T-Mobile believes that black history is American history and that together we're unstoppable. That's why T-Mobile is proud to celebrate Black History Month by sponsoring a special episode of the daily White Guys podcast focusing on the unsung achievements of black Americans. Check out that episode now released on February 13th to learn about figures and events from American history who deserve more recognition than currently given. And visit T-Mobile dotcom slash Black History to learn more today or to join the conversation using hashtag unstoppable together with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts.

Banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions, kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with their top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet terms? Apply Capital One in a member FDIC.

Welcome to stuff you should know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh, there's Chuck, Dragonslayer Bryant, and, well, that's it, it's just the two of us. We can make it if we try to chuck just the two of us, Dragons and us.

And the great Bill Withers was that Bill with David Tracey. We just had the same conversation like two months ago. I'm not doing it again.

Oh, about Bill Withers. Yeah, I didn't realize that that was a Bill Withers song. It was a good song. Lean on me though. Man is just I cannot take it.

Grandma said, what is that? Said a Bill Withers song. I did not know that. It's good. He's he's great. And we probably had this exact same conversation.

I don't know if we had that one or not, but you know who else I like who's a little bit like Bill Withers. Not quite as cool I guess, if you're like a cool person.

But George Benson was amazing and still is. I think he's still around here. We listen to his stuff. Yeah.

But now I'm realizing that I maybe I should just not correct myself and let people be sent in a bunch of e-mails.

Oh, I love that. I love that we get a million of the same emails. It's Grandma's hands.

I was getting at John Denver's Grandma Featherbed kind of just was in the ether. So, gosh, as we just talked about, John Denver. Sure. Karaoke's grandma is bad. What's the follow up to use me up early. So dragons. Yeah. Let's talk about dragons.

Let's have a pleasant conversation about dragons, shall we? Check.

Yeah, dragons aren't real. And you'll notice by the title of this episode, which is Dragons Colen as real as Mermaids. Hmm. Yeah. And it's funny because I think the week before this comes out, mermaids is a is our pick for the Selex, the select episode. So it aligns perfectly. That is perfect. But dragons aren't real.

Well OK, I please stop saying that because you're crushing my dreams. Sorry. So when we, when we talk about dragons we have to stay right here at the outset. There's a lot of different kinds of dragons. And typically when you think of like the the flying winged, usually long, maybe scaly, fire breathing, fire breathing dragon, often with a long kind of serpentine tail. Sometimes it's even pointy like the devil.

Sure. Which we'll see why that's considered a western dragon. And that is its own thing that kind of evolved from a number of different traditions. But there's also the Asian dragon, which, you know, has variations among different Asian countries. But it's generally seems to be kind of the same ancient Chinese thing. That's a totally different thing. And it evolved on its own in isolation as well. And so because you've got these different traditions of dragons that seem fairly similar in a lot of ways, there's a lot of people out there who say, wow, this is astounding.

Every culture in the world has some sort of tradition of dragons. And that's kind of true. But at the at the like throughout this episode, we'll see. That's not really accurate like that nowadays. It seems that way because we have overlaid that idea of dragons over everything. But if you really kind of dig into the past and and look into the nuances, some of these things that we term dragons, they're very different. So it's a lot more accurate to say that like every culture in the world has mythical beasts, some of which share a lot in common with our modern conception of dragons.

And that's probably where our modern conception of dragons came from, was all these different ideas of it in the ancient past?

Yeah, there's a book called An Instinct for Dragons, written by an anthropologist named David Jones about dragons and dragons throughout cultures and across cultures. And there's a theory he's got going, which is humans evolved in primates, evolved with a fear of three predators, basically snakes, cats, which are big cats, house cats and eagles and a dragon. It sort of makes sense that every culture sort of has something like a dragon, because in folklore and myth and in storytelling, you might combine the three scariest things into one super scary thing.

And that is a dragon.

Right. And you might say like, well, wait a minute. Like, I think eagles are kind of cool. I'm not at all sure no one. Have you ever been around an eagle when it was loose?

