0:12

This is writer and game designer Robin D.

0:14

Laws. And this is game designer and writer

0:17

Kenneth Hight. And this is our podcast, Ken

0:19

and Robin Talk About Stuff. Bandwidth brought to

0:21

you by Pograine Press. Stuff we're here to

0:23

talk about in this episode include... Describing fashion.

0:25

The Johnny Apple Seed of Dates. Skin-seeking

0:28

devils. And the

0:30

Pythagoreans. Okay

0:48

Ken, we've been summoned, I mean invited,

0:50

to attend another

0:52

gloriously gloomy party at

0:54

Castle Slogar. Remember,

0:57

keep your eyes peeled and your reflexes

0:59

ready. The Slogar's festering

1:01

festivity involves more cleavers than confetti.

1:03

Where did everyone disappear to? Did

1:05

they all get ludicrously lost in

1:07

the hedge maze again? I think

1:10

I heard muffled laughter or was

1:12

that slobbing? It's coming from

1:14

behind that door. Of

1:16

course it's locked. Just our luck. Hold

1:18

your skeletal horses, Ken. Look at the

1:21

floor. The tiles have markings.

1:23

Just like in that puzzle game

1:25

book I have. Unhappy birthday at

1:27

Castle Slogar! Ah ha! Found the

1:29

book. How will a

1:31

book about a birthday gone wrong

1:33

help us find a party that

1:35

might not even exist? Well, in

1:37

Unhappy Birthday at Castle Slogar, things

1:40

go awfully awry during Melissa Slogar's

1:42

latest 9th birthday party. Guests

1:45

are lost and Lord Slogar is missing.

1:47

Sound familiar? Whoa! That's

1:50

eerily similar. Wait, the book has

1:52

a map. Oh, but it's blank.

1:54

How do we navigate with that? Patience,

1:56

Ken. The book describes each room and

1:58

the exquisitely eerie obstacles you have to

2:01

overcome. You can even use a special

2:03

website to check your answers, get hints,

2:05

and unveil the map as you explore.

2:07

So we need to solve a puzzle

2:09

in this room to get to the

2:11

party in the next room. You're catching

2:14

on now. Let's see. I remember the

2:16

foyer puzzle involved. And

2:18

then you... And

2:20

just my... And voila! Look,

2:23

the password! And the door!

2:25

It's unlocked! Now let's go party like it's

2:27

$18.99! Hey,

2:29

can I borrow that puzzle game

2:31

book? No way! It's mine! But

2:33

you can get your own copy

2:36

of Unhappy Birthday at Castle Slogar

2:38

from AtlasGames at atlas-games.com-b-d-a-y. The

2:52

rattle of dice and sleek designer

2:54

colors, the thump of beautifully painted

2:56

miniatures, the crunch

2:58

of rice cakes, and

3:00

the bevelant gaze of Peter

3:03

Frampton coming alive because Peter

3:05

Frampton is always in fashion,

3:07

welcome us into this well-appointed

3:09

gaming hut where beloved Patreon

3:11

backer Mark Kenney asks, I'm

3:14

probably not the only gamer who ignored

3:16

fashion in my early days, but now

3:18

when I want to paint a scene

3:20

for my players I find I lack

3:22

even a rudimentary vocabulary to describe what

3:24

people are wearing. Is there a way

3:26

to learn enough to fake my way

3:28

through this part with some elegance? Or

3:30

do I just make a vague

3:33

remark about Bridgerton or Zoot suits

3:35

or whatever and move on? Robin?

3:37

Yeah, so fortunately there's a vast

3:39

corpus of material to

3:41

draw on because this is something

3:43

that costume designers for film

3:46

and theater need a lot of.

3:48

And so there's a lot of

3:51

reference books that you can go

3:53

to to find descriptions of

3:55

different articles of clothing and also

3:57

to see that from every document.

4:00

documented era of history and

4:02

Ken you've got a whole

4:05

pile of books that would suit that

4:07

purpose my small library in my small

4:09

apartment does not have them because

4:11

I haven't quite needed them, but there's

4:13

some good recommendations just to

4:16

learn about this subject and compare pictures

4:18

of clothes to the names that go

4:20

with them. Yeah, the sort

4:22

of smart play with any

4:25

sort of visual topic is

4:27

to find out whether or not

4:29

Torsion has a book on that topic

4:32

and if they do buy the

4:34

one that fits your price budget and

4:36

maybe your need if you're doing sort

4:39

of a contemporary game

4:41

in you know sort of maybe a

4:43

high society nice black agents or a

4:46

eyes wide shut but instead of

4:48

Fidelity oh it's more mo that's

4:50

the watchword something like that

4:52

then 100 contemporary fashion

4:55

designers from Torsion a

4:57

lovely sum up edited by

4:59

Terry Jones this lets you do fashion name-dropping

5:01

and I think it begins to sort of

5:04

In fact, I know it lets you begin

5:06

to sort of sort out in your head

5:08

the difference between a Chanel and a Vivian

5:10

Wedgwood another sort of overview from Torsion called

5:13

Fashion a history from the 18th

5:15

to the 20th century. This is a Gigandus

5:18

two volume set and it's mostly

5:20

the collection of the Kyoto Costume

5:22

Institute Which is not

5:25

just Asian fashion. It's also Western fashion,

5:27

but it shows that there's

5:29

a good breadth going on there Those are

5:31

Gigandus books and the 20th century is just

5:33

one volume if you're doing that the other one goes back to the

5:35

18th and Fide-on has a

5:37

book entitled the fashion book

5:39

another big beautiful visual

5:42

compendium and when you say visual compendium of

5:44

course the next words to drop out of

5:46

your mouth are dorling kinders Lee and

5:49

they have Fashion the definitive visual guide

5:51

and this one goes all the way

5:53

back to ancient Egypt So if I

5:55

think you're looking for a one-stop shop

5:58

for everything, that's a pretty strong

6:00

selection. I can also recommend

6:03

more than look at the picture, describe

6:05

the picture. There's a couple of books

6:08

by Lydia Edwards called How to

6:10

Read a Dress and How

6:12

to Read a Suit, and that

6:14

begins to get into a little more

6:17

vocabulary, a little more what does your

6:19

tailcoat say about you at the court

6:21

of King George versus look, they were

6:23

tailcoats at the court of King George.

6:26

So I think that if your game

6:28

is within that bracket, that maybe sets

6:30

you up with a little more helpful

6:33

vocabulary. And at some point, you're basically

6:35

going to, as Robin said, you're going

6:37

to have a specific

6:39

costume book about whatever era you're into,

6:42

and also there's going to be lots

6:44

of visual representations. So for example, I'm

6:46

running a game set in Venice as

6:48

soon as the Super's game ends. And

6:51

sure enough, there is a book

6:54

by Gary Wills called Venice the

6:56

Lion City that is keyed to

6:58

paintings of Venice from the Renaissance.

