March 30, 2017 • 44 mins
The Shroud of Turin is no ordinary bed sheet. Some think it's the burial cloth of Jesus. Others think it's an amazing piece of artwork. The truth is, we'll probably never know what it really is. The mystery of the Shroud of Turin awaits you...
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know
what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let
people know about your favorite podcasts, just to share the
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y pod still in nascent industry. A lot of people
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(00:20):
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who I see it? Thanksgiving once a year? Right, you
should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what
they are. Here's a cool show you should try, and
here's how to get it. Yeah, and it doesn't have
to be our show, just any podcast you like in
general that you think someone else would like to share it. Yeah,
So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
(00:44):
stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Sitting across
from me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant look so sharp today, dude,
wrapped in wrapped in my herring bone linen. I thought
(01:06):
that was an Infinity scarf. You're wearing it like an
Infinity scarf. That's the second Infinity scarf joke you've made,
although one was live on stage where you, uh, well,
immediate at you accidentally made fun of the lady there
on the first Yeah, some lady was like, well, what's
wrong with the infinity scarves? And I looked over and
(01:27):
lo and behold she was wearing an infinity scarf. Backpedal
from that pretty fast. I don't get why what is
it called an infinity scarf because it looks as if
it never ends. I think it's a scarf that is
sewn together. It's like a ring. Okay, that's all. Okay,
it's not a good name for it for not a
great invention, like an infinity pool that never ends, like
(01:50):
you can swim and swim forever. It looks as if
I just call him rich person. Pools. Yeah, not like
my above ground pool in the back the rust nator. Yeah,
the hick right next to the trampoline. Yeah, alright, I
think we've insulted enough people. Well that was a Simpsons reference.
(02:10):
Technically they insult and the hick um, Yes we did anyway,
So let's talk Shroud of turin Chuck, are you familiar?
What made you pick this the easter? No, it's just timing.
Although heck, that's great timing. Huh. Seriously, it wasn't it was.
To be honest, I was listening to an episode of
(02:32):
w TF with Mark Marin and he it's an older episode.
All of our ideas from Mark man I'm growing in
a stache. Well I've grown it. I'm just gonna shave
the beard. Uh. He was interviewing William Friedkin, the director,
and uh who. As it turns out, it's quite chatty.
Did he not stop talking the whole time? He talked
a lot. It was a really good interview. Well, yeah,
(02:55):
that's what you want out of an interviewee, yeah, sure, um.
But he saw all the shroud of turn in person,
and he described the experience and I thought, why haven't
we done one on that? That's pretty important. What was
his reaction to it? He he wept. So that's that's
actually something that's called Jerusalem syndrome. Yeah. He he was
(03:15):
incredibly move and he's not especially well. He talked a
lot about Jesus specifically, but said that he's not religious,
but he really has a thing for Jesus. But but
he doesn't identify as a Christian, but he really he
just is a big fan of Jesus. Jesus file Sure,
which is you know a lot of people like that.
(03:36):
I think, yeah, there's even um Messianic Jews Jews for
Jesus uh and apparently William Freed Kent I mean bio
because of the two categories Bill accounts Jesus the historical figure.
It's pretty stand up guy. Sure, you know, sure? And
I think, well, let's just stop dancing around this. Okay,
(03:58):
we're not a really just podcast. We're not. Every time
we've ever done in religious episode, we've gotten so much
blowback from every single thing we've gotten wrong that we're like,
our structure is not really set up to two podcasts
on religion very much. The Shroud of Turn is such
(04:19):
an interesting and contentious flash point where science and religion
meet and butt heads that we just couldn't possibly pretend
like it doesn't exist. It's too interesting. And I can
imagine that William Freakin wept when he saw the Shroud
of Turn. I would love to see the Shout of
Turn myself. Um, I don't. I have no idea what
(04:41):
my reaction would be, but I wouldn't be all that
surprised if I did weep when I saw it. Whatever
the Shout of Turn is, it is probably the most
venerated object in the world. Yeah, perhaps it's at least
among the top two or three. Take of me that, um,
and the idea that so many people look at this
(05:04):
thing with love and awe and amazement, that it's somehow
abuse it with the very stuff that they that it's
venerated for in some weird way. And I can imagine
that even as an atheist you would get hit by that. Well,
be to me like looking at a at a great
(05:25):
painting or something. Um, not to say that it is
a painting, even though some people say it is a painting,
which we'll get to. But you know what I'm saying, like, uh,
just moved by seeing the Mona Lisa, Yeah, or being
like I thought I was bigger than that. Yeah, I
was a little underwhelmed. Well, but that's the same thing
that Jerusalem syndrome. Typically happens when you go to a
very holy site in your overcome, but it can also
(05:45):
happen when you're looking at art as well. All Right,
it is a fifty if you don't know what it
is and you're hearing's go on and on about crying
t out of Turin, it is a fifty three square
foot piece of linen rectangle. I think it's about three
ft by four ft. Yeah, and it is, like I said,
(06:05):
herring bone twill uh, faint brownish image that uh when
we'll get into some of the more interesting finer points.
But when photographed the negative images is a very clear
image of a man, naked man with his arms folded
over his groin area, tastefully beard, mustache, shoulder length hair
(06:30):
parted in the middle um. And you know, looks like
that if you grew up in the Southern Baptist church.
Looks like that picture of Jesus hanging on the wall
that I grew up with, or your friend that you
went to that three eleven show back in Uh. And
there are stains in areas on the linen consistent with
(06:51):
crucifixion wounds. Yes, well, which we'll get to because it's
very important. All of this is I feel like we're
gonna be teasing this out throughout. Well, let's stop. Let's
start at the very beginning of all this. Okay, if
you're a believer and that the shot of turn is
a legitimate religious artifact, that is to say that Jesus
Christ was wrapped in it after his Christ buried in
(07:15):
it in Jurus, and that is indeed his image when
he died. He and this is Jesus we're talking about.
Still not William freaking right, He's still alive, right, is he? Yeah?
When Jesus died and was interred or in tombed, I'm sorry,
after three days, his apostles went and checked on him
(07:39):
and they found he wasn't there. He had ascended into heaven.
This just happened to be what we now celebrate as Easter. Yeah,
and a boy, really, this is going to come out
right around then, isn't it. Yeah? And Easter celebrates the
among Christians, the resurrection of Christ. After his death, he
dives Christified on Good Friday. He is found to be
(08:01):
have been resurrected up into Heaven on Easter Sunday. Jesus
wasn't there. His body was gone, but according to legend,
they found shrouds still there, his burial shroud. So the
idea is is that his burial shroud was taken out
of his tomb um and venerated from the get go
(08:24):
basically held on to so and moved from uh I
guess the from Jerusalem out to where did make its
second trip to believe. From there it went straight to
Turkey Constantinople and it was there for several hundred years. Right.
It was in the possession of some of the sultan's there. Yeah,
(08:45):
and then the Crusaders came along and said, we'll be
taking that and whatever else we want, and we're going
to move it to Athens, Greece. And it was there
um or actually I don't know if the Crusaders took it.
Maybe it'll smuggle out, but crusaders sacked the town. I
saw both. Well, the history is a bit murky until
(09:05):
the mid fourteenth century, right, it is so. And you
would think that if the Crusaders had taken it, they
would have taken it back to Europe because that's where
they hailed from. They wouldn't have taken it down to Athens, Greece.
But supposedly it's spent several centuries between the Crusades and
about the thirteenth century in Greece, and somehow, some way
(09:27):
it made its way to France, right, Yeah, a French night,
and I think this is where it gets a little
more solid and it's travels. Uh. Jeffroy de Charny de
Charny Um took it to France about thirty miles outside
of Paris, and um eventually it mounted it made his
(09:48):
way to its final home in Turin, Italy and where
it's been there ever since. Yeah, the cathedral of St.
John the Baptist is when it landed there, and it's
still there and you can go look at I think
it went on tour for a little while within the
last few years, right with van Halen. Uh. Yeah, it
(10:08):
was on display as a part of a traveling exhibit.
