From the Vault: Medusa, Part 2

ancient works of literature to modern horror fantasy films. So let's go ahead and enter the Gorgon's lair, and from a stone beside, a poisonous fft peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes, wilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise out of the cave. This hideous light had cleft, and he comes hastening like a moth that highs after a taper, and the midnight sky flares a light more dread an obscurity

tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror. For from the serpent's gleams of brazen glare, kindled by that inextricable error, which makes a thrilling vapor of the air become a blank and ever shifting mirror of all the beauty and the terror. There a woman's countenance with serpent locks, gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you

welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our series on the Gorgon Medusa. That's right. In the last episode, we largely just recounted what can roughly be thought of as the canonical myth of Medusa as it emerged from the classical era, based on a few popular tellings of the myth from those days. Now it's time to get into possible origins of the myth, as well as various interpretations of the meaning behind it.

Some of the meanings we've attributed it over time, but they're you know, there are also these cases where for the underlying power of myth that just keeps us coming back to reinterpret it. You know, there's just something about mythology in general, but especially with the Gorgon. There's something about the Gorgon myth that just keeps bringing us back keeps forcing us to reevaluate it. Yeah, it absolutely cannot

be ignored. I mean, maybe it's because you can't look at it without dying, that people can't stop looking at it. It's like being told not to think about a taboo subject. Uh. And so, uh, it's clearly the image of Medusa is one of the most obsessed over and revisited images from all of Greek mythology. Yeah, and we're gonna explore a

number of the different threads there. I think one of the great things about it is that all of the interpretations, I think pretty much all the interpretations were going to discuss here, they certainly have uh you know, a strong air of truth to them, like it feels right, and yet none of them feel like they explain it completely. There's always this sense of darkness and mystery uh, to Medusa that we can't quite grasp, you know, And and that's part of the this this part of the enigma

of it. Well, yeah, exactly. I think that's really the appeal of these ancient archetypes, these archetypal stories and monsters. Uh, it's that they don't mean one thing. Instead, there's something that the kind of you know, there are a box that can be opened twenty different ways, and depending on you know which part of it you open, you you uh,

you unlock different treasures from within. Yeah. Absolutely, And I want to remind everybody that one of one of our key sources in this these episodes was a book by David A. Lemming that's L. E. E. M. I n G. Titled Medusa in the Mirror Time from eighteen. So we'll refer back to that a few different times here, but we we also just recommend that book for anyone who wants a deeper dive into the nature of Medusa. Now we've got a really cool etymological lesson from your son,

I believe. In between recording these two episodes. Yeah, yeah, this was really interesting. So I mentioned that he was reading a lot about mythology, uh. And I also mentioned a cool comic book series that he was really into titled The Olympians, And I neglected to mention the author last time, but it's George O'Connor. He's written eleven of these, each of them themed around a different god or goddess,

and book to Athena concerns Medusa. I highly recommend those to anyone who just wants, you know, a nice uh visual representation of these myths for for a young reader or just for them themselves. But another series that my son was reading, these are all things like checked out of the library digitally, uh, during this quarantine period. There's a series called Science Comics, and he was reading one

titled Science Comics Dinosaurs, Fossils and Feathers. And the book points out that one of the three um Gray sisters we referred to in the last episode is dino. That's d e i n O or d i n o, which can be translated as dread. So. In eighteen forty two, paleontologists Sir Richard Owen coined the term dinosaur, derived from the ancient Greek uh dinos, meaning terrible, potent or fearfully great,

along with sauros, meaning lizard or reptile. Now, I don't think there's a stronger connection between the myth and the term, but Science Comics took the opportunity to include an image of the three Gray sisters in this book about dinosaurs, which was pretty awesome, uh, And I salute especially since it brought you these two subjects and my son is super into together in one book. Yeah, I never made

that connection. Even when I saw the name translated at Dano or dina, however you say it it as meaning like terror or dread, I didn't. I didn't make the connection to the dread lizard. Yeah, so I I thought when he first told me about it, I didn't believe and I was like, what are you sure? And then he showed me the page and yet there they are just popping up in in in dinosaur books now, so

you know, good for them. Well, I say, let's jump right back into uh to the head of the gore gun and pick up where we left off last time. So the last time you mentioned that we basically gave the outline of the myth. We talked about some of

its major variations. Um, but one thing that I think we alluded to a little bit last time was the idea that there have been attempts to sort of route the myth in history to say, like, you know, there's some magical elements to this myth, but basically it really came from this actual historical event that happened. But I'll

just I'll just make up right now. Yeah, Learning points out in his book that's several noted individuals throughout history, notably um Uh, Pla, fatus Uh, Diodorus of Sicily, Hosanias Uh, etcetera, have attempted to sort out the historical quote unquote truth of the myth. And this is kind of like geo mythology, the geomethology approach that we've discussed on the show before, you know, wondering what a particular myth really is about by seeking a literal version of the affairs of history.

With geomethology, it tends to break down to looking at fossils for the answer, dinosaur fossils in forming the shape

of a dragon, that sort of thing. Now, digego mythology is certainly a fascinating field, and we've discussed some wonderful ideas concerning the origins of various myths and monsters, but we also point out that it's often unbalanced to depend entirely upon geomethology, because myths and monsters, you know, certainly they can be borne out of you know, actual extent or extinct animals whose remains or uh, you know, description

one has come across. But we also have to factor in human belief, human fears, human creativity, and just the layer upon layer of human culture that often builds these things. Yeah, I would say, I mean. The thing about explanations like this that try to seek a rational, real world inspiration for some kind of mythological story or element we have, is I mean, for one thing, it's it's usually going to be highly speculative. You're you're just trying to find

a story that could fit the evidence. Rarely do we have a case where, like from ancient history, we know that, oh we we believe this mythical dragon existed because we found bones buried in the ground or something like that that would give you a really strong clue what the

actual inspiration was. The simple way I'd put it is, don't undersell human imagination, right, Like the fact that a strange creature or character or sequence of events happens in a myth doesn't mean that creature or character whatever has to be based on, uh, the storyteller having once seen something in the real world that shared this or that quality. A lot of times we just make stuff up, like we dream up weird things. We you know, the mind

mutates variations of things we've experienced in life. Naturally, it happens in dreams without us ever having seen you know, like a bat with human teeth or whatever it is that scared us in a dream. And so I think we don't. Uh. While it's fun to speculate about this kind of thing, we don't have to assume that myths and all that are are based directly on anything that

