The Gerasene Demoniac

“My name is Legion.” In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider the Biblical tale of exorcism and swine. What did the story mean? How was it used to enforce our relationship with animals and just how intelligent are pigs?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Come out of the man thou let spirit. What is
thy name? My name is Legion, because yawnny, and he
besought him much that he would not send them away
out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto
the mountains, a great herd of swine feeting, and all

(00:29):
the devils besought him, saying, sitting us among the peaks,
allow us to go into them, and forthwith Jesus gave
them leave, and the unclean spirits went out and entered
into the swine, and the herd ran violently down a
steep place into the sea, and were choked from the sea.

(01:05):
Welcome Stuff to Blow your Mind. A production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. And it's still October, so of course
we're letting out a great demonic oink today, Robert, I know. So,

(01:26):
so you wanted to talk about a demoniac today. And
this was a very exciting idea to me because this
story in the Bible about the garrison or gathering demoniac
has long been one of my favorites, but also because
it's a story that concerns possessed swine. I think it
gives us a great opportunity to talk about pig technology. Yeah,

(01:47):
this is this is a really fun one. I guess
you'd say. This is definitely a section of the New
Testament that I remember turning to when I would if
I was bored in church growing up, because it it
is such a weird little scene, you know, Jesus meeting
with um an individual that's possessed not by one demon,
but by like thousands of demons, a legion of demons

(02:09):
and uh, and then negotiating them out of the man,
but not only that, sending them then into a whole
bunch of pigs, which subsequently fall off the side of
a cliff into the ocean. Inge rown right. And there
are plenty of other stories in the New Testament about
Jesus doing various healings, doing exorcisms, so that that happens elsewhere.
But it's like the setting and the weird conclusion of

(02:31):
this story that make it so memorable going into the pigs.
So maybe we should look at the story in a
little bit of context and then come back to talk
about thoughts about it's you know, historical and theological role,
and then thoughts about pigs as animals and uh and
what a stampede of of devilish intelligence they might bring forth.
So I guess let's start with the story in the

(02:53):
context of the Gospel of Mark. And I think that's
a good place to start, because pretty much all scholars
agree that Mark is the earliest of the four canonical gospels,
since it's clear that the other gospels used Mark as
a source and like they made variations on it according
to their storytelling priorities, and probably also from the use
of other sources. Uh. Now, this story does also appear

(03:15):
in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but with some changes. Uh. So.
In the Gospel of Mark, the story happens in chapter five,
and it's right after a chapter where Jesus is out
preaching to a crowd. He tells the crowd a bunch
of familiar parables, like the parable of the lamp under
the bushel basket and the parable of the mustard seed.
You know, if you have faith is only the size

(03:36):
of a mustard seed, you can do great things, hits right. Uh.
And in the chapters before this in Mark, he's done
some various preaching, some healing. I think he heals the paralytic,
he heals a man with a withered hand. But so
at the end of this UH, at the fourth chapter,
after he's been doing this preaching, Jesus says, okay, let's
go across the sea, which is taken to refer to

(03:57):
the Sea of Galilee. It's a body of water UH
in the area. So Jesus and the disciples leave behind
the crowds. They get in the boat to cross the water,
and on the way across, a big storm comes up,
and the disciples are all shaken in their boots. But
then Jesus wakes up and he says, peace be still,
and the storm is replaced with dead calm. And then

(04:18):
Jesus goes on to immediately shame his disciples for being afraid, saying,
have you still no faith? And they're all of course
amazed by his powers, saying who is this then that
even the wind and the sea obey him. So I think,
in the context of the Gospel story, UH, this preacher
Jesus has been telling parables that shows great wisdom about

(04:38):
the coming Kingdom of God, and he's showing more and
more direct power himself all the time, not just as
a teacher, but as possibly some kind of sorcerer or
even divine being. And that's when we get to the
demoniac here. So they get to the other side of
the Sea of Galilee, and Mark says it's in the
country of the Garacenes, but other gospels say it's in
a different place, the country of the Maternes. And that's

(05:00):
why they're different names for this story, the gathering Swine,
the gathering demoniac, the Guarristine and swine the Garristine demoniac.
But wherever it is, we immediately meet this man out
of the tombs. Yeah. And it's it's worth noting that,
you know, the differences in the other two gospels. Um,
in Matthew, for instance, it's not one man out of

(05:21):
the tomb, but two men out of the tomb. Uh.
And then also in Luke, it's one man again, but
this time he's also naked, as if to you know,
really stress the feral nature of the individual. Well, yes,
and then Luke's telling of the story, Uh, it's I
think it's that's the one where it's stressed that he
was naked before he got the demons cast out, and
then he puts on clothes at once the demons are

(05:44):
out of him, right, and then sometimes in like retellings
I've noticed, especially in artistic depictions of this scene, sometimes
the artists seemed to just pick and choose from all three,
you know. So I saw one where it was two
naked individuals serving as the men of the tomb. Oh,
this is a very common thing that happens. Because you've got,
you know, different versions of the same story that appear
across the four Gospels. Sometimes people will just, like as

(06:07):
modern readers come, bind them all into one, so they'll
put all the elements there next to each other in
ways that don't always make sense, but it can be funny.
So what follows is, yeah, an exorcism scene, you know,
one that's maybe not as as dramatic as modern horror
viewers would would hope for. It's a little more more
of a negotiation in some respects. Yeah, but yeah, on

(06:28):
the face of it, we have a very disturbed individual
who seems to live among the tombs and abuses himself
with rocks, like scratching himself up with rocks. Yeah, we're
told he lives in the graveyard, but he spends day
and night prowling the graveyard in the mountains, bruising himself
with rocks and howling. Yeah, and then of course when
Jesus shows up, right, we get the the unclean spirits.