Was it traveling or was it just on display? In turn? Now,
I think it traveled but sprised. But here's what I'm
going on is William Friedkin's account. So I'm not sure,
but I do know that um more people saw it
in the last like few years than ever before, ever before,
(10:30):
very very recent times, because apparently, um, for many centuries
it was on public display. Yeah, you just have to
go to Turin, go into that church. Uh, and they would,
you know, probably ask you a serious questions before you entered,
right and as you exited, like what kind of fish
is this? That Jesus fish? Come on back? Uh. The
(10:52):
Catholic Church does not have an official stand on the
authenticity of this shroud. But um, chump, uh Chope, Pope
John Paul the Chopster said, you know, we trust science
basically to keep studying this thing. Yeah. The church, um,
I think, used to have an official position on it
until I think around and they said, you know what,
(11:16):
whatever it is, we still believe that you Catholics or
Christians should venerate this thing because at the very least
it's symbolic of Christ suffering on the cross. Um. But
we're not gonna say either way. We're the Catholic Church,
thank you, good night. I think it's how and transmission.
(11:37):
That's how Pope Ball ended all of his speeches. Um,
all right, let's let's take a little break here. You
want to, yeah, and we'll talk a bit about the
early science the shot turn. So Chuck, we were saying, um,
(12:10):
the shroud. As far as the Catholics are concerned, the
shroud didn't really exist until thirteen fifty three, when Geoffrey
de Charnay came up with it. Right, So that's the
beginning of its documented existence. That the Shroud of Turn
at least goes back on the record to thirteen fifty three,
which makes it pretty awesome in and of itself, right,
(12:32):
And for centuries and centuries people saw it, people looked
at it. I'm sure they kissed it and wept over
it and everything. And then it wasn't until the I
think the nineteenth century or at least the twentieth century
that it was really started to move out of public
display and started to be cared for and preserved a
little more, I think. And that's when science kind of
(12:54):
started to come around, specifically starting in right, Yeah, that
was the first. Like if you if you look at
just the regular image of the shroud of Turin, not
the negative photographic image, you know, you sort of see
an image of a person. But in like you said,
there was an amateur photographer in Italy name uh Second.
That means the second. He had an older sibling. He
(13:17):
took a picture. He was first though, No Primo that right.
If you're seeing Big Night, it's Stanley Tucci movie. Yeah,
Secondo and Primo. Yeah yeah, man, I won't see that again.
I haven't seen it since it was out. Have you
ever heard um that fam key Jansen? You know, the actress.
Does her name mean female or girl in Danish idea?
(13:40):
I think it might because that means her name is girl.
Jansen that's what her parents named her. If that's what
that means, all right, Sorry, that's okay. Um. So Secundo
took this photo. Um, when he was developing it, he
saw the reverse negative and went, wow, Mama Mia. What
(14:00):
he saw was that much more clear image of a man,
of the likeness of a of a human being in
much more detail. He was accused of forgery, of course,
out of the gate. Uh, and I think wasn't fully
clear to like the nineteen thirties when more photographers did
the same thing, and they're like, it's just a negative image.
(14:21):
Let the guy up, yeah right, like this round. Yeah.
So this negative image really kicked off like an even
greater interest in the shroud of turn. I think up
to that point, um, people of science had just been
kind of like, yeah, yeah, sure, that's exactly what it is.
It looks definitely like a burial shroud. When they saw that,
(14:43):
though that that negative, it's really difficult to avoid the
fact that it is clearly the image of a man
like you described at the beginning. It's not Jesus on toast, No,
it's nott or on my the wall of the house
I'm demoing from, you know, or this grilled cheese. I met. Yeah, Um, no,
(15:08):
it's it is, and it's universally recognized as that. It's
not like it kind of looks like this, it's that's
that's what that is, so much so that um even
skeptics say, well, then it was just a painting or
something like that by some artists. But just like that
photographed by Secondo pia Um, we've our new techniques and
(15:32):
tricks and software that we use as far as photography
goes and images goes, is starting to unlock even more
weirdness of it too. Right, So if you take the
um the lightness and darkness patterns and turn them into
like three dimensions, it actually reveals very clearly the three
(15:52):
dimensional shape of a face, which is kind of surprising
because that would mean that if we're a painting, somebody
had to have painted on a face with just the
right amount of darkness in places where that would have
been closest to the cloth, and lighter amounts in places
(16:16):
that would have been further away from the cloth, so
that when you did look at it in this light
gradient map, it would appear in in perfect three To mention,
it's a bizarre little thing, don't you think for sure. Uh.
As far as real study, UM, it took all the
way until almost nineteen seventy nine, sixty nine, when scientists
could finally I mean for decades people had done um
(16:40):
what they call indirect analysis. So basically, you know, I'm
looking at it, and I'm thinking about it and I'm
talking about it. But as far as actually getting your
hands on it, it was nineteen sixty nine when um,
like you said that they needed to preserve this thing.
So they brought in a team of of scientists us
(17:00):
to say, hey, how do we preserve this thing. We'll
let you touch it. And they all went, oh, that
sounds good to me. Uh so they formed the shroud.
We're always laughing about how the acronyms work out perfect.
This is not this is not that the Shroud of
Turn Research Project or stirp Uh. They had five days
(17:25):
of continuous access in ninety eight hours a day for
five days. Yeah, so this is nine years after the
first scientists were allowed to touch it. I guess they
formed this thing and they you know, of course, what
they did was it and say like all right, well
we'll work eight or nine hours a day, kick back
half some dinner and then sleep, get up to start
over eight course Italian meals. They split up into teams
(17:46):
so they could work non stop around the clock. They
had thirty three members from all over the spectrum of science,
twenty major research institutions, along with a team of European
scientists who observed. I guess they sat there with our
arms folded and just like you know, every ten minutes.
They were the ones that brought the good espresso. The
(18:07):
US led team, We're like, we don't know where you
get that around here, not the kind of espresso you
spit out into a napkin. Like what was that? It
was in Mulholland Drive when a great scene. Um so
here's what their report said, we need like a bombshell
effect here, okay, uh quote the shroud images that of
(18:34):
a real human form of a scourged, scourged, crucified man. Yeah,
a whip with like, um, several flays on the end
and and I think it has like um, like rocks
or something tied onto the end of the flaz It's
just terrible, very bad crucifixion. We we could do a
podcast on that. Yeah. You know something that I came
(18:57):
out of this research for me was do you have
to be a real s ob to crucify human being,
whether it's the son of God or some criminal criminal
whatever you should The idea that the Romans used to
do that is just it makes my ear blow. Torture
until you die, but it's the worst kind. Yeah. Um.
(19:22):
So they continue to say it is not the product
of an artist. Um. The blood stains are composed of
hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albuman
and um. Despite this, they said it is a mystery
because no combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances
(19:44):
can adequately adequately account for the image. Right. So that's
their official report from that first scientific inquiry, Yeah, published
and these definitely were men of science. But the Stirp
team was also um and it's ill today has is
criticized for. Uh. I guess the way it's put is
(20:06):
there were a team of scientists believers, like they were
all legitimate scientists, but they also legitimately believed the shrouded
turn was the burial shroud of Christ that had been
some way or another miraculously imbued with Christ's image upon
his ascension to Heaven. Yeah, I get the feeling a
lot of this research is like, well, let's get a
(20:27):
team in here to debunk it. Let's get a team
in here to verify it, you know, right, And and
there were skeptics on the Stirp team, but they they
apparently didn't have as full access as the believers did,
and there there was a lot of like infighting and
backbiting among the team. But one thing that's universally agreed
(20:49):
on by the members of the team, skeptics and believers alike,
is that the Vatican itself did not try to influence
the outcome of these tests. At the very least back
in ninete yate they were willing to just say, hey,
whatever whatever you find is what you find. Um, we're
still gonna love the shroud, no matter what right I thought.
The thing you were going to say was. The one
(21:10):
thing they all agreed on was that those sturt t
shirts didn't really work out very well. They argued about
the name a lot, but the sturb team is still
their findings are still criticized, and one of the things
that's very much criticized is the idea that there's no
artificial pigments on the shroud and that the bloodstains are
actually blood for an alternative hypothesis or an alternative um examination.
(21:35):
There's a guy named Walter mcclun did you did you
run into him in the hallways? Very ironic. Well, he's
also very dead, so that's odd, but that happened. Should
have mentioned it was the ghost of Dr McCrone. McCrone,
that's so, I'm sorry, that's it. So Walter McCrone was
I was like, is this guy you know, is he legit?
(21:56):
He's probably the most legitimate scientist of the twentieth century.
