The Minotaur, Part 1

Take the Minotaur out of its maze and you have but another beast man -- but within his manufactured environment, he is a singular terror in myth and popular consciousness. But where does this monster come from? What does his existence mean? What does the stalker of these bloody halls reveal about the human mind and human history? In this pair of Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes, Robert and Joe discuss the minotaur.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Every nine years, nine men come into the house so
that I can free them from all evil. I hear
their footsteps or their voices far away in the galleries
of stone, and I run joyously to find them. The
ceremony lasts but a few minutes. One after another, they fall,

(00:26):
without my ever having to bloody my hands. Where they fall,
they remain, and their bodies help distinguish one gallery from
the others. I do not know how many there have been,
but I do know that one of them predicted as
he died, that some day my redeemer would come. Since then,

(00:46):
there has been no pain for me in solitude, because
I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end
he will rise and stand above the dust. If my
ear could hear every sound in the world, I would
hear his footsteps. I hope he takes me to a
place with fewer galleries and fewer doors. What will my

(01:09):
Redeemer be like? I wonder? Will he be bull or man?
Could he possibly be a bull with the face of
a man, or will he be like me? Welcome to
stot to blow your mind production of my heart Radio. Hey,

(01:33):
you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's been
a long time coming. We finally enter the labyrinth of
the Minotaur. That's right. We're gonna try and leave some
string behind us as we go through these episodes so
that you can find your way back out again. But
we figured this would be a perfect journey to take

(01:54):
during October when we frequently engage on Halloween themed episodes. Now,
that cold opening I want to point out was from
the the just fabulous short story The House of Hysterian
by Johey Luis Borges. This one is translated by Andrew
Hurley and I got this out of the Book of

(02:17):
Collected Fictions, which is put out by Penguin. The minotaur
is kind of the perfect monster. I think the minotaur
has very often been done injustice by by films and
TV shows, And one of the few exceptions I can
think of is Jim Hinson's Storyteller, where that minotaur I
think has has just the right balance of of pain

(02:39):
and terror and anguish and and and uh and menace
uh and and I like that. You you don't often
get a very full look at the minotaur in that story. Yeah,
they do the Hintston team does a fabulous job presenting
just the physicality of the minotaur, but then also the
minotaur is written and performed in such a way that

(03:02):
that he is this true hybrid. You know, he's not
just beast, but he is also uh human as well.
You know, there's this juxtaposition in his being. He stands
across this threshold because we we we find him both
both terrifying and tragic. You know, we fear the minotaur
even as we empathize with it um you know, and

(03:24):
and even as just an adversary in the myth it
can it is supposed to combine brute strength and savagery,
but also with this cunning, predatory nature. That story by
Jorge Luis Borges is quite good because it captures the
pity and the pathos that we should feel for him,
but it does it in an ironic way. It's like
that you feel pity for the minotaur because he's deluded,

(03:47):
like he he has a very his vision of his
role in in the culture is very confused, like he believes.
At one point, he says he gets out of his
labyrinth and he wanders around in streets and he says
the people are afraid of him, but he believes it's
because they recognize his royal blood and they're like, oh,
you know, here's the you know, here's the powerful descendant

(04:10):
of the queen. We must defer. But of course, the
the implication once you get to the end of the
story and realize that it's about the minotaur, is that
I guess they were looking at his horns. Yes. Yeah,
this is as as perfect a short story as as
I can think of, and it is about really about
the perfect monster. And Borhes of course totally this was this.

(04:32):
I mean, Borhes was was obsessed by by labyrinths and
uh and the like, so that this is the perfect
myth for him to consider. And indeed the labyrinth is
essential to understanding the minotaur. If you take the minotaur
out of the labyrinth, as so many works of fiction
and films and games do, and all you have is

(04:55):
like a pretty cool beast man, but just a beast man.
For for the myths to work, for the monster to
have its true terror and and and all of these
other emotions were attributing to it, he has to reside
within this maze, within this artificial habitat that is seemingly
designed to confuse us. Yeah, in a way, I think

(05:16):
it's almost a mistake to have made the minotaur into
um less of a less of a unique sort of
proper noun type monster, and more into a species of
monster that you might encounter in Dungeons and Dragons or
something like that, because it really does. It takes him
out of his proper context, right right, and and and
we'll come back to Dungeons and Dragons in a bit,

(05:38):
because I think there are cases where it can be
where there has been some correction applied. But for the
most part, yeah, you you you take me make the
minotaur into just a species, and you mostly just have
a beast man. Uh. The setting is key, and in
fact is as Borges pointed out in another work, The
Book of Imaginary Beings. This is also from translation by Hurley. Indeed,

(06:00):
the image of the labyrinth and the image of the
minotaur seemed to go together. It is fitting that at
the center of a monstrous house there should live a
monstrous inhabitant. I agree, And I think another uniting theme
here is confusion, Because what is the thing that makes
the hybrid scary. It's that it is a perversion. It

(06:21):
is a confusion of nature and what makes the labyrinth scary? Uh,
this is the I guess, the more classic maze understanding
of the labyrinth, rather than the unidirectional labyrinth. We can
get into those distinctions in a bit. But the terror
there is also a confusion. It's a um it's you know,
having the stability of nature and of direction, uh, taken

(06:43):
out from under you. You are unmoored when dealing with
the minotaur because you don't know which way is which,
and you don't know what kind of beasts this is. Yeah,
and and and in many ways, this basic idea reverberates
through a lot of our horror fiction. I mean, a
haunted house has a ghost in it, you know, like that,
That's that's how it works. So Leatherface lives in the

(07:04):
crazy Chainsaw house, you know, and uh uh, Leathers takes
Manhattan would not work right, Uh? You know. Freddie Krueger
occupies the realm of dreams. And even even Jason is
a is a creature of like of Crystal Lake, right,
He's a creature of the woods, of this environment that
is far into the various teenagers and what have you

(07:26):
that have that are visiting it. I guess That is
one reason Jason Takes Manhattan is so funny is because
like he just doesn't make any sense whatsoever out of
his context. And you actually see that in the tone
of the movie because in Jason Takes Manhattan, when he's
walking around Times Square, the movie at that point transitions
to become a full comedy, like on purpose comedy with

(07:46):
jokes where he just lifts his mask up at the
punks and scares them, you know, and everybody's now and
the kids are saying, like there's a maniac chasing us
in the waitress at the diners, like welcomed into York.
You know, I never thought of this before, but I'm
now assuming that movie came out after Crocodile Dundee, right, probably,

(08:06):
Oh yeah, it's Crocodile Dundee, but he's Jason. Yeah, And
of course that's another fish out of water story. But
the minotaur is very much a fish in its own waters,
waters that are foreign and dark and mysterious to us.
And uh and I and I feel like like this
is a perfect metaphor for so many fears and anxieties

