Ritual Sacrifice

Our final Halloween episode tackles a grizzly topic: Ritual Sacrifices. We explore some of the practices and reasons for sacfrifice throughout history. Note that there are somewhat graphic descriptions of some violent acts toward humans and animals. If you're going to sacrifice something, make it an inanimate effigy or other symbolic object. Happy Halloween 2025!

Recommendations

• Abraham: Novocaine: https://www.paramountmovies.com/movies/novocaine
• Shane: Nine Inch Nails - Tron:Ares OST (https://open.spotify.com/album/47pjW3XDPW99NShtkeewxl?si=4fV1oxzNTaaCMyDasdFkWw)

Holidays (10/29/2025):

• International Internet Day
• Happy Early Halloween
• National Cat Day
• National Hermit Day
• National Oatmeal Day
• Read for the Record Day
• World Psoriasis Day
• World Stroke Day
• Brain Tumor Awareness Week
• Disarmament Week
• International Magic Week
• Prescription Errors Education and Awareness Week
• Winter Weather Preparedness Week
• World Origami Days
• Happy birthday to Winona Ryder, Ben Foster, Bob Ross and Gabrielle Union

Links and references: 

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/human-sacrifice
2. https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/ritual-sacrifice-0017159
3. https://www.thecollector.com/human-sacrifice-throughout-history/
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27042932/
5. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-human-sacrifice-propped-up-the-social-order/
6. https://www.science.org/content/article/human-sacrifice-may-have-helped-societies-become-more-complex

 



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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Welcome to Why We Do What We Do. I am
your Stabby host Abraham oh No, and I am your
give my Blood to the Gods host Shane. We are
a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans
and non human animals do, and in the month of October,
we primarily focus on the spooky or type of topics,

(00:43):
and then we make them slightly less spooky by dropping
a whole bunch of knowledge about them. Yeah, which is
not I mean mostly talking about spooky things because we
love Halloween and then making them less spooky is just
the fact that we are a science podcast, and that's
what happens when you take a scientific approach to things.
Yeah of the time, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, many times.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
But every now and again something it's more scary because
if we all have an explanation.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
You're like, what what do we do with this? So
there's that kind of part too sometimes, or.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
We'll come up with things that are spooky, like spooky
action at a distance, which is a very nerdy physicist
type thing. I think it's physical love, maybe it's quantum scientists.
Maybe it's asked astronomy. I don't know. It's a in
that realm of the sciences. Anyway, we're not talking Yeah,
it's something we're not talking about those today though. We're
doing Halloween e stuff and that includes today's topic, which

(01:34):
I will issue a quick warning at the top, contains
descriptions of blood and gore and violence because we're talking
about ritualistic sacrifices, so be warned going into it that
that is our topic du jour.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yes, I tried to like as we were putting together notes,
I tried to make it so that it was less gory,
less bloody, but we are going to talk about people
on animals dying in pretty gruesome ways.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
But we will spare those details.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
So if this were a movie, consider it rated PG
thirteen and so that it's not no violence, but relatively
less than you might see in like an R rated
or an X rated podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah, and it's more than what we would normally have
on the show.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
So yes, yes, very much. So. Anyway, if you like
what you hear in this discussion today and would like
to support us, you can join us on Patreon, pickup
some merch, leave us a rating and review, like, subscribe,
tell a friend, message us on the social media platforms,
and follow us on the social media platforms. And I'll
talk more about the ways that you can support us
at the end of this discussion. But this episode comes

(02:37):
out on October twenty ninth, and that is International Internet Day,
So yay, because that's how you got to our podcast,
is through that magical pathway. Yes, yes it is.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
And we would also like to issue everybody it's not
Halloween just yet, but it is two days before, so
we would like to offer everybody a happy early Halloween.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
We hope that your tricker treating is.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Full of all the candy that you like, and that
it is not that you don't get, like, you know,
handfuls of pennies or an apple. I mean, if you
get that, that's cool, but like that's not really what
you go trick or treating for, you know, you know
what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Coincidentally, it's also Nevada Day, so for those Nevadaens, which
I am one of those, shout out, oh joy. It
is National cat Day. I accept. I love that good good,
good for good day. It is National Hermit Day.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
That's me. Eventually it is National oatmeal Day. Love that
me too.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Actually, it is Read for the Record Day.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
That's great. I love that.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
It is World Psoriasis Day and World Stroke Day.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
It is.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's also a Brain Tumor Awareness Week. Another celebration that
we as a podcast are very in supportive, which is
Disarmament Week.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Something that we also love as a podcast is International
Magic Week.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Sure, sure, yeah, I love magic magic.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
It's fun.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yes, it is a Prescription errors education and awareness week.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a scary one. It is
Winter Weather Preparedness Week. So for US Floridians we are
getting our long sleeve shirts out.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Sometimes sometimes it is World or Agami days. Get your
papers a folded.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
That's such a fun, a fun thing, and it is
also a wonderful happy birthday to wood note a writer
Ben Foster, Bob Ross, and Gabrielle Union.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yes, yes, indeed, so those are those are the holidays
that we're talking about. But we don't just talk about holidays.
We talk about other things, which are sometimes mostly psychology related,
since that's what we do and both professionally and for
the podcast. But I think that that gets us to
are the point at which we transition to the substance

(04:54):
of the thing that we're talking about. So we'll get out,
get out our knife and slice into this ritualistically as
we Yeah, as we're talking about this, is there anything
that I miss or you'd like to add before we
dive into our topic.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
No, I think we're ready to go.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
I will add for those new listeners that at the
end of this discussion, what's going to happen is we're
going to read a bunch of credits and then we're
going to recommend some things. And I think that that's
really fun and you may or may not want to
follow our recommendations, but I think you I don't know.
I think they're fun either way, and you may want to,

(05:31):
so stick around through those credits as well to hear
here a fun discussion where we just share something that
brought us joy that we think might bring you joy too.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yes, yes, yes, So to get into this episode proper,
Abrahamer already issued a disclaimer, but we are going to
talk about some violent things.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
We're gonna keep it PG. Thirteen as best we.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Can, but if you're uncomfortable with the idea of torture
or murder or sacrifice per se, we recommend skipping this episode.
But in this episode, we are going to discover how
the things are linked. We already discover what terra Cotta, propaganda,
and Henry Rawlins all have in common.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Is it ritualistic sacrifice.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
You'd be surprised it's actually related to the ritual. It's
just secrifrice.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Very good. Well, to begin every discussion, we want to
make sure that we understand the terms that we're using,
that we are on the same page about the subject
we are discussing, because that way we are not using
strawman arguments. We're trying to make sure that things are
clear and understandable. So let's start by talking about what
sacrifice is if that was at all in question, and

(06:34):
it kind of doesn't matter, because when we understand things
precisely then we can use the parameters of those definitions
to help guide any further discussions that we have. So,
sacrifice is a practice that is centered around the idea
of symbolically offering to a deity or a group of
deities something and exchange for some kind of good fortune.