7:00

And this is how you can tell what people looked

7:02

like and how and what they wore and what they

7:05

wanted to, you know, what face they wanted to put

7:07

to the rest of the universe, which of course is

7:09

the whole point of fashion in the first

7:11

place. Right. Now, one of the challenges is

7:14

that if you learn the vocabulary

7:16

of clothing and try

7:19

to convey it verbally to your

7:21

players, do they know the vocabulary

7:24

of clothing? Because especially for other periods, a

7:26

lot of it is very technical. And certainly

7:28

when I'm, you know, reading a book and

7:30

it says, Oh, well, he's got a Chamblie

7:33

hat, I have to look up what a

7:35

Chamblie hat looks like. Do your players, are

7:37

they going to be able to take that

7:40

word and turn it into an image? So

7:42

you will probably also have to be serving

7:44

them images of the clothing

7:46

that you could, for example, you know,

7:48

photograph or scan from these different reference

7:51

books that you've now acquired or that

7:53

you can find the equivalent of on

7:55

the internet in the Google image

7:58

search. challenge players first

8:00

of all, you have to set up

8:03

a mechanism to serve images to your players,

8:05

which may be something you already do on

8:07

the reg, if not you'll have to do

8:09

it. And also, if

8:12

you have a picture of someone who

8:14

doesn't look like your character that you're

8:16

trying to describe, that's going to cause

8:19

a disjunction because if you just

8:21

show Joe average aristocrat

8:24

of the 18th century wearing

8:27

the outfit you want to wear, but your

8:29

character looks quite different than that, while you're at

8:31

a lock, they're going to visually

8:33

start picturing the person in your illustration once

8:36

you serve that to them. So you

8:38

may also then decide

8:40

to work backward from finding

8:43

a picture of someone wearing the clothes you

8:45

want and deciding that that's what they look

8:48

like facially. That you thought the vampire was

8:50

lean and hungry, but actually he's kind of

8:52

doughy and harmless looking. Right, well that's how

8:54

he fits into the very doughy, harmless looking

8:56

eras where doughy was fashionable. Yeah. And

8:59

also, you can treat this like any other

9:01

subject matter expertise, maybe you've got a player

9:04

or players who are more into fashion than

9:06

you and let them take

9:08

point in the same way that you let

9:10

the gun nut take point when you've opened

9:12

up the bad guy arsenal or you make

9:15

the Egyptologist major in college take point when

9:17

you're visiting the mummy tomb and

9:19

you say, well, Steve, go ahead, set

9:21

us up. What does that mummy tomb

9:23

look like? You know, if Cynthia has

9:25

been paying attention to fashion and you

9:27

haven't, maybe you let Cynthia, you say,

9:29

Cynthia, this is a top notch gathering

9:31

of rich degenerate witches here at

9:34

Gestad in 1958. What

9:36

are they wearing? And Cynthia can

9:39

go on for however long, I suspect

9:41

you let Cynthia have her head in

9:43

a way of subject matters experts everywhere.

9:45

Right. And Cynthia will also have to

9:47

serve up images to your players because

9:49

they also won't know that it's gallery.

9:52

Right. But the point being that,

9:54

you know, your players are a resource in this as

9:56

in so many other things. And if

9:58

you bring them into the co-creating. as much

10:01

or as little as your table feels comfortable with

10:03

it, you feel comfortable with, then you don't

10:07

have the embarrassment of describing something and

10:09

then Cynthia says, that's interesting that she's

10:11

wearing last season's gown, maybe she's a

10:13

vampire and it's like, ah, why, why

10:16

do I do this to myself? So,

10:18

Cynthia wouldn't do that to you, first of

10:20

all. Well, Cynthia's cool but there are other

10:22

Cynthia's out there. There are other Cynthia's. So,

10:24

the other point though is that you want

10:26

to, if you are showing

10:28

people clothing out of their context of

10:31

understanding what it means, you'll also have

10:33

to convey what it

10:35

is that that clothing says about that

10:37

character, right? So, first of all, anything

10:40

that is described as fashion is

10:42

for the rich and perhaps the nouveau

10:44

riche, depending on the economy of the

10:47

setting you're looking at and

10:49

most other clothing is

10:51

pretty utilitarian and peasant

10:54

gear doesn't change a lot over

10:56

decades or even centuries and even

10:58

within a gathering of people in

11:00

the same economic band, you

11:03

will want to convey this older

11:06

woman at the salon is wearing

11:08

what would have been fashionable when

11:10

she was young and now looks

11:12

a little ridiculous versus this woman

11:14

who's her contemporary wears something

11:16

that is absolutely up to the moment

11:18

and looks wrong on her and looks

11:20

ridiculous and the third one has a

11:23

perfectly adapted modern style to her

11:26

and so you also want

11:28

to think about what is it that

11:30

you're saying about the characters which is

11:32

both, not just about their economic

11:34

status and their social position

11:36

within that but what

11:39

it says about them as people.

11:41

So and there are general broad

11:43

categories of, you know, this is

11:45

the aggressive

11:47

outlandish fashion of

11:50

criminals is one of

11:52

the categories. This is the drab, unadorned

11:54

fashion of people who've been rich for

11:56

a long time and don't need to

11:58

show off. is what

12:00

someone who needs to establish their

12:02

wealth would wear and

12:04

how in tune with the latest trends they

12:07

are, how indifferent to them. All of those

12:09

say something about your character. So you want

12:11

to think about, you know, is

12:14

this flashy? Is this understated?

12:16

And why is the person choosing

12:19

to make those various choices? Yeah,

12:21

if the fashion, it exists on a spectrum

12:23

just like guns, just like mummies, just like

12:25

anything else that might be in a campaign

12:28

from, well, of course it's there. It's

12:30

a game with people and they're wearing

12:32

clothes of some sort to it is

12:34

the focus of the game because it

12:36

takes place in the high fashion

12:39

world. We are doing, you know, you're doing

12:41

a fall of delta green blow up adventure.

12:43

So everyone's a fashion model. Suddenly

12:45

you have a spectrum that it exists

12:47

on and you can get more or

12:49

less away with stuff. The more important

12:51

it is if it becomes

12:53

central to the game, then maybe

12:55

think about, you know, a little

12:57

Joel Schumacher wardrobe montage

12:59

where you ask the player characters,

13:02

you ask the players, what

13:04

are you wearing? Are you going showy? Are

13:06

you going old rich? Are you going desperate?

13:08

Are you going sexy? Are you trying to

13:11

blend into the background? Do you want to

13:13

be able to take off or put on

13:15

a jacket and suddenly look like a waiter? You

13:17

know, what's your goal? Fashion wise, what do you

13:20

want the clothes you're wearing to say to other

13:22

people in the scene or in the campaign? Even if

13:25

you're doing a game where we're going to be, you

13:27

know, court intriguing for forever,

13:30

that suddenly becomes an important question of

13:32

how do you dress and that becomes

13:34

as essential as, you know, where do

13:37

you hide the stiletto? Sometimes

13:39

it's the same question. So the degree

13:42

to which it's centered in the game should

13:44

also by and large be the degree to

13:46

which the players get to make their own

13:48

decisions about what do they look like? What

13:51

do they carry? What can they do in

13:53

a pinch? What do they know they can't

13:55

pull off, but they're going to have to

13:57

in order to infiltrate, you know, the butterfly

14:00

ball here at the court

14:02

of the Shogun and suddenly

14:04

these rough and tough Ronin

14:06

have to dress up as court functionaries

14:08

and they maybe can't handle it and

14:11

that becomes an important suspense point or

14:13

thrilling setup, right? Right.

