January 3, 2012 • 31 mins
From samurai blades to claymores, the sword is one of humanity's most iconic inventions, and they've cut a bloody swath across history. In this episode, Robert and Julie consider the way of the sword, from their manufacture to their use in film and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
I know I'm kind of beating a dead horse here,
but but I just I always feel like violence on
our public transportation systems would be a lot more tolerable
(00:26):
if these guys were fighting with swords. So if you
think that if we all had scabbard on, well, I'm
not arguing for everyone to have a sword necessarily. I'm
not saying sword toting populace is a is a safe populist,
or anything to that extent. I'm just saying that, like
some dude shoots another dude at the train station, it's
(00:46):
it's this huge panic thing. But if two dudes are
sword fighting, I mean, you're gonna kind of take note,
You're gonna watch, You're gonna hopefully back up. But what
you're saying, there's something stylish, there's something classy, there's something
exhilarating about the about a good sword fight. Did you
make it sound like we live in Paris and someone
is going on, God, that's what I'm saying. It would
(01:06):
be I mean that's how I imagine, you know, how
it goes in Paris. It's just random duels breaking out
on the subways, some of refresh listeners. If you're out there,
just if you could confirm, that would be great. Yeah.
And you know, Europe is just lousy with immortals trying
to cut each other's heads off from watching the TV.
But and and of course having watched the TV, having
watched movies, occasionally we do get to see a great
(01:28):
sword fight. And there is, for my money, nothing better.
Did you have any mind? Is there is there sword
fight that sticks out to you? What? I have a couple, Um,
The first one is Princess Pride does have some good Yeah,
Nigo Montoya, he's just the whole thing, like, uh, he know,
my name is Nigo Montoya. You killed my father to die? Yes?
And then they actually have a great fight. Yeah, yeah,
(01:50):
that's some really good swordmanship. And he fights he can
fight both, but they both actually uh Wesley and and
you go both well it's kind of trickery right because
it was edited, but they use the right and left
hand so it looks really fancy. And then my all
time favorite though is Killed Bill Volume one, the last
fight scene in which I believe it is or n
(02:12):
Ishi played by uh Lucy Lou fights the bride Uma Thurman,
and it is I mean, I love the scene. It's
a gorgeous scene. I mean, she's just Uma Thurman's character
has just slaughtered the crazy eighty eight, this gang. She's
blood splattered. She goes out into this courtyard in Tokyo
where she meets her her enemy or In, and the
(02:33):
snow is falling, and it's just beautiful because the scene
is it's stark, and it's full of honor and um,
you know, there's some exchanges that are really great. And
then of course Lucy Lu's character gets completely decapitated. Well
I'm not completely take that back her the top of
her head gets decapitated. Yeah. Well it's it's like decapitation
(02:54):
is such a hallmark of of sword fights on cinema.
It's like, after a while they realized and we can't
just go for the it up neck cut. We need
to go for something a little more inventive. So you
see the top of the head like the brain cut. Yeah,
which is really disconcerting, I think, you know, but it
allows her to say this line, which I love. She
says that really was a ha Tori Hanzo sword, which
(03:15):
to me, that's what that scene is about, right, the
power of this sword. Yeah. Well, um, that also brings
to mind this was not one of my favorite sword
fight films. But um, there's that the film Equilibrium years back.
It was kind of a matrix seeing had Christian Bale
in it, Sean Bean and it's it's not the best film,
but the action, some of the action was pretty slick.
(03:36):
Uh and spoiler alert, but Tay Diggs gets his face
cut off, like not like people, but like that straight up,
we can't actually cut anybody's head off because it's not
exciting enough for modern cinema. So just like the front
of his head is cut off. But but if I
were to choose thinking about okay, I'm sure you can
find it on YouTube, it's like he could have been
in the Body's exhibit then, because there's like a slice
(03:58):
of his face. Yes exactly. It's kind of like like
the dudes who choreographed these and planned this out, they
were like the bodies exhibited their favorite place. Yeah. Um,
but but in terms of like just great sword fights,
my my two favorites are probably the the in fight
scene between Macbeth and McDuff and Roman Polanski's adaptation, because
like that one, because it's just such a brutal, drag
(04:21):
out fight, Like there's nothing like fancy and swashbuckley about it.
It's it's uh, it's just two dudes going at it
with this this air of on one side vengeance and
then the other side, uh, just you know, backed against
the wall with nothing to lose. And uh. And then
the movie Rob Roy has a great scene between Archie
(04:42):
Bald Cunningham played by Tim Roth and Rob Roy played
by Nicon. So those are those are two great ones. Really,
Scott's the duelist. Also, it's generally right up there on
the top of everyone's list is having just a fantastic
cinematic sword fight. So in case you guys are wondering,
you know, what do you think we're talking about today? Swords? Um,
how we romanticize them, how they're a huge part of
(05:02):
our culture, Um, what they're made of, and the craftsmanship. Um,
you know, just all sorts of different aspects of how
this tool really um entered our society and forever changed
the world and of course the world right and uh,
and the word tool is is essential here. Uh, And
I aroge anyone to go back and listen to our
(05:23):
podcast that we did on tool use and the evolution
of tool used, because a lot of what we say,
they're really sums up um or really gets to the
heart of of what's amazing about the sword. The idea
that the sword, I mean, it's kind of a cliche
from anything where any kind of film reverred a master's
swordsman instructing the uh, the young apprentice, Uh, you know,
telling them about the sword is then extension of the
(05:44):
human body, that the sword is part of your arm
and it studies have shown neurologically, this is the way
um humans and other animals conceptualize their tool use. That's
how it ends up making sense inside the human mind.
And it is uh and it's very basis. It is
the intation of the human body with with something to
perform a task, in this case a death dealing device. Right.
(06:08):
We've talked about this before too, Like you know you've
brought it up. Okay, if you wear contacts, then are
you still human? Right, because you're augmenting yourself and so
you think about the sword and when we think about
it now, I think it's completely antiquated. It's been out
of general use for at least two hundred years. Um.
You know it's just in a very in in a
sportsman's like way. Um. And yet here is this, um,
(06:30):
this augmenting of ourselves back in the day because at
one point, really is especially in the Middle Ages, almost
all men had a sword, right, this was this was
very common to possess. Yeah, if you could afford it,
for sure. Yeah. But although at some point it really
you know, is affordable to a degree. I mean maybe
your sword would break and you would be killed. But um,
(06:51):
you know it's very possible that a peasant could have it,
and certainly a kink. So this was something that that
at one point history unified a great many people. So
the origin of the sword is as another one of
those things that just kind of vanishes into prehistory when
you try and you know, nail it down. Like the
already earliest blades were likely made out of bone, bits
of stone. Eventually they're creating things out of bronze. Um.
(07:13):
We found some really amazing not when I say we,
I mean humans archaeologist not last week have found arsenic
copper alloy soy swords inlaid with silver from roughly uhtree BC.