(06:55):
That's what sacrifices.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, yeah, So essentially, like simply put, the person is
or the group is giving up something that they could
use or would be a value to them in exchange
to something from the gods or God that believe in so,
and these offerings could welcome lots of different things, good
fortune for the group, the tribe, or the church, such
as bringing about good harvests, things like preventing natural disasters,

(07:18):
specifically natural disasters that would impact their people right in
their area, to prevent the wrath of the gods, to
seek favors, among other requests. Sometimes you'll have people that
will put together specific offerings to ask for a request
or a favor from the gods or the deities. And
really you'll see this kind of happen in lots of
different ways, lots of different forms, but that's essentially what's happening.

(07:38):
The person is giving something up or the group is
giving something up in exchange for something some gift from
the deities that they're worshiping.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
And I guess we can say, like, obviously, sacrifices used
in a lot of terms, and we are talking about
the more ritualistic sacrifice that has to do with this
type of sort of I guess you'd call it religious,
maybe traditional. I mean, ritual really is the sort of
the key word here, because obviously, as you can have
lots of you have just very general sacrifice that doesn't
depend on any orientation to gods, although it still involves

(08:10):
giving something up.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Anyway, there are lots of types of sacrifices that humans
have practiced throughout history, so we have well we'll go
through each of these in more detail, but you'll see
things like what it's called a burnt offering, a grain offering,
a peace offering, a guilt sacrifice, and a blood offering.
So let's just go through each one of those.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, So, burnt offerings they refer to the burning of
an animal on an altar to God or God's The
animal or the object must be completely unblemished and is
generally used to appease the god that they're sacrificing to.
So essentially they just like the living creature on fire.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Unfortunately, do we know why this would be appeasing to
a god? Like I have the thought that I'm like,
if if there was a god that wanted me to
burn an animal, I'd be like, I don't like you
as a god. Yeah you are bad. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
And you know what's funny is, as I was going
through the notes, it was really hard to find like
function related to the requirements of the gods. A lot
of it was like the lore or the like the
belief that the gods had to be appeased to prevent
and a lot of it was like preventing something like
something bad, like I'm sacrificing to the god of the
underworld so that they don't bring about a plague.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
So it was never like it was never that the gods.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Requested this explicitly in their rioters or anything like that.
It was more so it was more so just kind
of like we believe in angry gods that find us expendable,
so they find us expendable, they find us thing they
can just throw us over there, and they're more powerful
than us, and so we want to respect them and
we don't want to piss them off. And it's really
more so like it's really a giant coercion tactic.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, yeah, I see that now. So I guess it's
more like it's not that these gods love me and
so like I'm trying to give something back to them.
It's more like these gods kind of don't care about me,
but if I can assuage their indifference, then maybe they'll
be like, well, I like that person well enough that

(10:11):
in my quest around the world doing things I'll try
not to also kill them. Yeah, and so then maybe
the people sort of logic their way to if I
give up something that's valuable to me and do something
that I would definitely not otherwise do, then that is
in contrast enough and enough of an homage to these

(10:33):
great deific beings that they will then be unwilling to
or they'll they'll maybe go out of their way to
be less cruel to me than they might otherwise be. Yeah.
One thing we do not rate well enough in terms
of the importance of how it guides a lot of
the decisions and behaviors that we engage in is that
if we can have a coherent narrative that is very

(10:56):
comforting to us as a species, if we like we
use our language in a very simplistic logic syllogism that
is like if A then B, if A then C,
therefore B then C, and we can if we can
slot those things together so that they follow that sort
of logic, then we're willing to do crazy things that

(11:17):
we might otherwise not do and have that be like, Okay,
this now fits the if then narrative I've constructed about
these events.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, and you know, I'm going to give everybody like
a quick spoiler alert here, because as we go through,
like you know, as we're talking about this, we're talking
about kind of like the will and the belief and
the wants and the needs of the gods. But spoiler
is that you're going to find that people in power
like to control people who are not in power. And
it seems like a really easy way to kind of say, like, oh,
like I got to sacrifice people to stay in power

(11:47):
and appease the gods on my end, So hey, send someone,
because you got to give something up for us to
stay alive as a society. So and we'll actually come
back to that later too.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Sure. Yeah, so another sacrife. So so we talked about
the burnt offering, then there's also the advertisement offering. The
advertisement offering is the worst kind of sacrifice, that's true.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, do you sacrifice your attention?

Speaker 1 (12:17):
What a bar to the to the advertising gods. That's
a really good analogy if you think about it. You know,
they are uncaring, powerful entities that just want to harm
us and take from us, and we try and assuage
them by giving them space in our podcast. Yeah, oh man,
that's the spookiest thing. Yeah, I made up a real

(12:39):
ritualistic sacrifice that we actually do. And here we are,
I'm sorry, listeners, to sacrifice you for the for the advertisers.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah oh yeah, well you're back, and so now we'll
give you we'll give you the good fortune of more information.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
So yeah, there you go.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
So at this point we're talking about the different types
of sacrifices that humans have engaged in or practiced. We've
talked about burnt offerings. There's green offerings, which are a
type of sacrifice that it is also called mincha or minca,
and it's a non bloody sacrifice that includes maybe flour, oil, frankincense,
and it means of sharing gratitude, like thank you for
this bountiful crop, for this boutiful harvest. You know, here's

(13:16):
an offering to say thank you.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
And again, I think we can make sense in a
way of thinking about the if you're dealing with something
that seems this supernatural, otherworldly being, that you got to
think like, what can I do that will grant me
goodwill or good fortune from this thing? And it can't
be something I do just every day, because clearly that's

(13:41):
not granting me goodwill and good fortune, I have to
do something that's different, right, Like in start contrast, and
giving up something that is valuable to me, like a
source of food, is possibly something I could do because
like I need that, so giving it away would put
me in the good graces of this thing. So I think,
right thinking about it that way, you could sort of
see how they would make that make sense right. Absolutely Similarly,

(14:03):
I guess we're just on the vein of these because
we mentioned all the different types of offering. There is
the peace offering. This generally refers to the offering of
some sort of gift. These are made voluntarily. They might
include ornate jewelry, weapons, pottery. I think you know anything
that shows that again is a thing of value that
you're saying, like I put it on the altar, I

(14:26):
bury it in the hole, I throw it into the
ocean or the well, whatever it is, the point being
that we get rid of it, we sacrifice it because
we hope that in doing so we will bring upon
ourselves good fortune by the will of the gods. That
actually makes me wonder because I didn't actually look into
whether or not how common it was to throw things
into wells, and like if they were throwing lead jewelry

(14:47):
into wells and then drinking from those wells.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah, oh that might not be so good. I mean
we are going to talk about wells later, so like
that does come up, which is a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
That would explain how the Protestants came to be Just kidding,
just kidding, Yeah. I actually literally as I was cycling
through like people I could throw into the bus, and
I was like, I eventually landed on Europeans at this time,
like we're thinking like back hundreds of years. I'm like,
I'm just gonna say Protestants. So anyway, that was not

(15:18):
an intentional like target. I was just I just landed
on something as I was scrolling through possible people to
throw unto.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
The bus convenience. It was an issue of convenience.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
Yes, there's also guilt sacrifices, and guilt sacrifices are also
known as sin offerings or trespass offerings, and this is
used as a means of reparations. So generally speaking, the
person has committed a specific offense to the deities or
the gods, and as such they must make restitution by
sacrificing an unblemished ram. Generally like that was actually like
the thing that came up was like specifically an unblemish ram,

