SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Dragons: As Real as Mermaids

Dragons are like mermaids in that they're not real. And that's about where the comparison ends. Learn all about dragons today. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:01Josh Clark?

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• 2:38Speaker 01

  Hey, everybody. Chuck here with episode seven of the S-Y-S-K, not S-U-S-K, like we get in emails, Stuff You, Y-O-U, Should Know playlist, because we're getting weird, everybody. This episode's on dragons. Dragons, as real as mermaids. See what we did there?

• 2:59Speaker 05

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  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.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  And the great Bill Withers.

• 3:28Josh Clark?

  Was that Bill Withers? Can't even say it with a straight say. We just had the same conversation like two months ago. I'm not doing it again.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Oh, about Bill Withers?

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I didn't realize that that was a Bill Withers song. It was a good song. Lean on Me, though, man, is just, whoa, I cannot take it.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Grandma's Bed?

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  What is that? Is that a Bill Withers song? I did not know that.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  It's good. He's, he's great. And we probably had this exact same conversation.

• 3:56Josh Clark?

  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?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:20Josh Clark?

  Oh, I love that. I love that. We get a million of the same emails.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  It's Grandma's Hands. I was getting it. John Denver's Grandma's Feather Bed kind of just was in the ether, so.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  Gotcha.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Because we just talked about John Denver, about karaoke.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  Grandma's Bed. The follow-up to Use Me Up.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  So dragons.

• 4:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's talk about dragons. Let's have a pleasant conversation about dragons, shall we, Chuck?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dragons aren't real. And you'll notice by the title of this episode, which is Dragons, as real as mermaids.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  And it's funny, because I think the week before this comes out, mermaids is a, is our pick for the.

• 5:04Josh Clark?

  Selects?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  The select episode, so it aligns perfectly.

• 5:08Josh Clark?

  That is perfect.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  The dragons aren't real.

• 5:10Josh Clark?

  Well, okay. Please stop saying that, because you're crushing my dreams.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 5:16Josh Clark?

  So when we, 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.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Fire-breathing.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  Fire-breathing dragon, often with a long kind of serpentine tail. Sometimes it's even pointy, like the devil.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:42Josh Clark?

  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 is 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.

• 6:26Josh Clark?

  And that's kind of true, but at the, at the, like, throughout this episode, we'll see, that's not really accurate. Like, 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, 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.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  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 storytelling, you might combine the three scariest things into one super scary thing, and that is a dragon.

• 7:50Josh Clark?

  Right. And you might say, like, well, wait a minute, like, I think eagles are kind of cool. I'm not at all scared of them. Number 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.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Or one that dive bombed you?

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  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, the sum of all of our most primal fears.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 9:32Josh Clark?

  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 it was the bee, that the, 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 bee, the description of a bee, or I should say, a swarm of a bee, is what actually became the dragon in, in mythology. And at first, you're just like, that doesn't, that doesn't make any sense at all.

• 10:14Josh Clark?

  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 bee 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 bee.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  It does in a cartoon.

• 10:37Josh Clark?

  Exactly. It can do, it can point an air, 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,

• 11:21Josh Clark?

  at least it makes a lot more sense than a bee, you know, when you really kind of dig into it.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 11:53Josh Clark?

  Like unequivocally.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and not, you know, huge flying fire breathing snakes, but just snakes.

• 11:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, he even says, no, I'm just talking about snakes, everybody.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Not dragons. Don't get ahead of yourself. These are snakes.

• 12:06Josh Clark?

  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, a head of a lion, the goat body, a serpent tail, and bat's 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.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and other writers and other classical stories did the same thing, whether it was draconthus or draconus, 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 the 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.

• 13:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so over time, like, that's where the word dragon came from, was to use, it was a word for snake, that's it. 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. It seems like the legend or the myth, the mythical version of dragons started to kind of plump up and grow.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this, this is a point Ed, the Grabster put this together, 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 gonna write only about, you know, natural history and I'm only gonna 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.

• 14:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  And a lot of this is sort of where the sort of myth of the dragon came from.

• 14:15Josh Clark?

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

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:22Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  It's like, was this real or not? I can't remember. Who cares?

• 14:26Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, like, you really hit upon something really important. Mistranslations, or 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.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  And how probably dumb in a lot of ways ancient people seem compared to how they actually were because of this tradition of like, peepore translation that was passed down over the year.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Peepore?

• 15:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  That's very cute.

• 15:02Josh Clark?