happened in reality or that somebody saw. Yeah, I mean, and certainly there are plenty of examples where the geo mythological approach or that purely historical approach can be very informative. Monsters based on again previously extant species or specimens, descriptions

that make their way from distant lands. Um. And of course many mythic exploits do have a basis, even a primary one, in actual kings and queens and in heroes that at one point in history may have been actual mortal people before you know, the mythology and legend took over. But but Living cautions that the rationalist approach quote provides one sort of explanation of the meaning of the Medusa's story,

but tends to ignore the power of the mythic elements. Yes, so examples of this would include, like you know, ancient historians saying, ah, so the story of Perseus and Medusa really comes from Perseus being like, imagine there was this guy named Perseus, and he was a pirate, and he was trying to go to these islands in the Atlantic. One was that were each ruled by these queens who were the gore Gun sisters, uh and and so forth

like that. I would say one problem with the rationalist historical approach is that very often it seems to me to just be making things up. So like, how to simply making up a non magical fictional origin story for a monster or character improve on the existing magical mythology? Yeah, exactly. And and ultimately is learning argues the power of myth is deeper than history, and and we can follow that in a couple of different actions. But first I thought

we might discuss the origin of Medusa. That is perhaps most fascinating. And Lemmings book that of the disembodied head of Medusa and the idea that it predates Medusa's body. And I realized that sounds like some causality wrecking weirdness there, which you know you can certainly encounter in in mythology. But the more you think about this angle, I think the more it makes perfect sense. And here's the basic premise.

The moment that really caps off the story of Medusa, as we recounted in the previous episode, is Athena's incorporating of her petrifying head into her own shield. Uh. That that Gorgonian face becoming part of her own emblem. And we know that Medusa's head and the Gorgonian head itself, these were common motifs on vice's sculptures and helmets, shields, etcetera. Were pieces of armor and uh, and not only for

mythic heroes, but for common soldiers as well. And what's more, this practice of utilizing the Gorgon's head pre dates the more evolved versions of the Medusa myth. You know that the real story shaped elements that we refer back to

again and again. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think it's hard to know for sure, but it seems, based on the evidence we have that before the fully formed story of Medusa existed, there was simply the Gorgonian, the magical image a protective amulet bearing this terrifying monstrous head with grinding teeth and a lolling tongue often tusks uh,

sometimes kind of gender fluid. It could be it could be female, could be male with a beard, could incorporate some kind of snake imagery in the hair, but often not. It's just generally this terrifying face. So before there was the character, there was the ritual magical image. Even in Homer's Iliad, you know, one of the great literary sources giving us access to early information about Greek myths, you don't get the full Medusa story, you don't get a

full ledged character. Instead, you just get this image, recurring the image of the disembodied head of the gorgon, which Homer describes as a thing grim and awful to behold. Yeah. So, so basically the idea is that Medusa pre existed is a terrifying, petrifying disembodied head um. Like you said, sometimes the gorgon was even bearded, and sometimes it was male. Uh,

and it was a common decoration. And then the persea smith comes along, at least in part to provide a backstory for the monster, to to literally flesh her out, to give her a body so as to explain the absence of a body. So if this origin is correct, you know you can imagine cases where you have like soldiers hanging around the campfire and they've all got this terrifying head on their shields, and somebody's looking at the

shields and being like, I wonder, I wonder who that is. Yeah, I mean it's easy to imagine how a lot of these things come come around. You know. Storyteller is just sort of coming up with some thing to explain it,

incorporating it into some other story they heard. Uh, and that monster was the Medusa, the very face on your shield, that sort of thing, or it's or you could also compare it to what we do in the modern era with we have say a terrifying we'll say, certainly a more fleshed out intoday, but we have something like say Hannibal Lecter, and people are like, oh, this character is great. Uh, I want to learn more about him? What's his backstory? Where do you come from? Can we have a whole

book that just explains where we came from? And? Uh? You know so and you can. You can look at examples of that numerous works, you know, and you make something that appeals to people, people want to keep tugging on that threat. Well, that's that's something I think a lot of times gets out of hand and is can be very unsatisfying because a lot of times people don't realize that the scarcity of a beloved element in a

narrative is exactly what makes it so beloved. Like, you know, Hannibal Lecter in the original Silence of the Lamb's movie, I know it's not he was a character and other stuff before that, but and you know the Jonathan Demmi movie, I would say he's especially effective as a character because he's in the movie so little. He's you know, he's got less than twenty minutes of screen time or whatever. Yeah, I would agree, yeah, and certainly in in both both

the Book's Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. It's very that's very much the case. He's a key character, but he's not your primary character. You're not spending just

oodles of time with him. The mystery remains. And so yeah, you say, oh, I want a whole book about Hannibal Lector, I want to know his whole backstory because he's so cool, is so interesting, so mysterious, And then you get that and it's like, Okay, I mean the same thing that people are like, I want a Boba Fette movie, Like is that going to be as good as you think it is, yeah, exactly, but to bring it back to Medusa.

So I think this idea that the the image of Medusa's severed head could in fact pre date the fully formed myth of Medusa's life and and you know her origins and uh and her role in the Perseus story. UH. Like that ordering is is interesting to consider because again it's something that's difficult to prove conclusively, but it does appear to be going on with a number of things in the history of myth and religion around the world. This was a point often made by the people known

as the Cambridge Ritualists. In Lemming's book, he identifies specifically the scholar Jane Harrison as one pushing this idea that many myths that we have access to today very likely emerge as a response to rituals and practices rather than as the cause of them. And of course this would match up pretty well with the ordering of evidence that

we have in the history of Medusa. Not that there was like a myth of Perseus and Medusa which gave rise to the use of Medusa emblems on shields and armor and money and stuff, but exactly the inverse, that there was a tradition of displaying a fearsome gorgon head on objects as a kind of ritual protective magic, and you know, to scare away the bad demons, to frighten your enemies, and so forth. And over time, these rituals, the art, the spells gave rise to a myth to

explain it, Who is this scary head? We keep stamping on things? Where did she come from? And then as the myth changes, grows more complex and develops along with the cultural values and interests over time. So in that the myth of the gorgon's head is so ancient that Liming points out that it's its origins likely reside outside of Greece entirely. Now we should remind ourselves that that this is quite common in myth and religion. An idea or a deity from one culture grows into or is