(08:28):
in life. And that's another huge reason that the minotar
myth and things that are like the Minetar myth resonates
so strongly the idea of a realm that we're uncertain
about and the things that might be in there that
can harm us. I don't think we've said it so far,
but we should acknowledge this is gonna be a two
part series because we've wanted to do the Minotaur for years.
I don't know why it took us so long to

(08:49):
get around to it, but we're gonna have two episodes
worth of Minotaur for you. And I think maybe at
first here we should just tell the myth, right, Yeah, yeah,
we should. We should just remind everybody what the story is,
who the major players are here and and what happens
now before we we get going. I do want to
to drive home, of course, that the Minetar emergence from
Greek myth, but as always, myths are amorphous. They change

(09:12):
over time, with different tellings, with different peoples and cultures.
Stories merged together, stories split apart, stories are finally recorded
and then re recorded and translated, ETCETERA real history, magical thinking,
and many other factors come into the creation of a myth,
and the Minotaur is no exception. That's right, and This
is one thing we talked about when we when we

(09:33):
did the Medusa episodes earlier this year that I find
often today, like kids are really insistent on knowing what
canon is, like what is what is technically canon and
what is not canon. I think that that's a product
of modern myth making, like Star Wars and stuff, where
you've got ideas of intellectual property and like one artist

(09:54):
or owner's control over what technically really happens in this
mythical universe. That's not how ancient myths are Ancient myths
or you know, there's a million different versions of them,
especially with like you know, the ones where we have
a lot of different sources over hundreds of years, like
the Greek myths. You know, you've got sources they go
back to a couple of centuries b C. And you've
got sources going way up into Some of our fullest

(10:16):
sources are from the earliest centuries c E. And so
you end up with tons of different variations and there's
no way to pick one and say, oh, this is
the real version of the myth. Yeah, And I feel
like it would be healthier for us if we approached
things like Star Wars in that way. I've thought about
this a little bit because I've been thinking way too
much about Star Wars this year. Uh. But yeah, I

(10:38):
feel like the Clone Wars, for instance, this is uh,
you know, this is a mythic event. Uh. And You're
going to have various tellings and retellings of it, and
there will continue to be tellings and retellings of it,
and and and it's and the thing itself is going
to ultimately be shapeless and unformed at the center. The
fixed canon is a product of a society that operates

(11:00):
largely on the basis of fixed recorded media and has
a like capitalist conception of intellectual property. I think those
things are just death to mythology. You gotta let it breathe. Yeah.
And and certainly you see even with with with films
and whatnot, you see that energy there in the in
the fandom and people that follow, you know, we we

(11:21):
all want to have our own interpretations of what happened,
alternate interpretations. There's this yearning for for for for these interpretations,
for fan fictions, for additional fleshings out of mysteries. And
I think I think that's basically the same sort of
energy that you would see go into the deviation and
the and the recreation of myths over time. Now having

(11:43):
said all that, I guess we should also try to identify, though,
what are the main sources we would be looking at
for the closest thing to a canonical version of the myth.
I guess the closest thing to canonical would be the
version of the myth that most people know, right, And
a lot of a lot of the modern understanding of
of the men at our story, like as without many

(12:04):
other myths, comes down down to of its metamorphosis. Uh.
And so that was one of the key areas we
turned to here. As always, I I pick up Carol
Rose's uh books of Monsters and Fairies, because she she
did such a fabulous job, uh, you know, basically, uh,
you know, nailing down that the essential myths, uh, that

(12:24):
sort of thing. But certainly what we're gonna about to
roll out here is not the It is not the cannon,
but it is maybe as close to the cannon as
we can sort of agree on for the purposes of
moving forward. Yeah. I just want to mention another major
source on this, I think would be pseudo Apolodorus. The
I think this is probably now believed to be like
a first or second century CE work. But you know,

(12:44):
it's the Biblioteca. It's tells a lot of classic Greek
and Roman myths, and it was traditionally attributed to an
author named a Polydorus. Now that authorship is questioned, so
it's largely known as pseudo Apolodorus. Now ask your doctors
about pseudo Apolodorus. Okay, Well, what's the story? Okay? Alright?
So so here we go on the isle of Crete.

(13:05):
There is a king who, like most kings, desires above
all else to ensure and extend his reign. And as
he lives in a world ruled by the gods and
is himself not entirely without divine blood, he seeks their support. Now,
given the creed is surrounded on all sides by the sea,
it makes sense to reach out to Poseidon getting into

(13:26):
bad company there. Yeah, But you know, kings, they're they're vain, uh,
and they see themselves as powerful enough to stand beside
such deities. So he asked the sea god to deliver
up a sign of his divine right to rule, as
well as a proper beast of sacrifice. And so the
god does just this. He delivers up this white bull

(13:47):
from the surf. It comes, comes, comes out, It's as
white as the frothing sea foam itself, and this beast
comes to be known as the Cretan Bull. I think
even this aspect of the myth is very interesting because
is what he does is King Minos asks Poseidon to
send him a bull that he can then turn around
and sacrifice to Poseidon. So he wouldn't even really be

(14:11):
giving of himself, he'd just be sort of returning the
favor in a way. Well, I guess it does kind
of remind me of like the the gesture of say
you you visit somebody's house for dinner, and you bring
a bottle of wine, and then the expectation is kind
of like that bottle of wine will then be opened
and shared with the guests. Okay, I can see that.

(14:32):
The analogy I was thinking of was checking the ball
in a game of basketball where you've only got one goal,
Check the ball. Check the ball, you know, like when
you never played half court basketball where you get to
the when possession changes you, you check the ball, you
throw it to the other team, you say check, and
then they throw the ball back to you. It is
a sign that possession has changed. Okay, I'll take your

(14:54):
word for it. Okay, so the Cretan bowl is fabulous,
is beautiful, and then the factors into some other myths
as well. But but so splendid is this beast, and
so self interested is King Minos that he decides to
keep this trophy for himself and instead to offer up
the blood sacrifice of immortal bowl so that Poseidon, you know,
will still be pleased. Uh. So it's like you bring

(15:17):
a really nice bottle of wine to dinner and the
host is like, oh thanks, and then gets out the
two buck chuck exactly. Yeah. But, as we've touched on before,
Poseidon is certainly nobody to trifle with um, even if
you do have a little bit of of royal blood
of Zeus in your system, as is uh supposed to
be the case with Minos. Okay, well, we know from

(15:40):
experience that Poseidon does not deal well with slides. In fact,
Poseidon does not even usually treat people well if they've
done nothing to him. So he is he's bad news.
How is he going to react to this? Well horribly?
But by comparing preparing it to other things, Besidon is done.
I mean he he was almost playing at softball here,

(16:01):
as we'll see, but that still he definitely has the
last laugh. So here's what Poseidon did. He bewitched Minos's wife, Pacific,
causing her to fall in love with the Cretan bull.
So she ends up belonging to be one with this beast.
And she convinces the master artificer Daedalus, who was then
residing in Crete, to craft for her this mechanical bovine