Like he he published and edited a u a peer
reviewed journal on microscopy and microscopic investigation. It's called scop
this with an exclamation point. Um. He uh. It was
(22:18):
just he's a legitimate scientist, so let me just say that.
And he did some examination of the turn shroud and
he found, no, there's actually no blood on this at all.
And what you're what what looks to be blood is
actually red ochre pigment for million and then a temper
temper um binder. Yeah. And this was in the late seventies,
(22:41):
early eighties. And he said, um, basically he could account
for everything in there as something that would have been
in a paint from the fifties, whereas other folks have said, no,
actually that iron in there, that's old hemoglobin. That's from
the hemoglobin, and he said, no, it's not. Yeah, he
(23:04):
needn't bend. So the idea that that he did find
red ochre and vermilion pigment, you think, okay, well case
closed here, Like this is a great example of the
shroud of turin. It is not case closed. It's never
going to be case closed. Chemists, molecular biologists, geneticists, you
(23:26):
could throw every single scientist that you can possibly think
of at this thing, and they can find wherever they
want to find, And you're gonna have another team who
finds the other contrary findings. And neither group is going
to read one another's publications except the most hardcore people
carrying out these experience. But people like you and I
(23:49):
have no idea whether wait, was there blood found on
it um? What were the findings about the red ochre.
Did he just surmise that it was red ochre pigment
because he found all the stuff that makes up red
ochre pigment, or did he actually find red ochre pigment?
Like this is the kind of thing that keeps the
shot of turin a mystery. Well, yeah, I mean there
(24:09):
have been He's not the only one to have studied
whether or not it was blood. There have been other
people that said, who's a Heller and Adler said, oh,
it's blood, and it's it's a B blood type. Yes,
we can even tell you that, and then someone else
would come along and say it's not blood, or if
it was, he certainly can't tell the blood type, or
(24:30):
whether or not it's blood from the person who might
have been wrapped in the shroud, or blood from someone
handling it, or animal blood. Yeah, there's a there's a
big criticism of that that it was contamination from somebody
who was actually analyzing the samples, because well, as we'll
see later on, a lot of people touch this thing
over the years, right, and then other skeptics point to
(24:52):
it and say, dude, you can see it's not blood.
That's not blood. Blood turns black or at least such
such a dark, deep brown over the years that it
looks black to the human eye. This looks like blood.
That's not what blood looks like once it dries and
ages on cloth. So there's a lot of different arguments
(25:12):
either side but neither one is compelling enough to convince
the other side that they're correct, correct, And so it
just goes on and on, And I read a I
think a Skeptics Dictionary post on um the Shroud of Turn,
and the the guy who wrote it just perfect skeptics
(25:33):
fashion was basically said, you know, even if you do
prove that this is Jesus's burial shroud, that Jesus Christ
was buried in this burrel shroud, it doesn't prove that
he's the son of God. So it will never be settled. Yeah,
that's not the point of the Shroud of Turn. Yeah,
I mean, I don't think anyone's saying that this proves that. Yeah,
(25:59):
I think they're just trying to get Well, they're two
big mysteries. One is is it authentic as a shroud?
Who is it? Or if it's not, how how was
this thing made? The second thing is called the question
of questions? Yeah, so, uh, should we take another break?
All right, we'll talk about that and some other carbon
fourteen testing and DNA testing right for this? All right?
(26:39):
Should we start with you? Let's start with carbon test.
Let's go chronologically, Uh, late nineteen eighties. I'm a junior
in high school, Sonny Crockett was coked to the gills,
long bangs hanging in my face. I think I'm a skater,
but I'm really not same here. I tried pretty hard,
(27:00):
but I was never that great. I was okay. I
was wearing jams. Sure, you're like a little version of me.
Did you wear jams? Yeah? Did you ever wear skids
or wear those? Like? Past your before? Yeah? Past your tone?
I don't know. Kids. They were like pajama pants, clear
and clear and simple. Definitely not foot but I mean
(27:23):
like they were what you would think of his flannel
pajama pants, but they were to be worn like pants.
They were a weird chat. Not as weird as that
is the cavaricis, but they were weird. I saw a
guy I try not to judge people on their appearance,
but I saw a guy getting on a Delta flight
a few weeks ago wearing, uh, a pair of oversized
(27:46):
baggy fleece batman pajama pants with these huge fuzzy animal
slippers and like a Porsche or a Lamborghini T shirt
and mirrored sunglasses. Oh, how cool. It's like a forty
something in year old man. I couldn't figure it out,
and that man was val Kilmer. That might have been
(28:08):
all right, carbon fourteen dating. The Vaticans said, go forth
and date this thing. Um. That's what I kind of
love about how the Vaticans treated this over the years
of They've always been like, you know, you've got some
new scientific methods. Let's bring him in here and we'll
talk science. Yea. So they sent it to three different
(28:30):
labs University of Oxford Radio Carbon Accelerator Unit UH, University
of Arizona Go Wildcats, and the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology probably so uh Yodlers UH. And this is an
interesting case because they all three of them found that
the shroud material that they were given dated between twelve
(28:54):
sixty and long, long, long after the Jesus of history lived,
and perhaps not coincidentally, right around the time when the
shroud first shows up in the documented record. So that
combined with the fact that it was much after Jesus time,
led a lot of people in the late eighties to say,
case closed. This thing is certainly not the burial cloth
(29:17):
of Jesus. Now, when somebody comes out with um findings
like this, the other side sets about trying to take
it out as much as possible every way they can.
There's a lot of really um interesting backwards twisting turning
arabesques that that involved logic in a lot of a
(29:42):
lot of instances. But with this one of the first
ones that came out was well you you guys, the
sample was tainted somehow. That was a big one. And
then the scientists have said, well, how how is the
sample tainted? And this is where some of the stretching
nous comes in sometimes, right, one of the one of
them accusations is that the samples retained by contemporary carbon deposits,
(30:09):
which threw off the readings of the carbon fourteen. Right. Okay,
So there's a very famous thing that I think maybe
um Walter McCrone came up with. But it shows it's
a graph and it shows how much twentieth century carbon
it would take to to taint the results from the
(30:30):
fourth from the forties to the four fourteenth century CE.
It would take an amount of carbon contamination that weighs
more than the shroud itself weighs. So that was probably
not the case. Yeah. Another thing that um, some people
kind of poopooed about this study was they gave them
(30:50):
three control fabrics to test alongside um all old stuff
Egyptian mummy, a medieval Nubian to him in a medieval
French investment, ecclesiastical siment, and all the data from those three,
from the three different institutions came out the same, whereas
there was a span of about a hundred and fifty
years on the Shroud of turin between the three, and
(31:12):
what they released was the mean of these three. And
so a lot of people said, well, hey, you're your
fancy science. Tests nailed these controls, all three of them,
but there's a big variants in the Shroud of Turrance results,
so they go back to the your stuff was tainted.
Another criticism that was proposed was that they had taken
(31:34):
a patch from the medieval era that had been used
to patch up the shroud, because the shroud actually was
in a fire once yea when it was in France,
I believe still um. It was folded up in a
box and the chapel that it was in caught fire,
and the box caught fire and the shroud miraculously sorry
(32:00):
didn't didn't burn. It just kind of got some scorch
marks and melted a little bit. Still survived. Yeah they
are um, but they survived this fire. So what the
critics of the carbon fourteen test said was that, well,
you guys chose a part that had been patched up
around this time during the medieval age. It's so fact though,
you got it wrong. And then they probably said, well,
(32:22):
why did you give a SEP part? Well they didn't.
The Carbon fourteen reports supposedly says that they specifically avoided
any part that showed any stitching or patches or anything
like that, that they did not take a sample from that.
And these were very small samples too. It's not like
they cut off the bottom third of it and out
for testing. Um. Alright, so back to what you described, well,
(32:46):
you quoted from the description of physicists as the question
of questions. All right, forget the fact that this could
be the shroud that Jesus was buried in. Forget all
this stuff like how was this thing made? Because no
one's been able to recreate this, like come up with
(33:07):
the process that could recreate this thing, because it's got
a weird color and it's just no one can replicate it, right,
And the reason why they're having trouble replicating it is
it's not just the color that's that's tough to replicate.
They're finding that if you look at the places where
it is colored, Um, the thread itself is only just
(33:32):
a little bit saturated with this color. Yeah, like it
soaked in a very like thin amount. Right, This is
what's throwing everybody off. Apparently to me, this is the
whole key that the mystery swings on. If you were
an artist and you were creating this using pigment, your
(33:53):
your paint should just so right through at least one thread.