(06:49):
Immediately they start begging Jesus like they recognize his power,
which I think is a thing that's supposed to be
important in the story. Yeah, they realized they don't have
a lot of bargaining strength her into this. It's like
when the bad Cops shows up in the interrogation room.
They're like, oh no, yeah, now we're we've been getting
away with this, but now we're in trouble. And so

(07:09):
they immediately begged Jesus not to send them away. They
reveal their name, which I think we can come back
to that, but that might be a theologically significant thing.
They revealed their name is Legion, as in a large
Roman military unit consisting of more than a thousand soldiers.
It was different numbers at different times. Yeah. I was
looking at at various modern translations, and there's at least

(07:30):
one translation that just said our name is a lot
because there are a lot of us. I mean, I
do think that's sort of what it was supposed to mean,
but but it lacks that right you know, like, what
if it was the name is a whole message us,
Like what if the film was The Exorcist three colon
a lot instead of Legion, which which of course is

(07:54):
referring back to this very this very line. Uh. Though
it might also be significant that Legion is like a
Roman concept because of course at the time, like a
huge theme of the Gospels is that the people, the
Jewish people are being occupied by the Romans, and there
are a lot of sort of rebellious sentiments and anti
Roman ideas. Yeah, yeah, and when we'll definitely come back

(08:15):
to some of the Roman elements here. Yeah. But to
conclude the story, of course, this was in the opening
passage we read. But Jesus commands the demons out. They
asked him to send them into a flock of pigs nearby,
and Jesus is like, okay, take the pigs. So he
sends them into the pigs, and then the pigs immediately
go stampeding down into the water of the Sea of
Galilee to their doom. So I see overall that I

(08:39):
think this story in its place in the Gospel of
Mark is kind of an escalation moment. Like Jesus keeps
showing greater and greater power, not just wisdom and teaching,
not just power over the winds and the seas, but
now even over a legion of demons. And so all
the disciples are of course like, oh wow, how you
know he's he's so powerful. They keep emphasizing that this

(08:59):
is even more powerful than we thought he was before.
So I was looking around for a little more information
on this than I read A Spirit Possession and the
Garrison h Demoniac by J. Duncan M. Derrett from The
journal Man in nine and he made the following points
about it. The first of all, he points out there
are no really important textual textual variance of the tale,

(09:21):
you know, like one one man possessed by demons, too
naked or not naked like still, that the story is
essentially the same. Now, I wonder if that also refers
to the fact that there are not major like non
canonical early older texts that have different versions of the
story that change, because that is the case with some stories.
He also points out that the man here is clearly

(09:43):
shunned as unclean, and he's engaging and in kind of
an out of control cleansing ritual, you know, the scraping
of the body, um you know, the the abusing of
himself with rocks, you know, really on those same lines
as like flagellation and so forth. Um Deret also draws
comparisons to various rights of possession in other cultures where

(10:07):
sensation to physical pain is dulled, which I think is
an interesting point because there are various like especially religious
trials and rituals, in which one will do something that
is either you know, definitely painful or takes on the
appearance of painful and just be via the like the
frenzy of the of the ritual, one is able to

(10:32):
to experience less pain or to uh or at least
it's you know, you get into that area where it's
like there's the experience of the of the right, and
then there is the the story of the right you know.
Well yeah. This also makes me think, of course, about
the nature of what was going on when people believe
they encounter demon possession in the ancient world. I mean, so,
of course, there are multiple theories about this, and it

(10:53):
would probably vary from case to case. Of course, one
major and pretty obvious thing is the idea that people
in the ancient world often didn't understand that they were
looking at the symptoms of various mental illnesses, and you know,
would characterize that as a person being possessed by an
unclean spirit. But you could also imagine a person who
might not necessarily have a particular mental illness, but would

(11:16):
be prompted in some various way by the religious context
to believe that they were possessed in some way and
act out the role. Yeah. I think of some of
the medieval rights of penance that would come much later,
in which one would say, for instance, flatulate yourself with
with sticks or whips, uh you know where, ragged clothing

(11:38):
and crawl through the streets. Uh, you know that sort
of thing. Uh. So in in in all of this,
Dred is saying that this is you know, potentially essentially
at the theater of protests that's taking place. You know
that there is a you know, there's a performance quality
to it, um of course. And then he points out that,
you know, Jesus acquires the demon's name, which is often

(11:58):
an important aspect of some sort of an exorcism ritual.
And I think that even shows up in like the
the Conjuring movies, right. Really, Yeah, I didn't know if
there was a like an actual ancient exorcism precedent for that,
but it's in the second Conjuring movie. There's this whole
thing where it's like I figured out the demon's name,
now I can defeat it. Oh yeah, it's definitely definitely

(12:20):
part of Dungeons and Dragons, you know, really the demon's name,
you have some power over it. Usually from the Gospel
of Guy GaX. Yeah. Um. And then he also points
out what we just discussed already. Legion is, of course
a military term. The man is possessed by a host
of demons, and Jesus is he's either speaking to all
of them or perhaps to the leader commanding them. And

(12:41):
Jesus has presented as being, you know, much more than
a match for an entire legion of demons. Like you said,
this is a lot of this is about presenting just
how how powerful Jesus is. Yes, And I think that's
an important point of comparison. When even you look at
something like in The Exorcist, you know, the priests show
up and the demon taunts them and stuff. It's like, okay,
I'm ready to do bad attle. When Jesus shows up,

(13:01):
the demon is immediately crying uncle. He's like Oh no,
don't send me out too far. Maybe just let me
go to the pigs, like he immediately knows he's beaten now. Pigs,
Derek reminds us, were slaughtered in offering to the underworld
at Roman burials, thus their connection to the tombs and
to this particular individual's fascination with morbidity and with death.

(13:25):
Pigs are associated with sacrifices to demons as well as
with beast reality, and Derett stresses that there is a
sexual connotation to spirit possession. Uh, you know, this idea
of of entering into the pigs, or also just the
idea of a spirit having entered into you and taken
hold of your senses. Well, that also makes me think

(13:46):
about another possible explanation for a belief in spirit possession
in the ancient world, which is just maybe a person
wasn't even necessarily experiencing symptoms of mental illness or even
acting out a possession. Maybe they were just behaving in
an unconventional way and people around them said, well, you know,
nobody in the right mind would act like that. So
if they violated sexual taboos or something like that, you

(14:08):
could say they must have had a demon in order
to do that. Now, one thing that he does point
out is that pigs are actually great swimmers, really yeah,
and also that they don't stampede. So there's a big
problem with this idea of potentially it defends how I
guess you read into the demon possession of the pigs.
But pigs on their own are not going to stampede.

