Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media.
Speaker 2: Podcast reborn every six hundred years. In Man's reckoning of time,
Speaker 2: the gargoyles joined battle against Man to gain dominion over
Speaker 2: the earth. In each coming, the gargoyles were nearly destroyed
Speaker 2: by men, who flourished in greater numbers. Now it has
Speaker 2: been so many hundreds of years that it seems the
Speaker 2: ancient statues and paintings of gargoyles are just products of
Speaker 2: man's imagination. In this year, with man's thoughts turned toward
Speaker 2: the many ills he has brought upon himself, Man has
Speaker 2: forgotten his most ancient adversary, the Gargoyles.
Speaker 3: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 4: A giant, hairy creature.
Speaker 2: Part eight part mats in Larkness, a twenty four mile long,
Speaker 2: bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 4: It's a creature known as the lockdeest monster Mobstert.
Speaker 3: That opening was a tiny excerpt from the nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: two made for TV film Gargoyles. It's not a great movie,
Speaker 3: though lots of people have had fun watching it. I
Speaker 3: suppose it's mostly notable for its special effects work by
Speaker 3: a young artist named Stan Winston at the time I'm
Speaker 3: recording this. You can check that film out on YouTube,
Speaker 3: and I put a link to it in our show
Speaker 3: notes at monster talk dot org. This week we're taking
Speaker 3: a look at gargoyles. Now, this is tricky since primarily
Speaker 3: gargoyles are strictly speaking, a physical work of architecture. We'll
Speaker 3: talk about that during the interview. I've wanted to cover
Speaker 3: this fabulous monster, but I didn't know quite how to
Speaker 3: tackle it, what angle to take. It's shown up in
Speaker 3: films like Disney's animated adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
Speaker 3: the aforementioned Gargoyles, and the regrettable twenty fourteen film I Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: which currently sports an overly generous four percent approval rating
Speaker 3: on Rotten Tomatoes. One of my hesitancies in covering this monster,
Speaker 3: despite its widespread public recognition, was the lack of consistency
Speaker 3: in the folklore and history. There's stories which say the
Speaker 3: creatures were named after the sound of the gargoyles the
Speaker 3: water that passed through its mouth, their story saying it
Speaker 3: was named after a monstrous dragon like creature, and there's
Speaker 3: a mishmash of legends about whether gargoyles are supposed to
Speaker 3: be figures of good or figures of evil. But despite
Speaker 3: the inconsistencies and the lore, one thing I think we
Speaker 3: can agree on is that gargoyles are art. They're a
Speaker 3: feature of Gothic architecture hundreds of years old, and they
Speaker 3: served both a serious structural purpose and a glorious artistic one.
Speaker 3: Thanks to our Facebook keeper James Niland recommending our guest
Speaker 3: this week, it's time to crank up our Cradle of
Speaker 3: philth albums and get our Gothic on with some gargoyle mornstutle.
Speaker 1: So. Matthew Duman is a photographer and graphic designer who
Speaker 1: grew up in Bethany, Connecticut. He attended the Gargoyle Free
Speaker 1: Campus of Central Connecticut State University, but while studying abroad,
Speaker 1: developed a fascination with the grotesque sculptures of the cathedrals
Speaker 1: of Britain. In addition to England, Matt has made photographic
Speaker 1: trips to Italy, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Matt currently
Speaker 1: works in new Haven, Connecticut. He began exploring the variety
Speaker 1: of sculptures found on the buildings of Yale University and
Speaker 1: as a personal and as a personal project, has researched
Speaker 1: and documented these New World grotesques, which are closer but
Speaker 1: no less bewitching than their European counterparts. Welcome to the show, Matt,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks, thank you.
Speaker 1: So just to begin with, what is a gargoyle? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think most of us have seen them, but if
Speaker 1: you can tell us a lot a little bit about them,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think that they might
Speaker 1: have a spiritual or a superstitious purpose, or is it
Speaker 1: practical you can tell us a little bit about gargoyles.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a little of both. Actually these days, in
Speaker 4: modern times, the definitions have gotten a little muddled. There
Speaker 4: is gargoyles and there are grotesques. Now, grotesque is the general,
Speaker 4: the general architectural term for any kind of sculpture on
Speaker 4: or in a building, and it's usually a person, animal,
Speaker 4: or fanciful creature. Now, a gargoyle is a specific type
Speaker 4: of grotesque. Specifically, it's the ones that channel water, so basically,
Speaker 4: and that's where the that's where the word comes from.
Speaker 4: It comes from the old French word gigwe, which is
Speaker 4: spelled g A R G U I L L E.
Speaker 4: Which refers to the throat. Now that's related to the
Speaker 4: modern word to gargoyle because it refers to water going
Speaker 4: down your throat, which is what gargoyles, which is what
Speaker 4: gargoyles function as. So basically, a gargoyle is a specific
Speaker 4: type of grotesque and it's a basically a decorative range
Speaker 4: about very decorative.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us a little bit about the styles
Speaker 3: in the forms of these these So let me just
Speaker 3: say before we get into that. I've been wanting to
Speaker 3: talk about gargoyles because culturally, you know, they fit in
Speaker 3: as a monster in modern times, and all these sort
Speaker 3: of fictional narratives like the Gargoyles cartoon they were in.
Speaker 3: There was a Frankenstein movie that came out that was
Speaker 3: kind of horrible that had gargoyles is one of the
Speaker 3: kind of creatures as sort of protections. And then there
Speaker 3: was a Stan Winston movie back in the early seventies
Speaker 3: for TV. But historically they there's not like a huge
Speaker 3: amount of lore that I could find about gargoyles coming
Speaker 3: to life, or where do they arise from or anything
Speaker 3: like that. But did you when you were looking in
Speaker 3: the research, did you find anything about the people believing
Speaker 3: that they came to life or were real, or in
Speaker 3: any way representing anything except artistics or representations of monsters.
Speaker 4: I haven't found anything with people actually believing they were
Speaker 4: real or came to life. They're really more symbolic.
Speaker 5: So maybe we could talk about that.
Speaker 3: In the they come in a lot of different styles
Speaker 3: and in your book, by the way, your book has
Speaker 3: just a ton of beautiful photography for people who can't
Speaker 3: make it to yell to look themselves. You've captured really
Speaker 3: great photographs of all these different gargoyles and grotesques throughout the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be a great time.
Speaker 5: Would you want to go out by a coffee table? Yes,
Speaker 5: I got coffee?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Oh sorry.
