Stuff You Should Know - Dragons: As Real as Mermaids

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

Dragons are like mermaids in that they're not real. And that's about where the comparison ends. Learn all about dragons today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Dragon Slayer Bryant and well that's it. It's just the two of us. We can make it if we try, Chuck. Just the two of us,

Dragons and us. And the great Bill Withers. Was that Bill Withers? Can't even say with a straight say. 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. Lena, me though, man, is just, whoa, I cannot take it. Grandma's bed. What is that? Is that a Bill Withers song? I did not know that. It's good. 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. You ever listen to his stuff? Yeah, but

now I'm realizing that I, maybe I should just not correct myself and let people be, send in a bunch of emails. Oh, I love that. I love that. Let me get a million of the same emails. It's Grandma's Hands. I was getting it. John Denver's Grandma's Featherbed kind of just was in the ether. Gotcha. So we just talked about John Denver, about karaoke. Grandma's Bed. Grandma's Hands. The follow up to Use Me Up. So dragons. Yeah, let's talk about dragons. Let's have a pleasant conversation about dragons, shall we Chuck? Yeah, dragons aren't real. And you'll notice by the title of this episode, which is dragons colon as real as mermaids. And it's funny because I think the week before this comes out, mermaids is our pick for the select episode. So it aligns

perfectly. That is perfect. But dragons aren't real. Well, okay. Please stop saying that because you're crushing my dreams. Sorry. So when we talk about dragons, we have to say right here at the outset that 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 generally seems to be kind of the same

ancient Chinese thing. That's a totally different thing. And it evolves 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 throughout this episode, we'll see that's not really accurate. Nowadays, it seems that way because we have overlaid the idea of dragons over everything. But if you really kind of dig into the past and look into the nuance of 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 E. Jones about dragons and dragons throughout cultures and across cultures. And there's a theory he's got going, which is humans evolved and primates evolved with a fear of three predators, basically snakes, cats, which are big cats, house cats, and eagles. And that 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 scared. Number one, have you ever been around an eagle when it was loose? I'll 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 to, 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 harpy eagle. Remember, we talked about the harpy eagle in the sloth episode because they can mess a 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 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 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 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 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 as always, but that it was the B, 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 swarm of a B is what actually became the dragon in mythology. And at first year it's 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 Tolkien 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 does in a cartoon. Exactly. It can do, it can point an arrow, it can make an arrow to point a direction, you know, where somebody's 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 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 all that 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 D-R-A-K-O-N, the dracon, 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. Yeah, 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 chimera, which is, I think, the head of a lion, the goat body, a serpent tail and bats wings. He even says the serpent tail, the back portion of the chimera 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 draconis or draconis 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 dracon, which is an enemy of the eagle, because an eagle as 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 where the word dragon came from. It was a word for snake. That would sit. And then over time, as people started to exaggerate here or there, conflate different types of snakes and different behaviors that aren't found in snakes, but saying that they were, and they all kind of put that under the umbrella word for snakes dragon, and it seems like the legend or the myth, the mythical version of dragon started to

kind of plump up and grow. Yeah. And this is a point Ed, the Grabster put this together for us, but Ed 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, was this real or not? I can't remember. Who cares? So, yeah, like you really hit upon something really important, mistranslations or a different way to put his 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. Oh, sure. How probably dumb in a lot of ways, ancient people seem compared to how they actually were because of this tradition of like P poor translation that was passed down over the year. P poor. Yeah. That'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 were to seem to be describing anything even remotely dragon like any mythical beast, anything that might have wings, anything with a serpent tail, anything that breathe 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. And then now we reach 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 were talking about into dragons along the way.

Right. I think that is a great first act. Thank you. Thank you. I'm bowing. I'm throwing roses at your feet. Thank you. And we're going to take a little break, Aruni, and be right back. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, cancelled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. The situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Breaker Rooney. I've never said that before in my life. I liked it 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. Okay. You know. Yeah, up with Flanders. Yeah, up with Flanders. That's right. So my favorite thing always about Flanders is when he would be really buff like every time he took off his shirt magically. Stupid sexy Flanders. I know, it's hilarious. This is so funny. He ascribed 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 were 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 USUM, USUM, 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 these were like their gods that they were talking about. These were, you know, 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-K-A-D-I-A-N, not the Canadian group that the Cajuns come from. This is different. 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 archangels, 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, at first appeared as a serpent. And so in the end, Satan is also a serpent, but spelled, you know, with the D-R-A-K-O-N, like the ancient Greek. Oh, is that right? Yeah. But there's, you know, 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, 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. Okay. About the Silence of the Lambs prequel, I think. Oh, sure. Yeah. He's like,