(14:28):
They're probably not going to drown in the river. Now,
I guess you could say that, well, they're not. They're
no longer pig brains controlling those pigs. Those are scared
demon brains, and maybe they don't know how to swim. Well,
this is funny. I was also looking up examples. I
was trying to find things about pigs stampeding. I didn't
really find anything like good documented like zoological literature about

(14:50):
pig stampeding, though I did find a news story about
supposedly somewhere in Syria stampede of pigs killing some IIS
fighters and in recent years. But I think that's probably
just like a news like a journalist appellation. It might
have not have been a stampede, but just like a
herd of pigs. Wasn't there a scene in a cornte
McCarthy novel where I heard of pigs trample off into

(15:13):
the river, though probably a reference to this very tale.
I feel like it was. It was one of the
Appalachian books, like maybe Child of God or Outer Dark.
I don't know. I've I've read some of those books,
but I don't remember that scene. But I could be wrong. Yeah,
it might not have been picked, been something else. But
there are a lot of drowned animals at one point,

(15:34):
certainly now on the uncleanliness of pigs. Obviously, much has
been written about this because there you know, there there
are uh supposed practical reasons that pork is prohibited in
Judaism and Islam. One is that pigs are not very
sustainable and drier environments. That's the argument. Another is that pork,
of course can contain trickin nosis, but of course that's

(15:55):
taken care of if it's cooked properly. Um so, so
it's often in it out that like that, even when
Judaism and Islam, even when these religions travel out of
areas where you could make the argument that a pig
is not suitable for this environment, like, the restriction still remains. Yeah,
I'm not sure. I'm convinced by any of the alleged

(16:18):
practical reasons behind the prohibition on pork and other foods
in Judaism and Islam, because I mean, I haven't seen
any really convincing evidence there. It seems to be more likely.
This is another one of the many unique practices and
characteristics you'd find in any religion or culture that don't
necessarily result from some kind of clear material environmental mandate.

(16:38):
I mean, there are some like we were just recently
talking about, you know, sky burial practices in Tibet being
a religious cultural practice, but perhaps resulting from the fact
that also within that landscape, it's hard to find places
to dig graves, it's hard to find wood to burn
bodies with, so it just sort of makes sense from
a material environmental standpoint. I think sometimes explanations like that

(17:00):
makes sense. But I'm I'm not convinced by any of
the pork ones, right. Another one that sometimes brought up
well there in the texts themselves. Sometimes a point is
made about the cloven hoof, which seems kind of nonsensical. Why, yeah,
what's the problem. Yeah, there's also the idea that, well,
pigs are omnivores and they may consume scavenged flesh, and
that could be seen as unclean. But yes, we've discussed

(17:23):
in the show before even strict herbivores will eat meat
on occasion. Um. I Unfortunately, like I did some searching
on this, uh and and saw some videos of like
like how many ducklings can can a particular cow eat that?
You know? I mean, it just it happens, it's it's
it's so it's never considered cows before. We've thought about

(17:46):
like deer eating meat. Of course, squirrels and meat, we think, yeah,
wilder creatures, right, But this now is just haunting my brain.
Why is it so much scarier to be eaten by
a cow than any other animal? I can think because
you trusted it so much. I thought that you had it,
had invested through a domestication. Seems so docile, and then
it jumps seven feet straight in the air and eats you.

(18:07):
Have you ever seen how high cows can jump? It
looks wrong. I don't know that I have. Certainly I'm
always impressed by how fast a horse can move, and
how fast it can like PLoP unto the ground and
pop back up again. So let's get back though to
the religious reasons that ultimately the social reasons to prohibit
something like a pork is explained by a Nigel Barber, PhD.

(18:28):
In psychology today. The signaling theory of religion puts forth
that abstaining from something like pork is a way of
signaling your devotion and provides something that a social group
can bond over, and there's a you're all going to
be paying a ritual cost for this. Basically, food taboos
keep co religionists together and and it's something where like

(18:48):
everyone has to give up something, you have to pay
a fee to to join this club. Yeah, that makes
a lot of sense to me. Again, I don't know
that that's the primary real reason, but that certainly seems
very plausible. I mean, I think they are all kinds
of things that religions do where the main goal of
doing them is showing that you are a devoted member

(19:12):
of the religion and good standing. Right. Yeah, I mean,
like for a modern example, one turns to like the
straight edge movement. Right, We're on one hand, you can say, okay,
there is a sort of signaling going on here. People
who are abstaining from these various substances are doing so
and by doing so they can they can claim to
be a part of a particular group. However, it's not

(19:32):
the only thing, like they're also you know, any individual
that's that's following that lifestyle will also point to other
reasons why they are abstaining, not merely to be a
part of a group, but for you know, various other
lifestyle purposes. Oh sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, but whether
or not those other reasons are also truly motivating them,
I think it's hard to deny that shared abstinence creates solidarity. Right,

(19:56):
But to come back to the Romans, the Romans definitely
a pork. And so when the Omens roll in and began,
you know, controlling your territory, derating the pork, you are not.
There's a firm line to be drawn in the sand
there between us and them, right right, So there could
be like people all around with flocks of pigs that
they're preparing to eat, and you can look at those
things and be like, well, that's no part of my life. Yeah.

(20:18):
And of course, ultimately, you know, rules against eating certain
animals are going to be kind of an arbitrary agreement.
And I think a huge example of this, as well
discussed is the predominant American notion that it's well and
good to eat a pig, that eating a pig is
something that should be celebrated, we should have parades about it.
But eating a dog, well, that's just that's just not

(20:38):
acceptable now. And then nature of exercismicism itself, Well, we've
covered exorcism on the show before, and I think it's
always important to to think about rights of exorcism across
various cultures. Is is being rights potentially too, of expulsion
of negative feelings, uh, negative attributes, and in some cases
an attempt crude attempt in some cases to treat mental illness,

(21:00):
you know. But I think think we have to think about,
you know, a tendency to think about the exorcisms as
a pure, superstitious right, and you know, not to think
about its connotations to more secular rights, such as expelling
negative thoughts via breath in various meditation and yoga practices,
you know. I mean, we don't think of that as exorcism,
We don't think of that as magic, but it is
an exercise that can allow us to well to to

(21:23):
to quote, doone to you know, to allow your your
fear to pass over and through you Oh yeah. I
mean I've see no problem at all from a secular standpoint,
excepting that exorcism could sometimes be a successful psychological intervention,
not because there are actually like like spirit demons, but
because like going like you're saying, like going through a

(21:44):
cathartic event where you go through some kind of ritual purging. Uh.
I'm not saying that it's necessarily a reliable practice, but
it's not surprising that it might work sometimes in some cases.
And certainly not to say that it is a better
method for like, for actual mental illness. But but at
any rate, I just want to like frame, you know,
provide a frame of reference for it. Um. Also, I

(22:05):
want to come back to the idea of pig based
u beings, pig based monsters, and pig based creatures. Um.
You do see these should pop up in a lot
of different mythologies around the world wherever they are pigs.
I mean, it's just given right, wherever there are pigs,
there is going to be some idea of the pig
half man, half pig being man. Pig monsters are are