absorbed by another. For instance, gray eyed Athena is said to have sprung from Zeus's head, but we can be sure that she did not emerge wholesale from the Greek imagination. Is is her roots seemed to go back through the various powerful goddesses of Proto into Indo Europeans sumere in culture. Living gives the specific example of Aphrodite uh and her likely connection to a nana and ishtar in ancient Sumerian Babylon, and Leming points out a few different traditions of Gorgonian

heads that predate Medusa. Heads that gaze out at us with the steel faces and petrifying eyes. Uh. There reminds me a lot of the kind of lion face one makes in in yoga. But also you see similar faces that are made snarling faces that are made in various forms of dance or you know, bodily performance. As a scholar, Tobin Cibers described it, that's the emblem of of the stupefying look and and some of the examples that Leming points out. There's the Mesopotamian demon whom Baba uh quote,

when he looks at someone, it is the look of death. Yeah. And I think with whom Baba you get a similar dynamic to Medusa, where there's this tradition of ritual imagery. It's this kind of like emon head that has some kind of ritual magical power and as as displayed on objects. But also, of course Himbaba appears as a character in the mythology shows up in the epic of Gilgamesh as as a villain that must be destroyed, right, and destroying they do. They in fact, they decapitate the monster, which

is key in all of this as well. There's also the God Best of Egypt household protector God with possible sub Saharan origins, and despite the Egyptian dependency on side profile imagery, Bess is always depicted facing out towards the viewer.

I want to come back to that. And additionally, some early Greek versions of the bodied Medusa apparently have the look of a pre existing head motif having been basically stamped onto a body, like you know, kind of kind of coming back to this idea of like let's let's just let's match this up, let's let's let's provide a body for this, and it's just kind of like almost like the ancient Greek version of very rough photoshop that

one might encounter. Yes, some of the ancient Greek Medusa imagery almost seems like, you know when people do that like bad on purpose ms paint drawing of something, where they like like take a square of somebody's head and

pasted onto a weird stick figure. Yeah. Yeah, And but I think it also kind of speaks to the idea that these things were too like the head of the Gorgonian head was like a distinct image, a distinct pre existing image, and therefore the incorporation of it with the body would would be inherently rough and imperfect, and you would only get a true joining of the two later on. But but I want to come back to this idea of of the Gorgonian head staring directly at the viewer

of the art. But but in in modern like cinematic interpretations, we see this as well. In fact, we see it fantastically in Ray Ray Harryhausen's Medusa that we encounter in the original Clash of the Titans. There is at least I think there's there are a couple of sequences, but there's one scene in particular where she breaks the fourth wall and stares to rectly at the audience. Yeah, it's like the Great Train Robbery, you know, Yeah, or like

Good Fellows when Joe Pesci shoots the gun at the camera. Yeah. Like I think, all you know, those are examples of of things that are in the tradition of the Gorgonian head as well. Yeah, but I feel like Harry Howsing in particular with with Clash eighty one. Yeah, you know, he and he and or the filmmakers. I think they realize that it's not a gorgon unless it breaks the fourth wall and does look directly at the audience. And this is key because the Gorgonian head is in all

of these examples pure apotropaic magic. Yeah, totally. I mean apotropaic magic is one of the most interesting subjects to me. I I love thinking about this stuff. So apotropaic magic means magic that is used to ward off evil or threats or something like that. Uh. You know a classic example that we'll get to more later. You know the types of talisman's that you could have to ward off the evil eye. That will come up more in a

bit here. But yeah, I love this idea. Lemming brings this up human and the idea that in ancient art if you look at a lot of the representations of humanoid figures, humans and gods and stuff from the ancient Near East in the Mesopotamian region, a whole lot of it has UH figures depicted in profile facing to the side. Think about ancient Egyptian artwork, and a lot of ancient Greek artwork that you're gonna have heads facing to the side.

The Medusa figure and the other apotropic monster figures such as Humbaba are going to be depicted in defiance of this art that often looks directly at you. And it's almost as if the art is seeing you back. You know, you're looking at it and it's looking at you. And I think that the weirdness of this may have to do with these ancient taboos about the evil eye, about

being looked at. That like having a piece of art that stares directly into your face as you look at it is in a way inherently threatening, whether the creature depicted as monsters or not, all the more so if it is monstrous. So I was reading a bit about this in an essay by a met Museum curator to accompany an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on

Medusa and Hybrid Monsters and art history. Her name is Kiki Carriglu, and the essay was called Dangerous Beauty, Medusa and Classical Art and the way she describes it as so she's talking about the the archaic gorgon face, the face of the gorgon before we get the later derived versions that are associated with the full fledged a myth. She writes, quote, the archaic gorgon is always full face moreover,

glaring directly at the viewer. This combination of frontality and monstrosity and a single immediately recognizable figure is what makes the Greek gorgon such an original, invocative image of radical

difference of the absolute other. Uh. And so she talks about some of the the apotropaic uses of the gorgon face that, you know, you go back in history, a lot of the things that would have the gorgon on it would be not just shields used in battle, but but for example, funerary monuments, you know, so the gorgon's face on the funeral or the tomb door or something is an apotropaic emblem to protect the tomb from evil.

But also this was really interesting to me. Carrolu talks about how there is a transition from archaic Greek art to classical Greek art, wherein the classical period Medusa was

quote progressively transformed into an attractive young woman. So, beginning around the fifth century b C, art representing Medusa began to transform from mainly terrifying be steel heads with tusks and poor sign features and stuff like that into increasingly humanoid, feminine and beautiful, and Caroglu points out that this transition in representation over time applies actually not just to Medusa, but is is sort of character ristic of a an overall trend in Greek art in how it depicts mythical

female monsters and hybrids, including sphinxes like the sphinx story that you get in the Legend of Oedipus, but also sirens and the sea monster Skilla. You've got these archaic depictions in which they are monstrous in human, gross and all that, and then around the fifth century b C.

These monsters become more notably feminine and beautiful. Yeah, it's an interesting transformation and one that is going to be key to a number of these different interpretations that we're going to be discussing and the way that Medusa was utilized by subsequent cultures. Absolutely, should we take a break. Yeah, let's take a quick break, but we will be right back with more of the Gorgon's Thank alright, we're back. So we started the episode today by reading from a poem.

That poem was a poem by Percy Shelley. It's called on the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery.

