
Speaker 2: Now, these are the precursors of the word dragon, which
Speaker 2: did not appear in that form until the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: and the earlier dragon myths are all about snakes. Hercules,
Speaker 2: for example, Heracles to the Greeks, he could not get
Speaker 2: away from these blasted things. The goddess Hera sent two
Speaker 2: of them to his crib to kill him, and they
Speaker 2: were not successful because he strangled him to death.
Speaker 3: Then, when he was an.
Speaker 2: Adult, he had to defeat the racon that was guarding
Speaker 2: the apples of the Hesperides in order to take the apples.
Speaker 3: And then later on he.
Speaker 2: Had to defeat another racon with multiple heads, the hydra,
Speaker 2: and the poor guy just could not get away from racontess,
Speaker 2: which is the ancient Greek for dragons. And he even
Speaker 2: had to meet the hellhound Cariberos at one point, and
Speaker 2: the tail on that animal was a rack on. And
Speaker 2: then we get to other contemporaneous smiths. It's one serpent
Speaker 2: after the next, like the serpent that Asclepios had around
Speaker 2: his staff, which symbolizes medicine today. The ancient Greeks called
Speaker 2: it a racon and other examples. The hero Jason famously
Speaker 2: put to sleep the racon that was guarding the Golden
Speaker 2: Fleece in order to steal the fleece, and he had
Speaker 2: some help from Medea, who was well. The serpent was
Speaker 2: kind of her pet. If you will, and the list
Speaker 2: goes on.
Speaker 1: I think we need to have a quick Medea insert here.
Speaker 1: So Medea is from the legend of Jason and the Argonauts.
Speaker 1: She is a sorceress and was a princess of Colchis.
Speaker 1: She fell for Jason and helps him steal the Golden
Speaker 1: Fleece by betraying her father and murdering her brother to
Speaker 1: aid his escape. They flee to Greece together, they marry,
Speaker 1: they have children, but when Jason leaves her to marry
Speaker 1: a Corinthian princess, Medea takes brutal revenge. She sends the
Speaker 1: Princess of poison robe that bursts into flames, killing her
Speaker 1: and the king, and then in a final act of vengeance,
Speaker 1: she kills her own children to wound Jason forever. She
Speaker 1: escapes in a flying chariot sent by her grandfather, the
Speaker 1: son god Helios. That's what she's famous for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she certainly got her revenge on him after that
Speaker 4: in the story with the poison cloak that she gave
Speaker 4: to his next wife. I guess that's the subject for another.
Speaker 1: Episode Media's she turned from heroin to villain in a
Speaker 1: lot of views. But I mean, you don't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to who you're wrong on
Speaker 1: your adventures.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So Bill, do you see common patterns in
Speaker 4: dragon stories around the world, or these legends more culturally
Speaker 4: distinct than we might typically assume.
Speaker 3: Well, there are some.
Speaker 2: Basic similarities in a lot of the circum Mediterranean dragon
Speaker 2: stories from the from pre medieval times. Very often there
Speaker 2: is a hero who either has to slay or otherwise
Speaker 2: defeat or banish a dragon, which is an obstacle, and
Speaker 2: he has to do that in order to achieve a goal. Sometimes, well,
Speaker 2: very often the drakon is wrecking havoc around the surrounding
Speaker 2: landscape in the towns, so it's kind.
Speaker 3: Of an enemy to everybody.
Speaker 2: But other times, no, it's just an obstacle against one thing,
Speaker 2: well in the way of one thing. But either way,
Speaker 2: it's considered something to defeat a good deal of the time,
Speaker 2: and right, sometimes it's a hero, sometimes it's a god
Speaker 2: who slays the dragon, and I guess the commonality there's usually.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: A negative thing, which is a bit ironic because also
Speaker 2: in the circum Mediterranean world at the same time, snakes
Speaker 2: that were called sacred dragons were kept in temples as
Speaker 2: agents of healing, so they were also considered good things.