(15:46):
but it's kind of I'm you know, that has evolved
to include other things as needed.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Okay, guilt sacrifice. That makes I get it. Okay, that
gets us to the final one, which is probably the
one you were thinking of the most and the one
that we alluded to the most. And when we were
describing what ritualistic sacrifices, and that's the blood offering, this
was sort of spoil or alert because we're going to
get more into the lore of this. This is formalized

(16:11):
in the Old Testament. Blood sacrifices are ways for humans
to atone for some sin, maintain the relationship with God,
you know, slaughter a human being on the altar. Yeah,
and I feel like I've mentioned this before, but like,
if I were an evil demon whose primary objective was
to cause human suffering, I could not do better than

(16:32):
coming up with a religion that teaches people that they
should be ashamed of themselves, hate themselves, and be perfectly
willing to kill each other and like spill their blood
on like a giant stone. I'd be like, I am
really good at my job as a demon. Like I
have got this down, Like I could not do a
better job than I am doing currently.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, and actually brings us to like,
so sometimes blood sacrifices don't require a death, which is nice.
I guess, Okay, if you want to go that route, sure,
but we are going to kind of talk to about
the extreme right, and this is kind of where we're
leading today, which is we're talking about the type of
sacrifice where the subject of the sacrifice is a living being,
they are a victim of this, and we are going

(17:13):
to start kind of treading into that scary territory of
animal and human sacrifice, with the focus more so on
human sacrifice than animal sacrifice, because animal sacrifice is actually
very common and has a lot of widespread kind of
like belief systems related to it, and human sacrifices maybe
the thing that people are a little bit more scared.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Of, sorry just because I I've been ruminating on this
for the last ten seconds, which is that in movies
they often depict those blood sacrifice Someone will cut their
hand and I'm always like, why would you cut the palm?
There's so many places on your body that you don't
need to touch things on a regular basis that like
people cutting the palm of their hand constantly. I'm like,

(17:52):
that's the worst place that you could possibly be cutting. Dangerous.
It'd be like cutting the bottom of your foot. I'm like,
what are you like you now can't walk for a
while until the heels right, unless you can't feel pain,
but otherwise, like, yeah, cut somewhere where you're like not
hitting a major artery that you also don't need to
touch things constantly.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
It seems like a bad idea.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
It doesn't make any sense, but you know it maybe
just it's dramatic effect.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, I guess it's it looks cool. You lay like
they'll squeeze, they'll pull the blade through their fist and
then there's blood running between their fingers and maybe that's
what it is. But anyway, it's the thing they do
a lot.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, it comes up a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Animal and human sacrifice, let's talk about those. So these
are rituals that center around offering an animal or a
human being to a deity. You hear that and you say,
how does one offer a living creature to a deity?
And that's a good question. Well, there are a lot
of ways, but most of them end up with the
living being being a non living bean after this ritual, yeah,

(18:48):
meaning that they are a dead bean and they start living,
they end up no longer living and like a spoiler
alert for all of you, like we're all gonna die.
Like that's just that's just a thing. Yeah. I feel
like I've heard some good ones. They're like, oh, that
person took a well, let's just use tilan all since
that's in the news right now. Sure, they took tilan on.
They died. It was seventy five years later. But they

(19:10):
did die right, Like they were old enough to take
tailand all and died seventy five years later. I think
they had a long and healthy life, yeah, is what
I would take from that. But anyway, point being that
in this case, we're talking about the person of the
living being whatever it was, ending up dead immediately after
the ritual and not much later in life exactly.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
So for clarity, animal sacrifice refers to the ritual killing
an offering of an animal, where human sacrifice is the
same thing, but with people. So instead of killing a
ram or a sheep or chicken, it's a human being,
sometimes children, sometimes adults, sometimes prisoners of war, but usually
a human in that situation.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Also for clarity, there's a difference between capital punishment and
the explicit sacrifice of someone for ritual. Maybe not in
the final outcome, there's not much, there's a difference, but
in terms of the function, Yeah, like what is the
reason for the behavior? Because and that I think is
always important to understand, because if we alter the motivations,

(20:11):
then we alter the frequencies of those behaviors. If, for example,
we said, like we're not going to sacrifice humans anymore
because we think that intentionally killing people to a peace
of God is a bad idea, then that the amount
of killing of people intentionally might reduce as an outcome
of that. So anyway, understanding the motive is important. Sometimes

(20:33):
the punishment for a crime may be that they are
victim of a sacrifice. That also does happen, Yeah, but
they are not inherently entwined together. Just because it's capital
punishment doesn't mean it's sacrifice. And matter of fact, most
of the time that's not the case, and a sacrifice
is not meant to be treated as capital punishment most
of the time. But they could have overlapped.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, and you'll find, like you know, in some of
the examples that we're going to share in just a
little bit where you've got somebody who is being punished
for a crime according to that society standards and they
are like pulled into that system of ritual sacrifice and
what that looks like. You'll see sometimes though for the
most part, like capital punishment is just like a restitution
of sorts, like you're gonna pay for this crime you committed,

(21:16):
but with your life. Yeah, which is you know, seems
like an extreme and also not good, but it is
it is something to think about. It's like, you know,
what's the intention, because sometimes what you'll find is like
in ritual sacrifice, you have people that will volunteer to
be the sacrifice.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
You lot people that.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Are innocent, that are like indentured servants and slaves that
are that are forced to be part of that ritual sacrifice.
They've done nothing wrong except for exist, and so that
that's kind of what we'll see here. Is as really
ultimately comes down to attention, like are they being murdered
by whatever being is in power or a group that's
in power. Are they being murdered because of a crime

(21:51):
they've committed, or are they being murdered to appease a
god or a deity in some way, or do something
that is like kind of in the more spiritual PARANORMALPA.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Did you ever watch the movie Master and Commander with
Russell Crowe?

Speaker 3 (22:05):
I never did, but I wanted to because I like
Russell Crowe in movies.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna spoil it. I mean, this is
kind of an old movie. I think this came out
like fifteen or twenty years ago at this point, But
I'm gonna spoil a little bit of it. So if
you don't want to, you can skip ahead, like fifteen seconds.
There is really haunting scene in this movie where for
a minute they're like stuck on the ocean with no wind,
and this one person on the on the boat believes
they are the cause of this. They think, like they're right.

(22:32):
The whole crew is being punished because of this one person.
So after days of this where they're kind of at
the breaking point, they're like out of food, out of
drinkable water, they're like about ready to like all die.
In the middle of the night, he takes a cannonball,
ties it onto himself and then jumps into the ocean
and you just watch him like sink down and he's
like the just so distressing to watch. Yeah, and then

(22:53):
sadly the next day, like the winds pick up and
the ship moves, and of course that they'll attribute this
to his sacrifice. But that stands out to me as
one of those like willing sacrifices of someone who chooses it. Yeah,
again based on a belief about something.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Sure, yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
I mean, and something that you know we have to
sacrifice on our end is we have to sacrifice our
talking time so that we can give you more ads.
So you have now the good fortune of hearing something
that we have no idea what they're going to talk about.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
It is all right, we're back from that. Whatever happens
to you, sure had break. We have so little control
over what they end up playing. I mean, we could
record our own ads. We just haven't done it yet.