So we've been really into it for a while. And
as far as the creation of the modern sword goes,
it generally comes down to heat treatment. You can't make
(07:34):
steel at room temperature. You have to get iron glowing
with heat. You have to infuse it with carbon, then
quench the resulting material and cooling liquid. Where you get
you know, the very cinematic scene of somebody thrusting the
newly forged sword into the into the water or into
the snow or something. Um. And then there's you know,
there's layering. It's it's a very complicated craft to create
(07:55):
a a fine sword, and some of these techniques have
been lost over time or or certainly the appreciation for
it is often uh forgotten as as human warfare moves
on to different technologies. Yeah, there's one Scottish sword from
Middle Ages that I think is it's fascinating. Um. It
is in the movie Reclaiming the Blade. They feature it
(08:18):
there and um, this sword was forged by by weaving
six strands of iron together and then the edge was
made up steel and it made it incredibly strong. But
the steel made it really like very uh I mean lethal, right,
because it could cut very well. But they were saying
that forging this blade would have taken thousands of hammer
(08:40):
blows struck just right in order to both strengthen the
steel edge and maintain the degree of flexibility in the blade.
So obviously the person who is creating this, the blacksmith,
is highly skilled at this. And in fact, we'll talk
about this and a little bit. Some swords we can't
even quite figure out how to replicate to right and
(09:01):
uh and like you alluded to, their these things have
to take a lot of stress. It's not just hacking
into uh, you know, unarmed peasants with these things. It's
uh that they're gonna hit wood, they're gonna hit armor,
they're going to hit bone, they're going to there's gonna
be stress ricocheting through the material or reverberating through the
material itself. So you have to make it. Anyone could
(09:22):
could potentially make something and call it a sword. You
could carve one out of kindling. But to to make
an instrument like this that is going to last, uh
in many cases for centuries and centuries, um, it requires
a great deal of skill. Just another quick note, though
particularly interesting weapon I ran across and researching this. There's
a Danish blade called a seek u s e a
(09:44):
x um or perhaps it's a sex I don't I
may have the pronunciation there wrong, but I just can't
bring myself. I just can't bring myself to talk about
baio wolf slang Grendel with his sex um. Yes you can, yeah,
I probably can, but but anywa rate uh baio Wolf
supposedly had one of these, it or would have. It's
a very old blade and the handle was actually made
(10:06):
of something called usk or usk, which is mineralized walrus penis.
Of course, yeah, because the thing is you don't want
the handle to get slippery and all the blood that
and the Grendl blood that's going everywhere, so so you
want something that's it's gonna hold tighten your hand. Well,
and I can't help thinking too that although I don't
think of as walruss is like overly masculine one with
(10:30):
the big tusks. Yeah, but I don't think of them
as being like, hey, I'm gonna take you down, not
like a tiger. Yeah. I guess you don't see a
lot of walrus tattoos, right exactly. It would be amazing.
So you know, my first thought was, Okay, you're just
transferring the power of the walrus to the to the handle.
But perhaps that was just what was available. Yeah, just
in aside, there's an amazing bit of street art in
(10:50):
San Francisco Walrus laser beam, giant walrus laser beams coming
out of his eyes. It's great if you Okay, there
there's a tattoo. If you guys see it, take a
gaze at it. But the style of swords varies just
throughout the world. Um, like every culture has the sort
of slightly different take on the blade. Uh. And you
know it depends on the time too. As warfare evolves,
(11:11):
so does the sword. And we could devote a whole
podcast to to just discussing that. But but just to
briefly mention some some other models. Um, there's of course
the rapier, the slender, sharply pointed sword that you see.
I think of that more of like a gentleman's sword. Yeah,
the gentleman's sword early modern Europe during the sixteen seventeen centuries,
um used for thrusting and uh and yeah, there's yeah
(11:33):
kind of a musketeer type thing, you know. Um, the
Samurai swords of Japan, which are highly revered for their craftsmanship.
Those things are still around. The handles will often be
replaced over time, but the blade itself often really holds up. Well. Yeah,
I actually read somewhere too that um, somewhere in England
the samurai's swords fights have become somewhat common. Actually, say,
(11:53):
isn't the UK? Yeah? Said one. One member of Parliaments
says they happen every week in her home city. Um.
And the government actually moved to ban the manufacturer, sale
or import of Japanese style swords in two thousand and eight.
This is in the UK. This is in the UK.
This is from an article from Slate dot com Without
swords and nerds. Well, I mean, on one hand, maybe
(12:13):
that's just a shun, the sign that the gathering is occurring,
right and well yeah, but but the other I mean,
these are not trained samurai. These are really just like
kids going out in hack and they might as well
be using clean on blades, which sometimes they do. But
but but back to actual weapons. There's also the conda,
which is an Indian double edged straight sword that it
(12:34):
comes to a point really abruptly, especially if you're more
familiar with looking at Western and Eastern more traditional Western
and Eastern models of the sword. This one is particularly
interesting to look up, and it was used just throughout
the region a by like the Sikhs, the Maratha's, the
jots Um. And then of course there's a sword that
I've found particularly interesting to to look into. And then
of course it's like the great two handed great sword,
(12:56):
which you'll recognize from medieval iconography. This just sort of
that with a really long handle that you would have
to grip in two hands, and and it's just a
really long blade so that if the thing was standing
next to the man wielding it, it would be about
his height. And uh, you see this, Uh, this sort
of myth emerges over time that this weapon is not
(13:18):
a skilled weapon that it or or even if it
is a skilled weapon, that it is a weapon of
brute strength and brute power. And then there's not a
martial art to it, like obviously, like anyone can can
look at a Samurai sword and then look at some
of the images of it and you're like, yeah, there's
there's definitely a martial art to that well, and it's
better documented to right right right, whereas yeah, it's it's
to a certain extent, it's less documented in um, you're
(13:41):
talking about European martial arts, right right. These were used
fourteen fifteen, sixteenth century. And even if this war began
to gravitate more towards the smaller weapons and thinner weapons
and change. I mean, initially, these these new soldiers that
they didn't have the resources at their their fingertips, so
they weren't historians, so it was easy to say, oh, well,
you know, today we use this more skillful blade. And
(14:02):
then and in the old days are they just lumbered
around with these giant pieces of steel? And then even
today I've read some some interesting criticism pointing out that
that a lot of this a you have like historians
looking into blades, and like, if the historian picks up
even an authentic sword, they're not they're not gonna necessarily
know what to do with it. If they say it's heavy,
what does that mean? This is like some eighty year
(14:23):
old British dude, right right, And especially the ones from
the or the Middle Ages, which they're kind of rusted
out looking. They look very crude. So if you if
you don't have an understanding of how they were using
you could sort of jump to the conclusion that you know,
this is one step away from barbary, right, and then
if you're if you're dealing we like, so you can't
use the you can't actually mess around with the real things,
(14:45):
so you're looking at a replica. The problem with replicas
is that a lot of times they are they're trying
to capture the look of the of the weapon, but
they end up getting the weight all wrong and the
balance and the weapon all wrong. And the balance and
a sword is key, like even like in a rapier.
The idea is is that the hilt is heavier than
the sword because it gives you balance. And these great
two handed swords you you see you often see a
(15:06):
big ball on the end pommel and that is a
counterweight that helps in leveraging the weapon. Yeah. Yeah, So
there's a whole there's a whole system of weights to
keep in mind. And when you really look back up
at the text from that agent, people were writing books
about how to fight with these things. It wasn't just
like here is a big sword, go out and kill
people with it. Now, they were they they showed different techniques,
(15:28):
there were different ways of doing it. There is a
particular move with the with the long sword called the
and this is in um in the German school of swordsmanship,
the mord strike or the mordor slag, which is the
murder strike and the murder blow. And this would occur
when you would you would actually turn the sword around
and then bash somebody in the face with that weighted pommel.