And there's a funny thing about this poem. Uh. There is no painting of Medusa by Leonardo da Vinci, at least not that we have right this this painting or or in all likelihood a pair of paintings are lost works, which, especially when you're talking about Leonardo da Vinci, there's just something endlessly fascinating about that, right, the idea that there were there are these works that he created that you know, other people saw in an attest to existing that are

just no longer with us. Um. But I think I think even Shelley was not actually looking at a Da Vinci painting. He was mistaken, right right right, there were um so, there were at least two early paintings that were described in I think in a Life of Leonardo da Vinci. Uh this would have been um uh georgo Vasari's biography of the artist. But then later there's a six painting by a Flemish painter that has at times been wrongfully wrongfully attributed as the work of Da Vinci.

It's still, you know, wonderful to behold, but it is. It is not authentically da Vinci um. But yeah, this painting would go on to inspire Percy Shelley in the writing of this poem. Now, one of the things about the sort of lore surrounding Da Vinci's painting is that is that this painting or pair of paintings they they supposedly like, really captured uh you know, the beautiful terror really captured the magic of the Gorgonian head in a

way that like unsettled people when they saw it. So that just makes the this, uh, this these particular lost works even more amazing to think about. Yeah, I believe I read. I can't remember in which of our sources it was. It might have been in the liming, but one of the sources we were looking at talked about how it might have been Da Vinci's painting that was actually the first to show Medusa not just with snakes entwined in her hair, but with snakes as her hair

that hurt. That's all the hair she's got. Yeah. Interesting, and and I I can't help but take the spectative leap too and try to imagine, oh, well, maybe maybe these paintings are lost because da Vinci, with his great art was able to legitimately capture the power of Medusa's gaze, and these paintings actually petrified people, actually turned people to stone, and so they had to be in a locked away or destroyed, right like a Renaissance van helsing yea, yeah,

as far as I know, they haven't been utilized in horror fiction, uh that way, but it seems like a given like somebody and it hasn't been done already. Somebody should do that totally, alright. So we talked a little bit earlier about apotrepeg magic and the evil eye. Let's let's come back to the evil eye. Yeah, so so letting points out that that, uh, you know, this is all of course connected to this concept of the evil eye. Medusa's gaze has the power to petrify, and certainly the

face is key to the aforementioned um apotropaic magic. But as with other evil eyes and myths such one of my favorites is Ballor of the Baleful Eye and Irish mythology, whose his eye is this terrifying beam of death but is covered by his long mutated brow. Uh you know. You see this in other various cultures as well, where in some form or another there is an eye that curses whatever it looks at, and oftentimes it is disembodied, which is what we see with the Gray Sisters. Oh yeah,

the Gray Sisters. Uh, they share one eye between them and Perseus snatches it in order to to you know, muscle them to get information out. One thing that's funny though, is I can't remember if we talked about this in the last episode or not. Um, what's going on with the tooth? Like, what does the tooth do? Does the tooth do anything? I don't know. The tooth feels a lot of the tooth, for one thing, is often abandoned

by by in reinterpretations, you know, uh, just people. Yeah, they don't know quite what to do with the tooth, and the tooth to me anyway, feels like it's just part of a hag joke, you know, like, oh, they're old and they have you know, they don't have any teeth. In fact, they have only one teeth that they all have to share. It has a you know, absurd, like susical kind of sense to it. I think you're right about that. Yeah, it must just be like it was.

It was a detail added for color that then nobody could really figure out what to do with it? Yeah, or certainly it's uh, you know, the import has been lost over time, Like you can't chow with one tooth, You've got to have at least two. Yeah, what are you gonna do with it? So anyway, we end up focusing more on the eye. So the general belief is that the concept of the evil eye arises from the universal dislike of being stared at or of being stared down.

And there's there's also something more to this, as discussed by Jean Paul Satra in Being and Thingness. So Sarta considered this key to the meaning of the medusa myth. Medusa represents the objectifying gaze of the other, which robs one of the self. So basically, you know, we're all just bobbing about in the world, self obsessed. It's all about us, it's our story and how we're interacting with

the world. But then there's this stare from another, this petrifying stare, and Sartra wrote that if one looks at something, the one who looks is the center of consciousness. The one who looks controls the world. But if another looks back at the looker, if the looker knows that they are looked upon, they become an objectified self in the eyes of another. And so the staring other in this case, say the Gorgonian head or the evil eye, the staring

other is the thief of consciousness. This is interesting and I think this there's some truth to this that goes beyond just you know, so Sarta is trying to apply this to his view of um uh, you know, absurdity and and chasing after the idea of the meaning of life, which might be illusory, but uh, there's something to this in our basic primal fears, like as soon as as soon as you realize you are being looked at, you

feel amazingly vulnerable. Being looked at in a way reminds you that you yourself are a not just a subject but an object, That you are impermanent, that your death is inevitable, that you are subject to forces outside your control.

Being looked at and realizing you're being looked at is in many ways the ultimate sort of like uh, terror and loss of control, I mean why is why is one of the most terrifying things to people, like public speaking or public appearances, you know, being up on a stage in front of an audience of people looking at them is horrifying. And it goes beyond just being afraid that you're gonna say the wrong thing or something. There's

like this deep dread to it. It feels like it gets down to something very basic and very threatening that you can't even look at. Almost as if it's the image of Medusa. Yeah, yeah, and certainly if you were you know, there's sort of the casual objectification of everybody and everything in the world. Again, that goes back to just the way that we think about ourselves and our narrative.

But then also if you're if you're actively engaging in objectification and and the objectified individual looks back at you, you know that it it has a powerful effect. Like I think back to the Wrong Frick film from Baraka and some of the other subsequent works like this, with in which you have these lengthy they're not images, they're like lengthy film portraits of individual staring directly back at

the camera. You know, And of course you see this in portraiture as well, like the idea that that the the subject is meeting your gaze. You can have this profound effect, you know, you um, you can feel uncomfortable at times, even so I think there is. There's a lot of truth to what he is saying here. Now, all this stuff we're talking about is at the level of like human consciousness. You know, what kinds of things we with our conscious minds realize about our own nature.