14:17

Players like to make choices and

14:19

one choice you can have them make is which

14:21

of these outfits are you wearing to

14:24

the ball where you'll be spying on

14:26

the bad guys and there's

14:28

a lot of archival

14:30

fashion magazines online. Also

14:33

movie stills will give you

14:35

period clothing and in some cases that's just

14:37

films that were contemporary at the time but

14:40

are now periods so an actual 60's some

14:42

set in the 60's or you

14:45

can also look for period films there's lots of

14:47

stills for that. That will still sort

14:49

of have the problem of you know you're

14:51

seeing the faces unless you blur

14:53

them out but you could present those

14:56

to the players as you

14:58

know which of these three outfits do you

15:00

wear or you know allow them to sort

15:02

of dig in and decide what does this

15:04

say about my character not just about the

15:07

you're expressing things about the game master characters.

15:10

The thing about images from movies and

15:12

TV is that those are exaggerated

15:15

versions that are already making

15:17

a point about the characters

15:19

but for the purposes of

15:21

a role playing scenario that's

15:23

good. If they're heightened means that

15:25

they are more communicative and say

15:27

more. If you look at

15:30

historical photos from an era you

15:32

will see that a lot of

15:34

the big bold fashion choices that

15:36

you may be thinking about from

15:38

fashion magazines or movies were

15:40

not that prevalent out on the actual street

15:42

right lots of actual candid

15:45

photos of people in

15:47

the 60's a lot of the clothing

15:50

looks like it's still the style of

15:52

the 50's and the 40's because fashion

15:54

except for people who are really into

15:56

clothing doesn't change all that rapidly and

15:58

whether you care about it or not. about that level

16:00

of realism or not, you may still find

16:03

a super cool photo of the 60s that

16:06

conveys something about the era through the way

16:08

people are wearing clothes, but it will probably

16:11

actually convey something quite different than a film

16:14

still from a movie that's set in

16:16

swinging London in 1966. Yeah,

16:19

my players in Fall of Delta Green, by

16:21

the way, love figuring out what their characters

16:23

are wearing, some more than others. But

16:26

again, there's a lot of diving through film

16:28

stills, you know, looking for what sort of

16:30

thing and also the 60s are sort of

16:32

one of the eras where extreme fashion begins

16:35

to be a thing. And

16:37

if you are demonstrating your character's sort

16:39

of flamboyance and independence from great conformity,

16:41

then they dive right for that. And

16:43

that becomes a fun character moment and

16:45

a way for the players to get

16:47

immersed into the period without me, the

16:49

GM, having to assign them homework, which

16:51

they might or might not do because

16:53

they're good players, but they would rather

16:55

go through 100 pictures of Anne Margaret

16:58

saying, if I find a

17:00

dowdy enough picture of Anne Margaret, it'll be

17:03

how my character dresses, right? Parental

17:05

knowledge. That's where you see

17:07

it. There you go, Margaret. So yeah, like

17:09

everything else, guns, art, mummies, fashion is as

17:11

much as you want to make of it.

17:14

It's an important part of a lot of people's

17:16

lives and an important part of social

17:18

signaling from ancient Egypt

17:20

to now. And that

17:22

sounds not only like a

17:25

summary, it almost sounds like

17:27

the curtain pulling shut, letting

17:29

us change in the privacy of another commercial

17:31

for a different hut. By

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the King in Yellow. Where every spell

18:02

is potent. A potent shock card, that

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accompanying shock cards by Robin. In a magic

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rich scenario for each of the four sequences.

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Answer at the Bone Cabaret,

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Sarah Sulfiel's tale of Belle

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L'Til, village based military horror

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from Gareth Rider Hanrahan. Memories

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of a Dream Clown, Ruth

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Kitchen Tillman's visitation with everyone's

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favorite aftermath children's entertainer. And

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Sarah's Love Wears No Mask,

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which brings Carcosa to its natural contemporary

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home, reality television.

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Also out now, legions of Carcosa,

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the bestiary for the Yellow King.

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From alien parasites to warped human

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All three available now. It's Blackstar

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at the Pelgrain Press web shop. Ah,

19:42

the delicious aroma of cooking or in

19:44

this case baking. Tell us where you

19:46

once more stepped into the food huts.

19:48

Where again we're going to look back

19:50

into the history of food and we're

19:52

going to look at the Johnny Appleseed

19:54

of the date. So Johnny Appleseed, who

19:56

as real name was John Chapman, we

19:59

talked about all the way

20:01

back in episode three because he

20:03

was also a Sweden-Bordian mystic, and

20:06

much less a mystical but perhaps

20:08

equally influential figure or super

20:11

influential for a while

20:13

anyway, is Walter Tennyson

20:15

Swingle who is the

20:17

botanist and expert on

20:19

plant diseases and citrus

20:21

taxonomy who introduced

20:23

the date to North

20:25

America and it then

20:28

enjoyed a powerful hegemony

20:30

for many decades over

20:33

the desserts that people are baking

20:35

up in their kitchens and Ken to his

20:38

friends, he wasn't known as Walter, you called

20:40

him Tenney, so tell us about the story

20:42

of Tenney and the date. Tenney and the

20:44

date. Tenney is born in 1871. His

20:47

family moves to Kansas very early. He

20:49

is a child prodigy. He's

20:51

going to college when he's 13. He

20:53

gets his BA at 16 and

20:55

he gets a job offer with the Department

20:58

of Agriculture in 1891

21:00

and he has to get his parents permission.

21:02

He's only 20 to take that

21:04

job. They give him permission and he goes, dad,

21:07

can I do some agronomy? Can

21:09

I do agronomy in Florida with

21:11

a lady? Well, anyway, the Department

21:13

of Agriculture hires him. They send him to

21:15

Florida and they send him to

21:17

studying oranges and throws himself

21:19

into it, begins, you know,

21:22

looking at orange cultivation and decides what

21:24

we really need is to do a

21:26

full taxonomy of all citrus fruit so

21:28

we'll know what can be bred with

21:30

what and what kind of strains we

21:32

can grow depending on a situation. For

21:34

a while, the farmers are like, we

21:36

really just need the one strain that

21:38

we have now and we need it

21:40

not to get diseases and he's fixing

21:42

some of those diseases because it's sort

21:45

of a low-hanging fruit, as you will, but

21:47

some of them, he really does need to

21:49

do some cultivars and that's where he's going

21:52

back and forth with the farmers and

21:54

he's saying things like, we need to have maybe

21:56

a frost-proof orange and the farmers are like, are

21:58

you crazy? This is Florida. And

22:00

then in 1895, a hard freeze kills

22:02

all the oranges and he says, well,

22:04

I told you. And that sort of

22:07

gives him a little more impetus. During

22:10

that period, he also takes the leave

22:12

of absence to study under the world's

22:14

greatest fruit psychologist at the

22:16

University of Bonn in Germany. And

22:19

that's where he falls in love with

22:21

microscopic studies, even down to electron microscopes

22:23

once those come out of plant structures

22:25

and plant what was called germ plasm

22:28

back then. But his genetics now. And

22:31

he rapidly becomes the leading figure in America

22:33

on that. When he comes back in 1897,

22:35

he instantly invents the tangelo. Everyone

22:39

is amazed. A new fruit? What?