(22:28):
underrated for horror value, yeah, absolutely, I feel like sometimes
they're rolled out as more comedic relief uh. And in
those cases, I don't I don't think enough you know,
enough emphasis is placed on just how how horrifying, how
scary like a wild boar can be. I have no
respect to whatsoever for the solo movies. That's just not

(22:50):
my kind of horror film. But the one thing I
remember thinking was actually successful about them is just the
fact that, like the creep in them, Where's sometimes wears
a pig mask. Oh yeah, that was one of his
many disguises, and one of a very dramatic individual. He
had a mask, yet a puppet. He had a whole
production truck. The puppets just kind of goofy. The pig

(23:12):
mask is where it's at. Uh. Now, I want to
make a quick side note about Chinese tradition, you know,
and all this talk of demons and pigs, I can't
help but think of Pigsy. Are you familiar with Pigsy?
I don't think I know Pigsy, Pigsy or what is it?
A zoo um bagier from Journey into the West. So

(23:32):
if you just if you look up Journey into the
West and Pigsy, uh, for instance, on YouTube, you'll find
numerous clips I'm sure from the various film and TV
adaptations of Journey into the West. I mean, they've also
been video game adaptations of Journey into the West, but
the accounts vary. But basically, he was punished by the
Jade Emperor for lusting after chang Uh, the Goddess of

(23:53):
the Moon, and his punishment, he's cast down to Earth
and winds up in the form of a half pig,
half human monster. But just his faults, he becomes a
great adventure and is a key character and Journey into
the West and ultimately slays many demons. Oh, a pig slayer.
Did we talk about him in our in our monster
Slayer episode last year? I don't think we did. Um. Yeah,
I don't think Journey into the West has has actually

(24:15):
come up on the show before. But there's you know,
there's a there's a lot of wonderful material there if
we ever choose to come back to it. Oh, I
guess I gotta read it now. Yeah, we're watching. Like
I said, there's some fabulous film adaptations of this. You
got the Monkey King, you got Pigsy or the whole group.
All right, I think we have to take a break,
but we will be right back with more about about

(24:35):
the garristine demoniac, the gathering swine, pig science, and and
much more than Alright, we're back. So I've I've already
mentioned how this is. This is one of those little
Bible stories that if you're if you're bored in a
Christian church, you sometimes turned to. Also, it has had
a big influence on on horror and sort of demonic

(24:56):
and occults themed material, most notably The Exorcist three Legion,
a surprisingly good movie, given that The Exorcist one, of
course horror classic Exorcist to one of the most hilarious
bad horror movies of all time. I remember it's got
a line in it it's something like your machine has
scientifically proven there's an ancient demon locked inside her. Yeah.

(25:20):
I think if I had to rewatch an Exorcist film
this year, it would be three, Like like one is
a classic. But also I've always been one that is
believed that the best parts of the Exorcist are not
the you know, the screaming crazy uh you know Reagan,
the you know, raging out with demonic possession. It's smaller moments.

(25:40):
It's like the little what Pozoozu, the creature that's been
made by the child or or drawn on a sheet
in the background. That sure, yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
I actually think some of the best stuff in The
Exorcist is the parts where it's kind of like a
seventies character study movie. I mean, there are parts that
almost feel kind of like a Scorsese movie or something,
with like father Cares visiting his mother and that kind

(26:02):
of stuff, and his horrible nightmares. And I think it's
a very effective horror film. But Exorcist three is also
really really good. It's been years since I've seen it,
but uh, at least I won't say it's as good
as the first one, but it's surprisingly good for being
a third film. I can't think of a third film
that competes apart from Halloween three. Oh um, Underworld three

(26:24):
is the best of the Underworld. So there's that. But
the the ie An Legion things shows up in all
kinds of just like you know, demon horror, right, it's
how can you resist? It seems like such an easy
thing to pick up and run with. I remember it
also shows up in something that I inexplicably read when
I was a kid. I remember buying a used copy
of the screenplay or the teleplay to Stephen King's Storm

(26:49):
of the Century, which is I think not ever a
piece of fiction. I think he wrote it directly for
like made for TV. So I was just reading the
original work, which is his teleplay, not kings best work,
but basically, uh, the demon Legion shows up in a
small island town in New England, of course, and he
demands to steal the town's children. And he he's originally

(27:09):
disguised as a man named Lenoge and of course it's
an anagram for my name is for Legion for but
also he's played by the demon is played by Comb Fiori,
a prolific character actor and the bad guy from one
of your favorites, Robert Chronicles of Rittick. Oh yeah, he's
what the Lord Marshall right right, yeah? Is he like
he's like the main big bad in it and yeah, yeah,

(27:32):
he's the head necromonger. Yeah yeah, and he's he is
a wonderful character Actor's been in tons of things, so
great comedic actor as well. Now, in any given like
piece of a religious text, there, you know, there's always
various things going on with it, right, there's a question
of what does it say, what is the story, What
did the the people who wrote it or told it

(27:52):
or transcribed it mean for it to say? And then
what is the tradition of using it? How has it
been used and even misused over the years to drive
home particular points? Right? Often, what did the author intend
for it to mean versus how has it been interpreted
by the faithful over the years is a very different thing. Yeah,
And one one interpretation of this text I was surprised

(28:14):
by was the fact that it's been uh is, there's
been used to drive home this idea that humans have
no responsibility towards animals, particularly uh suggested by St. Augustine
of Hippo. Augustine wrote, quote, Christ himself shows that to
refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of

(28:35):
plants is the height of superstition. For judging that there
are no common rights between us and the beasts and trees,
he sent the devils into a herd of swine, and
with a curse, withered the tree on which he found
no fruit. Oh yeah, that's the withering of the fig tree, right,
which is a different story In the Bible, Jesus comes
across a fig tree. It says there were no figs
on the tree, for figs were not in season, and

(28:57):
Jesus becomes angry with the tree and he withers it. Yeah,
I mean he was having a bad day in that day. Well,
I think that story it to go back to what
authors actually intended versus how they're interpreted. I think a
lot of scholars think that that story was originally meant
to be like a metaphor for people who did not
bear good fruits. Right, so it's not literally about trees

(29:18):
or are showing off his abilities to wither fruit? Right?
At least yeah, at least under this interpretation, it seems
very a very plausible interpretation to me. But here Augustine's
running with it is like now it's literally about trees.
It's about how trees not worth nothing. You can do
whatever you want to them, it doesn't matter. Jesus showed
it in this parable. Yeah, seen, you can well imagine that.