(23:40):
Maybe someday.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Anyway, we're getting to the point now we're asking the question.
We're not sacrificing the question. We're kind of sacrificing the question.
We're asking the question who sacrifices who? And what's who's
the who involved in this activity? When we unpack this.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
To start, I do think it's important to note that
human sacrifices are really not all that common across the world.
And when I say that, what I mean is they
don't happen at high rates. They have been found to
happen across multiple cultures across every continent. So I want
to point that out because that's going to come back
later too. But basically, the idea of like prevalent human
sacrifice is really just one of those like weird nineties fears,

(24:20):
like Y two K or quicksand like, I feel like
those are those things that like we grew up as
kids were like, well you're gonna be maybe partly because
of Indiana Jones.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
But slightly before that you had Satanic panic, which we
did an episode on for Halloween Copley, which, boy, we'll
talk about that later today too. Sorry no, no, no, that's good.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
No, No, I'm not no, because it's it does come
up right, and it is one of those things that's
like it's important to kind of know a little bit
of context. But there are a few groups who actively
did engage in human sacrifice as offerings as part of
cultural beliefs and systems, and we are going to talk
about thousands and thousands of years ago. We're not talking
about like in the seventies. Ye, you know, we're going
to talk about these these cultures that like kind of this.

(24:58):
This was a practice that exist for quite some time,
over several millennia ago.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
All Right. The first one we're going to start with
is in China, not for any particular reason other than
maybe alphabetical order, but we're just going to start there.
So in China, archaeologists found a cemetery near I'm going
to say Mogu village in northwestern China, Mogaw maybe I'm
saying that wrong. And here they found hundreds of tombs,
but only some of which held human sacrifices or what

(25:25):
they believed to be human sacrifices. I think there was
good reason for them to think they were human sacrifices.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Yeah, and the sacrifice was occurring at the time, but
it likely stopped in about two hundred and twenty one
BCE with the first emperor of China, Qin shi Huang
or Wwaang. And if you're familiar with those massive Terrakatta
armies that were buried and found like they were excavated
and they were just like just thousands of thousands of

(25:51):
these Tarrakatta soldiers. It was believed these statues were buried
as a replacement for human sacrifice. So when he became
when he became the emperor, he wanted to a limit
human sacrifice, and this was a way that he could
bring soldiers into the afterlife without having to sacrifice actual soldiers.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
I fully accept burying effigies as replacement sacrifices. I'm okay
with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, particularly if they're already made
of dirt, like yeah, you almost couldn't have a better
replacement of the person.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yeah, yeah, you just sign your name on it. It's fine,
this will be you.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yes, yeah, cool, I accept. Let's talk about Inca. Some
archaeologists found mummies that were identified as children who are
involved in rituals human sacrifice in some ruins here in
the inc And sort of culture.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, and a lot of that was believed to be
for harvests and good fortune. So if children were sacrifice
as a results of that, and they were and they
were mummified, so that was a little bit different than
what you might see in other spaces. You've also got
Mayan practices and it was believed that the minds participated
in human sacrifice, but only for special occasions. This is
not something that happened all the time or very often.
It would take place in their temples, and many of

(27:00):
the people sacrificed were identified as prisoners of war, so
it'd be intruders, people who were committed some violence against
the tribe or the group, and they would be used
as a form of capital punishment and they would be
sacrificed as very likely as a prisoner of war.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Apparently in some rituals, the victim was painted blue in
honor of the rain god Chock, and then they were
thrown into a well, which sounds like a very unpleasant
way to go because it is very likely that you
would die of starvation and not drowning.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
Yes, yes, yes, and probably from injuries too, if the
well is deep enough.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
Oh yeah, good point yeah head trauma yeah yeah, boy.
Don't use that well after that.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah, that's not a drinking well. Avoid that please, you
will get very sick.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Thanks.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
There are some reports of human sacrifice occurring in ansurery
in Israel. Language in the Hebrew Bible mentions that human
sacrifices were carried out sometimes, but historians are actually unsure
of how often that practice occurred, or to what degree
it occurred. They think it might be more related to
capital punishment and things like that, but there are several
mentions of human sacrifice and blood sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Interesting, okay. In ancient Egypt, the remains of many people
have been found near or within the tombs of pharaohs.
Some historians believe that when the pharaohs were entombed, a
certain number of slaves or animals were also buried and
sealed in the tombs as a sacrifice to please the
god of the underworld Osiris. Which that is pretty rough

(28:26):
and super crappy.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah, so for the crime of being owned by another person, right,
which is unfortunate and so and a lot of it too,
was that the you know, because there is some historic
belief that the pharaohs would bury lots of different things
with them to take into the afterlife, and one of
them was to bring their servants with them, to their
animals and their servants. But unfortunately, those folks were still

(28:50):
alive when the pharaoh passed, and that meant that when
the pharaoh passed, they were also to be passed.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
It is kind of remarkable to me how little value
humans hold for life. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, we're the
only species who I think really understands the concept of
death and like understands that, like we have this one
life and that's that's it. So the fact that we
would not treat that with like reverence is very bizarre
to me.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Well, and you know, and something to think about and
like let's talk about, like, you know, the possible function
of that behavior, Like maybe they were very reverent to
life and they wanted to bring their favorite people into
the afterlife with them, like as it, you know, because
that the belief, if the belief is that you're coming
with me, then I am and I'm honoring you by
bringing you with me into this space, which you know

(29:38):
is like again, I guess that has to do with
belief systems, but like, you know, like it's something I
don't understand as somebody who doesn't have a belief system
that includes you know, a deity at all. But it
is one of those things where it's like there were
some folks who are like they're taking their most valuable
people with them because they I mean, I'll never forget
I had a conversation with like one of my good
friends when I was younger, because he was trying to

(29:58):
save me. He's a Baptist trying to save me. The
sentiment always like struck a chord with me, sure because
he came over to my house and he took time
to talk to me to say, I am trying to
save you because when I go into the afterlife, I
want to be surrounded and be around the ones that
I love. And that is such a beautiful sentiment to
be like that you want to like spend time with
me like that even in the afterlife, even though I

(30:20):
know that out of you, So you know, there is that,
but it also is like, you know, there was also
not a lot a lot of value for human life
either at the same time, like you know, there there
was both of those things were true at the same time,
which was like really complex.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
You know.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
That's that's a really good point, and I do appreciate
that bringing that level of nuance to it, because it is, uh,
it's worth considering that, like thinking about it as a
way to value human life. And actually even if it
wasn't that like I'm honoring you by taking you into
the afterlife with me, you could even see it as
like your life is so valuable that this is a

(30:55):
meaningful sacrifice. Yeah, Like, if if I didn't value your life,
then like sacrificing you wouldn't do anything because you don't matter.
But instead, like your life is so important and so
unique and so holy you that like like sacrificing it
is a really big deal. So it's it's like sort
of an honor in a way.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, it's a complex thing.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Which, man, maybe we need to do an episode on
honor because like that is one of the most nebulous
and one of the most driving motivations that humans have.
So speaking of honor, yeah, speaking of honor.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, yeah, let's go out ancient Japan and some of
the architecture practices. So there was a thing that came
across as I was looking at this, and it's called
qiito bashira, and I hope I'm saying that right, maybe
hito bashira, And it's a Japanese practice of human sacrifice
that involved burying people alive in or near new buildings
like castles, bridges, or dams as a means to appease