22:42

And he establishes the US Department

22:44

of Agriculture Laboratory for foreign seed

22:46

and plant introduction in Miami

22:48

because when he's in Europe, he's also getting

22:50

a bunch of other cool fruits and plants,

22:53

especially from the Mediterranean. And he brings them

22:55

to Florida and everyone says, we could make

22:57

money on that. And he says, indeed you

22:59

could. So one of the things

23:01

he does is he brings table grapes to California.

23:03

California had only been growing wine grapes. And he

23:06

says, you know, you can eat grapes. And

23:08

everyone in California says, I don't think you can.

23:11

And sure enough, he says, here, here you go. Try

23:13

these. So he's going back and forth

23:16

to Europe and the Mediterranean. He goes to Algeria, which

23:18

is a very productive trip for him in 1900. And

23:22

he brings back date palms and

23:24

fig wasps, which are what are

23:26

necessary for the cultivation of figs.

23:29

And he says, well, according to all

23:31

the textbooks, figs should never multiply. Apparently

23:34

something is wrong with the fig. And he goes to the

23:36

peasants who are growing figs in the

23:38

Ottoman Empire. And he says, how

23:40

are you growing figs? And they tell him. And

23:42

he says, well, all right. And he writes it

23:45

up and all the, this is a classic stuffy

23:47

agronomist in Bonner, like, no, that could never happen.

23:50

You're talking to peasants. And he says, well, on

23:52

the other hand, figs. And so

23:54

he brings the fig wasps to

23:56

California and sure enough, that is

23:58

what lets the. Myrna Fig, populated

24:00

California, so suddenly fig bars. If you

24:03

like fig bars, you're welcome. Kenny did

24:05

that for you. Similarly, he

24:07

goes around in Algeria and gets date

24:09

palms. This is something that the Department

24:11

of Agriculture has actually asked him to

24:13

do because they're importing a ton of

24:15

dates from the Middle East

24:18

and they say, if we could

24:20

grow dates as cultivar dates for

24:22

individual eating as opposed to be

24:24

mushed up into desserts, then that

24:27

would be great. And he says, fantastic,

24:29

I'll get on it. He picks some varieties,

24:31

the deglet nur, the medjool, which is maybe

24:33

the one that people have heard of, the

24:35

thuri. Well, there's a story with the medjool

24:37

though, you're jumping ahead because he wants the

24:40

medjool, but they say, no, no,

24:42

no, the medjool is not for you, foreigner.

24:44

And at that time, they don't let him have

24:47

the supreme date of all dates,

24:49

they just give them the deglet dates. And it's

24:51

later in the story when he gets his hands

24:53

on the medjool. Well anyway, so he's back in

24:55

America with the deglet nur and it

24:57

becomes very, very difficult to get them to ripen for

24:59

some reason. He's growing them and growing them and growing

25:01

them, the date guys are yelling at him and

25:04

he's just about to give up and

25:06

the, you know, secretary of agriculture is

25:08

coming and he knocks on the door

25:11

and he says, well, you gave it a

25:13

good college try Tennyson. We will be able

25:15

to announce that it is impossible to grow dates in

25:17

America and the problem can be

25:19

shelved. And Swingle says, give me another year.

25:22

And the secretary of agriculture says, you

25:24

realize I'm the secretary of agriculture. You literally work

25:26

for me. And he says, I can't hear you.

25:29

I'm too busy growing dates. Yes, that's why I'm asking.

25:31

Right. So he says we have

25:33

a new experiment where we gas the

25:36

dates to make them ripen with a

25:38

deadly gas. Sounds dangerous and

25:40

terrible, but this was the nineteen thins.

25:42

So people did stuff. He starts to

25:44

gas the dates, but to get the

25:46

gas bill around the date branch, they

25:48

chop away the other date branches. And

25:51

it turns out as they're chopping away the

25:53

other date branches, even without gassing

25:55

anything, suddenly the dates bloom. The problem

25:57

is that America is too fertile and

25:59

wonderful. So, the trees produce

26:01

too many dates, and the

26:03

dates prevent individual dates from ripening because

26:05

it doesn't give enough sugar to any

26:08

individual date. It just grows lovely ornamental

26:10

dates, and that's not what you want.

26:12

But once you start just pruning them, you

26:14

can ripen the whole crop. He's cracked the

26:16

deglat nur, they send it out to California

26:19

and Arizona, and by 1920, California

26:22

is growing 100,000 pounds of dates

26:25

from basically a zero standing start

26:27

in 1900. So that's pretty

26:29

good. And in 1926,

26:31

to finish the date story, Robin,

26:34

do you want to tell the story since you found it? So

26:37

in 1926, a fungal pathogen, a

26:39

biode disease, threatens the mid-jewel with

26:42

extinction. And so at that time,

26:44

Tenney goes back to Algeria, and

26:46

the farmers say, well, our

26:49

whole thing is going to be wiped out. Perhaps

26:51

in a sort of a Noah's Ark code of gesture,

26:53

you could take a few cuttings. And

26:56

so finally, he gets his hand on the

26:58

queen of dates, the mid-jewel, and

27:00

takes 11 cuttings back

27:03

to North America. And nine

27:06

of those sprout and grow

27:08

and multiply, and that saves

27:11

the mid-jewel while it's being wiped

27:13

out by fungus in its home

27:16

territory. And so today, the vast

27:18

groves of mid-jewels in

27:20

Jordan and in Israel and

27:23

elsewhere in the region, their ancestors

27:25

are American. They lived in America

27:27

for a while before then being

27:29

reintroduced to closer to their own

27:31

native habitat. Like how all European

27:34

wines are California wines now. Exactly.

27:36

So this is his life, is going

27:39

around finding cool plants, bringing them to

27:41

America. He brings a lot

27:43

of different plants to America, some of

27:45

them other people have grown pistachios, but

27:48

he brings different breeds of pistachios. Same

27:50

deal. You can do that

27:52

with basically any sort of oddly subtropical

27:55

fruit you've heard of. Probably

27:57

Tennie is the guy that either brought it or

27:59

brought the the best cultivar of

28:01

it to America. In his

28:03

free time, he has learned Chinese

28:05

and is reading Chinese botany texts,

28:08

and he's impressed by how full

28:10

and complete and detailed these Ming Dynasty

28:13

and even earlier Chinese botany texts are,

28:15

and he keeps writing to the Library

28:17

of Congress and saying, send me such

28:19

and such a foundational Chinese botany text,

28:21

and the Library of Congress writes back

28:23

and says, we don't have that book,

28:26

or the Library of Congress, not the

28:28

Library of Beijing, what's going on with

28:30

you. And so eventually he makes

28:32

friends with the Librarian of Congress because he

28:34

keeps showing up and he's

28:36

going to China for botany

28:38

anyway to get plants, but

28:41

he says, hey, while I'm in China,

28:43

how about I pick up this immense

28:45

list of books that you apparently don't

28:47

have, and the Librarian of Congress says,

28:49

that sounds perfect. Here's a government commission

28:52

you can show to people. So he

28:54

buys botany texts, encyclopedias, gazetteers, herbals, albinacs,

28:56

and if he can't buy the book,

28:58

what he can do is hire a

29:00

copyist to make a hand, a copy

29:02

of the book, and then ship that

29:04

back to America. And this

29:07

is almost the only place where he

29:09

gets to anything Lovecraftian, but I'm going to mention it because

29:11

it's in the 20s. He collects books

29:13

called Tzungshu, which are books that

29:16

collect other books. Books

29:18

that are out of print, not out

29:20

of print, but out of circulation are

29:22

often only found in these Tzungshu copies.