This stuff is literally not deep enough to penetrate and
individual fiber, let alone, all the way through like a
paint wood point seven micrometers the diameter of an individual fiber.
That's a that's a very shallow um pigmentation, right, So
(34:14):
that this is where the big stumbling block is there, Like,
how would you do this? One of the proposals is that, Um,
there's this technique called bab relief. I always thought it
was boss relief until yesterday. But it's like if you
take an image and you carve it um and this
is actually pretty well known in the medieval era. You
(34:34):
can make it out of metal or um stone, and
you heat it up and you can scorch an image
on fabric. The thing is to make a scorch that's
as shallow as the shroud of turns images. It would
it would have to occur the shrouded have to lay
on the bab relief bust for something like just a
(34:56):
minute fraction of a second, And no one can figure
how you would get a good image like you have
on the shroud of Turin if you just if the
the linen just dropped and was pulled off and less
than a second. No one knows how that could possibly
be done. Yeah, and that's just one like there have
been many, many attempts to replicate this over the years,
(35:19):
either through science or through people using arts and and
uh materials available in the medieval times, UM something called
acid pigmentation. There's actually a kind of photography, very very
primitive photography. I saw that in medieval times. UM something
called dust transfer the bar relief. And then some have
(35:43):
contended it's a Malliard reaction taking place. Okay, well I
don't really know fully how they explained that, and I
don't think it held up. But I mean, that's the
reaction in cooking, like when you're browning like a meat,
so I don't know. Well, that actually deepens the mystery
rather than rather than all of it. Other people say
(36:06):
it could have been burial ointments, ultra violet radiation in
the Bible, and Matthew says the earth shook, the rocks split,
and the tombs broke open after the Crucifixion. So geologist said,
it might have been an earthquake that happened, and maybe
that threw off the radio carbon dating and maybe there
was a blast of neutrons. So you say, turned this
(36:28):
image into the fabric. And those are geologists, legitimate geologists,
but there are also extraordinarily controversial and most people in
their fields shunned them, wouldn't even talk to him at
a cocktail party for Jesus. Basically, they're what they're talking
about is something called piazzo nuclear fission. And the idea
is is that, like if you crush a rock, the
(36:49):
force of it can actually break the atoms apart, releasing
a bunch of neutrons. And this Italian geologist's idea is
that this earthquake that happened when Jesus died um released
these neutrons and created this irradiated image of him on
his burial shroud. And that's if you take that one
(37:10):
line from the Bible completely literally and supposed that they
didn't mean, like, you know, in a symbolic way, the
earth shook. But even if it did, there's no evidence
whatsoever that there is such thing as piezzo nuclear fission.
And then secondly, it even says that it shook when
he Um was crucified, so he wouldn't have even had
the burial shroud around him at the time. Of holes
(37:32):
in that one in particular Um, but it is, it's
a theory. And that's another thing about the shrouded turn too.
It's just learning about all the different hypotheses and all
the different suggestions that people have come up with, and
all the holes that they poke in those suggestions that
in and of itself is fascinating to me. Yeah, the
physicists a lots that I tried the ultra violet light
(37:54):
experiment and he basically said, you know, the the amount
of ultra violet light you need exceeds quote exceeds a
maximum power release by all ultra violet light sources available today.
So how in the world could someone have done this
on purpose in medieval times? So chuck the um carbon
fourteen and the fabric analysis. Those are huge, big landmark
(38:17):
cases one, right, and then I think things just kind
of everybody bickered for the next twelve five years. Yeah,
it's a lot of bickering, and um, finally somebody's like, well,
hey man, we've got this great DNA testing stuff we
can do. Uh, let's do let's do something. Let's do it.
(38:38):
To it to the shouted turn with the DNA tests. Yeah,
and so what they found out, Um, they found out
a lot of interesting things that didn't in the end
lead to any sort of verification of fake or authentic
at all, but interesting stuff. Nonetheless. One is that this
thing got around um or at the very least, um
(39:00):
was touched by a lot of people from all over
the world, and in return, it touched a lot of
people around the world. I would say, so, um, you
know Europe, uh, Middle East, India, Africa had DNA from
a lot of folks, and it had a lot of
plant DNA too. They tested both. Yeah, and a lot
(39:23):
of weird DNA plant DNA showed up on it. Right,
So you've got like black locust trees from Appalachia and
North America. Yeah, that was a little surprising. It's weird.
Apparently a very rare Asian pear tree. Um stuff that's
fun in India. Yeah, um, Mediterranean clover. That makes sense.
(39:47):
Well yeah, and so does with the human DNA. They
found the the most the heaviest concentration of DNA was
from people in the Middle East around where Jesus was buried,
So that kind of makes sense. Um. But here's the
one I don't get. They said that the oldest DNA
was from India, which they say suggested it could have
(40:11):
been manufactured in India because Indians and Europeans didn't like
have a lot of contact back then. But then I
saw someone trying to refute that in the same article,
and this is from Life Science by the way, um,
saying that it could have been uh when it was
on public display. Is where the Indian DNA came from.
(40:33):
That's where all this DNA could have come from. Well yeah,
but they said that the oldest DNA was from India.
So again it's just like every time someone uncovers something
that's just another little mystery to it. It It seems like
unless you go back to the carbon dating and those
scientists are like, now this has stood up to scrutiny
over the years. Yeah. And I actually saw a BBC
(40:53):
um little documentary on the uh, the shot of Turn,
and they went in physic it did somebody who was
there at at Oxford when they did the carbon dating,
and they were like no, he was his mind seemed
wide open at the very least, but he was definitely
like no, it was all legitimate and I've never heard
(41:13):
an objection to it that that panned out. You know, Um,
you got anything else, Well, I think you can probably
sit here for hours and hours, yeah, in hours, but
we're not going if you if it has floated your boat.
There's plenty of stuff for you to go read. You
can start with a couple of great articles that we used,
(41:36):
um one from nat GEO, Why is shoud of Turn?
Secrets continue to elude science? That was great and live science,
like you said, article called is it a fake DNA
testing deepens mystery, shout of Turn and plenty of other stuff.
Go check out um Walter mccrone's site as well. He's
got his own site on the shutter Turn. Yeah. Oh
(41:58):
it's by the way, I mentioned him and in this
meant to mention this send anology. It's what it's called
the Official Study of the Shroud. Really, it has its
own ology s I N D O N i'll apology.
We all know how to spell that O L O
G I E r Uh. Well, if you want to
know more about the shild, like we said, go start
(42:19):
searching and welcome to the rabbit hole. So see the thing?
Yeah in person? Why not? I totally would if I
was in your turn. There's steamers that go to Italy.
Still uh. And since we said Italy, it's time for listener.
I'm gonna call this divorce upcoming. Hey, guys, my wife
(42:42):
Jade and I are huge fans of the show and
listen almost every night before bed. But we don't like
each other. We have our favorite s Y s G moments.
But when that made us both laugh like crazy was
Chuck's nerd gasm towards the end of the Action Figures episode.
We rewound the podcast and listen to that part so
often I'd decided to take a clip. Uh, make a
(43:02):
clip of it and said it as my alarm clock tone. Uh.
Sound files attached. It's very short, but played on a
loop fifteen to twenty times at seven thirty am, and
you will get the full effect. Now we wake up
to your voices as well as falling asleep to them. Uh.
Long and may you're a great show. Continued David. Uh,
he didn't leave his wife's name, but David and oh
yeah Jade uh in Newcastle, England. And let's just play
(43:24):
this really quick. He's played like five times to get
the full effect. Let's hear it, go go go go go. Wow.
That would wake me up. I sit pulled up right
(43:45):
and be like not a Cain. Yeah, that's a yeah.
Good luck with the divorce. Thanks sorry Jade and David.
Thanks Jade and David. You could also bring them together,
you know, right in opposition against us. Okay, Uh, thanks
Dad and David and Jade or Dade that's your couple
name now and Javid? Um, yeah, either one's good. Uh.
(44:08):
If you want to get in touch with this like
Jade and David did, yeah, you can tweet to us
at s Y s K podcast or I'm also at
Josh um Clark Chucks at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
at stuff you Should Know on Facebook dot com. Uh.