(15:48):
Oh man, Yeah, And there's not enough of that in
movies like I don't know and see. You know. One
of the reasons that this is the sort of information
isn't sort of widespread and we don't when we think
of swords, we don't automatically start thinking about your p
mars arts is because these texts have been sitting around
in musty libraries and um sort of lost their way,
particularly in the UH in Europe, when you know, gunpowder
(16:11):
came into play, people began to use less and less swords,
and then it was taken up as a gentleman's sports.
So all of a sudden you have the sword changing
from maybe a heavy instrument or a super long blade
becoming very uniform and light um so that you could,
you know, have some sort of duel which really wasn't
meant to end in death right that was just about
(16:34):
defending your honor. Sometimes there was there was definitely some
death involved. Certainly there there are many instances, but mainly
you just want that that that snansy scar on your face. Right.
You can be like, man, h, yeah, that's right, I
got a duel um. But the point is there is
that there's some information that was that just didn't transition
from the Middle Ages from the fourteenth century to eighteenth
(16:57):
century UM, and so we began to think of swords
and a very different way. One last note on the
weight of medieval swords. I have a quote here from
the late Awart oaks Halt, who was a w wrote
the book Sword in Hand, and he was a leading
expert on medieval swords. He said, medieval swords are neither
unwieldablely heavy, nor all alike. The average weight of any
(17:18):
one of normal size is between two point five pounds
and three point five Even the big hands and a
half war swords rarely weighed more than four point five pounds. Uh.
Such weights too. Men who were trained to use the
sword from the age of seven, and who had been
tough specimens to survive that age, were by no means
too great to be too practical. So okay, so that's
like the way I use my step aerobics class. If
(17:40):
I went to a step aerobics class, right, yeah, I
mean you know, in one hand. So yeah, thankfully they
do not let you bring swords to the y. Right.
Oh well, I did tell you about the belly dancing class.
Actually she never brought a sword. She just would talk
about when she was belly dancer. Because the belly dancwers
will do that thing where they have the sword balanced
on their head and yeah, and they bound set on
(18:00):
their stomach. It's it's pretty exciting stuff. So if you
would always say to the classes, if we all had,
you know, swords at home. Okay, so this is a
part where you just kind of jut up your hip
and so on and so forth. Um. One of the
things I did want to mention too, is this the
skill that you needed in order to wield this instrument? Um,
Because think about it. In this case, you are attacking
(18:20):
and defending yourself at the same time. And to me,
it's like this physical game of chess because you have
to try to figure out what your opponent is doing.
So every attack contains a defense, and every defense contains
a counter attack because you attack, you open shoot yourself
up potentially for an attack from either the person you're
dealing with or some other individual on the field of battle. Yeah,
(18:40):
and that's why there were so many manuals that were
instructing people. And it was I kind of think of
it now too. If you get a Samsung I don't know,
some sort of electrical device and then you get a
user's manual with it, I'd like to imagine that. You know,
back in the day, you got your sword and little
users manuals say this is the best use of um
of UH the sword, given how it's weighted and how
(19:03):
your body should be an extension of it. You know,
this is how you should lunch. UM. I will try,
if I will try and make sure that I mentioned
this on a blog post or just on the Facebook
page for stuff to blow your mind. But if anyone
wants to see some images of like the long sword
UM user manual, if you will UM. There's an excellent
resource called and it was written in fourteen fifty nine
(19:24):
by hands tal Haafa called Alta Amatea und ring Kunst
and Uh and the whole text is available online and
you can you can browse through it and see how
to use a long sword, a dagger, a spear, a poleaxe,
and even wrestle. So unarmed and armed combat. So very cool,
Old hands, has you covered? Um? I did want to
mention to uh in skill in in a cultural use
(19:46):
of swords kendo. Japanese swordsmanship very cool. They follow a
very rigid rules that are meant to instill as much
integrity into dueling as possible. For instance, when you're about
to attack your opponent, you actually make a thumping down
with your foot to to sort of signify like, hey,
I'm about to to to rip you a new one.
(20:06):
Oh yeah, and I'm speaking of Japanese swordsmanship. I should,
I would. I would be remiss if I did not
mention that one of the great sword fighters of all time,
not Zorrow, was Miyamoto Musashi, author of the Book of
Five Rings sixteen seventeen centuries Ronan swordsman. His reputation is
just right up there at the top of of real
(20:28):
life dudes and you know, probably fictional dudes too. Yeah,
and it turns out there are a lot of these
real life dudes magical weapons. This is something that that
i've I've just I found really cool for a number
of years since I first discovered it. And that is that. Um.
You you have these blades, these swords that are not
just made from iron, they're made from meteoric iron. They're
(20:51):
they're made from iron that fell from the sky in
the form of a meteorite or multiple meteorites. Because generally,
in some cases you might have enough uh meteoric iron
there to make to forge one sword, but generally you
having to poke around. Um. And uh. Today we have
Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld novels, He actually
has a sword made from such iron. Uh. And it's
(21:13):
you know, very much a novelty. It's you know, it's
a cool thing to have in the There was a
time though, before uh, smelting technology really took hold back
in the Bronze Age, before mining allowed us to really
harvest iron ore. Uh. This is one of the few
sources of of iron, and that was you know, you'd
have to go out and like in the desert somewhere
where like black bits of stone that have fallen from
(21:35):
the sky will show up really easily. Somebody would gather
these together. They get so sold here and there, and
then they'd wind up in the hands of a metal
worker and a swordsman, and you would have these just
fantastic weapons. The ancient Egyptians called it black copper, and
it was generally just considered, you know, the the the
best metal to have, the best weapon to have. And
(21:57):
it would and it often end up being sort of
ceremonial because the dudes that have them can afford the
best swords. It can also probably afford not to have
to use them. Right. The seventh century calyps Um of
the Middle East were said to have brandished these weapons
and uh and supposedly such iconic figures as a till
of the hunt and Tamerlane also wielded these cosmic blades
(22:17):
against their enemies. Um, like I said, that's that just
blows my mind. They're just thinking about these these ancient
dudes carrying around these blades forged from the heavens. And
you can imagine, I mean it, you imagine how you
get tales of magical weapons just off of that. I mean,
can you imagine an eBay back then? That would have
been very sought after? Of course it is today too,
but um, it makes me think about how when we
(22:41):
when we talk about ancient swords that we think about
the material and the techniques as being primitive by today's
technological standards, but in fact, um their techniques were really advanced.
And what I'm talking about here is a sword, possibly
the question mark right forged out of nanotechnology. Damascus Blade. Uh.