(29:40):
Like Augustine like was kicking a pig or something or
a dog and someone say, hey, don't don't kick that dog,
and he's like, well, Jesus put a whole bunch of
demons in pigs and drove him off a cliff, So
I have free reign to kick as many dogs and
pigs as I see fit. Somebody like somebody shamed him
for letting his orchard with her, and then he's like,
I'll show you. When he goes and looks up the Bible,

(30:01):
He's like, look right here. So various authors have have
have taken issue with Augustine's interpretation here uh, Christian vegetarian
uh and Anglican priest Andrew Lindsay, author of Christianity and
the Rights of Animals. He counter argues and says, you know,
this is ridiculous. It's just propping up Augustine's prior opinion
that animals have no rights. And he contends that the

(30:23):
demons ultimately that they're selecting their own vessel here and
uh and did so because they were weaker creatures. Uh
and uh, you know, and obviously the demons themselves don't
care for animal rights. Meanwhile, he argues that there are
plenty of other passages where it's far easier to read
pro animal ideas in the words of Christ than it
is to uh, you know, to to to shoehorn in

(30:45):
an anti animal rights agenda. Well, there is one thing
that I actually do wonder about the story that's very interesting.
Is there supposed to be some kind of metaphorical or
theological meaning to the fact that the pigs, So that
Jesus sends the demons into the pigs where they asked
to go, He's like, okay, you can go into the pigs,
and then they go into the pigs, and then the

(31:06):
pigs immediately stampede and die. Why did they stampede and die?
Is there is that just like? Was that just added
to the story because like, okay, you know, that'd be
an interesting way to conclude it. And now the demons
are dealt with? Or was there some like meaning They're like,
does does this have something to do with the Romans
or with you know, yeah, because we already touched on

(31:26):
the connection between the Romans and pigs. We touched on
the connection between pigs and the location with the you know,
the the tombs. So and then also you always have
to wonder too with stories like this, like what what
other you know, pre existing narratives where they're out there
that have potentially been otherwise lost, that are reflected in
this story. Now, Thomas Aquinas, apparently I read thought that

(31:48):
this passage showed that Christ was primarily concerned with men
rather than pigs. But and and I've seen that pointed
out a few different places. But I was looking for
like a direct quote on this, and I was looking
at acquaintas his thoughts on the passage, and most of
it seemed to come down to him stressing the fact
that the pigs were unclean. So of course that's the
best place to send a bunch of demons. They love

(32:10):
unclean things. And it also shows shows he would he
argued that the devil can't kill you unless you present
yourself as an unclean animal. But I don't know that.
There's a lot of riffing on the scripture that I
ran across, but I'm not sure animal rights are the
lack thereof was the primary concern. Well, while we're on
the subject of the demonic oink, I think, uh, this

(32:30):
is a great opportunity to jump over to talking a
little bit about pig intelligence, pig behavior, and even a
very recent discovery about possible pig tool use. Yeah, yeah,
that that was. That was I think ultimately the the
bit of news that that made up my mind on
pursuing this as a topic. Yeah, so we've touched on
animal rights, we've touched on the notion of higher intelligence

(32:53):
in the form of demons being dropped into the bodies
of pigs. H Plus the notion that in some traditions
pigsy from journeying into the West is a product of reincarnation.
Uh So, having touched on these notions, you know, we
come back around to the question, well, how smart is
just a normal pig? You know, certainly I think we
can assume its brain is not on part of the humans.
We can more than assume that. We can state that.

(33:15):
But they're not the dumb animals we all we sometimes
take them for, uh the sort of comic relief. Look,
how dumb the pig is. It's covered in mud, it
lives in a pig pin. Well, I don't know if
this is actually a good explanation, but at least something
I've heard postulated in the past is what if the
common prohibitions on eating pigs in some religions stem from

(33:38):
not the uncleanness of pigs, but the similarity between pigs
and humans. I mean, there are a lot of sort
of biological and morphological similarities. For example, some pigs having
like fairly bare skin kind of like a less hair
than most mammals have unlike kind of like they're human cousins, uh,
just things. Oh apparently human meat tasting kind of like pork. Apparently.

(34:04):
I've also noticed that when a pig is butchered, uh,
sometimes its body looks like that of a of a
human um. Particularly ever, if you watch a lot of
like cooking shows on you know, very streaming channels, and
the inevitably there'll be a scene where someone has uh
you know, they're they're rolling out the slaughtered pig, or
then it's been prepared for the barbecue grill and it

(34:26):
looks alarmingly like a small person. Yeah, and so again,
I don't know if that really has all that much
explanatory power, but I can see that a little bit
like maybe we anthropomorphize pigs because it's just already pretty close.
There's a natural leap from humans to pigs, and boy
do we I mean, this has always disturbed me, the
level to which a barbecue restaurant will anthropomorphize a pig,

(34:48):
usually on the logo, where it'll be you know, it'll
be like smiling, happy humanoid pigs roaming around or even
doing grizzly things like cooking themselves or climbing into grills, Like,
what are you doing? Uh, you know you shouldn't you
be like distancing yourself from this notion that the pigs
are rational beings and you're eating them. Well, it makes

(35:11):
me think of the Chick fil A marketing strategy where
they would have the cows painting the signs. It's brilliant,
really anthropomorphized the other animal. That's that. That was I
think the wise choice. So also looking around a little
bit just on sort of pre existing um knowledge about
the intelligence of pigs, because there's there's been a lot
of data on this. So Barry Esterbrook wrote a book

(35:34):
called Pigtails which gets into all of this. Uh. He's
a science writer, and he points out some of the
big key points about peg behavior. First of all, pigs
have been taught to play computer games, and this gets
to to basically do it to the fact that pigs
have proven themselves to be very good at learning new task,
learning new tricks um, which is essentially what's going on

(35:55):
when they're playing a computer game and some of these
experiments they're trainable. Yeah, pigs have a sense of self
and they can recognize themselves in mirrors. They can also
figure out how a mirror works. I mean not in
terms of like how it's made and how it's like
the optics of it, but you know, they can they
can figure out what they're seeing through it and use

(36:15):
it to identify food. Oh really, so they can recognize
that the mirror is a reflection of what's you know,
behind them and stuff. Yeah, and also pigs can look
at another pig and calculate what that pig might do
or how it might act. A two thousand sixteen University
of Lincoln study found that, as with humans, the pig's
judgment and decisions are governed by mood and personality type. Uh.