Speaker 3: So the question was, so can you talk about some
Speaker 3: of the styles and forms that these gargirls come in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, there's the basic, basic style that everybody's familiar
Speaker 4: with which the name conjures up the like the demonic,
Speaker 4: frightening imagery, and that's that's a hangover from the medieval
Speaker 4: times where gargoyls were used on like churches and cathedrals,
Speaker 4: and there were it was. They were there for a
Speaker 4: few different reasons. One of them was like the the
Speaker 4: gargoyls and grotesques were on the outside, but the but
Speaker 4: the religious imagery was kept on the inside. So it
Speaker 4: was basically saying that evil was kept outside of the church.
Speaker 4: And also also also some people said it was just
Speaker 4: to scare away evil spirits so they don't come in
Speaker 4: to the church. Also they were used in maybe a
Speaker 4: little more practical sense you have. As I said, they
Speaker 4: had religious imagery and then they had the ugly gargoyles. Well,
Speaker 4: the gargirl girls were used too to accentuate enhance the
Speaker 4: beauty of the religious imagery imagery by by comparison.
Speaker 3: So I have kind of a follow up if you
Speaker 3: don't mind the what I I've read a lot of
Speaker 3: the ghost stories of m R James, and a lot
Speaker 3: of his work talks about it's fictional, but it talks
Speaker 3: about the sort of art that is inside churches in England,
Speaker 3: and like the art that.
Speaker 5: Sits on the end of church pews.
Speaker 3: And the art that's like sort of tucked away in
Speaker 3: various places. Did you get a sense of why there
Speaker 3: is so much grotesque art within the church. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it seems to be a counterpoints as a sort
Speaker 3: of beauty and majesty, of sort of heavenly ideas that
Speaker 3: the church talks about in some ways.
Speaker 4: Well, that brings me to my to my next style.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, the the more allegorical grotesque.
Speaker 4: Now back in mid back in the Middle Ages, most
Speaker 4: of the common person that the peasants, they were pretty
Speaker 4: much illiterate, so the church had to depend on visual
Speaker 4: imagery two make us to get us point across. So
Speaker 4: grotesques and gargoyls were used to show concepts of morality
Speaker 4: and religion because basically they couldn't depend on the peasants,
Speaker 4: all the peasants being able to read those concepts in
Speaker 4: in books like the Bible, which I think is kind
Speaker 4: of funny that Yale adopted that sort of thing, because
Speaker 4: I think most post Yale students are pretty literate.
Speaker 1: Were all of the gargoyles creatures or monsters of some kind,
Speaker 1: or were any fashioned after people or famous people in particular?
Speaker 4: There's a whole variety of garagars. The demonic imagery is
Speaker 4: just one category there were. As I said, they could
Speaker 4: demonstrate morality with different figures, or they could be maybe
Speaker 4: a statement about the city that the cathedral is located
Speaker 4: in or in modern times, which we're talking about like
Speaker 4: Yale University, the school itself, they would be at Yale,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of depictions of Yale's mascot, Handsome Dan
Speaker 4: the Bulldog, and then there's also a lot of depictions
Speaker 4: of pictions of historical events in Yale's home city of
Speaker 4: New Haven, Connecticut.
Speaker 5: So why are there so many gargoyles at yell Well.
Speaker 4: Yale is one of the schools that revived the Gothic
Speaker 4: architecture style, and this new this revival of Gothic architecture
Speaker 4: on college campuses is called collegiate Gothic. Now, this was
Speaker 4: revived during in the nineteenth century, and it was and
Speaker 4: it had its roots in trying to raise the school's
Speaker 4: stature in society and ultimately to get more money and endowments. Basically,
Speaker 4: they would make they would build buildings that associated their
Speaker 4: or their institution with the medieval universities of Europe like
Speaker 4: Oxford or Cambridge, and then they would make them look
Speaker 4: old to enhance their dignity and venerability and to make
Speaker 4: them look timeless. So basically they looked they looked old.
Speaker 4: People couldn't really say how old, but they look like
Speaker 4: they've been there a long time, and they look like
Speaker 4: they will stand for a long time. And that carried
Speaker 4: over to their attitudes towards the school itself. The school
Speaker 4: has been there and it will be there, and its
Speaker 4: ideals had been there and will be there a long time.
Speaker 1: So how did you get interested in gog oyles and
Speaker 1: how did you come to write a book about god oyles?
Speaker 4: Well, it's one of those things. It's like a hobby
Speaker 4: that just snowballed. I grew up bethany Where I grew
Speaker 4: up is a little town right north of new Haven,
Speaker 4: so I was always going into new Haven. I always
Speaker 4: knew Yale had some great buildings. I never thought too
Speaker 4: much about them, but I always assumed they were hundreds
Speaker 4: of years old. And when I started working in new Haven,
Speaker 4: I was looking for a personal project to get into.
Speaker 4: So I knew Yale had some nice buildings. So I
Speaker 4: started photographing around Yale, and I knew. I always heard
Speaker 4: Yale had sculptures on their buildings, but I assumed that
Speaker 4: it was that they were very stuffy and historical, and
Speaker 4: that's that's nice. But honestly, I wouldn't I wouldn't write
Speaker 4: a book about just that. It was when I started
Speaker 4: seeing grotesque and gargirls that were very very funny and
Speaker 4: just playing bizarre that really that it's that humor factor
Speaker 4: that really drew me in. And I started taking pictures
Speaker 4: and my hard drive started filling up. And at the
Speaker 4: time at the time, I was doing some freelance work
Speaker 4: for a for a Yale professor and we got to
Speaker 4: be good friends, and I would always complain to him
Speaker 4: that I have all these images. I don't know what
Speaker 4: to do. And so he said, well, why don't you
Speaker 4: do a book? And now he probably said it just
Speaker 4: to shut me up because I was complaining about it.
Speaker 4: But but and I said, well, I can design it,
Speaker 4: and I can have the photos. I guess I can
Speaker 4: do it. And it was a good At the time,
Speaker 4: it seemed like a good challenge. I never I never
Speaker 4: had done anything like that before. So I just started
Speaker 4: putting to the other book and it was it was
Speaker 4: a challenge, but it was a lot of It's been
Speaker 4: a lot of fun too.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love the fan that you went black and white
Speaker 3: because it's sort of ads to the gothic feeling.