(31:51):
the spirits.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
And like kita bashara sounds right to me, So I'm
just gonna use that apparently that translates into human pillar
is how you might consider that, which just got to
throw this out there and the new between the or
Not between the Bury and Me a cacious Strain album.
There's a lyric in there where he says Bury me
vertically with my The way he rhymes is really good,

(32:13):
says Bury me vertically with my head exposed, so the
world can watch me decompose. And that I was like, Wow,
what a horrific imagery that is. Yeah, but that's this
reminds me of that, the idea of human pillar. Yes, yeah, yikes.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
Yeah, it's so scary and it's it's so interesting I
think about too, because you know, there's so much ties
to like spirituality and like the old world in like
parts of Japan that like you could be walking around
near a temple or a dam or a bridge and
there's there's a spirit like the specifically somebody was buried
alive to sacrifice for that building, to make to make
sure it is protected.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Oh man, that is that is tough.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
It's intense.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
Speaking of tough, let's go, We're gonna go into the
Pacific Ocean and talk about Hawaii or Hawaii in some
instances the chiefs of other civilisations would be tortured and beaten,
so like if they were if folks were invaders, if
they were caught again captured as prisoners of war.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
The chiefs specifically were tortured and beaten.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
They were hung upside down and they were beaten with
bats to soften their skin and their tissues and stuff
like this. Their sweat would be collected and a local
priest would be anointed with it.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Prior to consuming part of the victim.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
So like, there was a little bit of Cambalism in
there too, and this was in service of the god
of war coup spelled ku. So this would happen. But
specifically they mentioned that it was like rival chiefs or
like enemy chiefs.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
I hate all of that so much.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, that's the most that's really the most graphic we'll get,
I think.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
So all right, well, pause for something that's hopefully less
bad than that, although the jury is out because it
is adds and that can be just as terrible, sometimes
might be worse. All right, we're back. It's probably it's
not as terrible. They're just they're just trying to sell

(33:58):
you something dumb or it convince you to believe something dumb,
but whatever, that's not obviously not as bad as sacrificing people.
That's much worse. But yes, of course, let's talk about
the Celts. So in the Celtic traditions, victims would be
brought before druids and struck on the back of the
head with the sword. The resulting spasms that occurred, which
they described as death spasms, were interpreted and used for prophecy,

(34:21):
which not the last time that, like the way that
the violence of death portrays itself is used to try
and foresee the future or understand something about the present
or something like that is used as like a form
of divination. Yeah, but that is also pretty gruesome.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, it's pretty brutal, pretty brutal. And there's lots of
other examples too. We just try I tried to really
capture stuff across Asia, South America, the Middle East and
Europe and stuff like that. I really try to capture
a few just to kind of show that it wasn't
a particular culture. I think a lot of times when
people think of human sacrifice, they think of specific cultures
that are often not like European. And here's an example
of also a European culture who was engaging in ritual

(35:05):
sacrifice rather than just talking about genocide, because European genocide
is a whole conversation they have. But like we're really
talking about like this specific example that I use for prophecies.
Now here's the thing about this, It was actually difficult
to specifically identify who was responsible for the sacrifice because
each circumstance that we just described was pretty unique.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Right.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
In some instances, it was initiated by a local holy
man or holy man in needing of prophecy, and that
was with the Celts, or by people in power like
ancient Egypt. In other situations was members of tribes for
the good of the tribes. You've got the Incas and
the Mayas, who are the mines we're doing this type
of stuff. Hawaii is another example. You see that kind
of happening. So it really was difficult to figure out
who was responsible because it might have been initiated by

(35:45):
multiple members of the community, but it was usually largely
a culturally accepted practice for these groups that was usually
implemented by somebody that held some type of status or power,
And that'll come up as far as our research goes to.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
As you might imagine, with all the sacrifice going on
in human sacrifice was a thing that was going on,
animal sacrifice was actually much more common than human sacrifice.
There was greater evidence for animal sacrifice across a greater
number of cultures, with greater prevalence. And I think that
that does speak to the fact that, like, generally, it
is not emotionally that easy to kill and do harm

(36:23):
to other humans. And it is for most people easier
at least to do harm or kill animals. And so
I guess there is enough humanity out there that that
was the case, but not so much that they were
above killing animals. Yeah, but yeah, people are complicated. People
are complicated, and history was weird in history and is
still weird.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I mean, I think somebody's going to look at our
time right now and go, huh, what the hell is that?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
And we're going to go I don't know, if I.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Live to be old enough to look back on this time,
I really hope that I look back and be like, man,
I'm sure glad we learned our lesson from that nonsense.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Yeah, that's the hope, right, That's the hope and the
dream of the way. Okay, so we're talking about this idea,
and really, truly, it's not happening anymore, or at least
it's not happening at such high levels. Specifically, human sacrifice
is not happening in the way that people understood it before.
It sounds like it was maybe way worse as or
described as way worse than it actually was. But you
know what put a halt to animal and human sacrifice?

(37:18):
Would you be surprised to learn that it was the
spread of Christianity? Of course, it was God sweeping across
the world and saving everybody from human sacrifice. I'm sure
you're not surprised by that narrative, right, That's a narrative
that comes up. As a more civilized religion, quote unquote,
more civilized religion begin to spread throughout the world, pagan
and ritual and tribal rituals related the sacrifice were frowned upon,

(37:40):
often considered lesser than and evil and you know, sacrilege
and blasphemous and ultimately reduced to near zero rates.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Or that's what Christians would have you believe.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
Since burnt offerings and blood offerings were both very prominent
in the Old Testament and the Bible, that's actually about
burning goats to death that came from the Christian Bible,
not somewhere else. History is written by the propagandists, So
I think it's important to remember that that sacrifice and
offerings also happened in Christian religions. It wasn't just Christianity
that saved that. It was all sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
I think if we also consider things like there was
a lot of death and torture that occurred under the
banner of that that was not necessarily labeled as sacrifice,
but was done pretty prolifically. You had the Inquisition, you
had the witch trials and the witch trials and the Americas,

(38:32):
and yes, the colonization slave trade that often was cited
the Bible is justification for that. It is not a
bloodless approach, even if they didn't necessarily do it because
they were trying to make their God happy. Yeah we
did it in the name of that anyway.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
And yeah, they did it in service of God. And
none of those white robes are spotless, So let's have
an intellectually honest conversation about that.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
However, However, I.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
Think it's important for the concept of like describing the
topic today, like those events and those crimes were never
explicitly described as sacrifice to appease God's or to wish
good fortune. It was in service of a religion. It
was being a good servant versus like sacrificing to a

(39:19):
pease and like that might be a fine discrimination, but
that's often the language that like radical Christian groups would use,
and like specifically was used in the Inquisition. You know,
we get rid of people who are against God, enemies
of God. It wasn't that they were being sacrificed for
the good of Christianity or Catholicism. They were being eliminated
to protect the religion. And that's a different that's a