(16:24):
likeness that wouldn't enable her to then mate with the bull. Yes,
So Poseidon, by which is pacifically says you're gonna fall
in love with this bull? She does. She gets Deadalus
to build her robot bull so she can get inside
it and have sex with the white bull. Yes, and
this results in a monstrous pregnancy, producing a monstrous hybrid

(16:47):
part human part bull. This is the Bull of Minos,
or the Minotaur, also known as a stereon. Yes um,
And certainly that that gets back to the title of
that borhe story, the House of Hysteria. Now, the exact
form of the minotaur was not always well to find uh.
The The A. S. Klein translation of The Metamorphosis describes

(17:09):
a quote strange hybrid creature, a twin form of bull
and man and bores. Is actually in that passage that
I read, he's alluding to this a little bit, uh
the idea that sometimes there is this idea that maybe
the minotaur is more like the face of a man
on the body of a bull rather than the reverse.
So now we have the minotaur, and it's easy to

(17:29):
sort of overlook how strange this creature is and exactly
like what it's mixed lineage means, because this is a
monster of two worlds yet none. It's the It's a
product of minos Is blasphemy, Poseidon's wrath, Pacific's lust. It
was an unnatural being, and yet it also was sacred.
Minos could not simply just kill it and slaughter it,

(17:51):
or cast it out back into the sea. You know
where it's a it's it's father, the bull came from.
So instead he chooses to hide it away, and luckily
he had in his employ just the right man to
design a most elegant hiding place. I want to read
here from the Metamorphoses, the garthen Dryden translation that talks

(18:13):
about this part. So Avid writes, when Minos willing to
conceal the shame that sprung from the reports of tattling
fame resolves a dark enclosure to provide, and far from sight,
the two formed creature hide. Great Dadalus of Athens was
the man that made the draft and formed the wondrous

(18:33):
plan where rooms within themselves encircled lie with various windings
to deceive the eye. As soft meanders wanton current plays
when through the phrygian fields, it loosely strays backward and
forward rolls the dimpled tide, seeming at once two different
ways to glide when circling streams their former banks survey

(18:56):
and waters past succeeding waters sea now floating to the
sea with downward course now pointing upward to its ancient source.
Such was the work, so intricate, the place that scarce
the workman all its turns could trace, And Dadalus was
puzzled how to find the secret ways of what himself designed.

(19:17):
That's that's wonderful. Oh yeah, So he's describing this thing
that these galleries, this place that's often described as a
maze or a labyrinth, as as being as confusing as
waters that churned back and forth without apparent rhyme or reason. Yeah,
I love this. So he makes some comparisons to the
natural world here, But but it is the ultimate unnatural

(19:40):
environment to house the ultimate unnatural creature. But maybe I
should read the next two lines because that sets up
what we're getting into now, these private walls the minotaur
include who twice was glutted with Athenian blood. That's not
a good rhyme, is it. I guess that reflects how
English pronunciation has changed over time. This is a very

(20:01):
old translation. I think it's ultimately perfect too, that that
Minos has this constructed, you know, because ultimately again, think
of the of the minotaur as a creature representing the
shaming of Minos. You know, it is the revenge of
of Poseidon. But a king doesn't really suffer shame like
you or I. His awfulness is common knowledge, right. He

(20:22):
He can't just change the central vileness upon which everything spends,
but he can alter the surrounding reality. He can foster confusion, misinformation.
He can tear apart your faith in the ordered structure
of cosmos, of society, of law or order. In short,
a king builds a maze, or certainly he pays a

(20:43):
great inventor who is by the way, in the case
of data lists, fleeing his own shame to build it
for him. Yeah, and so it's kind of hard to
understand exactly what it means that Dadalusts, like the great craftsman,
builds this maze. The other things we know of Dalists
for creating are, for example, the wings that he uses
ultimately to escape the realm of King Minos or Minos.

(21:07):
I know, we keep saying it both ways, and we're
probably just gonna keep saying it both ways. I hope
you're all right with that. But yeah, he makes the
wings of the wax and the feathers that he and
Icarus used to to escape the island. That doesn't go
so well for for Icarus. We all know that story.
But he, you know, and he's also renowned to be,
you know, the great master craftsman who makes statues that

(21:27):
are so lifelike it seems as if they will they
will become quickened and walk away. But here he has
made this this sort of like Palace of Confusion, which
is ultimately some combination of prison and weapon, and it
is his ultimate creation. And is Ovid points out a
creation so well designed, the Datalus himself barely escapes it. Uh,

(21:53):
and that of course plays more into the myth of Icarus.
But you're right, yes, the maze of the King becomes
not only a defensive ploy but weapon. And indeed the
Minoan mays came to feature into Minos's destructive policies. He
required tributes sent each year by other lands, including Athens,
and these individuals were thrown into the labyrinth, where they

(22:14):
were then hunted through the twisted halls amid the echoing
screams until they too confronted the minotaur and were torn
to bloody shreds and and presumably consumed as well. Yes,
so they demand tribute from Athens or is it just
from Athens or is it from other city states as well?
I believe other city states as well. But of course

(22:34):
this is the Athens is most central to the telling
of the myth, right because ultimately the hero of the story,
theseus will come from Athens. But from Athens. Every nine
years they demanded fourteen young people of sacrifice, seven maidens
and seven young men, and so they would be taken
away by ship to to the palace of of Minos,

(22:55):
and then they would be sent into the labyrinth to
meet their fate as a human sacrifice to the monster. Oh,
and of course the minotaur would eat them. I don't
know if he mentioned that part. The minotaur would devour
their flesh. Yum, yum. So inter theseius, Thepeus is the
fated one, the one, the fated slayer of the monster. Um.
And of course there's more to his story as well.

(23:16):
But basically what happens is he takes the place of
a tribute that is being sent to Crete. Right, He's
like one of these guys who would be sacrificed. No,
I'll go instead because I know what I can do.
I can kill that minotaur. Right. And of course he
is uh. You know, he's a handsome prince. So what
does he do he? You know, he impresses people with
his charisma. He makes an ally in Ariadne, the daughter

(23:38):
of King Minos. Right. Uh. It's often said that she
falls in love with him, though I don't know if
that's in every telling. So for some reason they end
up allied, yes, and uh and what does she do? Well?
She she gives him privileged information. She gives him a
ball of string to unwind behind him as he travels
through the labyrinth, and She tells him the various twist
and turns that will lead him out of the labyrinth,

(24:01):
because that's what the string is for, but to the
heart of the labyrinth, to the place where the minotaur
can be found. Uh. In other words, turned the hunted
into the hunter instead of being in there just kind
of lost and hunted by the minotaur. He'll know how
to get straight to the monster and kill it. And
that's exactly what happens. He follows her instructions, he slays

(24:21):
the minotaur and then follows the string back to the surface.
He ends up eloping with the daughter of King Minos,
but then ultimately abandons her, just totally maroons her on
an island. Yes, and and this is That's another great
thing about the the Jim Hinson Storyteller episode is that
it it definitely it doesn't just play Theseus up is