(36:38):
They're also proven to be really good remembering where food
stores are, and not only that, how they rate in
size to each other. So it's not just a matter
of like, oh, there's some the researchers put so much food,
you know, put put food here and here and here. No,
they can remember the proportions as well, you can rank
them in their their heads um. And they're also really
good at deceiving each other when it comes to food. Oh,

(37:00):
how does that work? Basically comes down to the fact
that they're they're intelligent animals, but they're also highly social animals.
So you know they in the wild, wild hogs are
not living in seclusion. They're living in contact with one another. Uh,
so they are social creatures. And on the subject of domestication, Uh,

(37:21):
the domesticated pig diverge from wild hogs somewhere like eight
thousand years ago. That's that's when we began domesticating pigs
and uh, and it's it is kind of impressive that
we haven't managed to domesticate the smarts out of them,
like they're like, even the domesticated pig is an intelligent creature. Well,
maybe we should explore more of that intelligence after we

(37:42):
come back from a break and we can talk about
pigs and tool use. Than all right, we're back. So
tool use this is uh, this is really fascinating because
of course tool use is our thing the humans. Tools
are the things we use to build our barbecue restaurants
and to slaughter pigs and then to cook pigs and

(38:05):
serve pigs and then to eat pigs. But apparently it
takes no tools to cast demons from a human into pigs.
We're not told there's a wand involved or anything. So yeah, Robert,
I I found out about this interesting report on pig
intelligence recently, I think because you shared it with me. Yeah,
the day it came out, I I shared it with
our our Facebook group. Stuff to Blow your mind a

(38:26):
discussion module, which is a place you can go if
you want to discuss episodes of the show and uh,
you know, sort of related studies with other listeners. Uh So,
for some background talking about tool use. Tool use is
often taken, of course, is one of the most interesting
and most important signs of higher intelligence and animals. It's
you know, it's I think fairly plausibly argued to be

(38:47):
one of the main things that makes humans very special. Right.
We've got language, we've got tool use, right, But we're
not the only animals that use tools. A few non
human animals show pretty clear or undisputed use of tools.
Of course. One great example is other primates, right, like chimpanzees, binobo's, orangutans,
and even I think you know, guerrillas, and some monkeys

(39:10):
and stuff. Chimpanzees will sometimes like use large rocks to
crush nutshells, use sticks for hunting or for fishing insects
or other prey out of crevices and enclosures. We've also
extensively covered tool use in some bird species in the past.
If you want to learn more, you can check out
our older episodes on the Unsettling depths of bird intelligence.

(39:31):
I think it was called Yes. The primary examples here
are birds like Corvid's and parrots. Great example is the
new Caledonian crow, which has been involved in a lot
of research. They can use sticks or bark for rooting
around inside crevices, fishing for insects and larvae. Uh, sometimes
even displaying really startling levels of abstraction. I believe there

(39:52):
are examples of them constructing tools, like putting things together
to make tools, or using one tool not to get food,
but to access a second, better tool which can be
used to get food. I mean that's interesting. Yeah, And
of course there are other mammals. Marine mammals like cetaceans
also sometimes display behaviors that might count as tool use.

(40:14):
I think you've mentioned before dolphins, like using sponges as tools. Yeah,
that definitely comes up. What was the it's basically like
for sea floor foraging. I believe so. Yeah, I'm I'm
a little foggy on the details of that one, but
but there is a there's definitely a case that has
been made for tool use by dolphins, even the octopus.
Actually it's invertebrate tool use. Uh. The octopus for example,

(40:37):
well sometimes carry shells or like coconut shells with them
to fold over their bodies to use as shelter, armor,
hunting blind uh. And then there are more arguable examples
of things that might or might not be tool used,
depending on your criteria. I mean, if you really stretch it,
like sometimes even reptiles like croc crocodilians are alleged to

(40:57):
use tools. But I think not everyone would agree on
whether these behaviors count. But maybe the newest, most surprising
discovery of animal tool use as of the day we're
recording this is this very recent documentation of tool use
by pigs. So what would count as tool use? Well,
I was reading a great article about this new discovery

(41:17):
and nat GEO by Christine Delamore. I think this is
the best article I've found about the this new research,
and she cites a definition here which seems very reasonable
to me. So the definition of tool use here is
quote the exertion of control over a freely manipulable external object,
which is the tool, with the goal of altering the

(41:37):
physical properties of another object, substance, surface, or medium via
a dynamic mechanical interaction, or to mediating the flow of information,
which sounds a little complicated, but basically means you've got
to use an object that's not part of your body,
an object from the outside, to make changes to your
environment or objects in your environment, or to control information somehow. Now,

(42:03):
if you're wondering, like, how can information work, I believe
that would mean, for example, by changing what can be
seen and by whom. So if you use an object
to help you see something you couldn't otherwise see, or
to keep somebody else from seeing something, like you put
up something to hide yourself, that could be considered tool use. Right.

(42:23):
So yeah, Like so the idea of say the octopus
climbing inside of a coconut is arguably an example of this, right,
And I think though there would be differences between, Like
going into a hole is not tool used, so you
could be hiding there. I think it would be like
if you carry along a thing with you that you
can hide inside. But then even then you run into

(42:44):
some difficulties. I mean, when you see an octopus doing that,
that seems like tool use. But when a hermit crab
doesn't that that doesn't seem like tool use, right, So
they're they're like, uh, They're always going to be these
difficulties with these edge cases about what counts and what doesn't.
So there's a lot of arguing, I think in the
scientific literature about does this case count or does it
not count and why? But anyway, this new research about

(43:06):
pig tool use originates with a conservation ecologist named Meredith
root Bernstein who in October of was at a zoo
in Paris. She was observing a group of vision wardy
pigs at this Parisian zoo and Visayan warty pigs are
a critically endangered species of wild pig native to the Philippines.

(43:28):
They're critically endangered, like so many other creatures, because of
habitat destruction. It's the ruin of their natural rainforest homeland
that has driven them to this point. You may have
actually seen images of them. The males of the species
often have a natural mohawk hairdo running down the length
of their bodies, so they look pretty cool. Yeah, yeah,
they look pretty rough and tumble. But this group observed

(43:52):
by root Bernstein, they were in captivity and that's important
to remember because that can sometimes change animal behavior. I've
got an image, by the way for you to look
at here, Robert. The hair is mighty. Absolutely, I would
go as far as to say that this particular hog
looks rad This hog could play with some kind of like, uh,
some kind of minor tough and a Russell Mulkahi movie.