do you see, you remember when Ray Fiennes has got poor Philip Seymour Hoffman's Strap to that wheelchair? Oh, man, that is one of the- You know, showing him like crime scene photos? Yeah. I had a spoiler coming. Didn't love that movie. It was okay. But 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 chills 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 don't like those, huh? No. I think we just talked about it recently. And I, for the rest of my life, I will be creeped out by those things. I'm going to get you one. Slide whistle with this Christmas. Next Christmas,

you're just going to get an ancient wicker wheelchair. No, I don't want to be wasteful. So I won't throw it away and I'll just have to live among it. It's going to be terrible. Like, I'll never get used to it either. You could make a life-size 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'd make a life-size version of Chuck and just talk to you. Be like, listen, I got a lot of stuff to say to you. That's even creepier by the way. 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 fake beard. Oh man. Okay. 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 a village and then 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 like rain fire up on 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, the dragon that killed Beowulf and the, I always thought it was a Norse legend, but apparently it's English, old English. It's just set in the Netherlands or in Scandinavia in the Norse. I think somewhere,

I don't remember exactly where it's set. It's just set there. It's not written by them. But that dragon was malevolent and I believe it was guarding treasure. I think the reason it went berserk and Beowulf had to kill it was because somebody stole one of its golden goblets, aka honey, because they're really talking about a bee. 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 standard feature of dragons, like you were saying. Yeah. So all this is going on for many, many, many years. Finally, the rubber kind of meets the road as far as Western dragons are concerned with the legend of Saint George, who was a Christian saint, a real Christian saint, maybe a real person

who may have been a Roman soldier who was tortured and killed for converting pagans to Christianity. This is circa 4th century AD. And because of stories getting passed around like a game of telephone, the actual first name of that story when it was told was Saint Theodore, but it was really Saint George. So I saw that they're both possibly known as dragon slaying saints. Okay. It's not necessarily like George took that from Theodore. They're both known for having slain a dragon. But what's interesting is if you see Saint Theodore depicted with his dragon, it's very clearly a crocodile. And the origin story of either one, but particularly Saint George is that there is a town in modern day Turkey or possibly Palestine. I'm about 100%

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 two a day, basically to distract the crocodile so they could go get the water and then get out of there. And then they ran out of sheep. So they said, well, what comes after sheep? How about maidens? So they started throwing maidens, sacrificing maidens, literally throwing them to the crocodile to distract it so they could get the water. And eventually they came upon the king's daughter. They drew straws to see what maiden would go next. And Saint George apparently arrived just in time to slay the dragon, aka the

crocodile. But this idea that that's where this 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 Saint George slew the dragon. And that's where that came from. And there was a real crocodile that lived by a real spring. Right. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I thought so too. I 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 1260 AD in an illustration in a medieval bestiary called MS Harley

3244. Great title. I think Ed said it was probably a catalog designation. Yeah, I think the real title is parallel. This is theological miscellany. Yeah, which is that's an actual great title. Yeah, I like MS Harley 3244. 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, sorry, I see what you're saying. Like the dragon that shows up in there specifically the red one? Well, no, I just mean sort of the dragon that we all think of in sort of literature and folklore. Right. Like this

is clearly that. Yeah, and supposedly it's the first one from like around 1260. 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 Peralta 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 Dan. Right. I think we said English Dan. It's England Dan. Oh, is it English Dan makes way more sense? Yeah, England Dan's a little weird. Yeah. But hey, England Dan was a little weird.

But your nickname is America Josh. Sure. How about all America Josh? 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. What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Uh-huh. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mange Shatikler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so Chuck, you mentioned something. You said kinder, gentler dragon. It's true. Like Western dragons are generally, in the tradition, murderous, greedy, wealth hoarding jerks 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 silk screen or something like that. 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, where it's 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 BC, 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 BC, 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 was 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 a symbolic of like 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, it's interesting. 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 all 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 a 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. And it's really interesting to compare that to like the analog for the West would be like Red Dead Redemption and the Old West with gunslingers. Yeah. And it's just such a different game design and everything. It's the one in Japan is, or the Ghost of Tsushima 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 a button and the wind guides you. And if you see a fox, you follow the fox up to a shrine 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 a village. 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 struck a memory in me about dragons. There's a commonality between Asian dragons, particularly Chinese dragons, which are called

long or long, L-U-N-G, 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 out. It's pretty early.