Speaker 2: So the dragon had more than one face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little side question there about can you talk
Speaker 1: about what is it called the cadaces the staff with
Speaker 1: the serpent that they used for medicine? What was the
Speaker 1: original meaning of this? You mentioned this now we think
Speaker 1: of it for healthcare in medicine, but like, what did
Speaker 1: it mean? If it's a nation symbol, can you tell
Speaker 1: us what it used to be and how it's changed.
Speaker 2: Well, the cad you see us his staff with a
Speaker 2: serpent wound around it. It may have been a magic symbol,
Speaker 2: because very often when a deity or hero is performing
Speaker 2: a magical act, there is a staff in the ancient
Speaker 2: iconography that's pointing toward whatever the action is. Even the
Speaker 2: the early, the earliest representations of Jesus on Roman sarcophag
Speaker 2: g I have him with a staff pointing to whatever
Speaker 2: thing he's doing, like raising Lazarus from the dead and
Speaker 2: so forth, And it very well could be that a
Speaker 2: Slepiosi's healing magic was symbolized by this staff, although it
Speaker 2: could have meant something else, but it would kind of
Speaker 2: make sense because the snake that's wrapped around it is
Speaker 2: sort of his familiar and there were actual snakes that
Speaker 2: were kept in the temples of Asclepios, and it was
Speaker 2: considered a blessing to be tongued by these snakes, and
Speaker 2: so that they were that was considered part of the
Speaker 2: healing process, or at least a precursor to it. So
Speaker 2: having that wrapped around his staff to symbolize the agent
Speaker 2: of the magic might have had something to do with
Speaker 2: the symbology there.
Speaker 1: Interesting well, I did a little side quest thing and
Speaker 1: it implied that it was adopted for modern medical stuff
Speaker 1: in the in the sixteenth century, which seems around the
Speaker 1: time that a lot of I guess a lot of
Speaker 1: ancient texts had been published because of the printing press,
Speaker 1: And it fits into that whole idea of the past
Speaker 1: is magic too, which is white that's a running theme for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was towards the end of the Renaissance,
Speaker 2: and the Renaissance was all about rebirthing all the ancient
Speaker 2: ways of thinking, including the ancient myths. So it kind
Speaker 2: of goes along with the whole zeitgeist of the time.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about you Heimerism here and the
Speaker 1: idea that any legend probably has some grain of truth,
Speaker 1: or you know, the idea that the ancient gods of
Speaker 1: Greece were real men and heroes who had adventures, and
Speaker 1: they got sort of expanded and it stretched on over time.
Speaker 1: And I think in cryptosology that theme runs deep, the
Speaker 1: idea that legends have a basis in reality. And I'm
Speaker 1: wondering to what extent you think that natural phenomena are
Speaker 1: encounters with unusual animals like crocodiles or whales, contributed to
Speaker 1: the formation of these dragon legends.
Speaker 3: I think there's a possibility there.
Speaker 2: But given the fact that the word meant snake, and
Speaker 2: that every representation in the Greek and Roman iconography of
Speaker 2: a dragon from a store is a snake, I would
Speaker 2: say that they were probably inspired by actual snakes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Violid, I like it makes sense.
Speaker 4: So you mentioned in the book that Renaissance taxidermy, like
Speaker 4: fabricated dragons contributed to the mythology. So could you tell
Speaker 4: us a little bit about one of your favorite fake
Speaker 4: dragon stories from that era and what it tells us
Speaker 4: about human credulity and imagination.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, well, one of the best has got to
Speaker 2: be Elder Vandi's dragon. The Italian naturalist, at least say
Speaker 2: Elder of Bandi, had a museum of biological curiosities that.
Speaker 3: He let people come to study.
Speaker 2: And this was in a town that happened to be
Speaker 2: the hometown of a man who was elected pope. And
Speaker 2: the day of the election, this dragon appeared outside the
Speaker 2: walls of this town, along with a fabricated backstory that
Speaker 2: it had been beaten to death by a peasant who
Speaker 2: had found it, and it frightened his oxen, and he
Speaker 2: wanted to pass, and the dragon was making the oxen balk,
Speaker 2: so he beat it in the head and killed it, supposedly.