(23:01):
These are sabers from Damascus now known as Syria, and
they date back generally during and they were just considered
the ultimate weapon to to have at hand because they
were strong, but they were and they were sharp, and
they were but they were light, and they could supposedly
cleave a silk scarf in two as it was floating
to the ground. It could I think their tails too,
(23:22):
that it could cut through a not only the night,
but riding a horse, but the horses well and all
the armor and the saddle and one swoop right. Yeah,
there's a saying something like cleaved man and horse together
and all armor in Twain. That was on the the
ad on the packaging right at the sword store. And
there are some people who think that the steel for
(23:43):
the blade actually originated in India, but because it was
exported to Europe through Damascus, it was assumed to be
its source. Yeah, it comes down to these uh, woots cakes, right, yeah,
which sounds delicious delicious, Yeah, Like it's you know, nice
and oatmeal on the outside and then like some creamy
goodiness I was going in the middle. Yeah. Oh, in
a way, there was surprise in the middle because these
(24:04):
these cakes had had iron in them and with apparently
just just a perfect array of impurities that that lent
itself exceedingly well to the creation of these these magnificent swords.
That being said, the guys hauling these woots cakes out
of the ground, they didn't necessarily recognize what was great
about them. They just realized that they were They could
(24:26):
sell these for some some good coin, and the the
metal workers realized that these could be used really well
to create something. But now a modern scientists have been
looking at the namass displayed in particularly, they've been looking
at one that dates back to believe the seventeenth century,
and you know, studying it, uh and trying to figure
out exactly what made it awesome. Has really high heart
(24:48):
carbon content. So they dissolved part of the weapon actually
in hydrochloric acid and studied it under an electron microscope,
and they found that the steel there contained these carbon
nanits tubes and these are like each one of these
is just slightly larger than a nanometer. We've covered these before.
These are the cannot carbon nanotube is kind of the uh,
you know, one of the golden childs of nanotechnology, the
(25:10):
idea that you're you're taking these little miniscule carbon tubes
and uh and if you if you build something out
of them, then the material is strong and flexible. It's
the thing that people talk about building uh, space elevators
out of and you know, sis a hundred times stronger
than steel and much lighter. Yeah. And the researchers also,
uh say that they discovered nanoscale wires of semontite, extremely
(25:33):
hard carbon iron compound. Um. Yeah, it's a carbon steel geometry. Yeah,
they were probably formed inside the nanotubes. Now, nobody's making
an ancient aliens or you know, technology of the ancients
argument here to say that, oh, well they Damascus swords
miths of old head nanotechnology. Well not not exactly. They
didn't they didn't know that. They're not saying that they
(25:54):
knew there was a car there were carbon nanotubes, any
sort of a fortuitous accident, right, Yeah, and you see,
you see even earlier examples of this in like stained
glass and UH and various UH glass blowing techniques that
would end up using what we would later understand is
nanotechnology to change their coloring um. Because if you it's
like we said before, if you change something at the
(26:15):
smallest level that can you can greatly increase the way
a substance behaves. It's various properties, even chemical properties. The
argument here is that is what is inadvertently going on
in the creation of these blades. Yeah, and they were
saying to you that, I mean, if you think about
it this way, like the edge of the blade would
would almost feel like it was composed of tiny diamonds, right,
And so that's why it's so effective and slicing um.
(26:38):
And there are also accounts of it being self sharpening,
which again if we don't know whether that was the case. Now,
there were number of people this UH initial study came
out a few years back, and and even when it
came out, there were a number of people that were
also kind of doubtful. They were like, I don't I
don't think that this is you're necessarily seeing what you
think you're seeing, or I think you're seeing something that
(27:01):
is present in in most steel if you really looked
at it. Uh and uh, as far as I can tell,
the there's no definitive word yet on exactly what the
deal is with a Damascus steel other than it's uh.
I mean the craftmanship is still above reproach. But right,
and this is actually again, this is the sword that
they cannot replicate in terms of the high carbon content
(27:21):
and its ability not become brittle or break. Right. Yeah,
the the recipe for it was lost centuries ago and
uh and since that that time. But also the woods
cakes were all used up for the most part, so well,
you know what did it expect? Put them out at
a party. Everybody's gonna eat them? All right, let's talk
about some fun with swords. How can I have fun
with swords? Well, like you mentioned, you can, I mean,
(27:44):
aside from dueling on the subway, you can dance with them,
of course, yes, um uh and and I actually I
love seeing the sword dancing with the with the belly dancers.
That's that's always frightening and beautiful to behold. Because what
if it falls off and it kills out somebody in
the restaurant, know what a bumber night? Yeah, But then
there's also sword swallowing. Yeah. Well, and I was gonna
(28:04):
mention too that there are Scottish sword dances too, just
in case. Presumably they performed them before the swordsman uses
the blade to cut the haggas women danced the men do. Yeah,
but yeah, they're swords swelling. And we actually have a
really great article how sword swelling works by pop Stuffs
Tracy Wilson. You should check out. And that looks like
(28:26):
it's a it's just a sled of hand trick, but
it is not. They're really sticking it down their throats,
really putting it in their GI tract. So there you
have it. The sword sword. Some of the things that
make them amazing, uh, some of the things that you
might not have known about, how they're made and how
they are used by skilled hands. All right, so speaking
(28:46):
of skilled hands, let's get some hands on some listener males.
Are you talking about a robot? Yes? Yeah, skilled hands.
That's on a kind of creepy there, skilled hands. Yeah,
there you go. Look how look how well he handles.
I haven't received a agmassage from robot that would be weird.
Al Right, here's one from Russ Russ Rights in Dear
Robert and Julie. I wanted to thank you both for
(29:07):
the great work you do on your podcast. You guys
have gotten me through many boring hours in the treadmill
with topics that are far more mind bending and thought
provoking than just staring at a wall or I muted
TV high praise your Your podcast is really great. I
recently just listened to the podcast about the future of Stink,
and ironically enough, I saw something the next day in
a hotel lounge and Serbia while I was on I
(29:28):
was on a business trip, and I thought you might
find it interesting. It's called an Aroma brand, and it
blows a certain type of smell into the lounge. Um.
The lounge has a kind of homy type feel as
a result of the smell, and it had a type
of wood burning fireplace apple pie baking instant smell to it.
It made me feel more at home there, oddly enough,
since Serbia is just about as far from my home
(29:48):
as possible since I'm from Chicago. But I'm guessing that's
what the benefit of a roma brand is meant to be.
At any rate, it was definitely better than the smell
of David Beckham's sweaty Sock. Thanks again for doing such
a great podcast, and happy holidays to you both, because
we're decent this and we were reading it during the holidays. Yeah, yeah,
thank you so much for that. And um yeah, for
(30:10):
for anybody who missed that podcast about about smell. We
we actually had a sample of David David David molecule
David Beckham's foot molecules, which smelled incredibly like cheese, and
it confused me because I was sort of attracted to it,
but then I was because I thought it was cheese,
and then I was completely repulsed. Yeah. I had a
(30:32):
lot of feelings work out after that podcast. Yeah, and
and certainly that's that's one of the things we talked
about in the the podcast, just about it, how many how
much goes into our our interpretational smell but it's a
good snore of bad smell and how our memory wraps
around it. So yeah, there you go. But what do
you guys have to share with us? Do you have
something you want to share about swords? What is your
favorite sword fight in cinematic history? What is your favorite
(30:54):
sort of related kill in cinematic history? Let us know.