  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, seemed to be describing anything even remotely dragon-like, any mythical beast, anything that might have wings, anything with a serpent tail, anything that breathed 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 now we've reached that point where it's like, this is how we got this idea that every culture has dragons. No, we just kind of lazily translated what other cultures were talking about into dragons

• 15:47Josh Clark?

  along the way.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Right. I think that is a great first act.

• 15:51Josh Clark?

  Thank you, thank you, I'm bowing.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  I'm throwing roses at your feet.

• 15:56Josh Clark?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  And we're gonna take a little break, Rooney, and be right back.

• 16:17Josh Clark?

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• 16:27Speaker 01

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• 16:40Josh Clark?

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• 16:55Speaker 01

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• 17:18Speaker 06

  First thought is like, wow, how are we gonna do all this?

• 17:20Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 17:39Speaker 06

  It was gonna rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 17:47Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 17:53Speaker 07

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 18:02Speaker 07

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  What the fans experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 18:10Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?

• 18:23Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly, it's usually a new rug.

• 18:34Josh Clark?

  Well, Chuck, whether you need a rug or whatever is next for you, you can go to Wayfair. It's the smart place to get it.

• 18:41Speaker 01

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• 18:52Josh Clark?

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• 19:34Josh Clark?

  So the rose petals I sent you arrived in time.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:37Josh Clark?

  Just in time. Thank you for throwing them and not saving them for something else.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  I also realized I just went all Ned Flanders with the Breaker Rooney. I've never said that before in my life.

• 19:45Josh Clark?

  I liked it, though. It was refreshing. We need that kind of wet behind the ears, you know, wholesomeness right now, Chuck.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're 14?

• 19:56Josh Clark?

  No, not just us. I mean, the world.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:59Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, up with Flanders.

• 20:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, up with Flanders. That's right.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  So my favorite thing always about Flanders was when he would be really buff, like every time he took off his shirt magically.

• 20:12Josh Clark?

  Stupid sexy Flanders. I know, it's hilarious. He ascribed it to a healthy dose of vitamin church.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I love it.

• 20:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  All right, where were we here? Giant snakes.

• 20:28Josh Clark?

  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.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Sumerian legends wrote about something called the usum, U-S-U-M, 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.

• 20:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I should say Sumer, not Sumeria. But they were, these were like, they're gods that they were talking about. These were, you know, 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.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:26Josh Clark?

  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, 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, 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.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, this, of course, goes straight to the Bible as well, in 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, it first appeared as a serpent. And so, in the end, Satan is also a serpent, but spelled, you know, with a D-R-A-K-O-N, like the ancient Greek.

• 22:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, is that right?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's, you know, I mean, not in the King James Version and stuff like that, obviously.

• 22:46Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  But, again, but, 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.

• 23:02Josh Clark?

  So that's what William Blake's Paradise Lost is about, right?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  I've never read it.

• 23:07Josh Clark?

  I haven't either. I'm just familiar with it from that movie, Red Dragon.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:12Josh Clark?

  About the Silence of the Lambs prequel, I think.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 23:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He's like, "Do you see, you remember when Ralph Fiennes has got poor Philip Seymour Hoffman strapped to that wheelchair?"

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 23:26Josh Clark?

  And you're showing him like crime scene photos?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Spoiler coming. Didn't love that movie. It was okay. But that, 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.

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  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.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  You don't like those, huh?

• 23:49Josh Clark?

  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.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get you one. Slide whistle was this Christmas. Next Christmas, you're just gonna get a, an ancient wicker wheelchair.

• 24:04Josh Clark?

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

• 24:11Speaker 01

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

• 24:18Josh Clark?

  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."

• 24:27Speaker 01

  That's even creepier, by the way.

• 24:28Josh Clark?

  And you're gonna sit there and listen to it. I'll be wearing nothing but an apron.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Just like a real doll with a big fake beard.

• 24:38Josh Clark?

  Oh, man.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  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 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 upon everyone.

• 25:05Josh Clark?

  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, the dragon that killed Beowulf in the, I always thought it was a Norse legend, but apparently it's English, Old English. It's just set in, in the Netherlands, or in Scandinavia, in the Norse. I think, 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, like, 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.

• 25:46Josh Clark?

  But so you have an idea of a, 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.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  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, you know, 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.

• 26:41Josh Clark?

  So I saw that they're both possibly known as dragon-slaying saints.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:46Josh Clark?

  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 there, the, 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 not 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

• 27:27Josh Clark?