When we suddenly feel looked at, you know, doesn't make you realize you're an object? Does it make you realize your impermanent, you're going to die and all that. But I would say even at the level of you know, animals, without that level of consciousness, probably there's there's more practical reality to the threat of being looked at. Right, Yeah, we see something like this in the natural world. You know,

the idea of the evil eye. It reminds one of eye spots, adaptations of or accidental pattern formation artifacts in a species that serve to either deceive potential predators or prey, or to draw a predator's attention away from more vulnerable parts of an animal. Now, with predators in particularly, uh, nothing beats a sure thing, right or a near sure thing. If an attack does not go exactly as planned, a number of consequences can occur. Prey might get away, in

which case energy and time is wasted. Other prey might be alerted and frightened away as well, we're still an alert prey animal could have the chance to counterattack and inflict damage, and such an injury can prove deadly. Cheetahs, for instance, rarely go after something like an ostrich because while the payoff for a successful hunt is really good, injury can mean starvation when your kills depend on high

speed attacks. Yeah, I mean for a lot of predation in the natural world, especially of like large land animals, you're not gonna be going after healthy adults most of the time. That's a that's a dangerous game. You want to pick off like juveniles or the sick and infirm if you can, right and uh. And if you're going to pick something off, it's better if it doesn't have

its full attention on you, right uh. So you know, keeping an eye on your enemy at all times is a great tactic, though that's that's quite a resource drain. So fooling your enemy into thinking it's being watched at all times that's an even better tactic. And we see this incount us examples of ey spot evolution. Now, to be clear, not all eye spots are there to mimic watching eyes sometimes they're there to to fool a predator again into attacking a less vulnerable part of the animal,

or they play into mate selection, et cetera. But in some cases, yes, eye spots seem to serve as anti predator adaptations. And we also see examples of this strategy's effectiveness outside of natural adaptation. So, for instance, individuals who happened to work in Bengal tiger country have long reported success with backwards wooden masks masks of of a human face that they wear in the back of their heads

in an attempt to ward off ambush attacks. Plus, various animal species evolved eye spots that in many cases may serve to protect them from creeping predators like this. Um. One really cool story of in which one uses eyes like this involves Australian conservation biologist Dr Neil Jordan's who has been experimenting with the use of painted on eye

spots to protect grazing cattle from lion attacks. Uh. This is basically just eyes painted on the rumps of cattle and this is all in an effort to cut down on lion human interactions that can be harmful or deadly on both sides. You know, basically, since lions are ambush hunters, they depend on surprise attacks and if they think they've been had, they'll abandon the hunt. Or at least that's

the theory that they're still uh working on. Now, if that works, that's not just the protection for the cattle, that's obviously a protection for the lions or you know, the conservation object here, because what like, if a lion attacks cattle, they are at risk of being severely retaliated against by farmers and ranchers. Exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's all an effort and this was through the Botswana Predator

of Conservation Trust. This is the Jordan is involved with here, and yeah, it's about ultimately trying to cut down on the conflict between the lions and the farmers and ultimately trying to protect both their triss. But of course, direct eye contact with your with your with this particular species is not always good. Um. You know, just as direct eye contact with an animal that sees you as prey might deter attack, such eye contact might encourage aggression from

a creature that sees who was a potential threat. Um. We see this with dogs for instance. And then of course there are plenty of known examples with with primates, particularly guerrillas. Uh. In fact, in one case back in two thousand seven, the Rotterdam Zoo engaged in this wonderful reversal of those tiger fooling masks. They were, uh, these these eye shades that look like averted eyes, that make you look like with cartoon eyes, like you're looking to the side. Uh. And they did this to cut down

on cases of gorillas responding violently to human eye contact. Oh, that's interesting. That makes me wonder to be in the guerrilla enclosures there. If you're like a status concerned gorilla and like just people are constantly walking up staring directly at you all day, that must be stressful. Yeah, I mean, staring is powerful stuff. I mean, I think even those of us with domestic pets in our house can attest to just you know how powerful a stair can be.

If you just start staring at say your cat or your dog. I'm not you know, it's not going to result in chaos, but you're gonna get it. You're gonna get a rise out of them. They're gonna realize I'm being stared at? Why am I being stared at? And then likewise they'll also turn that around on you at times. Oh yeah, I mean, Charlie knows when he's being looked at.

If I'm looking at something else in the room and then I suddenly look at him, he will often just start wagging his tail as soon as my eyes go to him. So when we're when we're dealing with with staring, you know, we're you know, we're not dealing with a trivial or even purely human uh conundrum, though certainly the human experience makes it all the more complicated. But yeah, we're getting into into something deep that deals with who

we are and how we interact with the world around us. Absolutely. I mean, it's not actually surprising to me the more that I think about it, that the idea of a stare was infused with malevolent magical power throughout the ancient world. The idea of that the evil eye that you know, you could certain people could look at you in a certain way that would curse you or make you sick or you know, bring harm magical harm in some way.

It's the kind of belief that if you don't grow up in a culture with that, you know, the belief something like that It can feel weird at first until you start to think about it. Then it just starts, almost as if you know, coming up from some ancient instinct. It's just starts to feel more and more true and real the more you think about it. Yeah, absolutely, at least for me. All Right, we're gonna take one more break,

but we'll be right back. Thank alright, we're back. So at this point, let's turn to Uh, the section that we're thinking of is the underlying darkness, getting digging into the meat behind the head of the Medusa, getting into this idea of what what is there, what keeps drawing us in? And what are we what are we contemplating

when we contemplate this image or this myth. So Living spends a fair amount of time in the book looking at both the varying ways that the myth has been interpreted and reinterpreted throughout history, and the idea that there is something deeply intriguing behind the myth quote a shadow being an archetypical figure who speaks meaningfully to us all. As we said right at the beginning, I mean Medusa has been obsessed over and and reinterpreted basically in every

generation of humans. I mean It is interesting how essentially the the the dominant cultural values of every age find a new way to say what the Medusa myth means. Yeah, it's we just keep exploring it and re exploring it as a potential metaphor for cultural ideas. You know, it's just counterintuitive enough. It has all these different hooks that we can latch onto. It involves several tropes that resonate

throughout global culture. The animate head, the beheading of a monster, a female monster with wild you know, primordial roots, a male hero who must overcome her. And in this last example, Lemming argues that Perseus and Medusa is essentially Marduk and Tiamatt all over again. Yeah, and if you're not familiar, Marduk and Tiamatt are key to the enemy a leish the Babylonian Hmspotamian myth in which Tiamat is this, you know, primordial being of the sea, much like Medusa's father Pontus

was this primordial being of the sea. And then Tiamatt gives birth to all the gods, and the gods end up in the kind of rebellion war, and she turns into this dragon sea monster type creature, and she has to be slain by a hero from the civilization, by Marduke, who represents the you know, the city of Babylon and

the order, the new order of the new gods. Right, and of course the gender aspects of of the Perseus and Medusa that they're very difficult to ignore, and it makes sense that they would be later explored in ways that this simply we're not part of the patriarchal ancient Greek worldview, right, but there's still something essential concerning male