We'd love to hear about it. You can find us
on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, we're stuff to Blow
the Mind and UH. On Twitter, you can you can
find us by searching for stuff to Blow your Mind,
but our handle is below the Mind when work, and
you can always email us at blow the Mind at
house to work dot com. Be sure to check out
(31:19):
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House
to Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
I know I'm kind of beating a dead horse here,
but but I just I always feel like violence on
our public transportation systems would be a lot more tolerable
(00:26):
if these guys were fighting with swords. So if you
think that if we all had scabbard on, well, I'm
not arguing for everyone to have a sword necessarily. I'm
not saying sword toting populace is a is a safe populist,
or anything to that extent. I'm just saying that, like
some dude shoots another dude at the train station, it's
(00:46):
it's this huge panic thing. But if two dudes are
sword fighting, I mean, you're gonna kind of take note,
You're gonna watch, You're gonna hopefully back up. But what
you're saying, there's something stylish, there's something classy, there's something
exhilarating about the about a good sword fight. Did you
make it sound like we live in Paris and someone
is going on, God, that's what I'm saying. It would
(01:06):
be I mean that's how I imagine, you know, how
it goes in Paris. It's just random duels breaking out
on the subways, some of refresh listeners. If you're out there,
just if you could confirm, that would be great. Yeah.
And you know, Europe is just lousy with immortals trying
to cut each other's heads off from watching the TV.
But and and of course having watched the TV, having
watched movies, occasionally we do get to see a great
(01:28):
sword fight. And there is, for my money, nothing better.
Did you have any mind? Is there is there sword
fight that sticks out to you? What? I have a couple, Um,
The first one is Princess Pride does have some good Yeah,
Nigo Montoya, he's just the whole thing, like, uh, he know,
my name is Nigo Montoya. You killed my father to die? Yes?
And then they actually have a great fight. Yeah, yeah,
(01:50):
that's some really good swordmanship. And he fights he can
fight both, but they both actually uh Wesley and and
you go both well it's kind of trickery right because
it was edited, but they use the right and left
hand so it looks really fancy. And then my all
time favorite though is Killed Bill Volume one, the last
fight scene in which I believe it is or n
(02:12):
Ishi played by uh Lucy Lou fights the bride Uma Thurman,
and it is I mean, I love the scene. It's
a gorgeous scene. I mean, she's just Uma Thurman's character
has just slaughtered the crazy eighty eight, this gang. She's
blood splattered. She goes out into this courtyard in Tokyo
where she meets her her enemy or In, and the
(02:33):
snow is falling, and it's just beautiful because the scene
is it's stark, and it's full of honor and um,
you know, there's some exchanges that are really great. And
then of course Lucy Lu's character gets completely decapitated. Well
I'm not completely take that back her the top of
her head gets decapitated. Yeah. Well it's it's like decapitation
(02:54):
is such a hallmark of of sword fights on cinema.
It's like, after a while they realized and we can't
just go for the it up neck cut. We need
to go for something a little more inventive. So you
see the top of the head like the brain cut. Yeah,
which is really disconcerting, I think, you know, but it
allows her to say this line, which I love. She
says that really was a ha Tori Hanzo sword, which
(03:15):
to me, that's what that scene is about, right, the
power of this sword. Yeah. Well, um, that also brings
to mind this was not one of my favorite sword
fight films. But um, there's that the film Equilibrium years back.
It was kind of a matrix seeing had Christian Bale
in it, Sean Bean and it's it's not the best film,
but the action, some of the action was pretty slick.
(03:36):
Uh and spoiler alert, but Tay Diggs gets his face
cut off, like not like people, but like that straight up,
we can't actually cut anybody's head off because it's not
exciting enough for modern cinema. So just like the front
of his head is cut off. But but if I
were to choose thinking about okay, I'm sure you can
find it on YouTube, it's like he could have been
in the Body's exhibit then, because there's like a slice
(03:58):
of his face. Yes exactly. It's kind of like like
the dudes who choreographed these and planned this out, they
were like the bodies exhibited their favorite place. Yeah. Um,
but but in terms of like just great sword fights,
my my two favorites are probably the the in fight
scene between Macbeth and McDuff and Roman Polanski's adaptation, because
like that one, because it's just such a brutal, drag
(04:21):
out fight, Like there's nothing like fancy and swashbuckley about it.
It's it's uh, it's just two dudes going at it
with this this air of on one side vengeance and
then the other side, uh, just you know, backed against
the wall with nothing to lose. And uh. And then
the movie Rob Roy has a great scene between Archie
(04:42):
Bald Cunningham played by Tim Roth and Rob Roy played
by Nicon. So those are those are two great ones. Really,
Scott's the duelist. Also, it's generally right up there on
the top of everyone's list is having just a fantastic
cinematic sword fight. So in case you guys are wondering,
you know, what do you think we're talking about today? Swords? Um,
how we romanticize them, how they're a huge part of
(05:02):
our culture, Um, what they're made of, and the craftsmanship. Um,
you know, just all sorts of different aspects of how
this tool really um entered our society and forever changed
the world and of course the world right and uh,
and the word tool is is essential here. Uh, And
I aroge anyone to go back and listen to our
(05:23):
podcast that we did on tool use and the evolution
of tool used, because a lot of what we say,
they're really sums up um or really gets to the
heart of of what's amazing about the sword. The idea
that the sword, I mean, it's kind of a cliche
from anything where any kind of film reverred a master's
swordsman instructing the uh, the young apprentice, Uh, you know,
telling them about the sword is then extension of the
(05:44):
human body, that the sword is part of your arm
and it studies have shown neurologically, this is the way
um humans and other animals conceptualize their tool use. That's
how it ends up making sense inside the human mind.
And it is uh and it's very basis. It is
the intation of the human body with with something to
perform a task, in this case a death dealing device. Right.
(06:08):
We've talked about this before too, Like you know you've
brought it up. Okay, if you wear contacts, then are
you still human? Right, because you're augmenting yourself and so
you think about the sword and when we think about
it now, I think it's completely antiquated. It's been out
of general use for at least two hundred years. Um.
You know it's just in a very in in a
sportsman's like way. Um. And yet here is this, um,
(06:30):
this augmenting of ourselves back in the day because at
one point, really is especially in the Middle Ages, almost
all men had a sword, right, this was this was
very common to possess. Yeah, if you could afford it,
for sure. Yeah. But although at some point it really
you know, is affordable to a degree. I mean maybe
your sword would break and you would be killed. But um,
(06:51):
you know it's very possible that a peasant could have it,
and certainly a kink. So this was something that that
at one point history unified a great many people. So
the origin of the sword is as another one of
those things that just kind of vanishes into prehistory when
you try and you know, nail it down. Like the
already earliest blades were likely made out of bone, bits
of stone. Eventually they're creating things out of bronze. Um.
(07:13):
We found some really amazing not when I say we,
I mean humans archaeologist not last week have found arsenic
copper alloy soy swords inlaid with silver from roughly uhtree BC.