I bet you'd be kind of scared of it because those talons are serious or one that dive bombed you. I think. Exactly. More to the point, though, or. More days, I should say, David Jones's point that this would be this fear, this innate fear that humans have would be based much more deeply in our evolutionary past when we were monkeys. And you actually could be killed by certain kinds of eagles like the Harbi Eagle. Remember, we talked about the harpy eagle in the Sloth episode because they can mess the sloth up.

They can mess a monkey up, too. So this guy's premise is like we have these ancient fears of these things. And as we evolved and became humans and started telling each other stories, these things combined, like you were saying into this one fierce mythological monster, which was basically the the sum of all of our most primal fears.

Yeah. And then, of course, if you look at ancient cultures, they always had sort of mythical stories and folklore to explain, you know, everything from weather phenomenon to things like volcanoes. And if they happened upon maybe dinosaur bones or whale bones, then a story might go along with that to explain it away. Like, you know, this was clearly some huge lizard like creature or maybe a snake like creature. And there was probably a story around it and why they should fear it or usually some sort of a sacrifice that they needed to make, you know, sort of in lockstep with those stories.

But that's just sort of another theory on maybe how the dragon might have come about as far as folklore goes.

One of the most interesting theories that I saw, and we should say no one has a widely accepted answer for this, which I love is always true. But it was the be that that the description often in ancient cultures, they used to use like riddles and exaggeration and metaphor to discuss and talk about and describe actual things. And that the B A description of a B or I should say a form of a B is what actually became the dragon in mythology.

And first year like that doesn't make any sense at all. But some of the points that these people made, there was a journal article in it in I think like a journal on Tolkin studies or something like that.

But they say that a B swarm moving together. It doesn't necessarily resemble a dragon, but it makes a lot more sense along those lines than it does when you're talking about an individual.

B, it doesn't a cartoon. Exactly. It can do it can point and air. It can make an arrow to point a direction, you know, where somebody is hiding that kind of thing. And then another one is that the fire, the idea of a dragon breathing fire is a metaphor for the the feeling of like your skin burning from a bee sting or the intense pain. And then lastly, in the Western tradition, a lot of dragons protect like mounds of gold or treasure and that this is a metaphor for honey and gold, like the honeycombs that ancient people would have basically considered gold, not just, you know, food, but also it was used as medicine as well.

So if you kind of put it together, it seems like a pretty interesting theory. At least it makes a lot more sense than a bee, you know, when you really kind of dig into it.

Yeah, totally. The word itself is, well, you can look back to The Iliad when Homer wrote about the Draycott in the direction, which supposedly is the first known use of the word in ancient Greek, is sort of has some confusing etymology behind it. But basically, Homer uses that word to describe snakes like unequivocally. Yeah. And not, you know, huge flying, fire breathing snakes, but just snakes. Yeah, yeah.

He even says, no, I'm just talking about snakes, everybody, not dragons. Don't get ahead of yourself. These are snakes. And I mean, they say that, like he points out that he's talking about snakes because he even says a Chimaira, which is I think the head of a lion, the goat body, a serpent tail and bats wings. He even says the the serpent tail, the back portion of the Chimaira is a dragon. So he's talking about just regular old snakes for sure.

Yeah.

And other writers and other classical stories did the same thing, whether it was direct contests or drunkenness, using all these words sort of interchangeably with other words for Snake. But then we go to the history of not the history, but just history of animals. And that's the first sort of scientific take on the dragon, which is an enemy of the ego, because an eagle is a bird of prey, would eat snakes, obviously. And different people got a little more specific in later writings as to what kind of snake.

But it's still just snakes.

Yeah. So over time, like, that's that's where the word dragon came. Was it to use. It was a word for snake, that's it. And then over time, as people started to exaggerate here, their complete different types of snakes and different behaviors, they aren't found in snakes. But saying that they were and they all kind of put that under the umbrella word for Snakes Dragon. It seems like the legend or the myth, the mythical version of Dragons started to kind of plump up and grow.

Yeah. And this this is a point that grabs her. Put this together, put this together for us. But Ned points out something I kind of never really considered back in the day in the classical period, writers were writers. There weren't like, hey, I'm going to write only about, you know, natural history and I'm only going to write fiction and myth and storytelling like writers just wrote. So there were people that wrote natural history tomes and also myth and storytelling legends.