  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, 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 maiden was, would go next. And Saint George apparently arrived just in time to slay the dragon, AKA the crocodile. But that, that's, 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

• 28:10Josh Clark?

  many people, was converted into a dragon over the years. And so Saint George slew the dragon, and that's where that came from.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  And there was a real crocodile that lived by a real spring.

• 28:21Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool.

• 28:23Josh Clark?

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

• 28:31Speaker 01

  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 M.S. Harley 3244. Great title. I think Ed said it was probably a catalog designation.

• 28:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think the real title is Perol. This is Theological Miscellaneous.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is, that's an actual great title.

• 29:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I like M.S. Harley 3244.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  It's, 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.

• 29:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  It's a dragon.

• 29:19Josh Clark?

  It's how a scene starts, you know?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:22Josh Clark?

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

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Well, no, I just mean sort of the dragon that we all think of in, in sort of literature and folklore.

• 29:33Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Like, this is clearly that.

• 29:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and supposedly, it's the first one from around 1260. Did you say that?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:41Josh Clark?

  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 Peralt, 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.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Thanks to England Dan.

• 30:12Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  I think we said English Dan. It's England Dan.

• 30:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, is it? English Dan makes way more sense.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, England Dan's a little weird.

• 30:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but hey, England Dan was a little weird.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  But your nickname is America Josh.

• 30:26Josh Clark?

  Sure. How about All-America Josh?

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Should we take a break now and talk about Asian dragons?

• 30:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  All right, we'll be right back with a kinder, gentler dragon, right after this.

• 30:55Josh Clark?

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• 31:17Josh Clark?

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• 31:57Speaker 01

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• 32:10Josh Clark?

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• 32:23Speaker 01

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• 32:34Josh Clark?

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• 33:01Speaker 01

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• 33:08Josh Clark?

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• 33:27Josh Clark?

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• 34:24Josh Clark?

  Okay, so Chuck, you've mentioned something. You said kinder, gentler dragon. It's true, like, Western dragons are generally, in the tradition, murderous, greedy, wealth-hoarding jerks.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Boo.

• 34:37Josh Clark?

  Who may be pure evil personified.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:40Josh Clark?

  An Asian dragon, which everybody has seen, at the very least in like a photo of a street parade.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:46Josh Clark?

  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.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is far, far, far older than in the West. I think in about 6,000 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.

• 35:48Josh Clark?

  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 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,

• 36:31Josh Clark?

  if anything, you know, that dragons are harmful and they're gonna kill you and they're gonna steal all your gold, or they're gonna 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?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  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 in ancient times.

• 37:03Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  And it's really interesting to compare that to, like, the analog for the West would be like Red Dead Redemption in the Old West with gunslingers.

• 37:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  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, and you pay your respects to the shrine, and it, 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 in 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

• 37:56Speaker 01

  rescuing, you know, some old lady in a village.

• 37:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Whereas the other game is just like, hey, just go and just pillage and murder and do awful things.

• 38:04Josh Clark?

  Shoot them up, yeah.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  It's really interesting. I'm much more enjoying this game.

• 38:08Josh Clark?

  Well, you said something that, that struck a memory in me about dragons. There's a commonality between Asian dragons, particularly Chinese dragons, which are called long or lung, 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 ruined temples, like, that's where you'll find them dwelling.

• 38:35Speaker 01

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

• 38:38Josh Clark?

  Exactly. So are there dragons in that game?

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Not yet, but now I'm kind of wondering.

• 38:43Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, look out.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  It's pretty early.

• 38:45Josh Clark?

  Because I did run across a Japanese type of dragon that, that 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.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Interesting. Yeah, so far there's nothing supernatural. It's Mongols that are the bad guys.

• 39:02Josh Clark?

  I gotcha. 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 you, and I don't know what it uses for ink, but I think it uses its tail as a pen, a quill.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  The blood of a virgin?

• 39:27Josh Clark?

  Writes poetry. Yeah, there you go. It's super, super nice, except for that one thing.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, if we could just get it some ink. There's something else I should 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.

• 39:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Very famous painter in Asia of dragons, and this was like 13th century A.D., and if you look up some of this stuff, it's really, really neat looking.

• 39:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, about the same time as Peraldas's Theologico miscellany was, was done with that first Western dragon, Chen Rong was making these ama, just amazing works of art. I think one of them's in the Boston Museum of Fine Art.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 40:11Josh Clark?

  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.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  I never read that.

• 40:23Josh Clark?

  Dude, that artwork in there is just amazing, but it has like all these weird kind of splotchy clouds of ink, and Chen, 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?