(39:40):
different experience, even though the outcome is the same.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Getting rid of people is a horrible sequence of four
words that I don't like. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad.
I don't like it either, unless you mean just like,
we need to clear this room, and so we'd like
to get rid of people by having them leave the
room because we I don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
I think if you belong to a group that aims
to eliminate people, you should probably rethink your choices and
maybe getting out of that group.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
You are on the wrong side of history. One percent
full stop. Yeah, all right, how are ritual sacrifices performed?
That's what we're all here for, right, is the shorter
tails We kind of mentioned a lot. There are a
lot of ways that they occurred. If humans are anything,
they are creative, particularly in these ways. We also see

(40:26):
this in a lot of fiction writing that sometimes became
fact writing or was it retelling of things that actually happened.
But let's enumerate a few of the ways that sacrifice occurred.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, so a common one that was often used as
stabbing or gutting. And this sounds exactly like what you
would think, So I'm gonna spare those details, but we
will say in some instances, the organs of the person
the victim were harvested and used for different things, and
maybe the victim was may have been consumed as part
of a cannibalistic ritual too. Like those did happen. They
were not quite as frequent as people like to believe,
but it did happen, and that was part of like

(40:59):
so some of the some of the belief systems, like
you know, I'm consuming part of this person because I'm
absorbing their essence and their abilities and their strength. I'm
their virility, Like there's different kind of belief systems around.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
That definitely also true for animals as well. Yeah, there's fire.
As we mentioned, this is related to that idea of
burnt offerings, some sacrifices including burning at a steak or
a pire, sometimes burning a killed creature or a still
living one human or animal. But fire was one way
that this was done and performed.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Yeah, we mentioned earlier to torture, so what was happening
is in the case of some tribes in Hawaii, some
folks were tortured for certain purposes which were including like
sweat and specific sweat from a person under specific conditions,
and those were used in ritualistic practices.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Drowning sort of related to the wells and other things.
As I mentioned the person throwing themselves into the ocean
with a cannonball and some capacity victims were thrown into
bodies of water, usually bound with weights so they'd be
or or just bound so that they couldn't move, unable
to swim or return to shore or to safety. But
in some way they were restricted or held down so
that they would die by drowning.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yep, and there's live burial and as we mentioned from
practices of the Hitobashira. Some victims were buried alive, or
if they weren't buried alive, they might have been buried
in the structure as well, which we saw on the
Great Wall of China, But that may have been more
so a function of just like efficiency than it was
actual ritual sacrifice. Like I think the people that were
buried in the Great Wall were not specifically buried because

(42:30):
it was good luck. I think it was like they
died on site, on their construction site and they were like, well,
this will be cheaper. But in Hitobashira, they were specifically
buried alive.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
And then another one that we'd see sometimes is beheading.
Headhunting practices were sometimes related to human sacrifice. The end
result was that those who finally sacrificed the person would
remove the head of that person. Sometimes that was the
killing blow, sometimes that was post mortem, but beheading could
be a part of the sacrifice act or the act itself. Right.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
Absolutely, So, now we're at the stage where we're going
to kind of talk about the science, like why would
anybody do this, why would we believe in this, why would.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Anybody engage in these practices?

Speaker 3 (43:10):
And you know, understanding that they've kind of fallen, They've
fallen into history times, like we're not really doing this anymore.
You might see animal sacrifice here and there, but it's
it's not quite as prevalent as it used to be,
especially with advancements and knowledge and advancements and technologies and
maybe some like movements towards like a better understanding of
the world around us and like how you know, like

(43:32):
we don't need to sacrifice a goat to get good
crops when we understand how agriculture works.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
I feel like we're heading back toward this though, like that. Yeah,
I'm at the point now where if like the President
of the United States was like, we're going to sacrifice
this so that we have good weather this year, I'd
be like, that sounds like something he would do.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah, And honestly, that's the whole premise of the Long Walk, right,
like we're going to sacrifice forty nine people for the
good of capitalism. Okay, Yeah, it's remarkably current and modern,
which is very scary.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
No, what else is remarkably current and modern? As ads?
Ah mother, all right, we're back. We started segueing to
science and then lamented politics, and now we're back on science. Yeah,
so let's talk about Watts and colleagues. In twenty sixteen,

(44:23):
they reported that an important function of human sacrifice was
related to legitimizing political and social class authority, which is
to say that those authority could bring good tidings to
their people. Essentially say like, you need me to have power,
and you need to grant me things that I want
because I protect you and so I will do the

(44:45):
hard work to make sure that you stay safe. And
they would bring good tightings to their people in societies
by keeping the gods at bay, by sacrificing those people
that they were protecting sure, avoiding wrath and receiving good
fortune were beneficial to everyone, definitely the people in power.
And since kings, emperors, and priests had direct lines to
d and ease, they were able to dictate the practices

(45:06):
around this to help bolster and support their communities. And
of course would not be the ones being sacrificed because
there are connections, so we need we need them to
have their power authority and to be dictating the sacrifice.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yeah, absolutely, so that's kind of I think important. There
was a societal, contextual cultural view of this, and like
really understanding power dynamics in this space, and generally speaking,
the sacrifices that occurred never actually were related to those outcomes,
Like we couldn't sacrifice chef and then get better rain
the next day. It just so happened that we actually
got some like specific kinds of like superstitious behavior occurring, right,

(45:43):
Like killing a deer for a crop is not going
to cause the crop to improve. What's more likely happening
is development of superstitious behavior and cultural selection in the
form of tradition. Right, So we developed these rules, we've
all quote unquote we've always done it this way.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
And when the tradition.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
Orbitual loses its power or loses the power and the
rule because some other new rules established or something like that,
the rule eventually goes away. We don't need human sacrifice
anymore because it's no longer relevant to us. So it's
kind of like this, right, you know, we kind of
say we've always done it this way. Oh wait, we
don't have to get messy, we don't have to get
our hands dirty, we don't have to get bloody, and.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
I could just offer the gods a loaf of bread.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
That's way better.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
So Kyle today is your lucky day.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
You are free to go right Like That's that's essentially
kind of the shift that's happened. We went like, oh,
we don't have to do that anymore, so we can
do this other thing instead, and now people get to
stay alive.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
It's kind of nice.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yes, Okay, good, So there's that. And you know, I
do think that we were sort of as we went
through these adding in some commentary about what we think
some of the functions were for some of those behaviors.
So I think, you know, this part does help elaborate
with some of the science. But I think bringing the
lens through which we view motives for human behavior that

(46:52):
we brought before of like looking for coherence and rules
that we generate, looking for like what is in stark
contrast to what I already do and what would be
something really important in that is like giving up something
of value, which could be objects, it could be animals,
it could be people, it could be food. Yeah, it
could be a lot of things. So I think we've
outlined relatively well, I think what some of the plausible

(47:12):
and reasonable motives are going on here. Yeah, it's probably
like a non zero number of times that it was
like an opportunity to get rid of a rival of
some In some cases we saw that with some of
the actual of the clear examples that were there. But
I know we said very explicitly that it was like,
we can both treat this as an offering to the