29:25

And so he buys those on the

29:27

theory that, well, there's a hundred books

29:29

in here, maybe one is about plants,

29:31

and sends it back. He

29:33

visits China again in 1926 when he's

29:35

on an official government trip to Tokyo.

29:37

He also goes to Korea. He's buying

29:40

plant books from Vietnam by the end of his

29:42

career. By 1928, he had

29:44

bought, donated, organized, or accessioned about

29:46

80,000 Chinese, Japanese, Korean,

29:49

and Vietnamese titles for the Library

29:51

of Congress. He discovered metaxenia

29:53

in plants, which is how the,

29:55

when the pollen influences the shape

29:58

of the fruit. people said

30:00

that superstitious nonsense, that's Lamarkeism, and

30:02

he says, well, but it happens.

30:05

And you guys figure out why. But

30:07

again, it takes another 10 years, but everyone starts saying,

30:10

yep, I guess metoxynia is a thing. In

30:12

1934, new dealers say

30:15

this giant, fully successful

30:17

plant importing thing that

30:19

the government does is

30:21

a waste of taxpayer money, and they abolish

30:24

it. And they shut down all of his

30:26

programs. They reduce him to one researcher at

30:28

the Department of Agriculture. They can't fire him,

30:30

but they can fire everyone associated with him and

30:32

take away all his authority to do anything. And

30:35

then to add insult to injury, they

30:37

say, we're not paying for the Miami

30:39

location anymore. We're going to move all

30:41

your plants to Orlando, Florida. And

30:44

they dig them all up, move them to Orlando

30:46

and don't water them, and they all die. So

30:48

all of the citrus cultivars that he's been accumulating

30:50

since 1898 are killed by the Department

30:54

of Agriculture. And if there

30:56

is a snapshot of the

30:59

government helping, that may be it. I

31:01

wonder if there's like a sally area of citrus

31:03

in the department, etc. To

31:06

the story, and maybe that's the storyline there.

31:08

Yes, Swingle definitely would get up people's nose.

31:10

I think if you were someone who was

31:12

direct in his direct report, as opposed to

31:14

the Librarian of Congress, you were maybe a

31:16

little less fond of Swingle. You didn't call

31:18

him Tammy, let's put it that way. But

31:21

anyway, in 1941, he retires and

31:23

the University of Miami says, why don't you start

31:25

that up again? But at the University

31:28

of Miami, and we promise to never tell you what to do. And

31:31

this is Steven Soderbergh's retirement. Exactly.

31:33

And so he retires there. And

31:36

by the time his retirement is over, he

31:38

has published 256 papers. So

31:42

he is absolute redwood

31:45

tree in the forest

31:47

of American botany. And

31:51

he dies in 1952, covered in honors and one

31:53

assumes smelling like oranges because that's basically what he'd

31:55

been doing in Miami for the rest of his

31:57

time. But if you love a tangilo, that's his.

32:00

you'll have a date, that's him, you'll

32:02

have a fig, that's him, you'll have

32:05

pistachios, it's probably half him, guavas, that's

32:07

him, all kind of stuff that Kenny

32:09

Swigga brought us. Right, and as far

32:12

as his impact on American and also

32:14

Canadian cooking goes, the date is the

32:16

claim to fame because there's a period

32:18

after the popularization of the date that

32:21

goes up until about the mid 70s

32:24

when the date is in

32:26

about 70% of

32:29

dessert recipes that you find in

32:31

cookbooks, especially the sort of local

32:33

organization style cookbooks that we've talked

32:35

about before which reflect what people

32:37

actually make and so the date

32:39

square I guess is probably the

32:42

foremost exponent of that. If you

32:44

go to something where church ladies

32:46

still make squares you may still

32:48

find some date squares there but

32:51

everything, cookies, loaves, it

32:53

had dates in it, it was huge. It's

32:56

a sweet delicious hit of sugar. Yes, and

32:58

if you get an actual reasonably fresh date

33:00

instead of the dried up desiccated

33:02

dates that you've had in your cupboard for

33:04

three years, those are quite nice and are

33:06

fun. They're very good. And the figure of

33:09

the 70% comes

33:11

from B Dylan Hollis in

33:13

his book, Baking Yesteryear, so his

33:16

whole thing he goes back and finds old recipe

33:18

books and makes things now and

33:20

they're full of dates. So what happened to

33:22

the date is that somehow, and

33:24

it's not because the chocolate chip was invented then,

33:27

because the chocolate chip was invented in 1937, but

33:29

in the 70s all of a sudden the chocolate

33:31

chip takes off and

33:36

the date which had its real

33:38

sort of heyday in the 40s

33:41

falls away as an ingredient in

33:43

everyday baking. At the same time

33:45

I think baking probably starts to trail

33:47

off as well, but since then the

33:49

role of the date has been taken

33:51

by the chocolate chip

33:53

and various other newer relatives

33:55

whether those would be the butterscotch

33:57

chip or your you know candy

34:00

pieces and things and the sorts of

34:02

desserts that have dates and then the

34:04

real survivor I guess, the most

34:06

likely thing that you're likely to have that has

34:09

dates in it now is a sticky toffee pudding.

34:11

Yeah, or some sort of

34:13

date pudding in general, right? Something that is

34:15

built around the flavor of the date as

34:17

opposed to using the date just for sweetness.

34:20

Right, but in terms of what you're actually

34:22

likely to make or to see on a

34:24

menu, sticky toffee pudding is the survivor of

34:26

the date dessert. But I will give one

34:28

last date statistic and this is one that

34:31

Swingle was very proud when he calculated. In

34:34

1945, the taxes paid that

34:36

year alone by date farmers amounted

34:38

to the entire budget for his

34:41

USDA date program for the previous

34:43

40 years. So

34:45

pretty good. That sounds like someone making a

34:47

statistic for his enemy who's about to shut

34:49

down his department. It does

34:52

sound like someone sending something to FDR's

34:54

Department of Agriculture and saying, fun fact.

34:56

So, it means when you shut down, it's time to

34:58

shut down this particular hut. But guess

35:01

what, around here, when you shut down one

35:03

hit, another hut opens on the other side

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moon scutting across the clouds. The

37:00

click of needles by the fire. And

37:03

the gentle, ah wouldn't do that, of

37:05

someone in the corner. Welcomes

37:08

us into a folkloric edition of

37:10

the Mythology Hut. Because we're gonna

37:12

talk folk tales. And specifically, we're

37:14

gonna talk a folk tale that

37:16

is known as G30318.3 in the

37:19

Stith Thompson

37:22

Index, or 815 in

37:25

the Arne Thompson Uther Index.