Speaker 4: Well, that's that's another point I wanted to make When
Speaker 4: I first when I first started taking pictures, I took
Speaker 4: them in color and I still take them in color originally,
Speaker 4: but when I was but they didn't really have the
Speaker 4: punch the effectiveness. It's only when I started playing around
Speaker 4: with them. One time I put them in black and
Speaker 4: white and I realized you could it brought out the
Speaker 4: character of the grotesque a lot more. I realized that
Speaker 4: since most of these grotesques and gargoys are not painted,
Speaker 4: their features are are dependent on, you know, the light
Speaker 4: and dark areas, and the only colors that really would
Speaker 4: show up in the photo are maybe the sky or
Speaker 4: leaves of trees, things that are not the grotesques. So
Speaker 4: basically the color was only a distraction. So I so
Speaker 4: I would convert them to black and white, and the
Speaker 4: true character of the grotesques really pops and shiny.
Speaker 3: I think it's very effective. Yeah, So can you talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about how these are made? I mean,
Speaker 3: are they sculpted or are they poured into molds? How
Speaker 3: are these actually crafted?
Speaker 4: Well, many most of the grow tests at Yale, I
Speaker 4: would say, are are are cast from molds. But Yale
Speaker 4: does have examples of many different kinds of methods that
Speaker 4: they were made. They also have ones that were sculpted
Speaker 4: from a solid piece of stone, and you can tell
Speaker 4: those by you can actually see like the veins running
Speaker 4: through the stone, so you could so you could tell
Speaker 4: that was one solid piece that they sculpted from. There's
Speaker 4: also others that were carved into into wood, and then
Speaker 4: others that were cast cast bronze or so some other metal.
Speaker 4: So so there's a there's a variety of methods that
Speaker 4: that that that you can use to actually make a gargoyle,
Speaker 4: but most of them at Yale are I think, are
Speaker 4: cast cast concrete.
Speaker 1: And were gargoyles usually designed along with the building or
Speaker 1: were they something they were added off to the fact.
Speaker 4: At Yale, I would say in most cases they were
Speaker 4: designed with the building, and depending on the the building itself,
Speaker 4: the importance of the building. Sometimes they even had like
Speaker 4: the main library called Stirling Memorial Library Yale, that's actually
Speaker 4: it's built to look like a Gothic cathedral. It even
Speaker 4: has a confessional it's actually a phone booth, but it
Speaker 4: looks like a conventional for those They actually had a
Speaker 4: committee with the architect and dignitaries from the from Yale
Speaker 4: and some of the masons and compies of many people
Speaker 4: involved in the construction that they would choose iconography to
Speaker 4: put on the building. And now other buildings maybe that
Speaker 4: were a little less important. Maybe it was up to
Speaker 4: the masons themselves or or just the architect. But but
Speaker 4: at Yale, on the whole, they were put up when
Speaker 4: the building was put up. I've been to other schools
Speaker 4: where that wasn't the case. They would actually leave blocks
Speaker 4: on the buildings, and then later, maybe fifty sixty years later,
Speaker 4: they would come and carve something.
Speaker 3: So while you were putting the book together, did you
Speaker 3: ever happened to visit during a rainstorm so you could
Speaker 3: actually hear the gargoyles at work.
Speaker 4: I never really visited during the rain. I did visit
Speaker 4: many times during the winter where you could see the
Speaker 4: where gargoyles. You could tell gargoyles from regular grotesque because
Speaker 4: they have these these long icicle goates hanging out of
Speaker 4: their mouths, and and those made for some good pictures
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: It's curious as to what they sounded like when the
Speaker 3: water was getting out of them.
Speaker 5: Well, I was wondering, Yeah, I was wondering. Well, yeah,
Speaker 5: I like garbays.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was yeah, yeah, Jim, I mean everybody sees
Speaker 3: them all the time. I rarely ever see them actually
Speaker 3: spouting water in any of the photographs or you know
Speaker 3: things I see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true, because see I tried to the reason
Speaker 4: why I was down in the wintertime a lot of
Speaker 4: times was, well, there's a lot of trees. Even though
Speaker 4: Yale's in the city, there's a lot of trees around
Speaker 4: the campus. And I found out the hard way. I
Speaker 4: started photographing in the summertime. By the end of the summer,
Speaker 4: I figured I got most of the I think I
Speaker 4: got pretty much everything or that's that's around Yale, And
Speaker 4: then the leaves came off the trees, revealing a whole
Speaker 4: lot more I never saw before. So then I realized
Speaker 4: that was pretty naive to make a statement like that.
Speaker 4: So so now I never say that I've seen everything,
Speaker 4: because it seems like there's always something more to see.
Speaker 4: And whenever I try, I tried to fot I go
Speaker 4: to photograph something, I always try to go maybe in
Speaker 4: the winter or early spring, before the leaves come on
Speaker 4: the trees, so because a lot of them can be
Speaker 4: covered with.
Speaker 3: Naive You remind me of Karen had talked about evesdroppers,
Speaker 3: which I guess is not really directly naive, but naives
Speaker 3: droppers a funny portmanteau. Anyway, do you know anything about evesdroppers,
Speaker 3: these sort of carved figures built into the eves and
Speaker 3: the English architecture.
Speaker 4: Yes, I've read about them. That was I think Henry
Speaker 4: the eighth did put those installed those when he was
Speaker 4: I think it was that Hampton Court he who was
Speaker 4: renovating Hampton Court for his purposes. And yeah, they were
Speaker 4: usually put high up, high up near the ceiling. And
Speaker 4: those are an actual form of gargoy and I think
Speaker 4: I mean a form of grotesque, I should say. And
Speaker 4: I think they were there, as the name suggests, as
Speaker 4: Eve's was to to remind the anyone, either the court
Speaker 4: or the staff of the of the palace that well,
Speaker 4: the king is always there and he's always listening, so
Speaker 4: don't don't say anything negative about the king, because it'll
Speaker 4: always get back to them. And I always think that
Speaker 4: those are a those are a form of grotesque. Now,
Speaker 4: they're a little different from your normal grotesque because well,
Speaker 4: first of all, they're they're mostly they're painted and most
Speaker 4: of the at least the ones I've seen. The details
Speaker 4: are painted on them, the eyes, the the eyebrows, things
Speaker 4: like that, And I think the painting is intentional because
Speaker 4: the people on the ground level can see them a
Speaker 4: lot better. They stand out a lot better. YEA, so
Speaker 4: they are a form of grotesque, but but they're not.
Speaker 4: Most grotestes are are not painted. Though.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I watched a good documentary on eavesdroppers in Hampton
Speaker 1: Court a few years ago, and so I just wondered
Speaker 1: if there was a relation between the two of them,
Speaker 1: And I guess it leads me to ask, as well,
Speaker 1: can you ever get gargoyles that are even though they're
Speaker 1: designed as water spouts? Can you ever get indoor ones
Speaker 1: for any reason?