(47:33):
gods and use it as a way to get rid
of someone whose behavior we don't like. Yeah, because we're
not smart enough to understand that we can change behavior.
So the way we change it is by ending the
organism who does the behaving.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
Yeah, it makes sense, and it's unfortunately very much so
a part of what we see happening today too is
eliminating political opponents. We're just using different means by which
to get there. So, you know, as we kind of
unpack this and we start thinking about it, like those
are things that we have to stop and consider, we
have to start looking at those things as there are
infinite possibilities for why this could occur. What we understand

(48:06):
if human behavior so far is what we've kind of
described in a very kind of like glancing blow.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Yeah, all right, interesting tidbits the something they think about
that we I sort of skipped ahead to this too
soon earlier during the rise of the Satanic Panic. There
were a reported twelve thousand cases a satanic ritual abuse
in North America. None of them were substantiated, so out

(48:33):
of twelve thousand, zero, so that the fraction on that
is zero over twelve thousand, Yeah, right, in fact equals zero.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
One major case was that of the West Memphis Three.
Damian Eccles, Jesse Miss, Kelly Junior, and Jason Baldwin were
all charged with the murder of three children as part
of some satanic ritual abuse. They were eventually acquitted, but
they first spent eighteen years in prison as a result
of those charges. Henry Rowlins was one of the most

(49:02):
vocal supporters of the West Memphis Three and helped organize
multiple concerts tell parise money for their legal fees. So
that ties his background. The Henry Rowlands.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Finally, Yeah, it was it was a matter of time.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Yes, yeah, and we I have talked a little bit
about the West Memphis Three, and we did definitely talk
about it inside of the Satanic Panic episode that we did.
But yeah, that's that's a just a horrific story.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate because the victims were young
children and they were, they were it was it was bad.
It was a bad situation, and the town that they
were in just needed a scapegoat, and these three kids,
Damien Echols and his friends like, ended up being scapegoats
for this this thing because they were the weird goth
kids in town. When you listen to the stories, it didn't
help that Damien was like a little bit snarky and

(49:46):
sarcastic because he didn't think he was gonna get charged
at the beginning. So when you listened to like early interviews,
he's being like like kind of like not oose, but
he's just being like really, yeah, he's being a little
bit of a punk. And then and then he got
charged and he was like, oh, that was maybe a mistake.
And now like, you know, he's doing some cool advocacy
work and some of those guys are doing that's up too.
But yeah, it's one of those things where, you know,

(50:07):
satanic ritual abuse or s r A is what they're
calling calling it in some of the literature, was a
phenomenon that just wasn't happening, and people thought it was.
So they were thinking the human sacrifice was happening, and
it just wasn't.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
There is nobody I can imagine more powerfully believing in this,
advocating for this and using this to charge people with crimes.
And Mike Johnson, this feels yeah, like that you talk
about this and I'm like, the first name that pops
in my head is Mike Johnson, Like this guy would
be all about that, Like, yeah, let's charge, like, let's
believe that this is actually a thing that's happening when

(50:40):
it's not. Let's charge people and convict them of something,
of doing something they didn't do. Let's coerce a bunch
of kids into spending most of their life in prison.
That's so in his wheelhouse, it's not even fun. Yeah. Yeah,
that guy is satanic panic contemporary version. Yeah, the worst anyway.
That actually brings us to the end of our discussion

(51:00):
about ritualistic sacrifice. This is one of the most gruesome
Halloween episodes we've ever done, accept the zombie bugs Man.
That was that was that was haunting, That was rough, Yes,
gnarally gnarally yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah, And honestly, like, you know, the thing, the thing
that we're kind of talking about is like it's really
to me, it doesn't really matter, like the details of
the specific sacrifices. I think it matters like the context
and why this was happening, and like in understanding like
the current signs of it, which is like it was
more so for like societal class structures. It was more
so for like belief systems than it was anything else.

(51:34):
It wasn't because people hated people like that might have
been an interesting side effect, but that's not really what
was going on, and it's certainly not happening today in
the way that people think.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
It is. Certainly hope that it doesn't end up there
again anyway. So yes, all right, very good. Well, if
you would like to tell us your thoughts on ritualistic sacrifice.
You can correct anything that we got wrong, or you
can just tell us everything that we got right, and
we're happy to hear those messages. Constructive criticism is great,
being amounts of praise is even better. You can email
us directly at infowwdwwdpodcast dot com. You can reach us

(52:06):
on the social media platforms, and we do look forward
to hearing from you. We have some listener mail, we
have some recommendations. But first I would like to say
if that you like what you heard today and you
are thinking man those guys are great. I really want
them to keep being a podcast and reaching a lot
of people. There's a myriad of ways that you can
do that. You can like and subscribe, leave a rating,
which helps us be sort of recommended to people. You

(52:27):
can leave a review, which helps people look at our
podcasts and say, people really like this, I should check
it out. And then if you don't like us, then
don't leave a review, but you can email some constructive
criticism and that'd be great. Otherwise, you can support us
by telling a friend like word of mouth is a
very powerful way to continue to spread podcasts in our
modern era. And you can even support us financially by
joining us over on Patreon, and if you do that,

(52:50):
you will get bonus content, ad free content early episodes,
and you get to join a community of very cool
people that we love. And at the end of our
full length episodes, which come out on Wednesday, I will
read the names of the people who have so generously
helped us keep being a podcast. So a gigantic, warm,
happy Halloween, non ritualistic sacrifice, Thank you too. Mike m Meghan,

(53:12):
Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian Ashley, Kiara and Charlie,
thank you all for continuing to help us be a
podcast by supporting us with Patreon.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
We love you so so much.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
In addition, my team of people help me do this podcast,
so I depend on them so very much. Writing in
fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you so much
for your awesome notes on this episode today, Shane, that
went super well, and thank you for reporting with me.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Thank you, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And the reason
that this sounds like a podcast, and it sounds like
a really good podcast is because we have a really
good audio engineer and his name is Justin, and he's
so good at what he does.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
And his ear lobes are just lovely too, sure because
he's using his ears for sound, right, so I want
to make sure to retire it together. He's using his ears.
You can hear it, We can hear it. Justin's got
pretty lovely earlobes.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Yes, maybe one day we'll have to feed your pictures
of just as your lobes for everyone's enjoyment somewhere in
some capacity. But anyway, I think that's what we have
to say before we get to our listener mail and recommendations.
Unless there's anything that I'm forgetting or anything you would
like to add.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
No, nothing on my end.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Ad Oh no, okay, we're back. We're going to do
some listener mail. Okay, this comes from Letitia who has
written in before, and we really appreciate writing in. And
if you would like to do that thing that Latitia did,

(54:35):
then you can email us and I'll say it again.
Info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. So ta Tisha, riots hi again.
Love the Frankenstein episode. When you all started talking about
swapping brain slash bodies, I thought about Altered Carbon books
and series. Keep up the good work. RFK Junior sucks.
Excellent work on the propaganda episodes. That's why all tyrannical

(54:56):
governments target the media and restrict access to any form
of information that doesn't agree with their agenda. What is
our country coming to? Thank you again for the thoughtful
content and I look forward to more episodes. I love this.
This is so nice. Yeah, agree with all of that.
Thank you for the kind words about the Frankenstein episode.
I have had Altered Carbon on my list for like
a really long time, but I have not engaged in

(55:16):
that series, yet it looked really good.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
Yeah, I you know what, I've been checking it out
and I've got it on my list now because I
hadn't I hadn't really thought about it.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
So like, that's thank you for that recommendation.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
I love.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
I love a good recommendation.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yeah. Absolutely, bonus recommendation from a listener. How cool is
that that? I love that. Yeah, we like sharing these things.
I thank you for writing in. We appreciate it, appreciate
the kind words and all of that. As far as
answering your question, what is our country coming to? You know,
it feels like we're headed toward the bottom of the
of the rock bottom. Yeah, and that once we get there,

(55:48):
we'll maybe be able to climb back out again. But
I don't know. People have short memories and they don't learn,
and people have figured out they can exploit ignorance really,
really effectively. And that's why we have the current administration
and House of Representatives and Senates that we currently have
at the time of our recording this, Yeah, which is
mostly a bunch of ignorant turns. So yes in the

(56:10):
United States agree, and many other countries are not faring
a whole lot better than we are, but some are,
So what is the whole world doing to?