• 40:44Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 40:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  What's wrong with that?

• 40:47Josh Clark?

  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 up?

• 40:57Josh Clark?

  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.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 41:29Josh Clark?

  Smog, right?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, S-M-A-U-G. Dungeons and Dragons in the 70s was a very big, sort of, you know, I don't 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 and different temperaments. And something that we talked a little bit about is the fire breathing thing. There are lots of different theories

• 42:13Speaker 01

  as to how that came about, maybe the tit of Satan with fire. Early on, when they were just serpents, perhaps they were drawn, spitting venom, and that could have looked like fire.

• 42:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  But there's always some sort of breath emitting weapon going on, it seems like.

• 42:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, over time, it's translated into, I think, like, the white dragon in Dungeons and Dragons blew, 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.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't want to, you don't want to test that.

• 43:04Josh Clark?

  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.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah?

• 43:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then it shows up after that a little while later in Marie Catherine Dullnoy's The Green Serpent. And then it just kind of takes off from there.

• 43:36Speaker 01

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

• 43:39Josh Clark?

  I do. My friend Toby was a producer on Pete's Dragon.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the remake, obviously.

• 43:45Josh Clark?

  Yes, which was really, really good and touching and tear jerking a little bit.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  I never saw the remake. I need to check that out.

• 43:52Josh Clark?

  It's very good. They did a really good job with it.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  But, you know, if you haven't seen the movie Reign of Fire, just stop what you're doing and watch that, because that is the King Daddy of all dragon movies.

• 44:05Josh Clark?

  I have not seen that. Do we, should we pause, come back and finish the episode after?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:31Josh Clark?

  So it's kind of like the Pacific Rim of dragon movies?

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:36Josh Clark?

  Or Starship Troopers of dragon movies?

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's another great movie.

• 44:41Josh Clark?

  There's also Puff the Magic Dragon. Don't forget him.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  God, saddest song of all time. My mom taught my daughter that. It's the worst.

• 44:48Josh Clark?

  Who, yeah, it has nothing to do with pot, so just, you know, forget that hippie.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  It's just sad.

• 44:55Josh Clark?

  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.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Right. And there's, you know, I didn't watch Game of Thrones, but I know there's, there were little trained dragons in that one.

• 45:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  That grew.

• 45:11Josh Clark?

  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.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:24Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:26Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 45:27Speaker 01

  I've got nothing else. There's dragons.

• 45:30Josh Clark?

  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.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  This is a story about corn and poop.

• 45:48Josh Clark?

  Oh, God.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Hey, guys, here's my corn story, one I've repeated often throughout my lengthy life. I just turned 70. Woo-hoo!

• 45:56Josh Clark?

  Nice. Happy birthday.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  So this is from Mary. Mary, 70. Well, not happy birthday, but happy, happy decade turning.

• 46:04Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  What does that mean?

• 46:05Josh Clark?

  I think birthday still works.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  No, but it wasn't her birthday necessarily, but...

• 46:10Josh Clark?

  Happy decade turning?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like when you hit 70 or 60 or 50.

• 46:14Josh Clark?

  Sure. No, I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm just saying that it's a new thing.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  It's a rich history of saying happy, the song, Happy Decade Turning.

• 46:21Josh Clark?

  What song is that?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Happy, happy decade turning.

• 46:27Josh Clark?

  Is that a Bill Withers song?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  You made it another 10 years. Lean on me.

• 46:32Josh Clark?

  That's good. You guys see Jay's hands there.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Man, I think I awkwardly got my way out of that really awkward sentence.

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  You did. It was really good.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  I grew up in Houston, Texas, guys. One blazing hot summer day, when I was about three or four, I 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, there in the poop, embedded securely but definitely visible, were corn kernels, unmasticated yellow against the brown corn kernels.

• 47:17Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, no, we got it. Just the corn kernels.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Thusly, I've never been able to look at corn, nor, God forbid, eat corn, literally in any form, ever since.

• 47:30Josh Clark?

  I could see that happening if it hit you in just the right way, especially at a certain age.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Yep. She says, "Not even corn pone," which I had to look up. I didn't even know what corn pone was. It's like cornbread, I think.

• 47:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. Not even corn pone? Good God, how have you lived 70 years without corn pone?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 48:15Josh Clark?

  Well, thanks. Well, yeah, I guess thanks in quotes, Mary, for that one.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 48:21Josh Clark?

  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 [email protected].

• 48:39Speaker 05

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 48:54Josh Clark?

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