Speaker 2: And the item was of course not a real dragon
Speaker 2: as it was conceived in those days, In other words,
Speaker 2: no longer a snake, but this monstrous thing. What it
Speaker 2: was was a grass snake that had its mid section
Speaker 2: replaced with the mid section of a fish, and there
Speaker 2: were little arms from a toad that were added to it,
Speaker 2: and it fooled a lot of people into thinking this
Speaker 2: was a real dragon.
Speaker 1: And but you're saying it was a total fraud.
Speaker 3: Yes it was.
Speaker 2: It was a complete fraud, and it probably had some
Speaker 2: politics going on with it, because the pope that had
Speaker 2: just got elected his family crest was a dragon, and
Speaker 2: to be elected on the on the day when a
Speaker 2: dragon appears near his hometown, the pope's hometown which happened
Speaker 2: to be where Aldervandi was also living and had his museum,
Speaker 2: and a dragon had been beaten to death by a
Speaker 2: peasant whose name was supposedly Baptista, in other words, a baptizer.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's religious and political innuindo in here. Apparently
Speaker 2: somebody did not like the pope and was beating him
Speaker 2: in effigy, and then the dragon was donated to Aldervandi,
Speaker 2: who put it on display, and obviously somebody knew it
Speaker 2: was going to go on display, because that's what you
Speaker 2: do with the museum. So this kind of in your
Speaker 2: face to the new pope was now public and permanent.
Speaker 2: There must have been some other intrigue going on with that,
Speaker 2: but I mean the the audacity to do them on
Speaker 2: that particular day, and they prepared for it too. The
Speaker 2: dragon appeared on that day, but they had to have
Speaker 2: put it together some days before. So someone was anticipating
Speaker 2: that this guy would be elected and had gone to
Speaker 2: the trouble to express their displeasure.
Speaker 3: Ahead of time.
Speaker 2: So who knows what sort of feud was going on
Speaker 2: and who knows who it was. But I would like
Speaker 2: to travel back in time a little bit and find
Speaker 2: that out.
Speaker 4: I'm just listening to and a question came to mind.
Speaker 4: I'm just starting to wonder. We're talking about serpents and snakes,
Speaker 4: and evolution is going to come into this discussion soon,
Speaker 4: but right now, I'm wondering, how did this mythical creature
Speaker 4: evolve from a snakelike creature to a kind of reptilian
Speaker 4: bast that has claws and wings and can breathe fire
Speaker 4: into all of these other things that we associate with
Speaker 4: dragons today.
Speaker 2: Well, the first bit of transformation was the fire. When
Speaker 2: Christianity became the predominant religion in the Roman Empire, the
Speaker 2: Christian storytellers began to make stories about their saints, stories
Speaker 2: about real people. But things that had not actually happened
Speaker 2: to those people, And there were encounters with serpents in
Speaker 2: which the saint was cast almost in the Greek or
Speaker 2: Roman hero role, with the serpent as adversary, and in
Speaker 2: the literature was called draco or draco, which is a
Speaker 2: formal way to say snake, like today we would say
Speaker 2: serpent instead of snake, so that they were trying to
Speaker 2: make it.
Speaker 3: Impressive and hyghalutine.
Speaker 2: Well, before Christianity had taken over, a lot of the
Speaker 2: dragon stories had the dragon spitting venom and venom burns.
Speaker 2: I can attest to this, having venomated at least once
Speaker 2: I got you.
Speaker 1: You mean it feels it burns? Yeah, yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Slamble,
Speaker 1: it feels like you're on fire, got it exactly.
Speaker 2: It won't set anything on fire, but you will feel
Speaker 2: like there is fire inside you when when the venom
Speaker 2: has been pumped into your system.
Speaker 4: And eating Chili's right.
Speaker 3: Well, with these.