Speaker 4: I guess if you were, you were somehow channeling water
Speaker 4: indoors or through inside, maybe up near the roof. I've
Speaker 4: never really seen them indoors.
Speaker 1: Mostly decorative ones that people buy for their houses or
Speaker 1: something modern ones.
Speaker 4: There are many grotesques that I've seen indoors, but not
Speaker 4: really ones, not really gargoyles that channel water. I've seen that.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen too many those.
Speaker 3: If I remember correctly, these appeared in something like the
Speaker 3: six hundreds originally something is that about? Right, Like the
Speaker 3: first time we saw gargoyles being used, it seems like
Speaker 3: they're they've kind of like coming gone in popularity.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I was curious as to why they were originally
Speaker 3: developed if I don't know, if you actually looked into
Speaker 3: that at all. I was wondering what drove them. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're they're artistic, but they're also functional. And I just
Speaker 3: don't know why they seem to have stuck around for
Speaker 3: so long. They've i mean, they've been around for such
Speaker 3: a long time to not have any particular you know,
Speaker 3: monster lore around them. I'm not really sure what the
Speaker 3: deal is there. It's sort of a really sticky meme almost.
Speaker 4: Well, as as you said, in the old days, in
Speaker 4: the in medieval times, gargoyles actually had a physical had
Speaker 4: a practical purpose to to remove water from the building
Speaker 4: to and they didn't just dump it off the side.
Speaker 4: They were kind of like spouted it away from the
Speaker 4: from the building, and that was so so the water
Speaker 4: wouldn't just pour down the side of the building and
Speaker 4: start to erode it. Now, later on, in probably maybe
Speaker 4: the fifteen sixteen hundreds, they developed down spouts and so
Speaker 4: they could remove water just down the side in a pipe.
Speaker 4: So the use of guard boyles kind of kind of
Speaker 4: faded out a bit, but then the style was revived
Speaker 4: in maybe the early eighteen hundreds because but more as
Speaker 4: a kind of a decorative affectation.
Speaker 1: Do they exist in other cultures at all? Do they
Speaker 1: just go back to the Middle Ages or they go
Speaker 1: back further than that in other countries or cultures?
Speaker 4: Well, they I've seen them on like ancient Greek temples,
Speaker 4: and they don't really They're They're a little different from
Speaker 4: the gargoyles that you and groteste that you that you
Speaker 4: imagine when people think of grotesques and gargoyls, they think
Speaker 4: of something medieval. But I've but I've seen decorative elements
Speaker 4: on ancient temples from ancient Greek, ancient Greece around so
Speaker 4: that time as well, it.
Speaker 5: Was it was it draining to do all this work
Speaker 5: taking all these photos.
Speaker 4: Well, I have to say, I mean it did it
Speaker 4: did get do you get tough? But Blake, I have
Speaker 4: to say I just kind of went with the flow nice.
Speaker 1: Well, I was thinking he was going to end the
Speaker 1: conversation at this point and scene.
Speaker 4: And to be serious, the hardest part of doing all
Speaker 4: this was I had so many pictures, and I'm not
Speaker 4: a very organized person, and the hardest part was just
Speaker 4: organized all these photos and editing them all and and
Speaker 4: choosing which ones to use. And as I like to say,
Speaker 4: yell is more grotesque than you can shake a student
Speaker 4: loan application Act. But yeah, I had to develop little
Speaker 4: organization techniques. So I knew which building these photos came from,
Speaker 4: and which part of the building, which ones were close
Speaker 4: to each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so these actually so James Neland who does our
Speaker 3: Facebook administration. He handles our Facebook group and does a
Speaker 3: great job with it. He helps keep the friendly tone
Speaker 3: of the group. And yeah, it's awesome. But he recommended
Speaker 3: the book to us, and so I guess he's he's
Speaker 3: also from Connecticut.
Speaker 5: Do you know James sir? How did you guys mean?
Speaker 4: No? He I was doing a a lecture. I do
Speaker 4: lectures at library, and I had one scheduled for Cromwell,
Speaker 4: which is the time where James James lives in and
Speaker 4: and he writes about a week before the lecture, he
Speaker 4: bought a book and I after he when when somebody
Speaker 4: buys a book, I filled the order send it out
Speaker 4: and then I send them an emails thanking them and
Speaker 4: send them the send them the tracking number. So I
Speaker 4: did that and then he replied saying that he was,
Speaker 4: you know, the administrator of this podcast, and and that's
Speaker 4: how I got how I got involved in all this.
Speaker 5: Well, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: It really is, I think something that our listeners will
Speaker 3: really enjoy.
Speaker 5: It's just full of monsters.
Speaker 3: It's got I mean, there's so many interesting and I
Speaker 3: mean when they say the word grotesque, I think that's
Speaker 3: very accurate.
Speaker 4: Well just in general, I like that word because it's
Speaker 4: a very it's it's very it gets a very visceral,
Speaker 4: visceral reaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was just really surprised to say that
Speaker 1: some Gogoyle's humor, yes, because I always thought they were grotesque,
Speaker 1: that they were supposed to inspire fear on some level.
Speaker 4: But especially these days, there's a whole variety of different kinds.
Speaker 4: And as I said, it's the I enjoy the humorous
Speaker 4: and the bizarre ones the most, and that's what really
Speaker 4: drew me into this project.
Speaker 1: Could you tell us a little bit about maybe some
Speaker 1: of the humorous ones, or the bizarre ones, or the
Speaker 1: scary ones that you've come across researching this project.
Speaker 4: Well, there's one. It's not actually on a building, it's
Speaker 4: it's on the base of a flagpole at Yale, and
Speaker 4: it's it's called Ledgered flag staff because it's memorial to
Speaker 4: a student, a former student called Augustus Canfield Ledgered, and
Speaker 4: it's cast bronze, and it was put up by his
Speaker 4: by his his friends now as Campfield Ledgard. He graduated
Speaker 4: from Yale in eighteen ninety eight, and then in eighteen
Speaker 4: ninety nine he was killed in the Spanish American War.
Speaker 4: And then about ten years later, well, in nineteen oh eight,
Speaker 4: his his friends, his Yale friends, put this memorial to him,
Speaker 4: and it has this really, really well grotesque face on it.