And so a lot of this stuff could get kind of mixed up and confused. Exaggerated mistranslation is a huge, huge deal. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And a lot of this is sort of where the sort of the myth of the dragon came from.

I just think of like some writer getting confused what they were working on that day. And now we have the myth of dragons.

Right. You know, it's like, is this real or not? I can't remember. Who cares?

So, yeah, like, you really hit upon something really important mistranslations. A different way to put it is lazy translation have really kind of changed our idea of what people were talking about in the ancient world. And I can't imagine how much nuance and understanding has been lost. How probably dumb and a lot of ways ancient people seem compared to how they actually were because of this tradition of like poor translation that was passed down over the year people. Yeah, it's very cute.

And the reason why it's kind of lazy translation is it seems like anybody who came across an ancient text or a text in another language who's translating something into English, and they would seem to be describing anything even remotely dragon like any mythical beast, anything that might have wings, anything with a serpent tail, anything that breathes fire. Boop Dragon, it's a dragon. And then now those of us who have a certain compartmentalized idea of what a dragon is, everything was a dragon then.

Then now we reached that point where it's like this is how we got this idea that every culture has dragons. Now we just kind of lazily translated what other cultures we're talking about into dragons along the way.

Right. I think that is a great first act. Thank you. Thank you. I'm bowing and throwing roses at your feet. Thank you. And we're going to take a little break and Rooney and be right back.

I'll tell you what, folks being blocked in the House for this past year, it's been tougher and tougher to exercise with cold weather. But thankfully, with my peloton, I'm able to go upstairs, get on that thing and ride to my heart's content.

Yeah, well, part of it is the instructors that Peloton has, they are inspiring. They're also kind of hilarious. And they will actually get you to work out when you're on your peloton, whether you're looking for some extra encouragement or structured workouts or whatever. Their instructors are there to bring out the best of you during each class. And boy, do they.

That's right. And get this, you can have one subscription for the whole family. That's what we have there. All excess membership is more like a family plan for no additional cost. You can bring home the peloton experience for you and your whole family with access to their entire class library, encouragement from expert instructors and the convenience of working out in your home on your time. So get started on your peloton journey. Go to one peloton dotcom to learn more.

That is o n e p l o t o n dotcom.

This episode is brought to you by IBM, safe or sporty, modern or reliable, we want both. We want a hybrid. Well, so do banks, and that's why they're going hybrid with IBM. A hybrid cloud approach helps them personalize experiences with Watson A.I. while helping keep data secure. It's more reward, less risk from banking to manufacturing. Businesses are going with a smarter hybrid cloud using the tools, platform and expertise of IBM. The world is going hybrid with IBM go hybrid and IBM dotcom slash hybrid cloud.

So the rose petals I sent you arrived in time, just in time, thank you for throwing them and not saving them for something else.

I also realized it just went on Ned Flanders with The Braker. Rooney, I've never said that before in my life. I like that, though. It was refreshing. We need that kind of wet behind the ears, you know, wholesomeness right now, Chuck. Yeah. In year 14. No, not just us. I mean the world. OK, you know.

Yeah. Up with Flanders. Yep, with Flanders. That's right.

So my favorite thing always about Flanders is when he would be really buff. Like every time he takes the shirt you put Sexy Flanders. I know it's funny how he described it to a healthy dose of vitamin church, right?

Oh, man, I love it. Yeah. All right. Where were we here? Giant snakes. Yeah, we talked about them.

We're talking about mistranslations were a big problem. And I think a good place to start with that is back in Sumeria. Yeah.

The Sumerian legends wrote about something called the You some UCM also called Dragons or, you know, at least referred to as Dragons now. And these were kind of like you said at the beginning, these were just sometimes just large monsters, large scary things and not necessarily a dragon, but was sort of just translated as Dragon.

Yeah. And I should say Sumer, not Sumeria. But they were these were like their gods that they were talking about. These were, you know, the the the like the god of the goddess of water who gave birth to the world. Like they had this incredibly detailed cosmology that explained, you know, where they came from, where the world came from, where the sun came from. And we along the way translated that to dragons. Right.