(44:14):
So in October fifteen, root Burnstein she was at this
zooe and she noticed one of the pigs in this
enclosure picking up a piece of tree bark with its
mouth and then using the bark as a spade to
dig around in the soil within its enclosure. Uh. The
pig was named Priscilla, by the way, and Priscilla's mate
was named Billy. So the French are good at naming pigs. Actually,

(44:37):
I don't know if the French name them, but Priscilla
and Billy, and then of course there were there were
younger pigs and the enclosure too. But root Burnstein, so
she saw this happening, the pig picking up the bark
with its mouth and digging with it, and she never
heard of documented tool use in any species of pigs.
So she went home to look it up, and she
couldn't find anything in the animal behavior literature, so she

(44:59):
kept returning to the zoo and documenting the pig's behavior
with the help of colleagues. But for several months she
never saw it happen again. So what was going on here? Well?
Delamore writes that Rude Bernstein suspected that the digging behavior
was part of the pigs nest building process. And of
course nest building doesn't happen year round. It's not all
the time, it's whenever there is a new litter of

(45:20):
piglets coming, and this happens about twice a year. So
root Bernstein and her colleagues waited, and in the following
spring they did, in fact observe tool use. Yet again,
three of the four pigs in the enclosure we're using
bark to help dig out their nests bark or sticks.
So does digging with bark count as tool use? We

(45:40):
can look in more detail in a minute, but yes,
I think it meets the regular criteria right. It's using
an object outside the body, a freely manipulable object to
change the environment, and there's no doubt that they're doing it.
There's video you can watch online. Though they do seem
a little clumsy at it. They don't look like hyper
like dexterrous tool users. It's more kind of like they're

(46:02):
flipping the stick all over the place and it kind
of moves the dirt around, which does make me wonder
what did tool use look like when like our ancestors
first started doing it, just like, you know, wildly swinging
things around and occasionally getting some benefit out of it. Well,
I mean, I think a lot of us probably fit

(46:22):
that description when we use, you know, a particular utensil
or go after a particular task in the kitchen that
we don't normally do. Like I was grading a sweet
potato last night, and I feel like that was basically
what was happening. People who were observing it might think, wow,
this this uh, this ape can barely manipulate this tool. Uh.

(46:43):
I don't know if this counts. Is too using intelligence? Yes?
Is it tool using intelligence? Or is it just occasionally
rubbing and fumbling this piece of the metal against the
this tuber. We're not sure, Robert, or your knuckles, Okay,
did you lose an they knuckles? Lucky, my my knuckles,
my skin, that's all fine, But that potato did suffer
I have lost a knuckler two to the greater before.

(47:06):
But my my point being, uh, you don't have to be, uh,
you know, an artful user of a tool to be
a tool user, right, Uh, you know, that's exactly right.
So rut Bernstein and her co authors published their research
in the journal Mammalian Biology in September twenty nineteen, and
so all the authors were Meredith Root Bernstein, A Trumpteen, Narayan,

(47:26):
Lucille Cornier, and Audi Bourgeois. The article is called context
specific tool use in sus Sebifrons in Mammalian Biology and
that this was published just in September in twenty nineteen,
so specifically, what's going on with the digging process here? Well,
the things become kind of interesting. So the authors documented
pigs using tools to dig four times in twenty sixteen

(47:48):
and seven times in twenty seventeen, and it seems that
the tool use always came in the middle of the
nest to digging process. Ultimately, of course, the nest they're
producing is going to be like a little dugout pit
and that's gonna be lined with leaves and that's where
the pig let's go. Uh. They also observed that the
male pigs digging was clumsier and less productive than the

(48:10):
digging by the females. Uh. It also seemed that the
knowledge about how to use the digging implements was being
passed on both vertically from mother to offspring and horizontally
by being taught to the males by the females. Interesting.
They also introduced foreign objects into the enclosure, like they
put spatulas in there to see if the pigs would

(48:33):
try to use them. Apparently they did sort of a
couple of times, but they seemed to prefer the sticks
in the bark. Yeah, I mean a spatulist seems like
it would It would not be the best tool anyway
for that task. Oh, I don't know. You could dig
in loose soil okay with a spatula okay, but like
a metal spoon would be better. Yeah, but biting on
a metal spoon might hurt us in their mouth. Yeah,

(48:53):
we're still giving them a human tool of and and
this this is a creature that that is using a
tool in a in a different manner. We need to
make special pig digging mecca suits. Then we'll really see
how far their tool using intelligence goes. But The authors
argued that the observed behaviors do meet the best definition
of tool use. And I want to read a quote

(49:13):
about how they explain this. They say, Uh, it is
tool use quote, because it involved the manipulation of an
external object, the bark, the stick, or the spatula. It
occurred exclusively and regularly within a goal oriented, repeated action pattern. Okay,
so it's not just like they're running around with sticks
in their mouths all the time and occasionally it moves
some soil. It only happens sometimes and only when they're

(49:36):
digging nests. And to continue with their quote, they say,
and as its end result, it altered both the distribution
of the soil to make a pit and the physical
properties of the tool user a physical disposition digging action,
and thus it likely also included information transfer to the
tool user in the form of appropriate receptive feedback different

(49:58):
to that without tool use. So there's an information thing again,
like using the stick to have a different method of
like feeling how deep the hole is and stuff. So
one question is how has this behavior escaped attention so long? Uh?
In Delamore's article, she mentions that well, wild pigs are
sometimes understudied so maybe that's the case. But also, you know,

(50:20):
one thing to think about is these pigs are in captivity.
Animals in captivity also sometimes show behaviors that the same
animals do not exhibit in the wild. But then again,
it seemed like the bark was only used for digging
nests and only at a specific stage in the nest
building process, which makes it pretty different from most of
the repetitive, compulsive types of behaviors that you would see

(50:43):
induced by captivity. Right. Yeah, it's not not a situation
where these pigs were doing this all the time. They
were only doing it like every six months during their
their nest building activities. Right. It's not the panther pacing
in its cage in the way that it would not
pace in the wild. So the question is do we
find examples of these endangered pigs or other related pigs

(51:05):
using tools in the wild. I think this is the
first really documented case that's clear. But in her article,
Delamore notes an interesting anecdote from somebody. She talks to,
somebody named Fernando Dino Gutierrez who's president of the Philippine
conservation group known as the Tallara Foundation. And so here's
this story. Quoting from Delmore's article uh quote. A few

(51:27):
years ago, Gautierra has witnessed a group of wild pigs
pushing rocks toward an electric fence to test it. And
Gautierra says, as soon as they push and the rocks
make contact, they would wait for the clicking sound or
absence thereof clicking means the wires are hot and they
will back off and not cross. No sounds mean it

(51:47):
is safe to investigate what's beyond the wire. So that
seems like pigs using like possible edge case there of
pigs using tools to mediate the flow of information. They
were testing the fences systematically for weaknesses they remember. But
as for whether these specific pigs, the vision warty pigs

(52:09):
do this kind of thing in the wild, I think
we don't really know that. Of course, there aren't many
of them in the wild. I think there might just
be a few hundred that their numbers are not really known.
But wild pig scientists of the world, combine your powers,
figure this out, plunge the depths of pig technology. Yeah,
it would be would be wonderful to hear more about this,
and certainly to hear about how it's occurring in the wild.