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Yeah, it's a real mess right now.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Yes, but okay, that was great. Thank you. Let's go
ahead and get to our recommendations.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Recommendations. All right, I am recommending a action comedy that
came out this year, twenty twenty five. It is called Novacaine.
This is starring Jack Quaid and a variety of other
people that people recognize. But it is like the guy
who plays Peter Parker's best friend in spider Man the

(56:57):
Spider Man movies, Yeah, Jacob, that forgets last thing anyway.
And it's essentially a movie about a guy who has
the genetic disability that he cannot feel pain, sure, and
he is a very careful, cautious, like don't take any
risks kind of person, and he works at a bank

(57:17):
and then the bank gets robbed and they steal his
they kidnap his love interest, and so he pursues them
to try and rescue her. And because he's not like
a fighter, but because he can't feel pain, he can
kind of tolerate things that the people he's pursuing cannot, sure,
and so he he does. That's the movie essentially, is

(57:39):
a sort of action, some comedy, but a lot of
action ensues with him as the sort of foiled sort
of elements being that he can tolerateself. Like at one point,
this is in the trailer, so I don't think I'm
giving anything away, but at one point a gun falls
into deep frier and so he just reaches into grab.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
And pulls it out.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Yeah, because obviously, like no one else is going to
go in there, so he just reaches in and grabs it.
I mean, he probably could have just lifted up the
basket and pulled it out, but like I guess it
didn't matter. So that was an example of the kind
of the ways that they play with what it means
for him to not feel pain.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
But yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun.
There is definitely some a decent enough amount of gore
that if you're a squeamish you probably won't want to
take it on. But it really reminded me of the
movie Nobody. Did you see that one? No?

Speaker 2 (58:33):
I didn't, but it's on my list. I heard that
was really good.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, it reminded me a bit
of Nobody. It reminded me just a little tiny bit
of John Wick in a way, and that you just
have these like it's so many fight sequences and like
action sequences, they're just they just roll right along. So
it's fast paced movie. It's not very long, really fun.

(58:55):
So anyway, that's my recommendation.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Yeah, no, I that's so, that's so awesome. I've seen
a couple trailers for it, and I have not had
a chance to check it out. So I've got that
on my list too.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
I believe it's streaming on Paramount, plus I saw it
on Amazon Prime where it was streaming at the time
of this recording. But yeah, that's my commendation.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Beautiful. I love that.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
Okay, so I'm going to recommend some music. I am
going to recommend a soundtrack, and so more recently, I
went to go see the movie Tron Ares, which was,
by the way, a lot of fun nice, Like, no
matter what people are saying about the like the reviews
and stuff like, it was a fun It's a fun
extension of that Tron world, which is like so unique
and so like thought provoking. But I think this was

(59:37):
a lot of fun and the visuals are really cool,
Like they did a good job with this, so I'm
bringing up the soundtrack because the original soundtrack was written
by Nine Inch Nails.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
And it's one of those things where, you know, it
takes a lot for me to really enjoy soundtrack by itself,
Like I have to enjoy the movie and a soundtrack together.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
But I can listen to this and kind.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Of go, this is this is good, Like it's just
good nine Snails like cool interludes, great songs, Like it's
Trent Rezlor doing cool things. And then I was like,
I was wondering to myself. I was, you know, I
was thinking that, you know, Trent Reznor has been doing
a lot of composer work and stuff like this, so
I think the bonus recommendation is just checking out some
of the other soundtracks he's done, because he's worked on
ninety one projects as a composer. That includes just so

(01:00:21):
you know, he wrote songs for two of the episodes
for The Bear, he wrote the soundtrack for Challengers, He
wrote this. He helped work on the soundtrack for the
new Teenage Mutan Ninja Turtles movie that just came out
not too long ago. He was on Soul, So like
it's funny to think of like nine inch Nails writing
music for Disney. Yeah, but that's what's happening. He was

(01:00:44):
also the composer for nine episodes of the Watchmen series
and The Social Network and bird Box, and so he's
got his hands in all these kind of interesting places.
But the Tron soundtrack is like quintessential, like more electronic
nineteen like like Beneach Nails, and it's really fun to
listen to.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Wow, I had no idea that Trent Reznor was keeping
so busy. Oh yeah, that's a really fun recommendation. I
appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Yeah, I think, I think you'll dig it. And the movie,
Like I said, the movie's fun, it's cool action.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
I would I would watch it. It looked I'm not as
familiar with Like I never saw the original Tron. I
did see the like reboot, remake, sequel, whatever it was.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Oh the yeah, yeah, legacy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Yeah that one. So I've just never been very immersed
in that world. But like, it does look pretty cool,
Like I'd be curious to watch it, So maybe i'll
I'll revisit the whole thing and then watch the new
movie and just be more aware.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
Yeah, yeah, it's worth it. It's worth it. Evan Peters
is in this new one. It's great.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
He's so good at Peters. Yeah, yeah, awesome, all right,
very good. Well, all right, so those recommendations, so yeah,
that's what we're doing there, and I think that's what
we have to say about that, and we've kind of
said all of our other things. So thank you all
for listening. Is there anything else you need to add
or would like to add, or that I forgot nothing
on mine? All right, Well, this is the end of
our spooky season for twenty twenty five, so happy Halloween.

(01:02:01):
I hope that you enjoyed our spooky episodes. We're actually
coming back next week launching into one of our long
sort of series that we do where all the topics
are related. Should we spoil it now or let it
be a surprise, let's boil it now? Go all right.
We are going to be doing for the rest of
the year a series of episodes focusing on disability and accessibility,

(01:02:22):
and so those will be our topics. The way we've
mapped it out, it should get us all the way
through the end of December, and then we'll start back
in January fresh with the brand new batch of random
stuff that we just want to talk about. Yep, so
that will be fun, but we'll see you guys. Thank
you for joining us on our journey in Halloween, and
we'll see you in the coming months for a lot
of discussions about disability, which is very in the wheelhouse

(01:02:44):
of our experience and professional work as well, which is great.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Yeah, I think that that's it for now, so I
hope you have a really happy Halloween, and thanks for listening.
This is Abraham, this is Shane. We're out see you.
You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.