Because I did run across a Japanese type of dragon that is malevolent, 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 got you. And then there's another type of Japanese dragon I ran across called Ryu, and this one actually bears a lot in common to the intelligent Western dragon in that it writes poetry. Yeah, it uses shed scales from its belly as paper. And I don't know what it uses for ink, but I think it uses its tail as a pin, a quill. The blood of a virgin?

It's poetry. Yeah, there you go. It's super nice, except for that one thing. Yeah, we could just get it some ink. There's something else I think people should look up here if you're looking up images, which is an artist named Chen Rong, C-H-E-N-R-O-N-G, a very famous painter in Asia of dragons. And this was like 13th century AD. And if you look up some of this stuff, it's really, really neat looking. Yeah, about the same time as Peralta's Theological Miscellany was done with that first Western dragon, Chen Rong was making these amazing works of art. I think one of them's in the Boston

Museum of Fine Art. Oh, cool. It's called like Nine Dragons or something, but it reminded me of the artwork in the original Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. I never read that. Dude, that artwork in there is just amazing, but it has like all these weird kind of splotchy clouds of ink and Chen Rong makes use of that as well. It's really kind of startling 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, that's not ripping off at all. I don't know why you'd even say that. Why would you even bring ripping off up?

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, right? Yeah, SMA, UG. 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 in 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 is the fire breathing thing. There are lots of different theories as to how that came about, maybe the tide of 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 test that. No. And we were saying also that the first visual depiction of the dragon shows up in Harley 3244. The first mention of the dragon in 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 in Marie Catherine Dole noise, the green serpent.

And then it just kind of takes off from there. You know, you have a connection to a 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 in touching and in tear jerking a little bit. I never saw the remake. I need to check that out. It's very good. They 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. 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? Oh man, that's another great movie. There's also Puff the Magic Dragon. Don't forget him. God, the saddest song of all time. My mom taught my daughter that it's the worst. Yeah, it has nothing to do with pot. So just, 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 Dragon Ball Z. Right. And there's, you know, I didn't watch Game of Thrones, but I know there were little trained 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. Totally. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. There's dragons. Well, if you want to know more about dragons, head out to a ruin 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. This is a story about corn and poop. Oh, God. Hey, guys, here's my corn story. One I've repeated often throughout my lengthy life. I just turned 70. Woohoo. Nice. Happy birthday. So this is from Mary, Mary 70. Well, not happy birthday, but

happy decade turning. Okay. What does that mean? I think birthday still works. No, but it wasn't her birthday necessarily, but I don't know what I'm saying. Yeah, like when you hit 70 or 60 or 50. Sure. No, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's a rich history of saying happy the song, happy decade turning. What song is that? Happy, happy decade turning. Is that a Bill Withers song? You made it another 10 years. Lean on me. That's good. You guys see Jay's hands there. Man, 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, was out in the driveway standing around,

kind of checking out the neighbor kid who was in her driveway who was about two. It's hotter than the blazes. Her name was Bianca. She was younger than me and still in the diaper phase of life, but it was so hot she wasn't wearing a diaper or anything else. Nature called to Bianca and, voila, a couple of little poos were deposited on the cement. Being a curious child, I went over to check it out and, lo and behold, they're in the poop, embedded securely, but definitely visible, were corn kernels. Unmasticated yellow against the brown corn kernels. Right. Yeah, no, we got it. Just the corn kernels. Thustly, I've never been able to look at corn, nor, God forbid, eat corn literally in any form ever since.

I could see that happening if it hit you in just the right way, especially at a certain age. Yep. She says, not even cornpone, which I had to look up. I didn't even know what cornpone was. It's like cornbread, I think. Yeah, yeah. Not even cornpone? Good God. How have you lived 70 years without cornpone? A great emotional scar was born 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 y'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. I love it. But thank you also for listening to us. If you want to write in and 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 StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the

White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.