So we've been really into it for a while. And
as far as the creation of the modern sword goes,
it generally comes down to heat treatment. You can't make
(07:34):
steel at room temperature. You have to get iron glowing
with heat. You have to infuse it with carbon, then
quench the resulting material and cooling liquid. Where you get
you know, the very cinematic scene of somebody thrusting the
newly forged sword into the into the water or into
the snow or something. Um. And then there's you know,
there's layering. It's it's a very complicated craft to create
(07:55):
a a fine sword, and some of these techniques have
been lost over time or or certainly the appreciation for
it is often uh forgotten as as human warfare moves
on to different technologies. Yeah, there's one Scottish sword from
Middle Ages that I think is it's fascinating. Um. It
is in the movie Reclaiming the Blade. They feature it
(08:18):
there and um, this sword was forged by by weaving
six strands of iron together and then the edge was
made up steel and it made it incredibly strong. But
the steel made it really like very uh I mean lethal, right,
because it could cut very well. But they were saying
that forging this blade would have taken thousands of hammer
(08:40):
blows struck just right in order to both strengthen the
steel edge and maintain the degree of flexibility in the blade.
So obviously the person who is creating this, the blacksmith,
is highly skilled at this. And in fact, we'll talk
about this and a little bit. Some swords we can't
even quite figure out how to replicate to right and
(09:01):
uh and like you alluded to, their these things have
to take a lot of stress. It's not just hacking
into uh, you know, unarmed peasants with these things. It's
uh that they're gonna hit wood, they're gonna hit armor,
they're going to hit bone, they're going to there's gonna
be stress ricocheting through the material or reverberating through the
material itself. So you have to make it. Anyone could
(09:22):
could potentially make something and call it a sword. You
could carve one out of kindling. But to to make
an instrument like this that is going to last, uh
in many cases for centuries and centuries, um, it requires
a great deal of skill. Just another quick note, though
particularly interesting weapon I ran across and researching this. There's
a Danish blade called a seek u s e a
(09:44):
x um or perhaps it's a sex I don't I
may have the pronunciation there wrong, but I just can't
bring myself. I just can't bring myself to talk about
baio wolf slang Grendel with his sex um. Yes you can, yeah,
I probably can, but but anywa rate uh baio Wolf
supposedly had one of these, it or would have. It's
a very old blade and the handle was actually made
(10:06):
of something called usk or usk, which is mineralized walrus penis.
Of course, yeah, because the thing is you don't want
the handle to get slippery and all the blood that
and the Grendl blood that's going everywhere, so so you
want something that's it's gonna hold tighten your hand. Well,
and I can't help thinking too that although I don't
think of as walruss is like overly masculine one with
(10:30):
the big tusks. Yeah, but I don't think of them
as being like, hey, I'm gonna take you down, not
like a tiger. Yeah. I guess you don't see a
lot of walrus tattoos, right exactly. It would be amazing.
So you know, my first thought was, Okay, you're just
transferring the power of the walrus to the to the handle.
But perhaps that was just what was available. Yeah, just
in aside, there's an amazing bit of street art in
(10:50):
San Francisco Walrus laser beam, giant walrus laser beams coming
out of his eyes. It's great if you Okay, there
there's a tattoo. If you guys see it, take a
gaze at it. But the style of swords varies just
throughout the world. Um, like every culture has the sort
of slightly different take on the blade. Uh. And you
know it depends on the time too. As warfare evolves,
(11:11):
so does the sword. And we could devote a whole
podcast to to just discussing that. But but just to
briefly mention some some other models. Um, there's of course
the rapier, the slender, sharply pointed sword that you see.
I think of that more of like a gentleman's sword. Yeah,
the gentleman's sword early modern Europe during the sixteen seventeen centuries,
um used for thrusting and uh and yeah, there's yeah
(11:33):
kind of a musketeer type thing, you know. Um, the
Samurai swords of Japan, which are highly revered for their craftsmanship.
Those things are still around. The handles will often be
replaced over time, but the blade itself often really holds up. Well. Yeah,
I actually read somewhere too that um, somewhere in England
the samurai's swords fights have become somewhat common. Actually, say,
(11:53):
isn't the UK? Yeah? Said one. One member of Parliaments
says they happen every week in her home city. Um.
And the government actually moved to ban the manufacturer, sale
or import of Japanese style swords in two thousand and eight.
This is in the UK. This is in the UK.
This is from an article from Slate dot com Without
swords and nerds. Well, I mean, on one hand, maybe
(12:13):
that's just a shun, the sign that the gathering is occurring,
right and well yeah, but but the other I mean,
these are not trained samurai. These are really just like
kids going out in hack and they might as well
be using clean on blades, which sometimes they do. But
but but back to actual weapons. There's also the conda,
which is an Indian double edged straight sword that it
(12:34):
comes to a point really abruptly, especially if you're more
familiar with looking at Western and Eastern more traditional Western
and Eastern models of the sword. This one is particularly
interesting to look up, and it was used just throughout
the region a by like the Sikhs, the Maratha's, the
jots Um. And then of course there's a sword that
I've found particularly interesting to to look into. And then
of course it's like the great two handed great sword,
(12:56):
which you'll recognize from medieval iconography. This just sort of
that with a really long handle that you would have
to grip in two hands, and and it's just a
really long blade so that if the thing was standing
next to the man wielding it, it would be about
his height. And uh, you see this, Uh, this sort
of myth emerges over time that this weapon is not
(13:18):
a skilled weapon that it or or even if it
is a skilled weapon, that it is a weapon of
brute strength and brute power. And then there's not a
martial art to it, like obviously, like anyone can can
look at a Samurai sword and then look at some
of the images of it and you're like, yeah, there's
there's definitely a martial art to that well, and it's
better documented to right right right, whereas yeah, it's it's
to a certain extent, it's less documented in um, you're
(13:41):
talking about European martial arts, right right. These were used
fourteen fifteen, sixteenth century. And even if this war began
to gravitate more towards the smaller weapons and thinner weapons
and change. I mean, initially, these these new soldiers that
they didn't have the resources at their their fingertips, so
they weren't historians, so it was easy to say, oh, well,
you know, today we use this more skillful blade. And
(14:02):
then and in the old days are they just lumbered
around with these giant pieces of steel? And then even
today I've read some some interesting criticism pointing out that
that a lot of this a you have like historians
looking into blades, and like, if the historian picks up
even an authentic sword, they're not they're not gonna necessarily
know what to do with it. If they say it's heavy,
what does that mean? This is like some eighty year
(14:23):
old British dude, right right, And especially the ones from
the or the Middle Ages, which they're kind of rusted
out looking. They look very crude. So if you if
you don't have an understanding of how they were using
you could sort of jump to the conclusion that you know,
this is one step away from barbary, right, and then
if you're if you're dealing we like, so you can't
use the you can't actually mess around with the real things,
(14:45):
so you're looking at a replica. The problem with replicas
is that a lot of times they are they're trying
to capture the look of the of the weapon, but
they end up getting the weight all wrong and the
balance and the weapon all wrong. And the balance and
a sword is key, like even like in a rapier.
The idea is is that the hilt is heavier than
the sword because it gives you balance. And these great
two handed swords you you see you often see a
(15:06):
big ball on the end pommel and that is a
counterweight that helps in leveraging the weapon. Yeah. Yeah, So
there's a whole there's a whole system of weights to
keep in mind. And when you really look back up
at the text from that agent, people were writing books
about how to fight with these things. It wasn't just
like here is a big sword, go out and kill
people with it. Now, they were they they showed different techniques,
(15:28):
there were different ways of doing it. There is a
particular move with the with the long sword called the
and this is in um in the German school of swordsmanship,
the mord strike or the mordor slag, which is the
murder strike and the murder blow. And this would occur
when you would you would actually turn the sword around
and then bash somebody in the face with that weighted pommel.