37:28

Which is, when the devil comes to

37:30

skin a corpse, and

37:33

the devil, he's up to stuff. Sometimes

37:36

he wants your skin, sometimes you're

37:38

dead. This is what happens. It's

37:40

a fun, weird detail that of

37:42

course is very transformable into a

37:45

game scenario. Because the

37:47

thing about the devil in folk

37:49

tales is that he's

37:51

quite different than the devil

37:54

that you hear about in church. And

37:56

is a quite different creature

37:59

entirely. often up to extremely

38:01

weird things, often because the

38:04

devil has been bolted on to an

38:06

earlier story about a generic demon or

38:08

evil spirit. An ogre, as they say.

38:11

Yes. So basically, the core of

38:13

this story is that someone dies and

38:16

often because they struck a bargain with

38:18

the devil but not all. Or they

38:20

were just awful. Because there's all sorts

38:22

of variations of this story. The devil's

38:24

going to come and skin the corpse

38:26

and take the skin. And

38:28

that's not what we think of the

38:30

devil doing. We think of him as coming and showing

38:33

up for your soul. But it turns out that in

38:35

a lot of these stories,

38:37

the skin can then be worn

38:39

either by the devil or some

38:41

other subsidiary, demon or ghost and

38:43

impersonate the dead person, perhaps to

38:45

his relatives or who

38:47

knows, they can send them on missions and so

38:50

forth. And it's often the way

38:52

the story is set out is the person who

38:54

is about to die tips off someone else the

38:56

fact that they, for some reason,

38:58

probably a deal they struck, they expect after

39:00

they die, the devil's going to come and take their

39:02

skin. And in the simplest version of

39:05

this story, that person, the actual

39:07

viewpoint character goes and watches that happen.

39:10

But there are more complicated versions of the story

39:12

that start to play into the way the devil

39:15

in folk tales is portrayed

39:17

as a trickable figure who

39:19

can be defeated sometimes by

39:21

virtuous churchmen or just as

39:23

often by canny but

39:26

good ordinary people who then

39:28

thwart the devil. So

39:30

Ken, I think you have a particularly fleshed out

39:33

version of this or skinned out version, I guess,

39:35

as it were to tell it. Yeah, the

39:37

sort of the version in Arne Thompson Uther

39:39

is called the devil who skins a corpse,

39:42

also known as the dead rich man. So,

39:44

you know, I guess they both

39:46

sell it for different audiences. So

39:48

a poor man promises three

39:50

times to hold a wake for

39:53

rich man, not a party, but this vigil

39:55

to watch his body. When the

39:57

rich man dies, the poor man goes to the cemetery.

40:00

He draws a magic circle around himself in

40:02

a lot of versions. The devil appears, digs

40:04

up the grave, takes the corpse out of

40:06

the coffin and skins it. And while the

40:08

devil is putting the body and the coffin

40:11

back into the grave, the poor man drags

40:13

the skin into his circle and the

40:16

devil wants it back because he wanted to wear

40:18

the skin to go around and haunt people and

40:20

impersonate the dead guy. And

40:22

the man is able to say, what skin? What are

40:24

you talking about? The devil's like, give me back the

40:26

skin. He says, I don't know what, I have a

40:29

skin. You don't want my skin. He's like, no, the

40:31

skin of the circle. Anyway, he just keeps him yelling

40:33

until dawn comes and the cock crows and the devil

40:35

has to go away because that's the rules. And

40:38

so then the poor guy reburys the

40:40

skin with rich men and his job

40:42

is done. And usually at some

40:44

point the devil has tried to bribe him to

40:46

give the skin back. And so there's money around

40:48

and he can pick that up and have

40:51

a better life. He's had a little reward. And

40:54

there is a version of this in Grimm's

40:56

fairy tales called the grave mound, which is

40:58

probably where most people have read this story.

41:01

But Grimm just left the skin out, I think, because

41:03

Grimm thought it was weird. So it's

41:05

just that the poor man is watching the

41:07

devil and the boy who

41:09

could not shudder shows up from a different

41:12

Grimm story. So it's an Avengers moment. It's

41:14

a crossover event. It's a crossover and they

41:16

together pull the devil into pouring gold into

41:18

an empty boot. And so

41:20

many laughs are had. It's a real

41:23

thigh slapper, but there's no skin

41:26

in that one. And so it's useful for

41:28

the rest of the story. But the actual

41:30

skin part seems to be not so much

41:32

German as it does Slavic and

41:35

Scandinavian and Lithuanian, but it seems to be

41:37

that sort of eastward of Germany

41:39

stretch where those stories all come from. But it

41:41

makes it over to England as well. Well, everything

41:44

makes it over to England. That's

41:47

called British. And so

41:49

the protective circle that you're in that

41:51

protects the devil from getting at you

41:53

is a feature of many of these

41:55

versions of the story. And so

41:57

that's a fun little bit where the devil is trying to get at you

41:59

and he can't. Often there's a hook

42:01

involved somehow in that the

42:04

narrative purpose of the hook sort of

42:06

drifts from one story to another. And

42:08

as happens in folk tales, people as

42:10

they, you know, retell them and they

42:13

mutate over time, people sometimes forget the

42:15

original point. So there's one of the

42:17

English versions of this is the old

42:19

woman who goes to solve the problem

42:22

uses the hook to recover the body so the

42:24

devil only gets the skin. So

42:27

in that version, the devil getting the

42:29

skin is a win because they didn't

42:31

get the rest of the body, which

42:33

could then be reburied. So that is

42:35

an example of culturally missing the original

42:38

point of the story. One of my favorite

42:40

versions is very vivid and might

42:43

be very gameable in that instead of

42:45

the devil in his

42:47

sort of horns and

42:50

forks, tail and clove and hoof form,

42:53

he shows up as a demonic dog. The

42:56

dog again lunges for the protective

42:58

circle, doesn't get through and it

43:01

eats the body. But then the

43:03

intervening character, the viewpoint character uses

43:05

the hook to recover the skin,

43:08

which is of course the part in this version where you

43:10

know that the skin is a thing you don't want

43:12

to double to get. And so the

43:14

dog eats the body, but the devil doesn't get the

43:16

skin to go around haunting people. So

43:19

this is just a scenario ready to go in

43:22

which the player characters are the ones who

43:24

realize that the devil is coming for somebody's

43:26

skin and they know that

43:28

the devil is coming tonight. You

43:30

give them limited time to faff about

43:33

and it's up to them to prevent the

43:35

devil from getting the skin. And that's

43:38

where you start to bring in all sorts

43:41

of different ways that the protective circle can

43:43

go wrong. And you

43:45

might also want to have the characters unaware of

43:47

the beginning of why would the

43:49

devil want a skin? What's going on here? Why

43:51

is it important to stop him and perhaps

43:54

some research that would allow them to

43:57

confront him? It's a little tricky in that it's

43:59

a defensive. scenario where the

44:02

characters are waiting for something to happen. Of

44:04

course, you can control the pacing by fast

44:06

forwarding to the thing happening. And of course,

44:09

once you put the notion of a magic

44:12

skin of a dead person into the

44:14

universe, that can show up.

44:16

You can find it hung in a closet.