You can send us an email stuff podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
a home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot
(44:29):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is It How stuff Works dot com
Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know
what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let
people know about your favorite podcasts, just to share the
sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right, it's t r
y pod still in nascent industry. A lot of people
don't know what podcasts are and helps everybody out if
(00:20):
you would go out and just say, hey, family member,
who I see it? Thanksgiving once a year? Right, you
should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what
they are. Here's a cool show you should try, and
here's how to get it. Yeah, and it doesn't have
to be our show, just any podcast you like in
general that you think someone else would like to share it. Yeah,
So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
(00:44):
stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Sitting across
from me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant look so sharp today, dude,
wrapped in wrapped in my herring bone linen. I thought
(01:06):
that was an Infinity scarf. You're wearing it like an
Infinity scarf. That's the second Infinity scarf joke you've made,
although one was live on stage where you, uh, well,
immediate at you accidentally made fun of the lady there
on the first Yeah, some lady was like, well, what's
wrong with the infinity scarves? And I looked over and
(01:27):
lo and behold she was wearing an infinity scarf. Backpedal
from that pretty fast. I don't get why what is
it called an infinity scarf because it looks as if
it never ends. I think it's a scarf that is
sewn together. It's like a ring. Okay, that's all. Okay,
it's not a good name for it for not a
great invention, like an infinity pool that never ends, like
(01:50):
you can swim and swim forever. It looks as if
I just call him rich person. Pools. Yeah, not like
my above ground pool in the back the rust nator. Yeah,
the hick right next to the trampoline. Yeah, alright, I
think we've insulted enough people. Well that was a Simpsons reference.
(02:10):
Technically they insult and the hick um, Yes we did anyway,
So let's talk Shroud of turin Chuck, are you familiar?
What made you pick this the easter? No, it's just timing.
Although heck, that's great timing. Huh. Seriously, it wasn't it was.
To be honest, I was listening to an episode of
(02:32):
w TF with Mark Marin and he it's an older episode.
All of our ideas from Mark man I'm growing in
a stache. Well I've grown it. I'm just gonna shave
the beard. Uh. He was interviewing William Friedkin, the director,
and uh who. As it turns out, it's quite chatty.
Did he not stop talking the whole time? He talked
a lot. It was a really good interview. Well, yeah,
(02:55):
that's what you want out of an interviewee, yeah, sure, um.
But he saw all the shroud of turn in person,
and he described the experience and I thought, why haven't
we done one on that? That's pretty important. What was
his reaction to it? He he wept. So that's that's
actually something that's called Jerusalem syndrome. Yeah. He he was
(03:15):
incredibly move and he's not especially well. He talked a
lot about Jesus specifically, but said that he's not religious,
but he really has a thing for Jesus. But but
he doesn't identify as a Christian, but he really he
just is a big fan of Jesus. Jesus file Sure,
which is you know a lot of people like that.
(03:36):
I think, yeah, there's even um Messianic Jews Jews for
Jesus uh and apparently William Freed Kent I mean bio
because of the two categories Bill accounts Jesus the historical figure.
It's pretty stand up guy. Sure, you know, sure? And
I think, well, let's just stop dancing around this. Okay,
(03:58):
we're not a really just podcast. We're not. Every time
we've ever done in religious episode, we've gotten so much
blowback from every single thing we've gotten wrong that we're like,
our structure is not really set up to two podcasts
on religion very much. The Shroud of Turn is such
(04:19):
an interesting and contentious flash point where science and religion
meet and butt heads that we just couldn't possibly pretend
like it doesn't exist. It's too interesting. And I can
imagine that William Freakin wept when he saw the Shroud
of Turn. I would love to see the Shout of
Turn myself. Um, I don't. I have no idea what
(04:41):
my reaction would be, but I wouldn't be all that
surprised if I did weep when I saw it. Whatever
the Shout of Turn is, it is probably the most
venerated object in the world. Yeah, perhaps it's at least
among the top two or three. Take of me that, um,
and the idea that so many people look at this
(05:04):
thing with love and awe and amazement, that it's somehow
abuse it with the very stuff that they that it's
venerated for in some weird way. And I can imagine
that even as an atheist you would get hit by that. Well,
be to me like looking at a at a great
(05:25):
painting or something. Um, not to say that it is
a painting, even though some people say it is a painting,
which we'll get to. But you know what I'm saying, like, uh,
just moved by seeing the Mona Lisa, Yeah, or being
like I thought I was bigger than that. Yeah, I
was a little underwhelmed. Well, but that's the same thing
that Jerusalem syndrome. Typically happens when you go to a
very holy site in your overcome, but it can also
(05:45):
happen when you're looking at art as well. All Right,
it is a fifty if you don't know what it
is and you're hearing's go on and on about crying
t out of Turin, it is a fifty three square
foot piece of linen rectangle. I think it's about three
ft by four ft. Yeah, and it is, like I said,
(06:05):
herring bone twill uh, faint brownish image that uh when
we'll get into some of the more interesting finer points.
But when photographed the negative images is a very clear
image of a man, naked man with his arms folded
over his groin area, tastefully beard, mustache, shoulder length hair
(06:30):
parted in the middle um. And you know, looks like
that if you grew up in the Southern Baptist church.
Looks like that picture of Jesus hanging on the wall
that I grew up with, or your friend that you
went to that three eleven show back in Uh. And
there are stains in areas on the linen consistent with
(06:51):
crucifixion wounds. Yes, well, which we'll get to because it's
very important. All of this is I feel like we're
gonna be teasing this out throughout. Well, let's stop. Let's
start at the very beginning of all this. Okay, if
you're a believer and that the shot of turn is
a legitimate religious artifact, that is to say that Jesus
Christ was wrapped in it after his Christ buried in
(07:15):
it in Jurus, and that is indeed his image when
he died. He and this is Jesus we're talking about.
Still not William freaking right, He's still alive, right, is he? Yeah?
When Jesus died and was interred or in tombed, I'm sorry,
after three days, his apostles went and checked on him
(07:39):
and they found he wasn't there. He had ascended into heaven.
This just happened to be what we now celebrate as Easter. Yeah,
and a boy, really, this is going to come out
right around then, isn't it. Yeah? And Easter celebrates the
among Christians, the resurrection of Christ. After his death, he
dives Christified on Good Friday. He is found to be
(08:01):
have been resurrected up into Heaven on Easter Sunday. Jesus
wasn't there. His body was gone, but according to legend,
they found shrouds still there, his burial shroud. So the
idea is is that his burial shroud was taken out
of his tomb um and venerated from the get go
(08:24):
basically held on to so and moved from uh I
guess the from Jerusalem out to where did make its
second trip to believe. From there it went straight to
Turkey Constantinople and it was there for several hundred years. Right.
It was in the possession of some of the sultan's there. Yeah,
(08:45):
and then the Crusaders came along and said, we'll be
taking that and whatever else we want, and we're going
to move it to Athens, Greece. And it was there
um or actually I don't know if the Crusaders took it.
Maybe it'll smuggle out, but crusaders sacked the town. I
saw both. Well, the history is a bit murky until
(09:05):
the mid fourteenth century, right, it is so. And you
would think that if the Crusaders had taken it, they
would have taken it back to Europe because that's where
they hailed from. They wouldn't have taken it down to Athens, Greece.
But supposedly it's spent several centuries between the Crusades and
about the thirteenth century in Greece, and somehow, some way
(09:27):
it made its way to France, right, Yeah, a French night,
and I think this is where it gets a little
more solid and it's travels. Uh. Jeffroy de Charny de
Charny Um took it to France about thirty miles outside
of Paris, and um eventually it mounted it made his
(09:48):
way to its final home in Turin, Italy and where
it's been there ever since. Yeah, the cathedral of St.
John the Baptist is when it landed there, and it's
still there and you can go look at I think
it went on tour for a little while within the
last few years, right with van Halen. Uh. Yeah, it
(10:08):
was on display as a part of a traveling exhibit.