You know, so luckily, there are scholars who have learned to speak Akkadian, I guess, the world's oldest spoken language, a K, a desire and not the the Canadian group that the Cajuns come from. This is different. But the so we understand now that there's much more nuance, much more detail to it. But I think the upshot of this is that there were conceptions of like fire breathing and like flying serpents and like potentially malicious, malevolent, evil, mythical beasts that would resemble kind of what we would understand as a dragon dating back thousands of years.

Yeah. And, you know, this course goes straight to the Bible as well. And revelations, there's a lot of talk about the arch angels, archangels battling a great dragon. In this case, the dragon is Satan. But again, this is sort of a translation like Satan was always sort of the serpent, at least in Genesis. It first appeared as a serpent. And so in the end, Satan is also a serpent, but spelled with a draconian like the ancient Greek.

I was all right. Yeah, but there's no I mean, not in the King James version and stuff like that, obviously. Sure. But again, you know, pre translation and, you know, there were sort of renderings of this of the big war for heaven. And this is when we see, you know, it kind of what we would see later on, which is metaphor for good versus evil in a big battle.

So that's what William Blake's Paradise Lost is about, right? I've never read it. I haven't either. I'm just familiar with it from that movie Red Dragon. OK, well, The Silence of the Lambs prequel, I think. Oh, sure. Yeah. He's like, do you see if you remember when Ray finds this guy, poor Philip Seymour Hoffman, strapped to that wheelchair. Oh, man. That's like crime scene. I had spoiler coming.

Didn't love that movie. It was OK. But that was that shot of that burning wheelchair and body going down the parking deck is one of the most sort of chilling images I've seen in movies.

I know the thing that kills me about it, though, is it's an antique wicker wheelchair, which is the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. I hate those. You know, like there's no I think we just talked about it recently. And I every for the rest of my life, I will be creeped out by those things.

I'm going to get you one slide with me with this Christmas. Next Christmas, you're just going to get a an ancient a quicker wheelchair.

No, no, I don't want to be wasteful, so I won't throw it away and I'll just have to live among. And it's going to be terrible, like I'll never get used to it either.

You could make a life sized chuck dummy, put it in there and set it on fire and roll it down a parking deck.

Oh, I wouldn't do that. I make a life sized version of Chuck and just talk to you and be like, listen, I got a lot of stuff to say to you that's even creepier. But and you're going to sit there and listen to it. I'll be wearing nothing but an apron. Just like a real doll with a big beard. Oh, man. OK, so, yeah, good versus evil is sort of how a lot of these tales and folklore play out and also incorporating stuff that you would see time and time again in literature later on, like there's a dragon that lives out by itself near the village and it's a greedy, vengeful dragon.

And we need to appease this dragon with sacrifice once a year or else it will come down and rain fire upon everyone. Yeah.

So all of this stuff like this idea, this western dragon that you're describing, like that's taken from like Beowulf, I believe that the dragon that killed Beowulf in the I always thought it was a north legend, but apparently it's English, old English. It's just set in in the Netherlands or in Scandinavia. In the Norse think I think somewhere I don't remember exactly where it set.

It's just sat there. It's not written by them. But like that dragon was malevolent and I believe it was guarding treasure. I think the reason it went berserk in Beowulf had to kill it was because somebody stole one of its golden goblets, a.k.a. honey. Now, because they're really talking about a B, but so you have an idea of a greedy, murderous dragon that protects treasure like that comes from an ancient tradition. But that's a pretty, pretty standard feature of dragons, like you were saying.

Yeah. So all this is going on for many, many, many years. Finally, the rubber meets the road as far as Western Dragons are concerned with the legend of St George, who is a Christian saint, a real Christian saint, maybe a real person who may have been a Roman soldier who was, you know, tortured and killed for converting pagans to Christianity. This is circa 4th century A.D.. Mm hmm. And because of stories getting passed around like a game of telephone, the actual first name of that story when it was told was St Theodore, but it was really St George.