(15:48):
Oh man, Yeah, And there's not enough of that in
movies like I don't know and see. You know. One
of the reasons that this is the sort of information
isn't sort of widespread and we don't when we think
of swords, we don't automatically start thinking about your p
mars arts is because these texts have been sitting around
in musty libraries and um sort of lost their way,
particularly in the UH in Europe, when you know, gunpowder
(16:11):
came into play, people began to use less and less swords,
and then it was taken up as a gentleman's sports.
So all of a sudden you have the sword changing
from maybe a heavy instrument or a super long blade
becoming very uniform and light um so that you could,
you know, have some sort of duel which really wasn't
meant to end in death right that was just about
(16:34):
defending your honor. Sometimes there was there was definitely some
death involved. Certainly there there are many instances, but mainly
you just want that that that snansy scar on your face. Right.
You can be like, man, h, yeah, that's right, I
got a duel um. But the point is there is
that there's some information that was that just didn't transition
from the Middle Ages from the fourteenth century to eighteenth
(16:57):
century UM, and so we began to think of swords
and a very different way. One last note on the
weight of medieval swords. I have a quote here from
the late Awart oaks Halt, who was a w wrote
the book Sword in Hand, and he was a leading
expert on medieval swords. He said, medieval swords are neither
unwieldablely heavy, nor all alike. The average weight of any
(17:18):
one of normal size is between two point five pounds
and three point five Even the big hands and a
half war swords rarely weighed more than four point five pounds. Uh.
Such weights too. Men who were trained to use the
sword from the age of seven, and who had been
tough specimens to survive that age, were by no means
too great to be too practical. So okay, so that's
like the way I use my step aerobics class. If
(17:40):
I went to a step aerobics class, right, yeah, I
mean you know, in one hand. So yeah, thankfully they
do not let you bring swords to the y. Right.
Oh well, I did tell you about the belly dancing class.
Actually she never brought a sword. She just would talk
about when she was belly dancer. Because the belly dancwers
will do that thing where they have the sword balanced
on their head and yeah, and they bound set on
(18:00):
their stomach. It's it's pretty exciting stuff. So if you
would always say to the classes, if we all had,
you know, swords at home. Okay, so this is a
part where you just kind of jut up your hip
and so on and so forth. Um. One of the
things I did want to mention too, is this the
skill that you needed in order to wield this instrument? Um,
Because think about it. In this case, you are attacking
(18:20):
and defending yourself at the same time. And to me,
it's like this physical game of chess because you have
to try to figure out what your opponent is doing.
So every attack contains a defense, and every defense contains
a counter attack because you attack, you open shoot yourself
up potentially for an attack from either the person you're
dealing with or some other individual on the field of battle. Yeah,
(18:40):
and that's why there were so many manuals that were
instructing people. And it was I kind of think of
it now too. If you get a Samsung I don't know,
some sort of electrical device and then you get a
user's manual with it, I'd like to imagine that. You know,
back in the day, you got your sword and little
users manuals say this is the best use of um
of UH the sword, given how it's weighted and how
(19:03):
your body should be an extension of it. You know,
this is how you should lunch. UM. I will try,
if I will try and make sure that I mentioned
this on a blog post or just on the Facebook
page for stuff to blow your mind. But if anyone
wants to see some images of like the long sword
UM user manual, if you will UM. There's an excellent
resource called and it was written in fourteen fifty nine
(19:24):
by hands tal Haafa called Alta Amatea und ring Kunst
and Uh and the whole text is available online and
you can you can browse through it and see how
to use a long sword, a dagger, a spear, a poleaxe,
and even wrestle. So unarmed and armed combat. So very cool,
Old hands, has you covered? Um? I did want to
mention to uh in skill in in a cultural use
(19:46):
of swords kendo. Japanese swordsmanship very cool. They follow a
very rigid rules that are meant to instill as much
integrity into dueling as possible. For instance, when you're about
to attack your opponent, you actually make a thumping down
with your foot to to sort of signify like, hey,
I'm about to to to rip you a new one.
(20:06):
Oh yeah, and I'm speaking of Japanese swordsmanship. I should,
I would. I would be remiss if I did not
mention that one of the great sword fighters of all time,
not Zorrow, was Miyamoto Musashi, author of the Book of
Five Rings sixteen seventeen centuries Ronan swordsman. His reputation is
just right up there at the top of of real
(20:28):
life dudes and you know, probably fictional dudes too. Yeah,
and it turns out there are a lot of these
real life dudes magical weapons. This is something that that
i've I've just I found really cool for a number
of years since I first discovered it. And that is that. Um.
You you have these blades, these swords that are not
just made from iron, they're made from meteoric iron. They're
(20:51):
they're made from iron that fell from the sky in
the form of a meteorite or multiple meteorites. Because generally,
in some cases you might have enough uh meteoric iron
there to make to forge one sword, but generally you
having to poke around. Um. And uh. Today we have
Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld novels, He actually
has a sword made from such iron. Uh. And it's
(21:13):
you know, very much a novelty. It's you know, it's
a cool thing to have in the There was a
time though, before uh, smelting technology really took hold back
in the Bronze Age, before mining allowed us to really
harvest iron ore. Uh. This is one of the few
sources of of iron, and that was you know, you'd
have to go out and like in the desert somewhere
where like black bits of stone that have fallen from
(21:35):
the sky will show up really easily. Somebody would gather
these together. They get so sold here and there, and
then they'd wind up in the hands of a metal
worker and a swordsman, and you would have these just
fantastic weapons. The ancient Egyptians called it black copper, and
it was generally just considered, you know, the the the
best metal to have, the best weapon to have. And
(21:57):
it would and it often end up being sort of
ceremonial because the dudes that have them can afford the
best swords. It can also probably afford not to have
to use them. Right. The seventh century calyps Um of
the Middle East were said to have brandished these weapons
and uh and supposedly such iconic figures as a till
of the hunt and Tamerlane also wielded these cosmic blades
(22:17):
against their enemies. Um, like I said, that's that just
blows my mind. They're just thinking about these these ancient
dudes carrying around these blades forged from the heavens. And
you can imagine, I mean it, you imagine how you
get tales of magical weapons just off of that. I mean,
can you imagine an eBay back then? That would have
been very sought after? Of course it is today too,
but um, it makes me think about how when we
(22:41):
when we talk about ancient swords that we think about
the material and the techniques as being primitive by today's
technological standards, but in fact, um their techniques were really advanced.
And what I'm talking about here is a sword, possibly
the question mark right forged out of nanotechnology. Damascus Blade. Uh.