(52:31):
Now there's one last thing though, that makes this even
more interesting. It's not clear to root Bernstein and her
co authors that the bark or the stick provides much
of a utilitarian advantage, if any. According to the study,
it seemed digging with the stick was sometimes less efficient
than digging with the hoofs or with the snout, which

(52:52):
is of course what they would normally use. I think
so if and again you can see this if you
watch the video. The digging does sort of work, but
it also it looks kind of bumbling and funny, and
you can imagine that digging with the snout or the
hoofs would actually be pretty quick. So if the bark
isn't necessarily speeding up the digging process even though it
is working, it's if it's not making the process faster

(53:14):
or more efficient, why do it at all. One thing
that occurred to me is why, well, maybe the snout
gets sore. I mean, that could be a thing. Yeah, yeah,
that's that's one possibility. M One also wonders, of course,
if if there is something communicated through the act of
using the tool, and it's some sort of like a
physical mental fitness communication. Yeah, that's a that's an interesting thing.

(53:37):
So this could be tool use that actually, even though
it's tool use, doesn't exist primarily for utilitarian advantage. What
if this is just a learned animal cultural behavior. Sometimes
animals do just pick up and repeat behaviors from one
another even though they don't provide an obvious continuing material benefit. Uh.

(53:58):
Of course we can imagine that the brain must be
supplying some kind of internal reward that motivates the pig's behavior.
But of course, you know, we know from our own
experience that we do behaviors all the time that don't
provide a clear evolutionary utilitarian benefit. They're just sort of
like a cultural artifact. There's something a behavior popped up,

(54:18):
it gets rewarded for some reason in our brains, even
though it's not helping us like live longer, be stronger,
or reproduce more well. And then via culture, there there
are various specific tools that we continue to use despite
the fact that there are much better ways to go
about a particular task. The main idea that the main
example comes to my mind is the wooden honey ladle

(54:40):
uh implement Um. We've talked about this on the show,
but about how it's just it's a messy, unnecessary thing
that looks cool. People like the way it looks. People
like the way it looks. But the honey bear, the
squeezable honey bear, is by far the superior means of
putting honey on anything or in anything. But what if
these pigs are using the sticks to dig for the

(55:02):
same reason that you might use the might use the
wooden honey spoon thing. I don't even know what you
call it. I think it has a name, and we're
forgetting it once more, the honey knob, honey, the ridged
honey knob, even though yeah, the squeeze bear that you
just squeeze with your own hands is more efficient. But yeah, Now,
another possibility that comes to mind here too is so

(55:25):
so we're looking to learn more about the wild implement
implementation of this tool use. So one question I would
have is, Okay, in the wild, are they using the
same pieces of wood, the same pieces of bark? Are
they comparable? Uh? And if they're not, that could be
an issue. Right, maybe they're using a different type of

(55:46):
wood in the wild the other that's true, Yeah, maybe
this is a behavior that they're trying to use tools
that are the inferior versions of the tool that would
be in their native range right or then also they're
threatened by habitat loss, so maybe they'd only even in
the wild, have the same access anymore, and they're making
do with inferior tools to carry out this, uh, this

(56:07):
practice that they've been doing for you know, for for
for so long. It's like after a nuclear apocalypse finding
humans making phone calls with tin cans and string. You know,
it's like, uh, why are they doing that? The tin
the tin cans and string don't work all that well.
But it's because they they're so used to doing the
regular phone calls and they don't have the right tools anymore.

(56:28):
Oh man, can you imagine a post apocalyptic world in
which there are no more smartphones, but but the people
still use like little chunks of stone or wood as
if they were smartphones that essentially like little idols, little
wooden gods that they speak to and listen to. Yes,
they carry around little rectangular flints that they stare at

(56:51):
while they're out in public, and then if they see
somebody they don't want to talk to, they can pretend
to be doing something on their flint and then so
they don't have to look up and make eye contact. Yeah,
well to bring it back to the gathering swine. I
mean it makes me think about how, in a way,
a lot of our our culturally learned behaviors are kind
of like a weird little demon possession, right there, a

(57:12):
thing that gets in our brain and exists for its
own sake, even though it doesn't necessarily help us in
any way, we just keep doing it. You know. It's
like it's the it's the self rewarding subroutine. Yeah, absolutely,
all right, So that you have it, I feel like
we covered a lot of ground in this episode. You know, Uh,
if you're playing the the Stuff to Blow your mind

(57:33):
drinking game, I guess you got to. You got to
take multiple shots here. We managed to fit a Bible
story in there. We had a skit with demons in it.
We got into tool use and animal intelligence, a little
bit of Chinese mythology incorporated as well. It's a lot
of my favorite stuff. Yeah, and and it's all ultimately
Halloween episode because at the heart we're still dealing with

(57:56):
the story of exorcism. So I'm looking up anagrams for
legion and like like Leno's in the Stephen King's story.
There are really not very many good ones. We got
leg I on Okay, let's not really good but but
still good. That just inserts the space. But we also
got ogl in sounds good ego Nil, Yeah, I like
that one, Lean Go line Go and old Jin Old Jen. Well,

(58:22):
those demons are gonna need a lot of names, because
there are a lot of them. I think we must
in there all right. Well, if you want to listen
to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, go
forth and do so. You'll find them wherever you get
your podcasts and wherever you get your podcast Just make
sure you rate and review, make sure you've subscribed. It's
a great way to support the show. You can also
get us find our episodes that Stuff with your Mind

(58:44):
dot com. Also, we have another show called Invention that
we uh we we highly recommend you check out this month.
We have a number of episodes that have come out
about caskets, casket science, casket history, weird casket inventions, well
worth listening to if you're in the mood for more
seasonal content. Yeah, if you're not subscribed to Invention, go

(59:05):
subscribe now. Ogl In Big Thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
or just to say hello, come on and ogle on
in at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(59:31):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart
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Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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