Speaker 4: And I was wondering after I read the story, I
Speaker 4: kept wondering, like, why would his classmates put such an
Speaker 4: ugly face at the base of their memorial to him?
Speaker 4: And then I was thinking about a while, and then
Speaker 4: I'm like, well, you know, Ledyard died tragically and much
Speaker 4: too early, so I think there was a lot of
Speaker 4: intent behind it, because you know, even on this campus
Speaker 4: of learning and architectural beauty, this ugly face serves as
Speaker 4: a shocking reminder of our own mortality and basically not
Speaker 4: to take life for granted.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at the picture because it's like on page
Speaker 3: ninety one of your book, is that is that?
Speaker 5: Maybe?
Speaker 3: Pan? I'm not really sure what that represents exactly.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people said it's it's bacchus.
Speaker 5: Oh could be?
Speaker 4: Could be because he has all these all these like
Speaker 4: fruits around him.
Speaker 5: Ah yeah, yeah, because I was.
Speaker 4: I was looking at it and it looks, well, it
Speaker 4: looks pretty grotesque, and it's over one hundred years old,
Speaker 4: and I was thinking, well, you could take off all
Speaker 4: that tarnish and it's still pretty darn ugly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, even when it was new, it was probably ugly.
Speaker 3: We've talked about the popularity of gargoyles over the ages
Speaker 3: have risen and fallen, but it seems that a lot
Speaker 3: of the really old looking parts, the sort of artistic throwback,
Speaker 3: are not actually that old. Can you talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about how the gargoyles have come and gone over
Speaker 3: the history of the college.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll start this off with a little anecdote. A
Speaker 4: few years ago I was watching a documentary of Windsor
Speaker 4: Castle in England, and it was they were in. They
Speaker 4: were interviewing some of the staff. Now Windsor Castle, it's
Speaker 4: near Heathrow Airport, so almost all the time there's always
Speaker 4: passenger jets coming and going above the castle. And they
Speaker 4: were interviewing this guide and he said one time he
Speaker 4: was he was showing who was taking around a group
Speaker 4: of Americans. He made sure to state they were Americans,
Speaker 4: and one of the Americans was asking him, he said,
Speaker 4: why why would they build the castle so close to
Speaker 4: the airport?
Speaker 1: Sounds like an American?
Speaker 4: Yeah, nice, And I didn't do that in my American accent.
Speaker 1: But you were wearing a baseball cap.
Speaker 4: Turned around behind it, turned around behind it, so basically,
Speaker 4: and that's just to show that the Americans have a
Speaker 4: much different perspective on the age of things than Europeans.
Speaker 4: We see something that's, you know, two hundred years old,
Speaker 4: and we think, wow, that that's pretty old. Well, over
Speaker 4: there they have buildings from the Middle Ages. They have
Speaker 4: Roman ruins which are a whole hell of a lot
Speaker 4: older than two hundred years. As I said before, one
Speaker 4: of the basic goals of collegiate Gothic architecture was to
Speaker 4: associate the the institutions in America with the older institutions
Speaker 4: in Europe like Oxford and Cambridge, and because they wanted
Speaker 4: to seem timeless and venerable. And I always it always
Speaker 4: made me laugh because I was thinking, you look at
Speaker 4: these buildings like, wow, they're pretty old. But then if
Speaker 4: you really take it literally, like do I really think
Speaker 4: that you know, a group of a group of masons
Speaker 4: over here in the Middle Ages and built these buildings
Speaker 4: in like Chicago and all in New Haven and and
Speaker 4: all all these different places around the country. Of course
Speaker 4: not you know it's but but but still they go
Speaker 4: through great lengths to make you think they're a lot old.
Speaker 4: They're a lot older than they actually are. Now.
Speaker 3: It's kind of effected though, And it's interesting because I
Speaker 3: think you can kind of pull it off with with
Speaker 3: gargoyles and the sort of sculptural elements. But if you
Speaker 3: were to put say a stone pyramid up, nobody's going
Speaker 3: to buy that.
Speaker 5: It's not going to seem ancient, right.
Speaker 1: You know, except for yeah, different, I would have to
Speaker 1: say that two hundred years is old when Australia, anything
Speaker 1: in anything that's one hundred years old is old in Australia.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Now there are also building. Now, those a lot of
Speaker 4: buildings that were built at that were supposed that were
Speaker 4: the style, the Collegiate Gothic style added Zenith probably about
Speaker 4: the late twenties early thirties were built around that time.
Speaker 4: At Yale, though, you go in there and you see
Speaker 4: these buildings that were that are about, you know, eighty
Speaker 4: ninety years old. Then between them there's this little pavilion
Speaker 4: that's that's a big stone structure, looks just like the
Speaker 4: other ones, and it looks very old. But then if
Speaker 4: you look closely, you'll notice that on the on the cornerstone,
Speaker 4: it says two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Nuts.
Speaker 4: See it's it's that kind of like little trickery that
Speaker 4: makes me that makes me view Yale less as a
Speaker 4: community and more as like a theme park.
Speaker 1: Do they are they still adding to the collection of
Speaker 1: gog oyles at Yale? Is it just something finished with
Speaker 1: that that aspect of architecture or do they ever get damage?
Speaker 1: Do they replace them with new works? Is that there
Speaker 1: any changes or are they mostly fixed Up?
Speaker 4: Until a few years ago, I would have said, well, no,
Speaker 4: this the Collegiate Gothic style kind of petered out at
Speaker 4: the end of the nineteen thirties and then modernism took
Speaker 4: over and now there's all modern buildings and all different styles.
Speaker 4: But just last fall, Yale finished two new residential colleges,
Speaker 4: both in the Collegiate Gothic style with grotesques and gargoyles. Now,
Speaker 4: the interesting thing about these is these were made in
Speaker 4: the past few years, so again they looked pretty old,
Speaker 4: but some of them are very modern in their concept
Speaker 4: and themes, Like there's actually one of an iPhone. Really
Speaker 4: cool and that's what I that's what I like as well.
Speaker 4: They kind of anachronistic feel of it as well.
Speaker 1: That's fun.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to figure out how that would work for
Speaker 5: having a spout.
Speaker 4: Uh, well, that phone wasn't actual, that was a grotesque.
Speaker 4: They have gargoyles of Handsome Dan the bulldog with water
Speaker 4: coming out of his mouth. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So speaking of which, so you've got these they sort
Speaker 3: of like, uh, it's a couple of hundred years of
Speaker 3: history there, do they have a like?
Speaker 5: Is it possible to id the sculptors who crafted these?