So I saw that they're both possibly known as Dragon Slaying Saints. OK, it's not necessarily like George took that from Thierer. They're both known for having slain a dragon. But what's interesting is if you see St Theodore depicted with his dragon, it's very clearly a crocodile.

And they're the the origin story of either one, but particularly St George, is that there is a town in modern day Turkey or possibly Palestine, I'm not 100 percent sure. But in what would have been called Anatolia back then, where they had the spring, like this town got their water from the spring and it was guarded by a giant, massive crocodile and that the townspeople would sacrifice a sheep to sometimes to a day, basically to distract the crocodiles so they could go get the water and then get out of there.

And then they ran out of sheep. So they say, well, what what comes after sheep? How about maidens? So they started throwing maidens, sacrificing maidens, literally throwing them to the crocodile to to distract it so they could get the water. And eventually they came upon the king's daughter. They drew straws to see what made and what would go next. And St George apparently arrived just in time to slay the dragon, a.k.a. the crocodile. But that that's this idea that that's where the story of somebody slaying a dragon could have been rooted in reality, that over the years, this massive crocodile, which was so fearsome and so murderous and killed so many people, was converted into a dragon over the years.

And so St George slew the dragon. And that's where that came from.

And that was a real crocodile that lived by a real spring. Right. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, I thought so, too. I'd love it when something that seems totally legendary is rooted in some sort of fact. It's just people embellished or exaggerated over time.

Totally. If you want to go with the sort of real great first image of what we think of as a Western dragon, you can go to 12 60 A.D. in an illustration in a medieval bestiary called me Harly. Thirty to forty four. Great title. I think Ed said it was probably a catalogue designation.

Yeah, I think the real title is parol. This is theological miscellany.

Yeah. Which is that's an actual great title. Yeah. I think Ms. Harly thirty to forty four. It's cool looking though. You can if you're near a laptop or something you can look this thing up and it is, you know, you look at it and this is exactly what you think of as something from like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or whatever. Yeah. It's like it's a dragon. It's how a scene starts, you know.

Yeah. So, so sorry. I see what you're saying. Like the dragon that that shows up in there, specifically the red one.

Well, no, I just mean sort of the dragon that we all think of in and sort of literature and folk. Laura, right like this is clearly that, yeah, and supposedly it's the first one from around 12, 16, did you say that? Yeah, so and yeah, when you see it you're like, yes, this is probably the basis of the Western Dragon as we understand it. And it would have spread to Europe, which it did.

I think that was English. It was by a guy named William Perrault and I believe he was English. So it would have spread from England to the rest of Europe and that that kind of set the stage for at least the visual version of the Western Dragon from that point on.

Thanks to England then. All right. I think we said English in England then.

Oh, is it English then? Makes way more sense. You know, England dance a little weird, yeah, but hey, England, Dan was a little weird, but your nickname is America. JOSH Sure. How about all Josh?

Uh, should we take a break now and talk about Asian dragons? Yeah, let's. All right. We'll be right back with a kinder, gentler dragon right after this.

You know, friends, for a lot of us, our home is now more than just our home, might be our gym and our classroom and our bakery and our barbershop and well, let's face it, our podcast studio. Yeah.

And if you're a business owner or people manager who might also be where you're doing your hiring, and that luckily is where the recruiter comes in. That's right.

Zip recruiter is going to make hiring faster and easier because you can do it all from one convenient place, zip recruiter dotcom stuff.

How does it make it easier? Well, funny you should ask Zeph. Recruiters matching technology scans thousands of resumes and profiles to send you the most qualified people for your job posting. And if you're really interested in a candidate, you can even invite them to apply for your job with one click zip recruiter sends them an email from you and you stand out from the competition.

That's right. And right now you can try zip recruiter for free at zip recruiter dotcom stuff that is zip recruiter dotcom slash stuf f all you need is wi fi to try it for free. Just go to zip recruiter dotcom stuff.

Zip recruiter. The smartest way to hire some.

Imagine you're home, totally organized with the touch home personal label maker. I love these things. Oh, yeah.