(24:42):
this perfect monster killer hero, but also shows this, I think,
to at least to modern interpretations and modern viewers, this
unsavory nature of the hero. You know, I was thinking
about how the story of Theseus and the Minotaur has
actually so much in common with the story of Percy
and Medusa, especially in the broad Strokes and in the

(25:03):
way modern audiences would react to it, and you have
to imagine, are we reacting to the story with different
values in a in a different way than ancient Greek
audiences would have reacted to it. But you know, some
of the broad contours that are the same are starts
with Poseidon doing something cruel because he's awful, and this

(25:23):
cruelty of Poseidon results in the creation of a monster.
The monster ends up living in some kind of secluded
underworld where it kills people, but only really when they
come to its domain. There is a young hero, the
son of a king of Sorts now in Perseus. He
is actually the son of Zeus. Theseus is the son
of a Gus, the king of Athens, but either way

(25:46):
the son of a king the son of a king.
Hero sets out to kill the monster. He receives tools
and strategies to help him from other people. Perseus gets
helped from Athena and hermi Is, giving him tools and
advice that will help him kill mad Usa. Theseus gets
tools and advice from Ariadney and Dadalus that will help
him kill the monster. The young hero succeeds in killing

(26:08):
the monster, then turns out at least on a critical
reading to be an absolute jerk. Remember Perseus going around
just showing the head of Medusa to random people. Oh yeah,
and then like if someone ticks him off, he'll just
turn him to stone with it. You know. He's just
kind of rampaging through the aisles surrounding aisles with that thing. Yeah,
and Theseus of course abandons Ariadney on the on the island,

(26:29):
And then in the end, at least as a modern
critical reader. For some reason, I in both stories end
up feeling more sympathy for the monster. The monster is
kind of pitiable. Yeah, there is this sense in in
some of the tellings that that the and and this
is also reflected in Borgees retelling that the monster doesn't
even necessarily put up much of a fight, or get
to put up much of a fight. He is just

(26:50):
dispatched by our hero here because you have to again,
I think you have to think of the minotaur not
only is an occupant of the maze, but a part
of the maze, a function of the maze, like the
killing center of the maze. And via this privileged information
that he gets Theseus, makes himself the center of the maze,

(27:11):
makes himself the killing function of the Manoan maze. Oh
and by the way, I also think it's fitting that
the the that's this whole episode ends up with with
this tragic turn of events for Minos his daughter as well,
which also feels a part uh somehow of Poseidon's grand design. Yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. And there's more tragedy too because when um,

(27:34):
when Theseus is returning home to Athens, his father Agus
gets confused about what's happening because of the way the
boat is returning and ends up killing himself throwing himself
into the sea. Uh. And then that's how we get
the name of the A, G, and C. Yeah. So
there's so many interesting themes in this story that that
we can get into over the next couple of episodes.

(27:55):
It deals with, of course, this this hybrid bull human monster.
Of course, it deals with human sacrifice, It deals deals
with mazes and labyrinths. Uh. There's a lot of rich
territory here, yes, and and certainly in a one angle
on it too. Is is going to be just questions
of the the Noan civilization of Crete and the Greek

(28:15):
perceptions of that civilization. But I wanna I want to
stress that the episode following this one will get more
into that than this episode, So just just stay tuned
if you have a lot of of of of of
nagging questions about that aspect of the myth. Alright, on
that note, we're going to take a quick break, but
when we come back, we will venture into hell. Alright,

(28:40):
we're back. So I want to talk a bit about
how the figure of the minotaur developed after the Greco
Roman world. And one example that I've come across recently,
because I think we've talked about this on the show,
is that this year Rachel and I have been rereading
The Divine Comedy, which has been surprisingly fun. I know,
like to to modern readers that it seem kind of weird.

(29:00):
Oh really, you want to get into all this stuff about,
you know, medieval Catholic theology and politics, But if you
have an addition that's got really good notes, filling you
in on the historical context is actually a really fun
and interesting and funny read. We've been reading from several translations.
We use the Pinskey translation of the Inferno. Uh, We've

(29:21):
been using the Gene Hollander translation of the Purgatorio and
the Paradiso, but using the notes by John Chiardi and
those notes. Charity's notes are fantastic. But so the minotaur
does appear in the Divine Comedy in Hell, of course,
And this is in Canto twelve, when Dante and his guide,
the the Latin poet Virgil, are descending into the Seventh

(29:45):
Circle of Hell. So, of course, Virgil is guiding Dante
through the different realms of the afterlife to sort of
educate him on what awaits after death and get him
to repent and turn more fully to God. And so
they're descending through Hell, and Dante's missing all the horrors
of Hell, and they're going down into the seventh Circle,
which is reserved for people whose nature is violence. And

(30:08):
they enter the circle by descending a fallen rock wall.
And here I just want to read from the RDI translation,
such was the passage down the steep, And there at
the very top, at the edge of the broken cleft,
lay spread the infamy of crete, the air of beast reality.
And the lecherous queen who hid in a wooden cow,

(30:28):
And when he saw us, he gnawed his own flesh
in a fit of spleen. And my master mocked, how
you do pump your breath? Do you think perhaps it
is the Duke of Athens who, in the world above
served up your death off with you, monster, This one
does not come instructed by your sister, but of himself

(30:49):
to observe your punishment in the Lost Kingdom. As a
bull that breaks its chains just when the knife has
struck its death blow, cannot stand nor run, but leaps
from side to side with its last life, So danced
the minotaur, and my shrewd guide cried out, run now
while he is blind with rage into the past, quick

(31:11):
and get over the side. This is great. And one
of the things I love about about like this, this
particular passage from Inferno, is that it almost is like
a Looney Tunes cartoon. Yes, you know, yeah, I mean
a lot of stuff in the Inferno is that way.
It's like they run into a monster or a figure,
you know, an evil figure or something. Uh. There's a
great part where they come up to plute us who's

(31:31):
clucking at them, and uh, you know there are parts
where uh, the beasts menacing them in untranslatable languages of hell,
you know, the tongue of the Inferno Poppy, Satan, Aleppe
and all that great stuff. But uh, but yeah, and
then and then Virgil will often like mock them, or
they'll kind of scramble away. And so what Virgil does

(31:51):
is he gets the minotaur really mad, and he's like
stomping and huffing like a bowl I guess, you know,
the like the Looney Tunes bowl, actually scratching the ground
and snorting. And then they scramble over the rocks and
get away. But I like the implication of them scrambling away.
This is never fully made clear in the Divine Comedy,
but it makes me wonder, like, was there a possibility

(32:11):
that Virgil and Dante could be killed while in hell
and would not get to complete the tour of the afterlife?
I don't know, Um, it's certainly implied. You know, there
is this sense of danger at times where where virgils
having to urge him on and and is there as
a protector of sorts, so uh, you know, in addition
to guide. Uh So, yeah, I always got the sense

(32:33):
that that that that was a possibility. And oh and
by the way, um, I was always partial to the
robert Ian Durling translations of of Inferno and in Purgatory.
Uh As I recall when I was reading these they
had not yet come out with up or that they
had not yet published a translation of his of Paradise.