Speaker 4: I really I really went in and researched and research,
Speaker 4: and I couldn't find too many names of the actual
Speaker 4: sculptors themselves. I did come up with a few names
Speaker 4: people who directed the the the proof production of the sculptures.
Speaker 4: They were Renee Chambalan, who was a who was an
Speaker 4: architectural sculptor. He did work in New York and Chicago
Speaker 4: as well. Now it said he was in charge of
Speaker 4: the sculpt the sculpture for Sterling Memorial Library. Now that
Speaker 4: doesn't mean he did all of the sculpture. I envisioned
Speaker 4: him working with the group of sculptors and masons and
Speaker 4: he would and he would be directing them as to
Speaker 4: what to what his vision was. But it's there's really
Speaker 4: as far as I found, there's very few records of
Speaker 4: individual masons and sculptors who worked on the buildings.
Speaker 3: Did you find any sense of a sort of Dan
Speaker 3: Brown level hidden mystery or meaning in any of the symbology.
Speaker 4: Well, there are. There's another type of grotesque that I
Speaker 4: like to call reclusive grow tesques, and they're basically grow
Speaker 4: tests that are kind of hidden. Now you think that
Speaker 4: you know, they spend money putting these, and they spend
Speaker 4: a lot of work, but producing the sculpture and putting
Speaker 4: it on the building, you think they want people to
Speaker 4: see it. Well, and then some of them are hidden,
Speaker 4: Like there's one on the Hall of Graduate Studies. They
Speaker 4: have these at the front entrance, they have these arches,
Speaker 4: and between the arches they have these and these niches,
Speaker 4: little alcoves that have a little decorated canopy on top,
Speaker 4: and those are empty, and but if you're really particularly curious,
Speaker 4: you can look up. You can kind of go really
Speaker 4: close and look up under the canopy and see this
Speaker 4: little face sticking his tongue out as you And I
Speaker 4: like that because I because you know, that wasn't for
Speaker 4: everybody to see, right, And like there's also in the library,
Speaker 4: just a corner with decorative work on it, but if
Speaker 4: you look up under underneath, there's a spider, but it's
Speaker 4: way up underneath, so it's not for general view. And
Speaker 4: as again as I was wondering why they would, why
Speaker 4: why would people go through the trouble to sculpt something
Speaker 4: which many people, you know, don't even see, And then
Speaker 4: I realized, Then I realized, well what am I doing?
Speaker 4: If I think when people actually look closely and see these,
Speaker 4: it inspires them to look closer at all the stone
Speaker 4: work and enhances the overall experience for them. I mean,
Speaker 4: something which I can can personally attest.
Speaker 5: Like Easter eggs.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Yeah, I've heard of Disneyland that they have
Speaker 1: those hidden mickeys they're supposed to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what That's what I say, much like the
Speaker 4: hidden mickeys of the Disney theme parks. I'm a big fit.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan of the Disney theme parks, like
Speaker 4: the imagineering and things that go into the behind the scenes.
Speaker 4: And I've seen a lot of relation between that the
Speaker 4: building of the Disney theme parks and the designing and
Speaker 4: building of a college campus.
Speaker 1: Interesting. It's very intricate.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's a lot of there's a lot of thought
Speaker 4: that goes into it.
Speaker 3: So you know, this topic is a little different from
Speaker 3: a lot of the monsters we've covered on the show
Speaker 3: in that I again, like we talked about, I don't
Speaker 3: feel like there was a huge I don't think there's
Speaker 3: a lore around the existence of gargoyles as real monsters,
Speaker 3: but as.
Speaker 5: An artistic feature.
Speaker 3: You know, they're all over the place, and they're they're
Speaker 3: gorgeous and interesting and I highly recommend the book. So
Speaker 3: if people want to get the book, uh, do you
Speaker 3: want to send them the Amazon or is it better
Speaker 3: to have him come to your web page or how
Speaker 3: what's the best way for our listeners to get a
Speaker 3: hold of this fascinating Well.
Speaker 4: It's available on Amazon, but it's also all available on
Speaker 4: my website as well. You probably get a little cheaper
Speaker 4: on on my website, which is www dot yalgogoyles dot com.
Speaker 1: Nice, okay, cool, So forgive me if we've already discussed this,
Speaker 1: But just how many goggoyles all there at Yale?
Speaker 4: I get this question so many times and I could
Speaker 4: only estimate many hundreds, is all I can is the
Speaker 4: most specific I can be, because I'm still finding I'm
Speaker 4: still finding new ones. And yeah, I've gotten to the
Speaker 4: habit of every time I go down there, looking around
Speaker 4: every little corner and nook and cranny, and sometimes you
Speaker 4: don't find anything. Other times you find all sorts of
Speaker 4: things that you never knew were there. That's what That's
Speaker 4: what really drew me in at the beginning, because as
Speaker 4: I said, I was familiar with the university from when
Speaker 4: I was a small child. It's just but now, when
Speaker 4: I when I started discovering all these creatures on the buildings,
Speaker 4: it gave me a whole new perspective. I would go
Speaker 4: down streets that I've been down many times in my life,
Speaker 4: but now I was seeing all these things that I've
Speaker 4: never seen before. So it gave me a new perspective
Speaker 4: on a familiar place.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the potential for a sequel or maybe
Speaker 1: to even just photograph the gargirls and different seasons. I
Speaker 1: think a book on each season.
Speaker 4: Well, that book came out, The Education and the Grotesque
Speaker 4: came out a few years ago. And since then, as
Speaker 4: I said, Yale opened up two new residential colleges. So
Speaker 4: I was there at the Gates Is on move in
Speaker 4: day when they when they opened it to students, and
Speaker 4: so I photographed them. Plus I've been to nine other
Speaker 4: university campuses like Duke and Princeton and University of Chicago
Speaker 4: and City College of New York. And that's what I'm
Speaker 4: putting together for That's what the book I'm working on now.
Speaker 4: It's called The Grotesque ten.
Speaker 1: Oh great, we'll have yeah, we'll have to have you
Speaker 1: back on to talk about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So when you were cataloging these what was the scariest
Speaker 5: imagery that you saw.