Not only does it help you coordinate things like your kitchen with a bunch of fonts and frames and labeling your pantry just perfectly or maybe even touching up your laundry room a little bit so you can find stuff. It also makes things fun, like it's fun to make labels and label the stuff. It's fun to organize. That's right.

You can even use little emojis if you want to get super cute. Even the tiniest little family member is going to benefit from having an organized space. Organize your stuff, people.

Yeah, and have fun with the touch. Home personal label maker only from brother. For details, visit P Touch Home by Brother Dotcom.

OK, so, Chuck, you mentioned something you said a kinder, gentler dragon, it's true, like Western dragons are generally, in the tradition, murderous, greedy, wealth hoarding jerks. Boo, who may be pure evil, personified an Asian dragon, which everybody has seen at the very least in like a photo of a street parade or in some sort of like a Chinese silkscreened or something like that. Um, an Asian dragon is typically much more benevolent than that and usually is associated with rain water, that kind of thing.

And so when you see those like a dragon being paraded around with a bunch of people, like under like a dragon costume, that's actually based on a very ancient rain dance, essentially a ceremony to invoke rain because these dragons were associated with that.

Yeah, and this is far, far, far older than in the West. I think in about 6000 B.C., there were people in China that were carving little dragon jade figurines. And there was art back then, I think as far back as 400 B.C. where it's clearly some kind of dragon, but again, supposedly independent from the sort of evolution of the Western Dragon. Yeah.

And so all of this is based on some of the early like Chinese religion was based on animism and not just Chinese, but a lot of ancient religions are based on animism where like an inanimate object is is symbolic of a larger thing or like a God, like the god of wind or the god of rain.

And so these ancient dragons were considered gods of rain. And there were different there's different types. There's different kinds. But again, like the fact that they are generally beneficial to humankind rather than harmful, I think is is it's it's interesting. It's I wonder what that says about the two different cultures. If anything, you know, that dragons are harmful and they're going to kill you and they're going to steal your gold or they're going to bring the rain that's going to grow the food that saves your family.

You know, where did that diverge or did it just they just don't have anything to do with one another? Yeah, that's interesting.

Sort of side note, I'm playing I've been playing video games, some during the pandemic, which I'm usually not a big gamer, but I've been playing a game lately called Ghost of Tsushima, which is a you play a samurai warrior that's sort of traveling through Japan and ancient times. Right. And it's really interesting to compare that to like the analogue for the West would be like Red Dead Redemption in the Old West with gunslinger's. Yeah. And it's just such a different game design and everything.

It's the one in Japan is are the ghost of sashimi is so peaceful. It's one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen. And instead of like a map telling you where to go, you press the button and the wind guides you. And if you see a fox, you follow the fox up to a shrine and you and you pay your respects to the shrine. And it doesn't really get you much other than it's not like you get like a million points or something for doing that.

It's just it seems like they really tried to honor Japanese traditions and so much of this game and the motivations are always pure. Like even when you're slicing guys up with your katana, it's because you're rescuing, you know, some old lady in the village. Yeah. Whereas the other game is just like, hey, just go and just pillage and murder and do awful things, shoot them up. Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm much more enjoying this game.

Well, you said something that that struck a memory in me about dragons. And there's a commonality between Asian dragons, particularly Chinese dragons, which are called long or long, Renji and Western Dragons. And typically they live in isolated areas away from everybody. And in Asia, the Chinese dragons usually live in old ruin temples like that's where you'll find them dwelling.

Oh, interesting. There are plenty of those in that game. Exactly.

So are there Dragons in that game? Not yet. But now I'm kind of wondering. Oh yeah. Look, it's pretty early because I did run across a Japanese type of dragon that there is malevolent, not not very nice. I don't remember the name of it. So I guess be on the lookout for all of them.

Interesting. Yeah. So far there's nothing supernatural. It's Mongols that are the bad guys. I gotcha.

And then there's another type of Japanese dragon I ran across called rEU and this one actually bears a lot in common to the intelligent western dragon in that it writes poetry. Hmm. Yeah, it uses qaid scales from its belly as paper and you and I don't know what it used.