(23:01):
These are sabers from Damascus now known as Syria, and
they date back generally during and they were just considered
the ultimate weapon to to have at hand because they
were strong, but they were and they were sharp, and
they were but they were light, and they could supposedly
cleave a silk scarf in two as it was floating
to the ground. It could I think their tails too,
(23:22):
that it could cut through a not only the night,
but riding a horse, but the horses well and all
the armor and the saddle and one swoop right. Yeah,
there's a saying something like cleaved man and horse together
and all armor in Twain. That was on the the
ad on the packaging right at the sword store. And
there are some people who think that the steel for
(23:43):
the blade actually originated in India, but because it was
exported to Europe through Damascus, it was assumed to be
its source. Yeah, it comes down to these uh, woots cakes, right, yeah,
which sounds delicious delicious, Yeah, Like it's you know, nice
and oatmeal on the outside and then like some creamy
goodiness I was going in the middle. Yeah. Oh, in
a way, there was surprise in the middle because these
(24:04):
these cakes had had iron in them and with apparently
just just a perfect array of impurities that that lent
itself exceedingly well to the creation of these these magnificent swords.
That being said, the guys hauling these woots cakes out
of the ground, they didn't necessarily recognize what was great
about them. They just realized that they were They could
(24:26):
sell these for some some good coin, and the the
metal workers realized that these could be used really well
to create something. But now a modern scientists have been
looking at the namass displayed in particularly, they've been looking
at one that dates back to believe the seventeenth century,
and you know, studying it, uh and trying to figure
out exactly what made it awesome. Has really high heart
(24:48):
carbon content. So they dissolved part of the weapon actually
in hydrochloric acid and studied it under an electron microscope,
and they found that the steel there contained these carbon
nanits tubes and these are like each one of these
is just slightly larger than a nanometer. We've covered these before.
These are the cannot carbon nanotube is kind of the uh,
you know, one of the golden childs of nanotechnology, the
(25:10):
idea that you're you're taking these little miniscule carbon tubes
and uh and if you if you build something out
of them, then the material is strong and flexible. It's
the thing that people talk about building uh, space elevators
out of and you know, sis a hundred times stronger
than steel and much lighter. Yeah. And the researchers also,
uh say that they discovered nanoscale wires of semontite, extremely
(25:33):
hard carbon iron compound. Um. Yeah, it's a carbon steel geometry. Yeah,
they were probably formed inside the nanotubes. Now, nobody's making
an ancient aliens or you know, technology of the ancients
argument here to say that, oh, well they Damascus swords
miths of old head nanotechnology. Well not not exactly. They
didn't they didn't know that. They're not saying that they
(25:54):
knew there was a car there were carbon nanotubes, any
sort of a fortuitous accident, right, Yeah, and you see,
you see even earlier examples of this in like stained
glass and UH and various UH glass blowing techniques that
would end up using what we would later understand is
nanotechnology to change their coloring um. Because if you it's
like we said before, if you change something at the
(26:15):
smallest level that can you can greatly increase the way
a substance behaves. It's various properties, even chemical properties. The
argument here is that is what is inadvertently going on
in the creation of these blades. Yeah, and they were
saying to you that, I mean, if you think about
it this way, like the edge of the blade would
would almost feel like it was composed of tiny diamonds, right,
And so that's why it's so effective and slicing um.
(26:38):
And there are also accounts of it being self sharpening,
which again if we don't know whether that was the case. Now,
there were number of people this UH initial study came
out a few years back, and and even when it
came out, there were a number of people that were
also kind of doubtful. They were like, I don't I
don't think that this is you're necessarily seeing what you
think you're seeing, or I think you're seeing something that
(27:01):
is present in in most steel if you really looked
at it. Uh and uh, as far as I can tell,
the there's no definitive word yet on exactly what the
deal is with a Damascus steel other than it's uh.
I mean the craftmanship is still above reproach. But right,
and this is actually again, this is the sword that
they cannot replicate in terms of the high carbon content
(27:21):
and its ability not become brittle or break. Right. Yeah,
the the recipe for it was lost centuries ago and
uh and since that that time. But also the woods
cakes were all used up for the most part, so well,
you know what did it expect? Put them out at
a party. Everybody's gonna eat them? All right, let's talk
about some fun with swords. How can I have fun
with swords? Well, like you mentioned, you can, I mean,
(27:44):
aside from dueling on the subway, you can dance with them,
of course, yes, um uh and and I actually I
love seeing the sword dancing with the with the belly dancers.
That's that's always frightening and beautiful to behold. Because what
if it falls off and it kills out somebody in
the restaurant, know what a bumber night? Yeah, But then
there's also sword swallowing. Yeah. Well, and I was gonna
(28:04):
mention too that there are Scottish sword dances too, just
in case. Presumably they performed them before the swordsman uses
the blade to cut the haggas women danced the men do. Yeah,
but yeah, they're swords swelling. And we actually have a
really great article how sword swelling works by pop Stuffs
Tracy Wilson. You should check out. And that looks like
(28:26):
it's a it's just a sled of hand trick, but
it is not. They're really sticking it down their throats,
really putting it in their GI tract. So there you
have it. The sword sword. Some of the things that
make them amazing, uh, some of the things that you
might not have known about, how they're made and how
they are used by skilled hands. All right, so speaking
(28:46):
of skilled hands, let's get some hands on some listener males.
Are you talking about a robot? Yes? Yeah, skilled hands.
That's on a kind of creepy there, skilled hands. Yeah,
there you go. Look how look how well he handles.
I haven't received a agmassage from robot that would be weird.
Al Right, here's one from Russ Russ Rights in Dear
Robert and Julie. I wanted to thank you both for
(29:07):
the great work you do on your podcast. You guys
have gotten me through many boring hours in the treadmill
with topics that are far more mind bending and thought
provoking than just staring at a wall or I muted
TV high praise your Your podcast is really great. I
recently just listened to the podcast about the future of Stink,
and ironically enough, I saw something the next day in
a hotel lounge and Serbia while I was on I
(29:28):
was on a business trip, and I thought you might
find it interesting. It's called an Aroma brand, and it
blows a certain type of smell into the lounge. Um.
The lounge has a kind of homy type feel as
a result of the smell, and it had a type
of wood burning fireplace apple pie baking instant smell to it.
It made me feel more at home there, oddly enough,
since Serbia is just about as far from my home
(29:48):
as possible since I'm from Chicago. But I'm guessing that's
what the benefit of a roma brand is meant to be.
At any rate, it was definitely better than the smell
of David Beckham's sweaty Sock. Thanks again for doing such
a great podcast, and happy holidays to you both, because
we're decent this and we were reading it during the holidays. Yeah, yeah,
thank you so much for that. And um yeah, for
(30:10):
for anybody who missed that podcast about about smell. We
we actually had a sample of David David David molecule
David Beckham's foot molecules, which smelled incredibly like cheese, and
it confused me because I was sort of attracted to it,
but then I was because I thought it was cheese,
and then I was completely repulsed. Yeah. I had a
(30:32):
lot of feelings work out after that podcast. Yeah, and
and certainly that's that's one of the things we talked
about in the the podcast, just about it, how many how
much goes into our our interpretational smell but it's a
good snore of bad smell and how our memory wraps
around it. So yeah, there you go. But what do
you guys have to share with us? Do you have
something you want to share about swords? What is your
favorite sword fight in cinematic history? What is your favorite
(30:54):
sort of related kill in cinematic history? Let us know.
We'd love to hear about it. You can find us
on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, we're stuff to Blow
the Mind and UH. On Twitter, you can you can
find us by searching for stuff to Blow your Mind,
but our handle is below the Mind when work, and
you can always email us at blow the Mind at
house to work dot com. Be sure to check out
(31:19):
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House
to Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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