Was it traveling or was it just on display? In turn? Now,
I think it traveled but sprised. But here's what I'm
going on is William Friedkin's account. So I'm not sure,
but I do know that um more people saw it
in the last like few years than ever before, ever before,
(10:30):
very very recent times, because apparently, um, for many centuries
it was on public display. Yeah, you just have to
go to Turin, go into that church. Uh, and they would,
you know, probably ask you a serious questions before you entered,
right and as you exited, like what kind of fish
is this? That Jesus fish? Come on back? Uh. The
(10:52):
Catholic Church does not have an official stand on the
authenticity of this shroud. But um, chump, uh Chope, Pope
John Paul the Chopster said, you know, we trust science
basically to keep studying this thing. Yeah. The church, um,
I think, used to have an official position on it
until I think around and they said, you know what,
(11:16):
whatever it is, we still believe that you Catholics or
Christians should venerate this thing because at the very least
it's symbolic of Christ suffering on the cross. Um. But
we're not gonna say either way. We're the Catholic Church,
thank you, good night. I think it's how and transmission.
(11:37):
That's how Pope Ball ended all of his speeches. Um,
all right, let's let's take a little break here. You
want to, yeah, and we'll talk a bit about the
early science the shot turn. So Chuck, we were saying, um,
(12:10):
the shroud. As far as the Catholics are concerned, the
shroud didn't really exist until thirteen fifty three, when Geoffrey
de Charnay came up with it. Right, So that's the
beginning of its documented existence. That the Shroud of Turn
at least goes back on the record to thirteen fifty three,
which makes it pretty awesome in and of itself, right,
(12:32):
And for centuries and centuries people saw it, people looked
at it. I'm sure they kissed it and wept over
it and everything. And then it wasn't until the I
think the nineteenth century or at least the twentieth century
that it was really started to move out of public
display and started to be cared for and preserved a
little more, I think. And that's when science kind of
(12:54):
started to come around, specifically starting in right, Yeah, that
was the first. Like if you if you look at
just the regular image of the shroud of Turin, not
the negative photographic image, you know, you sort of see
an image of a person. But in like you said,
there was an amateur photographer in Italy name uh Second.
That means the second. He had an older sibling. He
(13:17):
took a picture. He was first though, No Primo that right.
If you're seeing Big Night, it's Stanley Tucci movie. Yeah,
Secondo and Primo. Yeah yeah, man, I won't see that again.
I haven't seen it since it was out. Have you
ever heard um that fam key Jansen? You know, the actress.
Does her name mean female or girl in Danish idea?
(13:40):
I think it might because that means her name is girl.
Jansen that's what her parents named her. If that's what
that means, all right, Sorry, that's okay. Um. So Secundo
took this photo. Um, when he was developing it, he
saw the reverse negative and went, wow, Mama Mia. What
(14:00):
he saw was that much more clear image of a man,
of the likeness of a of a human being in
much more detail. He was accused of forgery, of course,
out of the gate. Uh, and I think wasn't fully
clear to like the nineteen thirties when more photographers did
the same thing, and they're like, it's just a negative image.
(14:21):
Let the guy up, yeah right, like this round. Yeah.
So this negative image really kicked off like an even
greater interest in the shroud of turn. I think up
to that point, um, people of science had just been
kind of like, yeah, yeah, sure, that's exactly what it is.
It looks definitely like a burial shroud. When they saw that,
(14:43):
though that that negative, it's really difficult to avoid the
fact that it is clearly the image of a man
like you described at the beginning. It's not Jesus on toast, No,
it's nott or on my the wall of the house
I'm demoing from, you know, or this grilled cheese. I met. Yeah, Um, no,
(15:08):
it's it is, and it's universally recognized as that. It's
not like it kind of looks like this, it's that's
that's what that is, so much so that um even
skeptics say, well, then it was just a painting or
something like that by some artists. But just like that
photographed by Secondo pia Um, we've our new techniques and
(15:32):
tricks and software that we use as far as photography
goes and images goes, is starting to unlock even more
weirdness of it too. Right, So if you take the
um the lightness and darkness patterns and turn them into
like three dimensions, it actually reveals very clearly the three
(15:52):
dimensional shape of a face, which is kind of surprising
because that would mean that if we're a painting, somebody
had to have painted on a face with just the
right amount of darkness in places where that would have
been closest to the cloth, and lighter amounts in places
(16:16):
that would have been further away from the cloth, so
that when you did look at it in this light
gradient map, it would appear in in perfect three To mention,
it's a bizarre little thing, don't you think for sure. Uh.
As far as real study, UM, it took all the
way until almost nineteen seventy nine, sixty nine, when scientists
could finally I mean for decades people had done um
(16:40):
what they call indirect analysis. So basically, you know, I'm
looking at it, and I'm thinking about it and I'm
talking about it. But as far as actually getting your
hands on it, it was nineteen sixty nine when um,
like you said that they needed to preserve this thing.
So they brought in a team of of scientists us
(17:00):
to say, hey, how do we preserve this thing. We'll
let you touch it. And they all went, oh, that
sounds good to me. Uh so they formed the shroud.
We're always laughing about how the acronyms work out perfect.
This is not this is not that the Shroud of
Turn Research Project or stirp Uh. They had five days
(17:25):
of continuous access in ninety eight hours a day for
five days. Yeah, so this is nine years after the
first scientists were allowed to touch it. I guess they
formed this thing and they you know, of course, what
they did was it and say like all right, well
we'll work eight or nine hours a day, kick back
half some dinner and then sleep, get up to start
over eight course Italian meals. They split up into teams
(17:46):
so they could work non stop around the clock. They
had thirty three members from all over the spectrum of science,
twenty major research institutions, along with a team of European
scientists who observed. I guess they sat there with our
arms folded and just like you know, every ten minutes.
They were the ones that brought the good espresso. The
(18:07):
US led team, We're like, we don't know where you
get that around here, not the kind of espresso you
spit out into a napkin. Like what was that? It
was in Mulholland Drive when a great scene. Um so
here's what their report said, we need like a bombshell
effect here, okay, uh quote the shroud images that of
(18:34):
a real human form of a scourged, scourged, crucified man. Yeah,
a whip with like, um, several flays on the end
and and I think it has like um, like rocks
or something tied onto the end of the flaz It's
just terrible, very bad crucifixion. We we could do a
podcast on that. Yeah. You know something that I came
(18:57):
out of this research for me was do you have
to be a real s ob to crucify human being,
whether it's the son of God or some criminal criminal
whatever you should The idea that the Romans used to
do that is just it makes my ear blow. Torture
until you die, but it's the worst kind. Yeah. Um.
(19:22):
So they continue to say it is not the product
of an artist. Um. The blood stains are composed of
hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albuman
and um. Despite this, they said it is a mystery
because no combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances
(19:44):
can adequately adequately account for the image. Right. So that's
their official report from that first scientific inquiry, Yeah, published
and these definitely were men of science. But the Stirp
team was also um and it's ill today has is
criticized for. Uh. I guess the way it's put is
(20:06):
there were a team of scientists believers, like they were
all legitimate scientists, but they also legitimately believed the shrouded
turn was the burial shroud of Christ that had been
some way or another miraculously imbued with Christ's image upon
his ascension to Heaven. Yeah, I get the feeling a
lot of this research is like, well, let's get a
(20:27):
team in here to debunk it. Let's get a team
in here to verify it, you know, right, And and
there were skeptics on the Stirp team, but they they
apparently didn't have as full access as the believers did,
and there there was a lot of like infighting and
backbiting among the team. But one thing that's universally agreed
(20:49):
on by the members of the team, skeptics and believers alike,
is that the Vatican itself did not try to influence
the outcome of these tests. At the very least back
in ninete yate they were willing to just say, hey,
whatever whatever you find is what you find. Um, we're
still gonna love the shroud, no matter what right I thought.
The thing you were going to say was. The one
(21:10):
thing they all agreed on was that those sturt t
shirts didn't really work out very well. They argued about
the name a lot, but the sturb team is still
their findings are still criticized, and one of the things
that's very much criticized is the idea that there's no
artificial pigments on the shroud and that the bloodstains are
actually blood for an alternative hypothesis or an alternative um examination.
(21:35):
There's a guy named Walter mcclun did you did you
run into him in the hallways? Very ironic. Well, he's
also very dead, so that's odd, but that happened. Should
have mentioned it was the ghost of Dr McCrone. McCrone,
that's so, I'm sorry, that's it. So Walter McCrone was
I was like, is this guy you know, is he legit?
(21:56):
He's probably the most legitimate scientist of the twentieth century.
Like he he published and edited a u a peer
reviewed journal on microscopy and microscopic investigation. It's called scop
this with an exclamation point. Um. He uh. It was
(22:18):
just he's a legitimate scientist, so let me just say that.