For ink, but I think it uses its tail as a pen, a quill, the blood of the Virgin writes poetry. That super nice, except for that one thing.

Yeah. Oh, we could just get it some ink. Right. There's something else I think people should look up here. If you're looking up images, which is an artist named Chen Wrong's in our swingy. Yeah. Very famous painter in Asia of dragons. And this was like 13th century A.D. And if you look at some of the stuff, it's really, really neat looking.

Yeah. About the same time as paralysis Theologica Mussolini was was done with that first Western dragon. Chen Rong was making these amazing, just amazing works of art. I think one of them is in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. Oh cool. It's called like Nine Dragons or something. But it was it reminded me of the artwork in the original Scary Stories to tell in the Dark series. I never read that do the artwork in there is just amazing.

But it has like all these weird kind of splotchy clouds of ink and chin chin rong makes use of that as well. It's really kind of startling how how closely the two resemble. I wonder if the artist from scary stories to tell in the dark was inspired by that in some way.

I bet, yeah. Nothing wrong with that. No, no, it's not ripping off at all. I don't know why you'd even say that. Why would you even bring ripping off a.

Yeah, so we should probably talk about famous dragons at this point, because we've thrown a couple out like the one from Beowulf who apparently doesn't even have a name.

Yeah. I mean, you know, there are so many stories in literature and movies, obviously, that have had dragons throughout the years. Certainly Tolkien in the mid 1930s when he wrote The Hobbit, this was a really evil dragon and, you know, drawn from that Western sort of influence of evil dragons. Small grey. Yeah, some huge Dungeons and Dragons in the 70s was a very big sort of, you know, how much Dragons had fallen out of the sort of pop culture eye.

But it really brought it back. And if it did fall out because in the game, there were different kinds of dragons, there were a couple of different sets who were indicated by different colors, red, green, black, white and blue, I think were evil. And then there were the bronze brass, silver and gold, which were for the most part, good. And they all had different things they could do in different temperaments. And something that we talked a little bit about as the fire breathing thing.

There were there are lots of different theories as to how that came about. Maybe the tide to Satan with fire early on when they were just serpents, perhaps they were drawn spitting venom and that could have looked like fire. Yeah, that makes sense. But there's always some sort of breath emitting weapon going on, it seems like.

Yeah. Over time, it's translated into, I think, like the White Dragon in Dungeons and Dragons, blue, like basically ice like cold. Some dragons blew out electricity, which you would think would be kind of new. But apparently the Leviathan, which is mentioned in the Bible, is a sea dragon, basically supposedly spit electricity out. But there's something weird coming out of the dragon's mouth that's probably going to kill you.

Yeah, you don't want to you don't a test that. No. And we were saying also that the the first visual depiction of dragging shows up in HARLY 30 to 40 for the first mention of the dragon. And like a story, like a fictitious story supposedly comes in Spencer Edmonds, the fairy queen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then it shows up after that a little while later. And Mary Catherine, dull noise, the green serpent. And then it just kind of takes off from there.

You know, you have a connection to Pete's Dragon, right?

I do. My friend Toby was a producer on Pete's Dragon. Yeah. For the remake, obviously. Yes.

Which was really, really good. And touching and tear jerking a little. I never saw the remake. I need to check that up. It's very good. He did a really good job with it.

But, you know, if you haven't seen the movie Rain of Fire, just stop what you're doing and watch that, because that is the king daddy of all Dragon movies.

I have not seen that. Do we should we pause, come back and finish the episode after? It's great. It's one of those movies that I don't know how well it did at the box office. I don't think super well, but it's one of those that has really become sort of a cult classic since then with McConaughey and Christian Bale. It's so over the top and just so fun. It's really, really good. So it's kind of like the Pacific Rim of Dragon movies.

Yeah. Or Starship Troopers of Dragon movies.

I mean, that's another great movie. There's also Puff the Magic Dragon. Don't forget him.

God, the saddest song of all time. He taught my daughter that it's the worst hu.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with pot. So just, you know, forget that hippie. It's just sad. It is a very sad one.