Speaker 4: Well, there's one at Trumbull College. Now it was for
Speaker 4: everybody likes it because it fits everybody's vision of a
Speaker 4: true grotesque or it's not really gargoyle, but that's what
Speaker 4: people think that that's what people call it. It's it's
Speaker 4: this lizard like demon with this with a ridge of
Speaker 4: spines on his back. And the reason why it's kind
Speaker 4: of scary was at first it was kind of far
Speaker 4: away and I had to stand on a bench with
Speaker 4: a big, big telephoto lens to see it. And I
Speaker 4: noticed it was holding a crown. And then I look
Speaker 4: closer and I see something streaming out of the crown,
Speaker 4: like is that hair? Is there a Is there a
Speaker 4: head in that crown? I couldn't see an actual head,
Speaker 4: and the only and the thing is, since it's far
Speaker 4: away and over the over the rooftops, I couldn't really
Speaker 4: see it from from many other angles. So I really
Speaker 4: don't know if there's an actual head in that crown,
Speaker 4: but it looks like there is.
Speaker 5: I mean there.
Speaker 3: You've got so many images in the book, and so
Speaker 3: many of them are just I guess it's a combination
Speaker 3: of grotesque and gorgeous.
Speaker 5: It's really really neat.
Speaker 4: Well, I tried to. I liked when they were close
Speaker 4: so I could really experiment with wide angle lenses and
Speaker 4: getting a you know, different angles on something, maybe from
Speaker 4: below or just I don't. I like just just seeing
Speaker 4: what I could do. And because I lived close to campus,
Speaker 4: I could always take a few pictures, go back home
Speaker 4: and look at them, and if they weren't right, come
Speaker 4: back and take them again and try something different.
Speaker 1: So does Yale offer any gargoyle tours or is this
Speaker 1: something that you've ever thought about offering.
Speaker 4: Actually I do offer that I do. I do gargoyle tours.
Speaker 4: I call them grotesque safaris to see gargoyles in their
Speaker 4: natural habitat. And I actually wear somebody gave me a
Speaker 4: photographer's vest years ago. I've never actually warned it to
Speaker 4: go photographing, just in my closet. And then I realized,
Speaker 4: well I could wear that. I can get some cargo pants,
Speaker 4: and then I bought a pit helmet online. So I
Speaker 4: go around, I meet I meet people down at old
Speaker 4: campus part of Yale, and I take them around. And
Speaker 4: now it's it's fun to wear that whole get up.
Speaker 4: But then I kind of realized there's a practical purpose
Speaker 4: as well, because this is in the middle of a city,
Speaker 4: and a lot of times there's a lot of students
Speaker 4: or just people milling around, so you have when you're
Speaker 4: on the tour, you have to know who to follow.
Speaker 4: The person the guide has to has to stand out
Speaker 4: in the crowd, and that helps me stand out. And
Speaker 4: people did so people.
Speaker 5: Did you have anys?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I have a little a sign that I
Speaker 4: made on the back of the of the vest that
Speaker 4: says the gargoyle Guide. Nice.
Speaker 1: So you get people coming up and asking you about
Speaker 1: the two of us. Yes, yeah, it's a great idea.
Speaker 4: I think after a tour I was walking across the
Speaker 4: World campus and one of the groundskeepers was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: the gargoyle guy. He's all yelling.
Speaker 1: You're famous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, apparently.
Speaker 5: That's so cool. It really is, Yes, symmetry, Yeah, it
Speaker 5: really is.
Speaker 6: Oh it is.
Speaker 1: It's just incredible. It's beautiful. And I've always loved gargoyles,
Speaker 1: being fascinated by them. So it's this is great that
Speaker 1: we're finally getting around to talking about.
Speaker 3: I have to say, I mean, it really is an
Speaker 3: effective means of making things look old. I mean, the
Speaker 3: whole idea of gargoyles, and we have this sort of
Speaker 3: cultural attachment to it as being a sort of medieval
Speaker 3: architectural feature, and just by slapping it onto buildings within
Speaker 3: the past couple of hundred years, it really does make
Speaker 3: them seem ancient.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, the Gothic style is a lot of
Speaker 4: features like you know, spires and wrought iron gates and
Speaker 4: all that is to make it make it old.
Speaker 5: Clothes, cigarettes and well that too.
Speaker 4: But the gargoyles have a little bit of an advantage
Speaker 4: because not only do they make it look old, they
Speaker 4: can actually convey a message. So they basically they can,
Speaker 4: as I like to say that the buildings can can
Speaker 4: wear their identity on their sleeves, like they could actually
Speaker 4: send literal messages instead of just implying a vague a
Speaker 4: vague notion of old of age.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I still think a couple of hundred years
Speaker 1: as old.
Speaker 4: Well, well it is. Now on on this topic, there's
Speaker 4: one architect who went to Yale and he designed a
Speaker 4: lot of the buildings the Gothic that celebrated Gothic buildings
Speaker 4: of Yale, the library and the law school. His name
Speaker 4: is James Gambell Rogers. Now there's a lot of stories
Speaker 4: about him. There's one one that when he fit when
Speaker 4: he was building one building, a lot of these buildings
Speaker 4: have like slate roobs. Well, he saw the slates before
Speaker 4: he put them up, and he didn't like them because
Speaker 4: they were too new looking. They were right out of
Speaker 4: the factory. So the story goes that he had him
Speaker 4: buried in Long Island Sound for about eight months, and
Speaker 4: then after he dug them up again, they were nicely
Speaker 4: old aged and pitted and discolored, so then they looked
Speaker 4: they looked, you know, a couple hundred years old. Then
Speaker 4: he had them put up. There's another story about him. Uh,
Speaker 4: there's what. There's a bell tower in the center of
Speaker 4: campus called Harkness Towers, built in nineteen twenty one. The
Speaker 4: story that and he designed that as well and has
Speaker 4: it has a lot of sculpture on it and all
Speaker 4: when he and the story goes, and I'm not I
Speaker 4: can't say I completely but these are just stories that
Speaker 4: get embellished over the years. And I can't say I
Speaker 4: totally believe this, but it's a good story. When they
Speaker 4: finished the town, it was the tallest free standing stone
Speaker 4: structure in North America in nineteen twenty one. Well, but
Speaker 4: he wasn't satisfied with it because it looked too new. Well,
Speaker 4: obviously it just they just finished construction. So the story
Speaker 4: goes that he had acid poured down the sides to
Speaker 4: age the building. And the thing was that not only
Speaker 4: did age the building, it weakened the structure enough that
Speaker 4: they had to put steel supports on the inside to
Speaker 4: hold it up, so it was no longer the tallest
Speaker 4: free standing stone structure. Now, the reason why I had
Speaker 4: my doubts that story because that would take a lot
Speaker 4: of acid. That the tower is over two hundred feet tall,
Speaker 4: and it would take a lot of acid to cover
Speaker 4: that whole building. And the stories have him sneaking up
Speaker 4: to the top of the tower at night and pouring
Speaker 4: a flask of acid down the side. Now, but as
Speaker 4: I say, it's I'm not sure if it's actually true,
Speaker 4: but it's a good story.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, Sure there's a lot of acid at Yale anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: because it reminds me of just a lot of the
Speaker 1: tourist scams overseas when people think that they're buying antiques
Speaker 1: and they're really just modern sculptures and various objects that
Speaker 1: have been aged or made to look old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a rich history and aging artifacts like soaking
Speaker 3: papers and tea and various other things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Well, there are quite a few of kind of aging
Speaker 4: techniques like that that that James Gamble, Rodgers and other
Speaker 4: architects used. One is when they sometimes you'll notice some
Speaker 4: of the stairs have a little kind of depression in
Speaker 4: the middle of the tread, and a lot of times
Speaker 4: sometimes they were actually molded that way. It's supposed to
Speaker 4: look like it's been worn down there.