And he did some examination of the turn shroud and
he found, no, there's actually no blood on this at all.
And what you're what what looks to be blood is
actually red ochre pigment for million and then a temper
temper um binder. Yeah. And this was in the late seventies,
(22:41):
early eighties. And he said, um, basically he could account
for everything in there as something that would have been
in a paint from the fifties, whereas other folks have said, no,
actually that iron in there, that's old hemoglobin. That's from
the hemoglobin, and he said, no, it's not. Yeah, he
(23:04):
needn't bend. So the idea that that he did find
red ochre and vermilion pigment, you think, okay, well case
closed here, Like this is a great example of the
shroud of turin. It is not case closed. It's never
going to be case closed. Chemists, molecular biologists, geneticists, you
(23:26):
could throw every single scientist that you can possibly think
of at this thing, and they can find wherever they
want to find, And you're gonna have another team who
finds the other contrary findings. And neither group is going
to read one another's publications except the most hardcore people
carrying out these experience. But people like you and I
(23:49):
have no idea whether wait, was there blood found on
it um? What were the findings about the red ochre.
Did he just surmise that it was red ochre pigment
because he found all the stuff that makes up red
ochre pigment, or did he actually find red ochre pigment?
Like this is the kind of thing that keeps the
shot of turin a mystery. Well, yeah, I mean there
(24:09):
have been He's not the only one to have studied
whether or not it was blood. There have been other
people that said, who's a Heller and Adler said, oh,
it's blood, and it's it's a B blood type. Yes,
we can even tell you that, and then someone else
would come along and say it's not blood, or if
it was, he certainly can't tell the blood type, or
(24:30):
whether or not it's blood from the person who might
have been wrapped in the shroud, or blood from someone
handling it, or animal blood. Yeah, there's a there's a
big criticism of that that it was contamination from somebody
who was actually analyzing the samples, because well, as we'll
see later on, a lot of people touch this thing
over the years, right, and then other skeptics point to
(24:52):
it and say, dude, you can see it's not blood.
That's not blood. Blood turns black or at least such
such a dark, deep brown over the years that it
looks black to the human eye. This looks like blood.
That's not what blood looks like once it dries and
ages on cloth. So there's a lot of different arguments
(25:12):
either side but neither one is compelling enough to convince
the other side that they're correct, correct, And so it
just goes on and on, And I read a I
think a Skeptics Dictionary post on um the Shroud of Turn,
and the the guy who wrote it just perfect skeptics
(25:33):
fashion was basically said, you know, even if you do
prove that this is Jesus's burial shroud, that Jesus Christ
was buried in this burrel shroud, it doesn't prove that
he's the son of God. So it will never be settled. Yeah,
that's not the point of the Shroud of Turn. Yeah,
I mean, I don't think anyone's saying that this proves that. Yeah,
(25:59):
I think they're just trying to get Well, they're two
big mysteries. One is is it authentic as a shroud?
Who is it? Or if it's not, how how was
this thing made? The second thing is called the question
of questions? Yeah, so, uh, should we take another break?
All right, we'll talk about that and some other carbon
fourteen testing and DNA testing right for this? All right?
(26:39):
Should we start with you? Let's start with carbon test.
Let's go chronologically, Uh, late nineteen eighties. I'm a junior
in high school, Sonny Crockett was coked to the gills,
long bangs hanging in my face. I think I'm a skater,
but I'm really not same here. I tried pretty hard,
(27:00):
but I was never that great. I was okay. I
was wearing jams. Sure, you're like a little version of me.
Did you wear jams? Yeah? Did you ever wear skids
or wear those? Like? Past your before? Yeah? Past your tone?
I don't know. Kids. They were like pajama pants, clear
and clear and simple. Definitely not foot but I mean
(27:23):
like they were what you would think of his flannel
pajama pants, but they were to be worn like pants.
They were a weird chat. Not as weird as that
is the cavaricis, but they were weird. I saw a
guy I try not to judge people on their appearance,
but I saw a guy getting on a Delta flight
a few weeks ago wearing, uh, a pair of oversized
(27:46):
baggy fleece batman pajama pants with these huge fuzzy animal
slippers and like a Porsche or a Lamborghini T shirt
and mirrored sunglasses. Oh, how cool. It's like a forty
something in year old man. I couldn't figure it out,
and that man was val Kilmer. That might have been
(28:08):
all right, carbon fourteen dating. The Vaticans said, go forth
and date this thing. Um. That's what I kind of
love about how the Vaticans treated this over the years
of They've always been like, you know, you've got some
new scientific methods. Let's bring him in here and we'll
talk science. Yea. So they sent it to three different
(28:30):
labs University of Oxford Radio Carbon Accelerator Unit UH, University
of Arizona Go Wildcats, and the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology probably so uh Yodlers UH. And this is an
interesting case because they all three of them found that
the shroud material that they were given dated between twelve
(28:54):
sixty and long, long, long after the Jesus of history lived,
and perhaps not coincidentally, right around the time when the
shroud first shows up in the documented record. So that
combined with the fact that it was much after Jesus time,
led a lot of people in the late eighties to say,
case closed. This thing is certainly not the burial cloth
(29:17):
of Jesus. Now, when somebody comes out with um findings
like this, the other side sets about trying to take
it out as much as possible every way they can.
There's a lot of really um interesting backwards twisting turning
arabesques that that involved logic in a lot of a
(29:42):
lot of instances. But with this one of the first
ones that came out was well you you guys, the
sample was tainted somehow. That was a big one. And
then the scientists have said, well, how how is the
sample tainted? And this is where some of the stretching
nous comes in sometimes, right, one of the one of
them accusations is that the samples retained by contemporary carbon deposits,
(30:09):
which threw off the readings of the carbon fourteen. Right. Okay,
So there's a very famous thing that I think maybe
um Walter McCrone came up with. But it shows it's
a graph and it shows how much twentieth century carbon
it would take to to taint the results from the
(30:30):
fourth from the forties to the four fourteenth century CE.
It would take an amount of carbon contamination that weighs
more than the shroud itself weighs. So that was probably
not the case. Yeah. Another thing that um, some people
kind of poopooed about this study was they gave them
(30:50):
three control fabrics to test alongside um all old stuff
Egyptian mummy, a medieval Nubian to him in a medieval
French investment, ecclesiastical siment, and all the data from those three,
from the three different institutions came out the same, whereas
there was a span of about a hundred and fifty
years on the Shroud of turin between the three, and
(31:12):
what they released was the mean of these three. And
so a lot of people said, well, hey, you're your
fancy science. Tests nailed these controls, all three of them,
but there's a big variants in the Shroud of Turrance results,
so they go back to the your stuff was tainted.
Another criticism that was proposed was that they had taken
(31:34):
a patch from the medieval era that had been used
to patch up the shroud, because the shroud actually was
in a fire once yea when it was in France,
I believe still um. It was folded up in a
box and the chapel that it was in caught fire,
and the box caught fire and the shroud miraculously sorry
(32:00):
didn't didn't burn. It just kind of got some scorch
marks and melted a little bit. Still survived. Yeah they
are um, but they survived this fire. So what the
critics of the carbon fourteen test said was that, well,
you guys chose a part that had been patched up
around this time during the medieval age. It's so fact though,
you got it wrong. And then they probably said, well,
(32:22):
why did you give a SEP part? Well they didn't.
The Carbon fourteen reports supposedly says that they specifically avoided
any part that showed any stitching or patches or anything
like that, that they did not take a sample from that.
And these were very small samples too. It's not like
they cut off the bottom third of it and out
for testing. Um. Alright, so back to what you described, well,
(32:46):
you quoted from the description of physicists as the question
of questions. All right, forget the fact that this could
be the shroud that Jesus was buried in. Forget all
this stuff like how was this thing made? Because no
one's been able to recreate this, like come up with
(33:07):
the process that could recreate this thing, because it's got
a weird color and it's just no one can replicate it, right,
And the reason why they're having trouble replicating it is
it's not just the color that's that's tough to replicate.
They're finding that if you look at the places where
it is colored, Um, the thread itself is only just
(33:32):
a little bit saturated with this color. Yeah, like it
soaked in a very like thin amount. Right, This is
what's throwing everybody off. Apparently to me, this is the
whole key that the mystery swings on. If you were
an artist and you were creating this using pigment, your
(33:53):
your paint should just so right through at least one thread.