44:18

Maybe someone, oh, are you in League of

44:20

the Devil and you wear dead people's skins

44:22

and walk around and do bad things? Is

44:24

that what you do? There is an Irish

44:26

legend called the Spancel of Death, which is

44:28

a hoop that you cut, like a

44:31

peeling an apple from a dead person from

44:33

heel to head and back down without ever

44:36

breaking the hoop. And then once you take

44:38

that hoop, you do magic over it and

44:40

then you can tie someone up with the

44:42

hoop and then they have to do what

44:44

you say. So maybe

44:46

one of the things the devil's like is, look,

44:49

I only need some of the skin to dress

44:51

up as the guy, but I'll give you a

44:53

spancel hoop and you can have the love of

44:55

the fair marguerite if you want. That'd be fun,

44:57

right? So you can have

44:59

all manner of bits of dead

45:01

people's skin showing up as magicable

45:03

items. And I don't

45:05

know that F20 games are really

45:08

the ideal place to do

45:10

sort of fairy tale type magic

45:12

and story, but you can easily

45:14

imagine this sort of story happening

45:17

either at low levels or with a

45:19

very, very powerful skin. Like this was the skin

45:21

of the king of the elves. Why does the

45:23

devil want it? Or in this case, in an

45:25

F20 world, you possibly get

45:28

all of that character's levels when you wear

45:30

it. Right. There we go. That would be

45:33

a real problem. And player characters

45:35

being player characters, you then have the temptation of,

45:38

do you want to wear the skin of this

45:40

character who is more powerful than

45:42

you are? Do you want to go

45:44

up a couple levels by becoming the

45:46

elf king? That can't possibly go wrong.

45:48

Orchises there saying, look, I need this

45:50

skin, but I know where there's the

45:52

skin of a 20th level paladin that

45:54

you can have. Exactly. Because there's one

45:56

player in every group that's going to wear the skin. Yeah, someone's

45:58

going to wear the skin. And of

46:01

course, in a more sort of investigative

46:03

note, the mystery can begin with someone

46:05

who's known to be dead commits a

46:07

murder. What's going on with that?

46:09

And then you find out that someone

46:11

is using a skin

46:13

suit given to them by the devil

46:15

or perhaps they're dealing with the devil

46:18

himself. You exhume the body to

46:20

make sure they're really dead and they're lying there with

46:22

no skin. That's a great moment. Yeah.

46:24

And that's when you discover the legend and

46:26

you can have the moment where, well, the

46:28

devil isn't real. What has happened in

46:30

this? Like, is the devil real? Is someone... Is the

46:32

devil real or does someone else have the skin

46:35

walking technology here in our small town

46:37

or wherever? And in Croatia, the devil

46:39

blows the skin off a vampire and

46:42

the vampire comes out like a new

46:44

fledged snake or butterfly. Well that is

46:46

very scary indeed. Butterfly

46:48

vampire skin. So basically

46:51

this is a weird,

46:53

cool image from folk tales that

46:56

spawns too many possible scenarios for you to use

46:58

them all. So while you're thinking which

47:00

one to use, we're going to pop up for

47:02

a little break and then be right back with our

47:04

final segment of this episode. Protect

47:23

this podcast from skin

47:25

seeking devils by joining

47:27

such beloved Patreon backers

47:29

as James Kiley, John

47:31

Buckley, Peter Darby, Trungboy,

47:33

and Merrickshin Cariol. It's

47:41

time once again to wind our way up the creek

47:43

of the cobweb stairs. We're going to stop on the

47:45

landing. We're going to wave to the painting of the

47:47

King of the Fire Salamander. It's going to give us

47:49

a little wink. And then we're going

47:52

to head on in to talk to the consultant

47:54

he called this. And he's got a lot of

47:56

notes and perhaps some triangles spread out before him

47:58

because we have a big. big topic

48:00

to cover in what has got to be a 101,

48:03

we're going to discuss

48:05

the Pythagoreans. We

48:07

know Pythagoras from geometry

48:10

and mathematics, but he

48:12

also spawned a sect,

48:15

branches of which became more and

48:17

more mystical and were treated as

48:19

more and more mystical by later

48:21

people looking back on

48:24

them. Of course, if we're looking

48:26

at something that begins in

48:28

the 6th century BCE, we're

48:30

nowhere near there being any sort

48:32

of distinction between science and the

48:35

esoteric. They're the same things up

48:37

until around 150 years ago. But

48:41

Ken, why don't you start telling us

48:43

the things that we need to know

48:45

that occultists care about when it comes

48:47

to the Pythagoreans and Pythagoras? Yeah, Pythagoras

48:49

is born on the island of Samos

48:52

in 570 BC. Political

48:54

turmoil drives him off the island. People

48:57

who like Pythagoras and like democracy

48:59

say that he objected to the

49:01

tyranny on Samos. People who

49:03

don't like Pythagoras often say he

49:05

objected to all the democracy on

49:08

Samos. But either way, he leaves.

49:10

He travels around, according to legend,

49:12

Egypt, Babylon. Some legends have

49:14

him in India, which is ridiculous. And

49:17

Egypt and Babylon are not impossible in the

49:19

6th century, Egypt more likely than Babylon, let's

49:21

say. And it winds

49:23

up in Croton in Italy, where

49:25

he has sort of his first

49:27

study group. And

49:30

he has a group of people that

49:32

surround him. They live aesthetically.

49:35

They engage in partial vegetarianism,

49:37

exactly how vegetarian they are as a

49:39

matter of controversy. But sort

49:41

of vegetarian is still vegetarian. They

49:43

also avoid fava beans in some

49:45

versions of the story, because beans

49:47

are one of the places the

49:49

soul goes while it's waiting to

49:52

reincarnate. And that is the thing

49:54

that Pythagoras teaches, even more than

49:56

triangles, that goes from the earliest

49:58

times down, the notion of

50:00

the transmigration of soul, the notion

50:02

that soul moves on from body

50:04

to body. And that is the

50:06

central thesis of Pythagoras along with

50:09

something called the Musica Universalis, the

50:11

notion that the entire created universe

50:13

is in harmony and that its

50:15

harmony can be depicted musically. Pythagoras

50:18

is famously supposed to have invented

50:20

the octave to have discovered a

50:22

pitch of harp strings, things like

50:24

that. Things may or may

50:27

not be Pythagoras invented perfect pitch,

50:29

more like Pythagoras invented a numerological

50:31

theory explaining why harp strings were the

50:33

way they were. But either

50:35

way, that was a big part of his

50:37

religious or mystical, again, big question mark, he

50:40

said, I'm just worshipping Apollo, I don't know

50:42

what you people are talking about. But

50:44

they did physical exercises, they had regular hours of

50:46

prayer, and if you're saying, Ken,

50:49

that sounds a lot like Christian monasticism. And

50:51

I would say someone had to invent it,

50:53

and that might have been Pythagoras' other big

50:55

invention. The harmonies are

50:57

expressed numerologically, and Pythagoras is also

51:00

probably the guy who comes

51:02

up with the five regular solids

51:05

that we now call platonic solids,

51:07

because spoiler, Plato's a big old

51:09

Pythagorean. His group

51:11

is separated into two,

51:14

the listeners, the Akuzmatikoi,

51:16

and the learners, the

51:18

Mathematicoi. And for a

51:20

while there, and you can still see historians

51:22

of science who say, well, the Mathematicoi are

51:24

the ones doing real science, and the Akuzmatikoi

51:26

are just the mistakes, that's not actually true.