And then also I think our younger listeners would be really mad if we didn't mention Dragonball Z. Right, and there's you know, I didn't watch Game of Thrones, but I know there's there were little strange dragons in that one. Yeah. That grew. Yeah.

And Chuck, it's just so satisfying to look over all of the different depictions of dragons that you see and all the differences and all the similarities and realize that all of them are talking about bees.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You got anything else? Nothing else. There's dragons.

Well, if you want to know more about dragons, head out to a ruined temple or maybe go search for gold in a cave and you might encounter one yourself. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

Uh, this is a story about corn in poop.

Hey, guys, here's my corn story. One I've repeated often throughout my lengthy life. I just turned 70. Whew. Nice. This is from Mary Mary 70.

Well, not happy birthday, but happy, happy decade turning. OK, what does that mean?

I think birthday still works. No, but it wasn't her birthday necessarily.

But happy decade turning. Yeah. Like when you hit 70 or 60 or 50. Sure. No, I know exactly the time I made it.

You know, there's a it's a new it's a rich history of saying happy the song Happy Decade Learning.

What song is that?

Happy, Happy Decade Turning. Is it a Bill Withers song? You made it another 10 years.

Lean on me. It's good EIC Jason's there and I think I awkwardly got my way out of that really awkward sentence you did. It was really good. I grew up in Houston, Texas, guys, one blazing hot summer day when I was about three or four days out in the driveway, standing around, kind of checking out the neighbor kid who was in her driveway who was about to, uh. It's hotter than the blazes. Her name was Bianca.

She was younger than me and still in the diaper phase of life, but was so hot she wasn't wearing a diaper or anything else. Nature called to Bianca and voilà, a couple of little Pu's were deposited on the cement.

Being a curious child, I went over to check it out. And lo and behold, there in the poop, embedded securely but definitely visible, where corn kernels on masticated yellow against the brown corn kernels, right?

Yeah. No, we got it.

Just the corn kernels. Thessaly, I've never been able to look at corn nor God forbid, eat corn literally in any form ever since I could see that happen if it hits you in just the right way, especially at a certain age.

Yeah. She says not even cornpone, which I had to look up.

I didn't even know it. Cornpone was it's like corn bread I think. Yeah, yeah. Not even a cornpone.

Good God. How do you live? Seventy years without cornpone.

A great emotional scar was born on that day. The only benefit of that experience is that whenever I want to cross or I'm sorry, gross. Anyone out, I just pull out the corn in the poop story. All adults hate it all children are gleefully grossed out by it. Yeah. Love your show, guys. Especially when you all wander off topic and then wander back. I think in the chili pepper episode y'all wandered over to Yoko Ono, which was interesting.

And that is from Mary Foy in Issaquah, Washington.

Well, thanks. Well, yeah, I guess. Thanks in quotes, Mary, for that one, but thank you also for listening to us. If you want to write in and kind of gross us out like Mary did, we're always up for that kind of thing. You can take your best shot, send it off to Stuff podcast and I heart radio dotcom. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts, my heart radio is the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Me, me, me, me, me, but also you, the pharaoh, fast forward to his favorite foreign film, Powdered Donut. OK, what's my line?

The only line I see here on the script is get options based on your budget with the Navy price quotes from Progressive.

Oh, man, it's a tongue twister, huh? I'm sorry. I'm going to need a few more minutes. Well, the bold as well.

The name your price tool. Only from Progressive's the hour ran afoul of the comatose Coxsone in the in the special coverage limited by Stickwork.

Hi, this is Bill Clinton. Please join me on. Why am I telling you? Why am I telling you this? Why am I telling you this? Why am I telling you this?

Because it is your future on the line.

From listening to my relatives and neighbors around the kitchen table or at my grandfather's store, I learned that everyone has a story and that everyone's story has value. Once you've heard a person's hopes and fears where they've been and where they want to go, your differences sort of slip away.

After years of being interviewed, I'm looking forward to doing the interviewing, to having conversations with some of the most fascinating people I know and sharing stories that have saved our lives. We'll talk about ideas that deserve more attention, about how science, technology and design are improving our lives, and about why we should be hopeful and optimistic about our future.

Listen to why am I telling you this on the radio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.