This stuff is literally not deep enough to penetrate and
individual fiber, let alone, all the way through like a
paint wood point seven micrometers the diameter of an individual fiber.
That's a that's a very shallow um pigmentation, right, So
(34:14):
that this is where the big stumbling block is there, Like,
how would you do this? One of the proposals is that, Um,
there's this technique called bab relief. I always thought it
was boss relief until yesterday. But it's like if you
take an image and you carve it um and this
is actually pretty well known in the medieval era. You
(34:34):
can make it out of metal or um stone, and
you heat it up and you can scorch an image
on fabric. The thing is to make a scorch that's
as shallow as the shroud of turns images. It would
it would have to occur the shrouded have to lay
on the bab relief bust for something like just a
(34:56):
minute fraction of a second, And no one can figure
how you would get a good image like you have
on the shroud of Turin if you just if the
the linen just dropped and was pulled off and less
than a second. No one knows how that could possibly
be done. Yeah, and that's just one like there have
been many, many attempts to replicate this over the years,
(35:19):
either through science or through people using arts and and
uh materials available in the medieval times, UM something called
acid pigmentation. There's actually a kind of photography, very very
primitive photography. I saw that in medieval times. UM something
called dust transfer the bar relief. And then some have
(35:43):
contended it's a Malliard reaction taking place. Okay, well I
don't really know fully how they explained that, and I
don't think it held up. But I mean, that's the
reaction in cooking, like when you're browning like a meat,
so I don't know. Well, that actually deepens the mystery
rather than rather than all of it. Other people say
(36:06):
it could have been burial ointments, ultra violet radiation in
the Bible, and Matthew says the earth shook, the rocks split,
and the tombs broke open after the Crucifixion. So geologist said,
it might have been an earthquake that happened, and maybe
that threw off the radio carbon dating and maybe there
was a blast of neutrons. So you say, turned this
(36:28):
image into the fabric. And those are geologists, legitimate geologists,
but there are also extraordinarily controversial and most people in
their fields shunned them, wouldn't even talk to him at
a cocktail party for Jesus. Basically, they're what they're talking
about is something called piazzo nuclear fission. And the idea
is is that, like if you crush a rock, the
(36:49):
force of it can actually break the atoms apart, releasing
a bunch of neutrons. And this Italian geologist's idea is
that this earthquake that happened when Jesus died um released
these neutrons and created this irradiated image of him on
his burial shroud. And that's if you take that one
(37:10):
line from the Bible completely literally and supposed that they
didn't mean, like, you know, in a symbolic way, the
earth shook. But even if it did, there's no evidence
whatsoever that there is such thing as piezzo nuclear fission.
And then secondly, it even says that it shook when
he Um was crucified, so he wouldn't have even had
the burial shroud around him at the time. Of holes
(37:32):
in that one in particular Um, but it is, it's
a theory. And that's another thing about the shrouded turn too.
It's just learning about all the different hypotheses and all
the different suggestions that people have come up with, and
all the holes that they poke in those suggestions that
in and of itself is fascinating to me. Yeah, the
physicists a lots that I tried the ultra violet light
(37:54):
experiment and he basically said, you know, the the amount
of ultra violet light you need exceeds quote exceeds a
maximum power release by all ultra violet light sources available today.
So how in the world could someone have done this
on purpose in medieval times? So chuck the um carbon
fourteen and the fabric analysis. Those are huge, big landmark
(38:17):
cases one, right, and then I think things just kind
of everybody bickered for the next twelve five years. Yeah,
it's a lot of bickering, and um, finally somebody's like, well,
hey man, we've got this great DNA testing stuff we
can do. Uh, let's do let's do something. Let's do it.
(38:38):
To it to the shouted turn with the DNA tests. Yeah,
and so what they found out, Um, they found out
a lot of interesting things that didn't in the end
lead to any sort of verification of fake or authentic
at all, but interesting stuff. Nonetheless. One is that this
thing got around um or at the very least, um
(39:00):
was touched by a lot of people from all over
the world, and in return, it touched a lot of
people around the world. I would say, so, um, you
know Europe, uh, Middle East, India, Africa had DNA from
a lot of folks, and it had a lot of
plant DNA too. They tested both. Yeah, and a lot
(39:23):
of weird DNA plant DNA showed up on it. Right,
So you've got like black locust trees from Appalachia and
North America. Yeah, that was a little surprising. It's weird.
Apparently a very rare Asian pear tree. Um stuff that's
fun in India. Yeah, um, Mediterranean clover. That makes sense.
(39:47):
Well yeah, and so does with the human DNA. They
found the the most the heaviest concentration of DNA was
from people in the Middle East around where Jesus was buried,
So that kind of makes sense. Um. But here's the
one I don't get. They said that the oldest DNA
was from India, which they say suggested it could have
(40:11):
been manufactured in India because Indians and Europeans didn't like
have a lot of contact back then. But then I
saw someone trying to refute that in the same article,
and this is from Life Science by the way, um,
saying that it could have been uh when it was
on public display. Is where the Indian DNA came from.
(40:33):
That's where all this DNA could have come from. Well yeah,
but they said that the oldest DNA was from India.
So again it's just like every time someone uncovers something
that's just another little mystery to it. It It seems like
unless you go back to the carbon dating and those
scientists are like, now this has stood up to scrutiny
over the years. Yeah. And I actually saw a BBC
(40:53):
um little documentary on the uh, the shot of Turn,
and they went in physic it did somebody who was
there at at Oxford when they did the carbon dating,
and they were like no, he was his mind seemed
wide open at the very least, but he was definitely
like no, it was all legitimate and I've never heard
(41:13):
an objection to it that that panned out. You know, Um,
you got anything else, Well, I think you can probably
sit here for hours and hours, yeah, in hours, but
we're not going if you if it has floated your boat.
There's plenty of stuff for you to go read. You
can start with a couple of great articles that we used,
(41:36):
um one from nat GEO, Why is shoud of Turn?
Secrets continue to elude science? That was great and live science,
like you said, article called is it a fake DNA
testing deepens mystery, shout of Turn and plenty of other stuff.
Go check out um Walter mccrone's site as well. He's
got his own site on the shutter Turn. Yeah. Oh
(41:58):
it's by the way, I mentioned him and in this
meant to mention this send anology. It's what it's called
the Official Study of the Shroud. Really, it has its
own ology s I N D O N i'll apology.
We all know how to spell that O L O
G I E r Uh. Well, if you want to
know more about the shild, like we said, go start
(42:19):
searching and welcome to the rabbit hole. So see the thing?
Yeah in person? Why not? I totally would if I
was in your turn. There's steamers that go to Italy.
Still uh. And since we said Italy, it's time for listener.
I'm gonna call this divorce upcoming. Hey, guys, my wife
(42:42):
Jade and I are huge fans of the show and
listen almost every night before bed. But we don't like
each other. We have our favorite s Y s G moments.
But when that made us both laugh like crazy was
Chuck's nerd gasm towards the end of the Action Figures episode.
We rewound the podcast and listen to that part so
often I'd decided to take a clip. Uh, make a
(43:02):
clip of it and said it as my alarm clock tone. Uh.
Sound files attached. It's very short, but played on a
loop fifteen to twenty times at seven thirty am, and
you will get the full effect. Now we wake up
to your voices as well as falling asleep to them. Uh.
Long and may you're a great show. Continued David. Uh,
he didn't leave his wife's name, but David and oh
yeah Jade uh in Newcastle, England. And let's just play
(43:24):
this really quick. He's played like five times to get
the full effect. Let's hear it, go go go go go. Wow.
That would wake me up. I sit pulled up right
(43:45):
and be like not a Cain. Yeah, that's a yeah.
Good luck with the divorce. Thanks sorry Jade and David.
Thanks Jade and David. You could also bring them together,
you know, right in opposition against us. Okay, Uh, thanks
Dad and David and Jade or Dade that's your couple
name now and Javid? Um, yeah, either one's good. Uh.
(44:08):
If you want to get in touch with this like
Jade and David did, yeah, you can tweet to us
at s Y s K podcast or I'm also at
Josh um Clark Chucks at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
at stuff you Should Know on Facebook dot com. Uh.
You can send us an email stuff podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
a home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot
(44:29):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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