(32:56):
But that is out now as well, and has been
for for years. Oh interest thing. I don't know anything
about that translation. I'll have to look into it. I
feel like I'm almost without doing it on purpose, becoming
a sort of Dante translation nerd this year, just because
we've been we've been looking at so many different ones.
I don't remember the details on that translation so much,
but but when I um when I studied uh Dante

(33:18):
a little bit in college, they those were the additions
that our our teacher recommended. So that's the one we got,
and I found it quite I think. Earlier, without the
you know, the aid of a class environment, I had
tried reading some other translation, like a Penguin translation, and
I didn't get as much out of it. But I
really liked these these additions. One thing I will say,

(33:39):
if you want to make a go of reading the
Divine Comedy, I think it is absolutely crucial to seek
out one that has really good notes that absolutely it
helps explain everything because these books like this is this
is medieval epic poetry that is full of contemporary political
and historical and you know, theological mythological references. It's just

(34:00):
crammed with culture and cultural references that you're not gonna
understand unless you have some background. But if you do
get the background, it can become very like interesting and
funny watching like how you know again, like medieval Florentine
politics are projected into the afterlife. Oh yeah, there's a
lot of Dante settling old scores and picking at his

(34:23):
enemies and also like talking about friends who you know,
tragic things happen to and sort of remembering them like
it's it's it's it's a really beautiful work. And it
covers it does. It covers a lot of territory. Once
you even emerge from just the inferno, you'll feel like
you've had a crash course in in in the politics
and uh and uh and and religious and just cultural

(34:44):
world of the time. Totally. Now, I wanted to talk
about a couple of things about this passage that I
thought were interesting. One of them is, uh, why is
this where the minotaur is in hell? In the seventh circle?
I mean, one part is clear, because this is the
circle of violence, right, One part is clear, it's the
violence against others you know, the minotaur kills and eats people.

(35:04):
But I think there's like a threefold thing going on here,
which is that the minotaur is depicted as a violent
against others by killing and eating them, violent against himself
because it shows him knowing his own flesh and anger.
And then finally that this is the kind of thing
that shows up a lot in the Inferno. He is
violent against nature by way of his monstrous hybrid city.

(35:25):
The fact that he's part human and part bull is
a form of violence. Now you could say that's not
really the minotaur's fault, but uh, in the in the
medieval Catholic theology that places people in Dante's Hell, a
lot of people are there for things that we would
say are not really their fault, right right. But this
is also, interestingly one of the dozens, i'd say, probably

(35:46):
hundreds of instances throughout the Divine Comedy of what I
think would be called syncretism in any other context. Of course,
syncretism is the blending or mixing of different religious or
cultural traditions. Uh Adunte is supposedly writing Orthodox Catholic theology
and fantasy form, but throughout the Divine Comedy he takes

(36:08):
as real all the gods and heroes and monsters of
classical Greek and Roman mythology, which would have been considered
like Satanic paganism in a way, but by a lot
of you know, Christian thinkers. But it seems for Dante,
Greco Roman mythology is is just sort of rolled straight
up into Christianity as if they are the same thing

(36:30):
and part of the same tradition. So hell is full
of figures from Greek mythology as if they actually existed
and are real figures, you know, dealing with with the
ramifications of of Christian salvation and stuff. Yeah, it is
a It is a rich hell that Dante creates here,
full of full of all these mythological figures. Uh, these monsters,

(36:53):
also demons and devils, but also people he knew, people
he liked, people he hated, reviled Kara. There's from recent histories.
Uh yeah, they're all there. I just find that so
interesting if anybody out there is a Dante scholar and
wants to get in touch with us about the syncretistic aspects,
like what, why was it seen as totally acceptable to

(37:14):
just essentially take all of these classic Greco Roman myths
as basically true, except unfortunately Odysseus was not afforded Christian salvation.
All right, well, we could, we could obviously keep going
on and on about Dante, and we should, we should
probably will definitely come back to Dante again in the future,
and maybe we should do a proper episode about about

(37:35):
Inferno as well. But let's come back to the meat here.
Let's come back to the minotaur. Okay, so maybe we
should talk about labyrinths and mazes. We alluded earlier to
the fact that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but
sometimes they're used to mean very distinct and different things. Yeah.
At times, there's this distinction between a branching assembly of

(37:57):
artificial paths and halls that are designed to confuse, and
in some cases these attributes are defined as a maze,
not a labyrinth. And then on the other hand, there's
the idea of this complex system that has but one
path through it. Uh, and this is sometimes described more
as a pure labyrinth. Uh. We need not get caught

(38:18):
up too much in the terminology here, because they are
used interchangeably today. But but this is this idea is
rather fascinating because you know, first and foremost, a labyrinth
or maze is generally an artificial environment um or at
least an artificial reworking of the natural environment in terms
of things like hedge mazees, hedge labyrinths, etcetera. But in
in there, in the purer sense of the word, a

(38:41):
labyrinth or maze has no other purpose other than to
confuse the individual with a complex system or to seamlessly
guide them through it. So the sort of labyrinth one
encounters on stones and church courtyards, for instance, there's only
one way through, there's not You don't have to make
any decisions. You just follow the path and it will
lead you through a complex system and back out again.

(39:03):
It's essentially a mindfulness exercise. Yeah, these are Sometimes the
terminology used is unicursive versus multi cursive. Was like, if
a labyrinth is the of the unicursive type, it means
there's only one path. It is very complicated, but you
can only basically go one direction unless you turn around
and go back the way you came from. The multi
cursive would be the ones where you have options about

(39:26):
which way to turn and can reach dead ends. Yeah,
in one you you lose your way and the other
one you sort of lose your your sense of self. Yeah,
and and and so the unicursive labyrinth. It's interesting to
think how that, like, you know, it could be thought
of as having metaphorical meanings, Like it's kind of fatalistic
in a way, there's only one way you can go.