female interaction. Here. Lemming argues an ancient feminine power is destroyed by a new masculine one, specifically the destruction of a matriarchal triple goddess concept, which is actually reflected twice in the myth, you know, both with the three Gorgons and the three Gray Sisters. So uh. In this, he argues, Meduces based on the lineage of a matriarchal Gaia, while Perseus is the offspring of the male Zeus. Later retellings

by rationalists such as Diodorus would build on this as well. Yeah, I think a really salient way of interpreting this myth is uh. This is something that Lemming points out specifically in the context of of the recurring motif of decapitation in so many different myths, the chopping off of the

head of the monster that it very often happens. It's accomplished by a hero who represents some kind of like a new order of the gods, that is, that is more orderly and civilized against some kind of primordial earthly old religion or old type of divine being. And there are a ton of examples. You know, there's like David decapitating Goliath in the epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Inky

do decapitate this forest monster humbaba uh. In the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knights, or Gawen decapitates the Green Knight, and the Green Knight I think is often taken to embody some kind of like the old religions of the land, like the pre Christianized land. Yeah, he's very much the Green man Um of course. Uh, Joe, have you seen the film sort of The Valuant? No?

I haven't. Oh, it's wonderful because you have Miles o'keith is Sir Gawin, and then you have Sean Connery himself as the Green Night, and it's a great scene where his head is lopped off and then he picks his head back up, puts it on his body and starts talking again. That's great. I mean that also kind of mirrors Medusa, right because like the head still is able to act even after it's been cut off, Like the

Medusa head is still a weapon that can be used. Yeah, yeah, the disembodied head is this uh this trope as well, but yeah, anyway to bring it back. So, of course, uh, you've got the two sides. Like Medusa here represents the old order. The guy INDs the creatures that are from the Earth and original and kind of monstrous and chaotic and untamed. Whereas the the Olympians, represented by Zeus and Athena. Uh, they give rise to Perseus, and Perseus is their human hero.

He fights for the Olympian order, the new gods, the people, you know, the new kids in town who are in charge. Now. Yeah, now there's this other notion to the and this is heavily built upon during the medieval period. The Medusa is also an embodied even of feminine danger. In the medieval tradition. This all ties in with concepts of courtly love and

and so forth. From medieval commentators. Letting tells us that Medusa did not seem to really be a sexual being to the ancient Greeks, though though certainly there is this trend to make her more and more feminine that we already alluded to. But medieval authors made her into this embodiment of feminine danger, a true film vitel in the proper sense of the term. Uh. This this this force

that could lure you away from the righteous path. And and this makes even more sense when you consider Athena as her opposite, a paragon of what a patriarchal society wants women to be and and approves of them being. So. Athena is strong, but she's also chased. She's bashful, uh as when description put it, and she is unemotional. Yeah. Lemmings shows example after example of how you see this

throughout medieval rights. When medusas imagined she is, she is the threat of sexual attraction to women, which you know, a lot this was a strong theme and a lot of especially like medieval Christian writing. You know can trace this back to St. Augustine. Really that most writings about righteousness seemed to be addressed to men, and they characterize women as basically, is this this this unaccountable force of

danger that will tempt you away from righteousness. Yeah, so it should come as no surprise that a lot of these themes end up being re explored, re examined, and sometimes you know, twisted around and reuteralized by by feminist authors and commentators that would come later. Absolutely, Yeah, and

also even some other trends as well. Um, but I want to touch on some other interpretations that leming Uh discusses in the book, and he points out that seventeenth century philosopher Francis Bacon saw the medusa myth, or at least like to use it as a solid metaphor for the proper rules of war. Okay, so choose a winnable fight, attack when unexpected. Yeah, I love how one of the rules of war here is sneak up on your enemy

while they're sleeping. Yes, very cool, Bacon. Uh. Karl Marks saw the gorgon head as a symbol of capitalism and all of its evils. Fredrik Nicie saw it as a symbol of Appollonian struggle against rampant dionyson is um Uh, So order and discipline versus chaos and hedonism. Now for for my money, the psychoanalytical views of Medusa are are really quite interesting though, And uh we see these from the likes of Sigmund Freud, Carl Young and others. Yeah.

One guess, if you're not already familiar what Freud thinks Medusa is related to. Yeah, yeah, it's it's gonna involve sex. So um advisory. If you're not ready for a big old slice of Freud, then you might want to skip this next part. But you know, I think if you're game, then this is interesting. So in n Freud wrote an s a titled Medusa's Head or dos medusan Hat, which was published in after his death. Um, so it all,

you know, basically comes down to sex and development. In particular, he saw the Medusa as an embodiment of male castration fears. I alluded to this in our last episode. We were discussing the snakes hanging from belts of the Gorgons in ancient depictions, and I think one of the reasons I found them a little disturbing, or at least, you know, one of the reasons I found them disturbing is that there is this sort of castration anxiety inherent in the imagery and and this is key to Freud's view of

the monster. So Freud considered castration fear to be a prime immobilizing factor in a male's life, originating in a boy's first view of his mother naked. The absence of a penis and the unavoidable realization that the penis can certainly not exist on a human has an effect. Uh. It's they realize it can be lost. Uh. Freud continued.

It also that decapitation is a symbol for castration. And I think this makes sense, honestly, because no matter how many horror films you watch, you don't really see anyone going around without a head all that often it's hard to relate to that kind of a uh, you know, fatal injury. Um. But you do encounter people all the time that presumably do not have a penis. Females are all, in the mind of the Freud envisioned may of old

child here castrated individuals. Um. Furthermore, there's this knowledge that one can live without the member in question, and plenty of people born with it have managed this. Now it goes without saying obviously, like a lot of Freud, this is a very male centric way of interpreting the myth right that like, he imagines that the young boys sees the world in these in these uh strange gender terms and sort of views women as men who are lacking

something and has this psycho sexual terror about it. Yeah. Yeah, and definitely we're not We're not saying this is the way to view the world, but this is this is what Freud wrote and uh uh. He also further argued that snakes or phallic symbols, all right, and uh that a plethora of phallic symbols also translates to castration fears. And this actually this reminded me of something um that