Speaker 5: Hundred cheating is with.
Speaker 4: Also there's also things like you'll see a row of
Speaker 4: windows and then one window, one window of that set
Speaker 4: is all blocked up. But if you look closely, you'll
Speaker 4: notice that the blocks that block up the window are
Speaker 4: the same blocks that it's used in the surrounding wall,
Speaker 4: and only that they're aged the same, they're worn the
Speaker 4: same amount, which means they were put there at construction,
Speaker 4: so it was built with that one window blocked up.
Speaker 4: And I've mentioned before those niches, the empty niche, that's
Speaker 4: another device they used. They're at the front of the
Speaker 4: Stirling Moor Library. I counted there twenty two of those niches.
Speaker 4: Only one has a sculpture in it. The others are empty.
Speaker 4: Now it looks like the perfect place for a tall
Speaker 4: statute has a it's a little alcove and it has
Speaker 4: a has a flat base bottom. Well, you're supposed to
Speaker 4: assume that when the building was originally constructed quote unquote
Speaker 4: hundreds of years ago, you're supposed to assume that they
Speaker 4: all had sculpture in them. But over the long of
Speaker 4: the building's long and colorful history, those sculptures were either
Speaker 4: stolen or destroyed or or in one one removed in
Speaker 4: one way or another. So that's another way to make you,
Speaker 4: just make you assume that the building is older than
Speaker 4: it actually is. That's a grotesque pun for you.
Speaker 5: Okay, you've got my attention.
Speaker 4: Well, at one of the side entrances to the library,
Speaker 4: there's a lamp and right above the lamp is a
Speaker 4: is a beetle, a beetle sculpted in the in the
Speaker 4: in the concrete, and also on either side is the
Speaker 4: beatles larvae. I don't know what the actual scientific name
Speaker 4: of this beetle in its library is, but a new
Speaker 4: know do know that the common name for its larvae
Speaker 4: is the bookworm.
Speaker 5: Nice? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's pretty clever.
Speaker 4: So what, as I said, I was drawn in by
Speaker 4: the by the humor in these Yeah. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 4: just not just that they're it's it makes it fun
Speaker 4: to look at. I think it's kind of incredible that
Speaker 4: you can connect with someone, i e. The makers, the
Speaker 4: sculptors of these you can connect with them on a
Speaker 4: personal and emotional level over a gulf of you know,
Speaker 4: sixty seventy eighty ninety years. And it's more than just
Speaker 4: writing some writing some factual information on the wall. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's actually connecting on an emotional and personal level, which
Speaker 4: I think is amazing.
Speaker 3: When when you've got to actually commit your pun into stonework,
Speaker 3: that's a that's a serious commitment.
Speaker 4: You gotta be serious about.
Speaker 1: I can see you doing that. Put a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to detail.
Speaker 2: It is, it is.
Speaker 5: That's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Well, Matt, we have a final question that we like
Speaker 1: to ask our guests, and that is what's your favorite monster?
Speaker 4: Well, I have to go old school with this and
Speaker 4: say the Lockness monster.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 4: Now, I've always loved water monsters, and I visited Lockness
Speaker 4: and I always thought it was and when it was there,
Speaker 4: I always thought it was incredible that there really isn't
Speaker 4: any solid proof of the existence of a monster. But
Speaker 4: but it's a it's a multi million dollar industry, the tourism.
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything.
Speaker 4: People are drawn there. And now that having been said,
Speaker 4: I also have a soft spot for Frankenstein because because
Speaker 4: who could resist a monster in a sports jacket?
Speaker 5: Well there is that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nice, that's fantastic. Well, Matthew, I really appreciate you
Speaker 3: taking the time to talk to us today.
Speaker 5: This was fantastic.
Speaker 3: Your book is beautiful. We'll put a link to it
Speaker 3: in the show notes. And you've mentioned the r L
Speaker 3: but you can mention it again.
Speaker 4: Okay, it's www dot Yale Gargoyles dot com. Great and
Speaker 4: uh we.
Speaker 1: Need a picture of him and his pit helmet for
Speaker 1: the Yeah, if.
Speaker 4: You if you can see you want me to say
Speaker 4: I have I have one?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Senators will put it in the show this that'd
Speaker 3: be great. And thanks again James for making the recommendation.
Speaker 3: This was a really fun talk.
Speaker 1: Are you making him blush?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful book and I really uh, I look
Speaker 3: forward to buying a coffee table so I can share
Speaker 3: it with my friends.
Speaker 5: So I'll have to get Tai Kia all right, all right,
Speaker 5: thank you both, Yeah, and have a good evening. And Karen,
Speaker 5: thank you for joining us as well.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you, matt.
Speaker 3: Oh you've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show
Speaker 3: about monsters. I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 5: You just heard an.
Speaker 3: Interview with Matthew Duman about his book, An Education in
Speaker 3: the Grotesque, The Gargoyles of Yale University. A link to
Speaker 3: his book is in the show notes at monster talk
Speaker 3: dot org. Please stay tuned to monster Trak for some
Speaker 3: really fun upcoming topics. We've got Megaladon's Mothman, some more magic,
Speaker 3: and even some Bigfoot coming back. Monster Talks an official
Speaker 3: podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The opinions expressed on the show
Speaker 3: are those of myself and my guests and do not
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Speaker 5: So we always start by reading bios, So there you go.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm going to say.
Speaker 5: That we always start by reading.
Speaker 4: Really I didn't. It wasn't where.
Speaker 5: It's surprising to everyone, including me,