(39:47):
It's also sort of an an act of submission in
a way, you're submitting to the designer of the labyrinth
and saying, like, I will just go the only way
there is to go. Yeah. And what I find interesting
is that ultimately both of these in repretations work well
with the minotaur myth. I mean, we we tend to
go with the version of the Minoan maze or the
labyrinth that the minetar resides in as being a place

(40:09):
of confusion, and then the master of confusion is the
minotaur that lives there. But you know, I also like
the idea of the labyrinth as a thing that is
complex but leads you down one path, and that one path,
of course, will take you to the mazes kill function
the minotar. Yeah, that's that's a different kind of terror.
You can instead of confusion, you can only go one

(40:31):
way and you know what lies that way, but you
can't go back. There's nowhere to go there. Yeah, you
can either go forward to death or not go at all. Yeah.
And again the data lists is the you know, the
master builder here, so you know, you can easily imagine
him creating this sort of structure that is about delivering
people onto the Minotaur. Which do you think deadalists would

(40:52):
have been more likely to create? I mean, I think
it's often described explicitly as a maze, a multi cursive maze.
But if you have the option which is more dead
list like, I don't know, if he's more egotistical, if
he's more you know, obsessed with his own skill and
all that he might want to be the the ultimate
controller that sets you on a unicursal labyrinth where you
know you have to go the way he tells you

(41:13):
to go. Yeah. Um, you know, I think I like,
I think I can make a case for either way.
But ultimately I see the maze of the Minotaur as
being a place of multiple, multiple branching paths and confusion. Now,
I think one of the things that you begin to
see though when you read about labyrinths and ancient accounts
of alleged labyrinths, aside from just how diverse the subject is,

(41:37):
is that there's often a description leveled at certain ancient
complexes and uh and and temples and structures like that,
and over time there's a transformation from a place that
has another purpose but is also confusing, into a place
that was clearly designed and built to confuse. And perhaps
we kind of observed the same sort of hyperbole when

(41:58):
considering confusing door layouts, you know, new cities and more,
you know where we think, oh man, they just they
just made this place to drive me crazy. Why is
this place constructed like this? Um is is like Walmart
a maze, whereas I Kea is a unicursal labyrinth. It's true,
I Kia does have that layout where you can you

(42:18):
you can cut directly through everything, but still they are
very much guiding your path. So I don't know. I
don't have much experience with Ikea. I went there once,
and I remember it being more more like that. There
is a minotar, oh really, but it's called flingbow with
an oom out probably. But coming back to what you
were saying about places with an original use being later

(42:40):
confused for a labyrinth, I think that that actually does
apply to some possible ruins in Egypt which UM have
been interpreted by some archaeologists, or maybe not archaeologist, by
some thinkers throughout history as something that was supposed to
be a confusing maze or labyrinth, but in fact was
probably just some kind of like temple or burial complex

(43:01):
that has been you know, massively degraded in a structural
sense over time and appears confusing to people who are
unearthing and exploring it. Now, yeah, this is the case
of the ancient Egyptian labyrinth. So it was often referred
I was reading about this in a book by William
Henry Matthews Amazes and Uh in Labyrinths. This is a

(43:22):
seminal work on the subject. UH. But he mentions just
the the evocative language of of using labyrinth quote a
structure which evoked so much wonder and admiration in ancient
times that can hardly fail to have roused the curiosity
of later generations. And so when he's talking about the
the ancient ancient Egyptian labyrinth, this is interesting because this

(43:43):
is the the oldest structure or place that apparently has
been described in these terms, and it was described by
the likes of herodotus Um. Now these these whatever, this
exactly was it did not survive destruction during Roman times. Uh.
And it seems though that it was some sort of
temple structure or some sort of temple compound. It definitely

(44:04):
was not created just to confuse foreigners, much like um,
foreign airports that you travel to were not designed just
to confuse you, even though that is the effects you
may feel. Um. But at any rate, the thing that
confuses foreigners becomes a thing that was built to confuse
them in these tellings. Oh, that's like one of those
egocentric biases we've discovered, where you think that the the

(44:27):
effect a thing has on you is the purpose it
was intentionally created for. Yeah. Uh. There's a quote that
gets into some of this too that ran across. This
is from Penelope read Dube from the idea of the
labyrinth from classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages. Quote, what
you see depends on where you stand. And thus, at
one and the same time, labyrinths are single. There is

(44:50):
one physical structure and double They simultaneously incorporate order and disorder,
clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity, artistry and chaos, nice
much like the minotaur in his double nature. Yeah, and
you know, I have to say I see another common
trend trend as well, if you write about mazes and labyrinths,

(45:10):
or even if you do a little podcast that covers them. Um,
if you're doing fiction or nonfiction, it doesn't matter if
you if you do something about mazes and labyrinths, you
can end up crafting or traversing this sort of literary
um maze or labyrinth as well. This is something that's
that's often you know, cited in these works like just

(45:31):
straight up either sometimes in ingest but other times as
part of the texture of the piece. Almost more than
any other physical object or structure in the world, the
maze or labyrinth just asks you to use it as
a metaphor. I mean, the maze is time, right, It's
like you can't see around the corner. Yeah, the mazes time.
I think that the mazes is the world, but it's

(45:53):
also our perception of the world. Um. And again I
think that's why this idea so engages us. There's like
there's basically no complex system in the world or in
our you know, information technology, et cetera that you cannot
apply the metaphor of the maze and the minotaur too
and get something memorable out of it. You know, there's

(46:14):
like any complex system, I don't I don't care if
it's the law, or politics, or or science. I mean
that whatever it is, there is conceivably a minotaur in there. Alright,
on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
but we will be right back. Thank thank Alright, we're
back now. I think it's time that we talk a

(46:34):
little bit of minotaur biology, because one of the things
that I have always wondered about the minotaur is why
does it eat humans? Now, I could imagine if the
minotaur was not the minotaur, but say the minto croc
and it had the head of a crocodile, a crocodile
that could eat a human. And so you could totally

(46:56):
understand why the human with the head of a crocodile
would live at the center of a maze and eat
fourteen youths from Athens every year. But bulls do not
normally eat humans. A bull is a herbivore. It eats grass,
or it eats grain, or you know, it can of
course eat some animal protein supplemented grain if that's what
you're feeding it. But in the natural world, we do

(47:18):
not think of bow vines like bulls and cows as
hunting and eating other animals, certainly not other mammals. So
why doesn't the minotaur just eat grass? Well, I think
maybe we've got a good answer for you, and it's
along some lines that might be familiar to listeners of
the show. Now, we've already ruined squirrels for you. You know,
sometimes a squirrel just needs to eat a bird or

(47:41):
another rodent. How do you like that, Well, we're going
to do the same thing with cattle, Joe, I am.
I am happy to report that chipmunks have also developed
an appetite for the meal worms that I put out
for the squirrels. Uh um, that's that's been one of
my recent observations. Uh. Here in coin Tea, more beautiful
rodents getting in on the animal flesh action. Yeah, but

(48:04):
they're adorable when they do it. Chip Monks cannot help
the adorable. But but as far as the myth goes,
I guess I gathered that the minotaur has been starved.
He is down there like an animal in a pit. Uh,
so he's going to tear into whatever he gets. But then,
on the other hand, of course, he is not entirely bull.
He is also part human. In humans, eat meat. But yeah,
but if he was fully human, wouldn't that mean he

(48:26):
would eat twice as much meat as it. It just
doesn't make sense that like adding part bull to him
would make him more desiring of human flesh, except in
the general logic of well, he's a monster and monsters
eat humans, so maybe he could also have the head
of a rabbit and he would eat humans. He would
not be as terrifying. But yeah, this brings us back