I had read about previously. I believe this was in Walter Stephen's book Demon Lovers, Witchcraft, Sex in the Crisis of Belief, where he was discussing castration anxiety myths of penis theff by witches um that was common during the era of European witchcraft persecution. The idea was that witches would go around stealing penises from men and then collect

them in birds nests high in trees. Again, we see a grouping a plethora of phallic emblems that is involved in a in a myth or a story that embodies castration fears of of men during this particular era. Now, Freud's not done here. He also contends that an erection is a reminder that once has a penis, So the petrification aspects of the of Medusa Smith tie in here, and he argues that the the the apatropeic power of the gorgon's head emblem is the emblem of female genitalia

and male castration anxiety. You know, I would say, when you see it all laid out like this, at least to me, Freud's take seems kind of ridiculous, like the Medusa represents like castration anxiety and the young man's psycho sexual horror at female anatomy as as Freud imagines it um. But then also the severing of the head represents castion

castration anxiety. I think this is one of those cases where Freud probably sounds more convincing if you're reading him build his own case rather than seeing it all presented and disinterested summary. Yeah, but probably so. And it's one of those things where it's like it's really interesting to read, and i'd and I'd be willing to entertain that that that there is something to this you know in the you know, the shadow archetypepe of of Medusa as we

encounter it. But you know, I, as with these other things, as would say geo mythology. You know, I'm not gonna put all my eggs in this one basket. Yeah. I mean I think a lot of what what Freud talks about it you could in a way think of as a kind of psycho mythology. He's like, Uh, the stuff he's saying is not like based on controlled experiments or anything.

He's he's sort of like weaving a story that makes sense to him about you know, how anxiety is about sex and how people think about sex and death and stuff pervades all of the imagery that we come up with. Now. Other thinkers, though, would echo at least some aspects of Freud's take here, uh, including a French feminist critic Sarah Kaufman, who wrote of the mixed horror and pleasure that women's

genitals arousing men now. Carl Jung, for his part, his interpretation was less sexual, but it's still can concern the power of the unconscious. He saw Medusa as a chaotic element tied to create civity and destruction, and in general, Medusa and Athena as archetypes connected to how women are viewed. And speaking of how women are viewed, there there's, of course a lot of feminist consideration of Medusa, including Kaufman,

who we just mentioned. One example that Lemon brings up is that of New York University law professor Amy Adler, author of Medusa A Glimpse of the Woman in First Amendment Law. Oh this part was interesting, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Adler touches on the fact that the U. S. Supreme Court considers live nude dancing unprotected by the First Amendment, while pornographic film is protected, and so the the idea here, uh is Adler lays it out, is that live female nudity is is still too threatening to petrifying for the male observer. But just as the mirrored shield of Athena allows percy Us to gaze upon Medusa without being turned to stone, so too does the medium of film allow

the male to consider female nudity without fear. The mirrored shield of Athena is the male gaze itself. It tams the female body, making it passive and quote removing its power to return the male viewers gaze. Yeah, I thought that was a really interesting read on this. Yeah, I did too, And again it gets back to the power of being stared back out by the thing that is

objectified by the person that is objectified. And of course, in addition to this, I mean Lemon chronicles that there are a ton of ways that Medusa has been sort of recaptured by feminists thought, especially throughout the second half of the twentieth century, basically just as as a figure to be sympathized with and celebrated rather than as like the monster of the storied. You know, to recognize that like Medusa is if we take the story literally the

wronged party. And in a way this all comes back to it's very similar to the Romantic take because so in the Romantic period we there was a lot of rethinking of the Medusa story that sympathized with Medusa. And I think the Percy Shelley poem that we started by

reading today is one of those works of literature. Absolutely in the same way that say, Percy Shelley and Prometheus Unbound would show you know, his and his generations large sympathies with sort of the rebel parties or the characters who might have been considered villains and previous tellings of stories uh that you know the story of Prometheus Unbound as a play in which the Prometheus, who defies the gods, uh, is sort of like he and his allies are the

heroes and and Jove, the king of the gods, is the villain and he gets slapped down by the demogorgan, you know, something previously imagined as a demon, but which Shelley imagined instead as this kind of like potency or void of potential. And now a fairly recent twist on on Medusa imagery is that is a sculpture that I think you've seen. I think it was on the stuff

to remind discussion module at some point. Uh. It was by a Luciano god body um a an Argentine Argentine Italian artist based in Buenos Aires, and basically he did a reversal of the of the classic statue of of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, but in his statue it is Medusa holding the decapitated head of Percy. I like it, yeah, because you know, we've touched on on

all the problematic aspects of of Medusa. Her character, you know, is this this victimized uh woman who is made into a monster that is further victimized and ultimately, uh, you know, violently murdered by a male hero. And this at least turns that around and allows her to get the upper hand. And so that just there's something refreshing about this particular statue.

You know. I like art like this because I think a lot of times we're we're faced with a dilemma and the you know, comes up a lot when we're dealing with ancient myths, where you have a story that you want to be able to sort of retell and re explore and celebrate in a way. But of course, you know, like most ancient myths, it it has some kind of either explicit or implicit values that are really not our values anymore. And uh, and so like what do you do with that? Do you do you try

to like change the myth? Do you do you try to like ignore parts of it that that feel icky today? And I think my take is that, like you let the myth be the myth, and and that's what it is. But you also create complementary art, right, Like you don't try to change the story of Perseus and Medusa, but you can also write a novel in which Medusa kills Perseus or make an awesome statue in which she's got

his head by the hair. Yeah. Absolutely, And as we've discussed in the first episode on Medusa, like, this is how mythology works. This is how the telling and the retelling these stories has always worked. So you totally have license to do this. Plus public domain, right, oh public domain? Is hessy it gonna come and sue you? Well, no, no, I do want to know what happens after this, because there were several things depending on on Perseus after the encounter.

So does Medusa go from here and like help out Danny and uh you know all that stuff? Or is that just left on its own? Now? Yeah, that's that's what's kind of beautiful about this, right, this could be the very beginning of a story. You could have a novel or at least, you know, a short story or novella of Medusa that begins with her defeating Perseus. M because then what happens because certainly Athena is still in play,

still presumably more than happy to work against Medusa. Um. And then yeah, basically, yeah, if somebody write this so I can read it, this sounds great Athena is like the terminator. It can she cannot be bargained with, She cannot be reasoned with, and will not stop until you are dead unless you go to Mount Olympus and you get her first. That's true. Yeah, after all, the Goregonian head is a ultimately a God created power. It works on titans, why not on the gods themselves? All right?