Speaker 2: Christian stories, the the venom spitting got replaced with fire spitting,
Speaker 2: and it's not too much of a stretch to do
Speaker 2: one from one to the other, because there was an
Speaker 2: association in people's minds with that, so that was the
Speaker 2: the first transformation. The dragon became fire breathing in Christian traditions,
Speaker 2: and then about the eighth or ninth century, for no
Speaker 2: apparent reason, artists began putting feathered bird wings and one
Speaker 2: pair of legs on dragon depictions. And I have searched
Speaker 2: the literature to see whether there was some inspiration from
Speaker 2: something written, and I've come up with squat, so I
Speaker 2: think the artists were just being imaginative. But once that
Speaker 2: got started, it stuck. And then a few centuries later
Speaker 2: it became popular to trade the bird wings for batwings,
Speaker 2: and this did not become really popular until the Renaissance.
Speaker 2: Didn't become standard until after the Renaissance. And the same
Speaker 2: goes for adding a second pair of limbs so that
Speaker 2: the dragon becomes a quite with wings. There was a
Speaker 2: little bit of that in the twelfth century, but it
Speaker 2: did not become standard until the Renaissance was at its height,
Speaker 2: so it took a while for this to catch on,
Speaker 2: and by the time the Renaissance was over, a lot
Speaker 2: of artists had stopped depicting the dragon with the sort
Speaker 2: of a bird shaped torso and had replaced that with
Speaker 2: a mammalian torso with mammalian haunches and the limbs that
Speaker 2: were clearly upright like those of a mammal, which just
Speaker 2: so happens to be how dinosaurs hold their limbs. So
Speaker 2: by the time dinosaurs were discovered for what they were
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, the dragon had come to resemble
Speaker 2: one with wings, quite by accident.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because you go from this idea that it's
Speaker 1: a serpent, and then it becomes a leged animal and
Speaker 1: winged animal and a fire breeding animal. And then Europeans
Speaker 1: as they go around the world, anytime they encounter is
Speaker 1: something that looks big and reptilian that's also a dragon.
Speaker 1: You know, even if that culture doesn't even have a dragon,
Speaker 1: it becomes part of the dragons. And you get things
Speaker 1: like we have a taxonomy. You know, if it's got
Speaker 1: four legs, it's a dragon. If it's got two leg
Speaker 1: it's a wyburn. You know, some people call them worms.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting and creative, and I think I struggle
Speaker 1: sometimes because, again going back to that Euhimmerist idea, the
Speaker 1: idea that things are based on real encounters kind of
Speaker 1: lies at the core of what is the challenge with
Speaker 1: dealing with people who don't have a scientific take on
Speaker 1: the world, or who like to have literally supernatural takes
Speaker 1: on the world. That these magical, supernatural creatures can somehow
Speaker 1: fit into a natural world, that there's a way to
Speaker 1: make them fit. There's a way it makes sense, and
Speaker 1: the easiest way, it seems like it's to reject science.
Speaker 1: But I guess I do have a question here after
Speaker 1: that little ramble, which is this. And this is one
Speaker 1: of those questions that sometimes annoy our listeners because it's
Speaker 1: a thoughtful, feely kind of question. But if you leave
Speaker 1: inside the science for a minute, why do you think
Speaker 1: this idea of dragons, this powerful fire breathing creature has
Speaker 1: such an emotional value even in modernity? Like why do
Speaker 1: people love dragons so much? And why do they want
Speaker 1: them to be real?
Speaker 2: I can only give you an opinion here, That's all
Speaker 2: we got.
Speaker 1: I mean, go for you, that's all we would ask.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good enough.
Speaker 2: I think, for lack of a better word, dragons are cool.
Speaker 5: Oh, even in the Renaissance when they were just starting
Speaker 5: to get the bells and whistles and only a few
Speaker 5: artists were putting the frill of spikes down the back
Speaker 5: and horns on the head, and they were.