(48:47):
to some of the best of modern zoology, which is that, uh,
some of the animals, many of the animals that subsist
largely on plant based food, are actually able to eat meat.
We now know this in the modern world, especially with
you know, modern video documentation, you can learn quite a
bit about what supposedly docile herbivores will do when given

(49:08):
the opportunity. Uh. And it appears that bovines are no exception.
So I want to start with a story that was
reported in Reuters from March seventh, two thousand seven. Uh.
This is a dateline Calcutta quote. When dozens of chickens
went missing from a remote West Bengal village. Everyone blamed
the neighborhood dogs. That would make sense right, you know,

(49:31):
the dogs get into the chicken coop, but it continues.
But Agia Ghosh, the owner of the missing chickens, eventually
solved the puzzle when he caught his cow, a sacred
animal for the Hindu family, gobbling up several of them
at night. That's gobbling up several of the chickens, not
of the family. We were shocked to see our calf

(49:51):
eating chickens alive, ghost told Reuters by phone from chand
Poor village. The family decided to stand guard at night
on Monday at the cow shed, which also served as
a hen coop, after forty eight chickens went missing in
a month. Instead of the dogs, we watched in horror
as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal, sneak

(50:13):
to the coop and grabbed the little ones with the
precision of a jungle cat, said his brother gor Ghosh. Uh.
And then it goes on to describe how a local
television station in India went to the village to get
pictures of the cow grabbing and eating a chicken. Uh
and Uh. Then the article consults me here sat Pati,
who is a district veterinary officer, who said quote, we

(50:36):
think lack of vital minerals in the body is causing
this behavior. We have taken a look and ask doctors
to look into the case immediately. The strange behavior is
possible in some exceptional cases. So it says that hundreds
of villagers had come to chant poor to Uh to
watch the cow eat and sometimes eat chickens um And

(50:58):
it said that local veterinary authority is believe the cow
was probably suffering from some kind of disease that made
it eat these chickens, but ultimately they didn't really know. Now,
on one hand, I would say, Okay, this is a
Reuters report. I think of Reuter's is very credible reporting.
But also this story feels very daily mail. You know,

(51:18):
I I could easily react to this and say this
is I don't know. I don't trust this reporting. Except
that there's video. I don't necessarily recommend people watch it
because I don't know if if you are inclined to
feeling bad about watching a live chicken get eaten the
whole by a cow, if that sounds like something that
would upset you, don't check out this video. But if

(51:39):
you're interested, look at it. It just yeah, it's just
a chicken wanders up in front of the cow, and
the cow just bites it and eats its whole body.
Oh man, well, you know this, this brings a few
thoughts to mind. First of all, in terms of relatives
of the cow that eat meat. I mean, now you
can certainly point you know, not directly, but by know

(52:00):
if a few degrees removed to carnivorous whales. Yes, that
is interesting, And actually I wish I'd looked this up.
I don't know if the ancestors of whales. Of course,
one of the most fascinating things about whale biology is
that we now know that whales evolved from a creature
that once dwelt on land. So the the ancestors of
whales going way back were land dwelling tetrapod mammals, four

(52:22):
footed mammals that walked around on the earth. And we
know that over millions of years they gradually adapted and
evolved to a sea based existence. And I don't know
if their ancestors on land were carnivorous or not, or
if they transitioned to eating meat once they became full
time dwellers of the sea. Well, this makes me think

(52:43):
also of horses. Because there are tales of horses eating
meat as well. UM. And I was not familed with
the story previously, but even shackledon UM they explore UH
and noted his his his pony socks preferring meat based
diet in in some in the you know, the harsher climates.

(53:05):
This would have been in nineteen o eight, I believe. Yeah,
So there are a lot of these little stories here
and there, and you wonder if you should believe the
stories now. In the case of the cow in the
West Bengal village, there's at least video or there's video
of a cow eating a chicken that I think is
video of that cow. I can't be a hud certain,
but whatever cow it is, it's eating a chicken. I
don't think there's any special effects involved. But but but no,

(53:30):
apparently this is it's not limited to just these few
weird cases described in the extreme UH. For example, I
was reading a paper in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology
from two thousand five by Jamie L. Knack and Christine A.
Ribbic or Ribbits R I B i C. Called apparent
predation by cattle at grassland bird nests. The authors here

(53:53):
were documenting pastures in southwestern Wisconsin during the years two
thousand to two thousand one which were used for cattle grazing.
So there's video documentation of what's going on in these pastures,
and uh, it was noticed there was something odd that
was noticed about this video. Cattle appeared to be mostly
grazing but also occasionally quote behaving as a vian predators,

(54:17):
removing nestlings and eggs from three active ground nests. So
with video documentation, they showed that cattle were removing eggs
and baby birds from bird nests that were on the
ground or at ground level and probably eating them. A
couple of the nests belonged to the savannah sparrow past

(54:38):
circulus sandwich insists that is its name. Uh. And in
one of these savannah sparrow nests, they removed three of
the four eggs from the nest and they damaged the
fourth egg. In the other savannah sparrow nest, they removed
all three of the nestlings. So these were baby birds,
they were already hatched there they took them out of
the nest. There was another nest that belonged to the

(54:58):
eastern meadow lark, which is Sternella magna, and the cattle
apparently took all four nestlings out of this nest uh
the author's right quote. We found only two of the
three missing eggs intact and one of seven missing nestlings
dead near two of the nests. Cows may have eaten
the egg and nestlings we were unable to account for. Alternatively,

(55:20):
the egg and nestlings may have been scavenged by predators
or removed from the area by the adult birds. Without
videotaped documentation, we would have attributed nest failure to traditional
predators and cattle would not have been implicated. We may
be underestimating the impact of cattle on ground nests by
not considering cattle as potential predators. This is almost like

(55:43):
you're wondering, you know, you find like your window broken
and several items missing from your house, and you assume
it is a burglar until the I don't know, until
the can't security camera footage reveals it was your house cat. Yeah,
I mean that the cow. They're out there in the field.
They're easy to take for granted. UM. I also love

(56:03):
how this feels very much like something from Gary Larson
Far Side cartoons. This is exactly what his cows would
be up to. They got out their cow tools and
they went to town on the nests. Um, so what
do we make of this? Well? I was reading about
this on a blog post by the British paleo zoologist
Darren Nice. He's got a blog called tetrapod Zoology. It's

(56:26):
a very good blog and Nice makes the following points.
First of all, a lot of animals that we understand
as strict herbivores are just not really that strict. Uh.
You know, they are primarily herbivores, but there are certain
scenarios where eating of other animals is quote absolutely deliberate
and likely motivated by a need for calcium. This brings

(56:49):
us back to the squirrels, right. This came up in
some of our research about squirrels gnawing on the bones
of other animals. A a leading hypothesis to explain why
something that is most stilly herbivorous would sometimes need to
like eat a bird skull or something, and the ideas
that there are certain mineral deficiencies that can lead to it,
primarily calcium, but deer and other hoofed animals in particular

(57:13):
have frequently been observed eating the antlers and bones of
other dead animals. Red deer or service a lap as
sometimes eat seabirds, but Nice reports that they sometimes appear
to intentionally avoid eating the flesh of the birds, sort
of separating out the bones and just eating those bones.