So I wanted to end today just by real quickly jumping off to a couple of other things that are really only tangentially related to Medusa. They don't have to do so much with the myth, but are just scientific concepts that have been related to it in various ways. So last year, which would be twenty nineteen, there was a new finding published in the Journal of Virology about a recently discovered so called giant virus. Now, giant viruses

in general are are very interesting subject. For a long time, pretty much all the viruses that we knew about were sub microscopic, you know, extremely small, very simple compared even to single celled organisms like bacteria. Viruses in general are

not thought usually to be alive. I guess it depends on how you define alive, but they're generally not thought to be alive, because what they do is that they contain packages of genetic material that can take over a host cell and sort of turn that cell into a factory for making more viruses. But they don't have the machinery to survive and reproduce on their own. They can't eat, they can't breathe, they can't reproduce without a host cell. In a way, a biological virus is a lot like

a computer virus. As a good point of comparison, it can't spread if it's just burned onto a CD sitting on your desk, right. It needs to be planted into active hardware, needs to be on a machine that is running and connected to something in order to spread. But in recent years, we've discovered that there are some viruses that are bigger and hardier and more complex than previously known viruses, and these are now usually referred to as

giant viruses. Uh. There there are a lot larger than normal viruses, sometimes even larger as large as or larger than bacteria. And uh sometimes they look kind of like furry d twenties. Like I've got a picture here for you to look at, Robert. This is a picture of the one I'm gonna get to in just a minute. But yeah, it's like got all these spikes all over, but it looks basically like you could roll it for

a critical hit. Yeah. Yeah, when, especially when it's illustrated in bright yellow and red, it looks like a natural twenty. Uh So, whereas a normal virus might have numbers of genes and the single digits, you know, some viruses might have like five genes or nine genes, giant viruses can

have hundreds of genes or a thousand genes. And in two thousand three, researchers in France published a description of the Acanthamba polyphaga mimi virus, a relatively huge virus that prays on amba which I believe this virus was discovered in a water cooling tower. I'm not sure about that, but I think so. Um many of the other giant viruses that have been discovered since then, we're found in

these weird, extreme places. I was reading an article in the Atlantic by Sarah Jong from March twenty nineteen, and it mentioned that, uh, these things had also turned up in an Austrian sewage plant, as well as water off the Chilean coast. And you may have heard this one in thirty thousand year old Siberian permafrost. Uh. The strain from this permafrost was a giant virus called Pithovirus subericum.

And even after being trapped in ice for tens of thousands of years, this giant virus was still infectious when they yeah, they thought it out, and they set some amibas out as bait next to it, and the pith of virus apparently went to work. The ambas died off and then their dead bodies contained fragments of this giant virus.

And the story. I mean, I've seen some researchers kind of poo poo this to say, like this is not the main thing to worry about with climate change, but uh, they may be right, but it does just make me wonder what kind of goodies we're gonna release as we keep thawing stuff that's been frozen for tens of thousands of years through climate change. Um. And I believe this was this actually was the premise of a horror movie by Larry Peasenden. What was the name of that? I was, Oh,

I don't think I know this one. It was called The Last Winter, Uh, and it had it starred Ron Perlman. Oh. Yeah, Fessenden did a He did a killer catfish movie called Beneath. I mean, you should watch you Beneath. It's it's I don't want to spoil too much. I mean, I think it's kind of satirical. But there's one part where these characters are trapped on a boat as this like google eyed catfish is picking them off one by one and at one point one of them screams of the catfish,

like what do you want from us? Oh? Nice? But anyway, So that Sarah's Young article I mentioned, it's primarily focused on the this virus that was newly described in twenty nineteen by Japanese researchers in the Journal of Virology and um So. Apparently, this giant virus came from a sample of mud that was taken from a hot spring some in Japan, and here's how it ties back in. The new virus has been named the Medusa virus. It's named

after a response it elicits from Amiba's when it attacks. So. A researcher named Massa Haru Takamura at the Tokyo University of Science noticed that when he observed this giant virus attacking ambas of the species A can't the Meba Casta castellani. Some of the amibas would get infected and they would burst open and spill their contents everywhere when they died, But some of the amibas would instead shrink down and basically turned to stone. They would form a type of

hard mineral shell known as a cyst. So the giant virus can in some cases petrify the host the Medusa effect in action. Uh. And I should mention that Jong's article shows a picture of Takamura where he's got his computer desktop in the background, and the background of the desktop is Rubens painting of Medusa's severed head. I don't know if that was posed on purpose us or if he just happened to have that there anyway, Um, he's

a little bit obsessed with this myth or something. But anyway, this viral discovery was mainly interesting because of some complex features of the virus itself. So that this virus, the Medusa virus, had his stones, which are these protein features usually found in more complex eukaryotic cells cells like plants and animals and amibas, and it's used for coiling and organizing DNA to make it compact when you've got a lot of DNA in a cell nucleus. Normally a virus

doesn't need something like this. Also, there was repeated there was evidence of repeated gene transfer throughout history between this giant virus and it's Amiba host. The Amiba genome had genes originally from the virus, the virus genome had genes

originally from the amiba. And then there was also a gene coding for DNA polymerase, which is used in complex living cells to synthesize d N A and the researchers believe that this d A polymerase gene could tell us really interesting things potentially about the history of eukaryotic life and its relationship to viruses. To quote from Takamorrow, don't know if he's right, but what he says is quote.

Genomics research of the giant virus indicates that there is likely a relationship between the Medusa virus and the origin of eukaryotic life. And another one of the researchers, Dr Ginkia Yoshiqua from Kyoto University, says that that our DNA polymerase, the DNA polymerase of eukaryotes. Quote probably originated from Medusa virus or one of its relatives. Now that's their take. But that's a very interesting possibility that like this key feature of the cells that form more complex life on

Earth could have come from viruses. Oh wow. And if we turned back to the myth, which again is has just been applied to this discovery. Uh, you know, but once one can't help but think about the connections here to this idea of of Medusa as this guy in entity, right, I mean that this would mean we we are all children of Medusa. Hail Medusa. All right. So there you have it, Medusa in two parts. Uh. Here on stuff to Blow your mind, obviously, we'd love to hear from

everybody out there. Um, how you interpret the myth of Medusa and Perseus. How some of this information we've presented altars or backs up your interpretation, changes your interpretation? What are your favorite Meduces from art, uh, from cinema, from comic books, etcetera. We'd love to to hear from you

about all of that. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be, just make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe. Those are the things you can do that will help support the show huge thanks as always to

our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback about this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.