Speaker 2: Finally giving the bat wings and the four limbs instead
Speaker 2: of two, and a little arrowhead thing on the end
Speaker 2: of the tail. Even before that got started, artists were
Speaker 2: trying their best to make the dragon look impressive, to
Speaker 2: make it look like you had to look twice at
Speaker 2: this painting, And so dragons were kind of an outlet
Speaker 2: for artistic creativity, if you will. And the more the
Speaker 2: centuries go by, the more ornate the dragon gets, until
Speaker 2: by the time we get to the twentieth century, Oh,
Speaker 2: it is full of bells and whistles. It's got spikes
Speaker 2: all over it, it's got scales that are modified into
Speaker 2: these big, larger scuts and with patterns going over the animal,
Speaker 2: and little hornlets on its face in addition to bigger horns.
Speaker 2: And it's the ornateness of it that just makes you
Speaker 2: take a second look and makes them so fun to see.
Speaker 2: And I think that has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: the fact that the artists have been trying to make
Speaker 2: you take a second look and they have figured out
Speaker 2: how to do it.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's near to my heart. We have an idea
Speaker 1: we talk about here. It started as sort of a joke,
Speaker 1: but it's not a joke. Which is we talk about cryptids.
Speaker 3: And how much.
Speaker 1: Fiction and film and the way that non real stories
Speaker 1: and nonreal images end up affecting how people really experience things.
Speaker 1: So I think, I guess probably the best example would
Speaker 1: be the Patterson Gimblin film. Bigfoot sort of came into
Speaker 1: existence in the nineteen fifties, but after the Patterson Gimblin film,
Speaker 1: everybody knew what they were looking for, so anytime people
Speaker 1: saw a bigfoot, it started to conform to that sort
Speaker 1: of a shape and size, And so I started calling
Speaker 1: this instead of cryptids scriptids, because the movies were influencing them.
Speaker 1: And he likes puns and I love puns. And I
Speaker 1: noticed you included a lot in your chapter titles and
Speaker 1: headings and stuff, so I definitely appreciate you, very impressed.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately these ideas, these I think wonderful fantasy ideas
Speaker 1: of dragons, have gotten lastoed into an anti science narrative
Speaker 1: that we've talked about several times here on Monster Talk,
Speaker 1: and that is the use of cryptozoology to support the
Speaker 1: idea of creationism. And in the second half of this interview,
Speaker 1: which we will go to soon, we're going to continue
Speaker 1: questions along those lines, because that's really the heart of
Speaker 1: this book is what is evolution? What are dragons? And
Speaker 1: why are people using dragons to support the idea that
Speaker 1: evolution is wrong? So tune in next week for part two.
Speaker 1: More monster You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science
Speaker 1: show about monsters.
Speaker 3: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 1: You just heard part one of our two part interview
Speaker 1: with doctor Philip Center discussing his new book, The Real
Speaker 1: Story of Dinosaurs and Dragons Science Sets the Fossil Record Straight,
Speaker 1: which details how creationists are trying to use dragons to
Speaker 1: undermine the science of natural selection and evolution. In part two,
Speaker 1: we're going to dive deeper into the conceptual battle between
Speaker 1: these ideas. Come back next week for that. We hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Each episode we
Speaker 1: strive to bring you the very best in monster related content,
Speaker 1: with a focus on bringing scientific skepticism into the conversation.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy Monster Talk, we now have a variety
Speaker 1: of ways to support the show, all with convenient links
Speaker 1: at monster talk dot org, forwarde slash support. That's monster
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Speaker 1: to our Patreon page, as well as a donation button.
Speaker 1: Another great way to support the show is to buy
Speaker 1: books from our Amazon Monster Talk wish list, which directly
Speaker 1: helps us with our research. We love used books very much,
Speaker 1: so don't feel compelled to buy new ones, and we
Speaker 1: love kid so we could share our digital libraries with
Speaker 1: each other, and finally, without spending any money at all,
Speaker 1: You can support us by leaving a positive review at
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Speaker 1: to help us find you listeners, and please share our
Speaker 1: show on your favorite social media platforms. Monster Talks theme
Speaker 1: music is by Peach Stealing Monkeys. The fun thing about
Speaker 1: science is that it says we get to see dinosaurs
Speaker 1: just about every day. This has been a Monster House
Speaker 1: presentation