(57:33):
He also mentions the study that I just talked about
where videotape caught domestic cattle raiding ground level bird nests
and apparently eating the birds, eating the chicks and the eggs,
and Nice says quote this behavior is likely opportunistic, but
may well be common and widespread. It is difficult to
document since it mostly occurs at night and no evidence remains.

(57:57):
I guess unless you're just randomly picking through cow feecs
to see if there are bird bones in it, and
then there are just a bunch of other examples. It
often appears to be opportunistic. A cow is not going
to chase down a human and eat it, but small
defenseless animals they might just sort of be in the
why not zone. Now, there are a few other reasons

(58:20):
that animals we think of as strict herbivores might sometimes
eat meat. Nice points out to study from two thousand
by B. B. And Griffiths that documented how cattle drinking
from water sources often accidentally ingest lots of water dwelling life,
say tadpoles, So they are eating the tadpoles, but it
doesn't appear to be on purpose. They're just sort of

(58:41):
like getting sucked into the mouth in the same way.
I think probably grazing herbivores end up eating a lot
of insects without meaning to. I think a lot of
carnivory by herbivores is probably just a result of not
being super picky or careful while eating plants or drinking water.
So one option is that some herbvores deliberately eat other

(59:03):
animals to make up for a mineral deficiency. Another option
is it's just accidental. But then Nice goes on to
say quote, but as shown by the studies cited below,
bird eating in bovids and deer may actually just be
a fairly normal bit of behavior that we're only beginning
to document. I also think that individuals of herbivorous species

(59:24):
sometimes learn quote accidentally that they can kill and eat
other animals and then take to this habit as and
when the opportunity arises. That is, because they can not
because they need to. In fact, I'd go as far
as saying that animals and other organisms likely do a
lot of things simply because they can not because their

(59:47):
anatomy or physiology is is specifically suited to that activity.
So there seems to be quite possibly a role for
just sort of you know, almost like skin ay and
kind of adaptation. Right, if you just happen to eat
an animal one time and it works out just fine
for you, you might well learn that like, oh, you know,

(01:00:08):
this is a this is a beneficial activity I never
thought of doing before, But I can just keep repeating
it if it seems to yield a benefit. And I
think sometimes when we consider ideas like being a herbivore
or a carnivore, I think the metabolic bottleneck is is
not nearly as likely to rule out meat as it
is to rule out tough, fibrous, or chemically hostile plant matter.

(01:00:32):
I mean, what what you need to have a really
specialized digestive system to digest. I would think it's probably
more likely to be plants than to be meat. Animal
flesh is relatively energy rich and easy to digest. Yeah,
I mean we certainly see that in in uh animals
like the panda, which I would have adapted over time
from this um more very diet to a very particular

(01:00:57):
herbivorous diet. Yeah, exactly. So you know, obviously different animals
have differently specialized digestive systems. Those are shaped by evolution
like everything else. But without being sure, I'd imagine it's
probably easier for more herbivores to get down on some
available meat than it would be for carnivores to try
to survive on leaves. Hm. That's interesting, But this I

(01:01:19):
don't know. This is one of those many things where
you start to wonder about what undocumented observations could have
occurred in the ancient world. You know, if somebody suddenly
had a cow like law that starts eating chickens, or
somebody has a bull that starts eating I don't know,
whatever kind of meat you give to it, could that
give rise to the idea that that, well, maybe there's

(01:01:40):
some kind of like hidden monstrous nature that is easy
to unlock when you starve a bull and make meat.
It's only opportunity to get calories. Huh. Well, you know,
I'm not as well read on on this episode, but
the minotaur would not be the only Greek mythological um
herbivore to eat meat, specifically the meat of humans. Because
you also have the mayors of Diomades, the man eating

(01:02:04):
herd of horses that were one of the labors of Hercules. Right,
he had to corral them or something, right, Uh yeah,
and uh and I if I remember correctly, Like they're
it's it's sometimes implied like this is part of their
magical nature that they eat humans, but other times it's
like it's the ideas they've been conditioned to do so
because this is the way their master treats them. Yeah,

(01:02:25):
that they feed unsuspecting guests on the island to these
man eating horses. I mean, I would be surprised. Again,
I don't know, but I would be surprised if a
if a bovine could live entirely on meat. It does
have a ruminant digestive system that is in many ways
specialized to eating tough plant matter. But but yeah, I

(01:02:46):
don't know. I mean, you could probably get by feeding
feeding a well adapted bull or cow kinds of strange
things if you give it an acquired taste. So uh
so it's possible something like this lies behind the horror
of the Minotaur. Yeah, if Ernest Shackleton gives you, um
some feed with some some meat added to it, you
want seconds. Well, I think we're gonna have to wrap

(01:03:08):
it up for part one here, but there is so
much more fun minute our stuff to talk about. We
need to talk about my knowing crete, We've got to
talk about other weird scientific interpretations of the origin of
the minotaur legend. I'm I'm so excited for part two.
I can't wait. Oh and by the way, we originally
intended for part two of our Minotaur series to come

(01:03:31):
out this following Thursday. Due to some scheduling issues, we're
going to actually have to air Part two the next Tuesday,
so it'll be a week out from this episode, so
you have an extra week there to be lost in
the maze. Since we're talking about myths uh and the monsters.
First of all, we have other episodes in the vault

(01:03:51):
dealing with these, such as the Medusa episodes. We have
episodes that deal with data lists UH in more detail.
But also if you go to stuff to Blow your
dot com, that will shoot you over to our iHeart
page and if you look over to the right there
you'll see some show links and you'll see something that
says store. Click on that, see I'm guiding you through

(01:04:11):
the labyrinth here. Click on that and you will go
to our t public store and here you'll find we
actually have some monstrous shirts available. We have, of course,
the all Hail the Great basiliska shirt uh that relates
to a monster episode. We have two different monstrous squirrel episodes,
one with a squirrel gnawing on a bone with death

(01:04:32):
in its eyes. And then we have the Skug King
of Rats shirt, and uh it I am I am
to understand that there will soon be an additional Medusa
shirt added that says petrifying gays with a with an
illustration that my son created, uh of so it's like
it's drawn by an eight year old and eight year
old's uh dedicated idea of what the Medusa looks like.

(01:04:55):
Lest it be forgotten, your son was also the origin
of the phrase scug King of Rats, which I think
might be my favorite shirt in our store. I love
my Skug King of Rat's shirt. Yeah, he still wears
he's wearing this the other day. Um, that's why he
is a head of marketing. Well deserved promotion. Now wherever
you get our podcast. We do just ask that you rate,

(01:05:16):
review and subscribe, especially if those are positive ratings. Positive
reviews um then you then you should do so. That's
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always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow your

(01:05:38):
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production
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(01:06:10):
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