51:29

You have to listen before you can learn, and

51:31

so it's a rank in the little

51:34

group. Right, and there's a sort of a schism

51:36

between those two groups, and one of them accepts

51:38

the wisdom of the other, and the other

51:40

rejects the doctrine of the other.

51:42

Right, yeah. Once Pythagoras' charisma

51:45

is not there to hold it together,

51:47

the various groups do begin to

51:49

fission and team up. Right. It's

51:52

like, precedented, or in this case, I

51:54

guess, precedent-setting story. It's precedent-setting way. Pythagoras

51:56

seems to have had a major influence on

51:58

Greek art and art. architecture and you

52:01

can say this is because of Pythagoras'

52:03

teaching that everything becomes obsessed with numbers

52:05

and ratios and proportions or you can

52:07

say steam engine time. Greek culture is

52:10

getting more into proportion and ratios because

52:12

they've got the wealth to build lots

52:14

of beautiful statues and an

52:16

interest in how it's done and that's just what

52:18

happened. But people can credit Pythagoras if

52:20

they want. In that case, he would also be one

52:23

of the fathers of architecture which is yet another reason

52:25

to venerate him. So, around

52:27

this point, Pythagoreans rise

52:30

to the elite or Pythagoras is adopted

52:32

by the elite and that means that

52:34

they have power and it turns out

52:37

in a story that we don't understand

52:39

very much about, that leads to a

52:41

violent internal political struggle and guess who

52:44

gets set on fire? It's the Pythagoreans.

52:46

Basically, you have a situation where as

52:49

you say, he begins by sort

52:51

of becoming a very influential leader

52:53

in Croton, joins the council. His

52:56

disciples serve as mayors of various

52:58

areas around Croton and Magna-Greekia generally,

53:00

the Greek cities in southern Italy

53:02

and the notion is that this

53:05

is a either weird

53:07

cult or more likely they just

53:09

took one side of the great

53:11

war of faction against faction that

53:14

was endemic to all Greek cities

53:16

generally some form of democracy

53:18

versus some form of tyranny and

53:20

sometimes the tyrants came in on

53:23

the back of popular support. Sometimes

53:25

the democracy was only 300 guys

53:28

who were mad that no one was listening to them, whatever.

53:30

But there's a lot of

53:32

political back and forth and because Pythagoreanism

53:34

was so influential, it therefore gets drawn

53:37

into the politics and once

53:39

people start setting things on fire,

53:41

the Pythagorean sort of take it

53:43

in the chin there. Pythagoras' disciple

53:45

or the disciple of his disciple,

53:47

Thellolis of Croton, is the next

53:50

big figure. He sort of takes

53:52

Pythagoreanism a little further.

53:54

He believes in the unlimited universe

53:56

of nature, physicists, that encounters limits

53:58

and becomes the known, cosmos,

54:00

and this fundamental construct

54:03

is basically the beginning

54:05

of what we now

54:08

recognize as the scientific

54:10

version of how the universe is

54:13

set out, because you'll note

54:15

at no point does Philola say God

54:17

does anything. Philola says the universe is

54:19

in chaos, it encounters limits,

54:21

the limits place it in order, harmonic order

54:23

that we perceive. He believes in a

54:26

spherical earth, he may be not the first

54:28

guy to say it but he says it really loud, and by

54:30

a hundred years from him everyone

54:32

believes in a spherical earth, maybe even at the

54:34

same time. He also believes in

54:36

our counter-earth, which we've talked about in a previous

54:38

segment, and that there are ten, because

54:41

ten is a magic number, of planets

54:43

including the sun, they circle

54:46

a central fire, and

54:48

there is an empire and a heavenly fire

54:50

on the outside, so fire is basically on

54:52

both sides. His disciple,

54:54

Architos of Tarentum, is the

54:56

first mathematical mechanical engineer and

54:59

is hugely influential on Plato, and

55:01

Plato by the time of the

55:03

Tameas is basically, as Bertrand Russell

55:06

said, a Pythagorean, that there's not

55:08

a lot of light between Plato

55:10

and Pythagoras, certainly in many, many

55:12

respects, and this is

55:14

partly why Aristotle makes

55:16

sure to write a history of Pythagoras in

55:18

which Pythagoras says a lot of dumb things.

55:22

So the sad part is that's almost

55:25

the only history of Pythagoras that has

55:27

survived and not all of it has

55:29

survived. Right, and often the only histories

55:31

of things left by classical texts are

55:34

by writers blackarding the thing or person

55:36

or people that they're talking about, so

55:38

it's not on college. Aristotle

55:40

doesn't blackard Pythagoras, he says, this is

55:42

what Pythagoras taught. At the time that

55:44

was really smart, but now we know.

55:46

That's just high level, Aristotle level

55:48

of blackarding. It's Aristotle just being

55:51

wonderful. So anyway, the

55:53

Pythagoreans sort of enter a bit

55:55

of a recension

55:58

until the first century BC. when

56:00

a group called the Neopathagoreans, we

56:02

call them that, they just probably

56:04

call themselves Pythagoreans, blows up. The

56:06

group Pythagorean, so rediscovered Pythagorean. Exactly.

56:09

Basically, it's as the mystical side

56:11

of Plato begins to rise to

56:13

the ascent as mysticism in general

56:15

is rising in the Roman East.

56:17

Apollonius of Tiana is generally identified

56:19

as the first great Neopathagorean. They

56:22

emphasize the soul body or spirit

56:24

matter dualism that they get out

56:27

of Plato and that also has

56:29

basically been percolating west from Persia over

56:31

the last 600 years. That

56:34

is laying a lot of groundwork

56:36

for stuff that will bop up

56:39

in Augustine and in Christianity later

56:41

on, possibly to its detriment. Philo

56:43

of Alexandria, though, becomes the first

56:45

great Jewish Pythagorean and he basically

56:48

invents Gematria as a way of

56:50

reconciling Judaism and Pythagoras. He says,

56:53

well, if everything is harmonic, then

56:55

the name of God is harmonic, letters are

56:57

harmonic, numbers are harmonic, letters are numbers. You

57:00

can map God and he sort of

57:02

sets off what becomes Kabbalah. There's a

57:05

Pythagorean known as Sextus who we don't

57:07

know anything else about except he left

57:09

a long list of proverbs, Pythagorean proverbs.

57:11

This is the second century, so sort

57:13

of the high point of the Neopathagorean

57:15

movement. And then there's lots and

57:18

lots of people who at this point pour

57:20

fiery in the Anglicists who are the first

57:22

great Neoplatonists. They write biographies

57:24

of Pythagoras again to claim him for

57:26

Neoplatonism. And so a lot

57:28

of what we think we know about Pythagoras comes

57:30

from Aristotle slagging off

57:32

on Pythagoras or cultists saying Pythagoras

57:34

was actually one of us. Right.

57:37

And speaking of slagging off, one

57:40

of the great make-em-ups that has

57:42

then filtered down into people's belief

57:44

was from Hippolytus of Rome in

57:46

the second century who wrote a

57:48

book refuting all

57:50

heresies against his Christian doctrine

57:53

and lists Druidism, the religion

57:55

of the Celts, as one of

57:58

these and he explains that

58:00

basically it owes its

58:02

origins to Pythagoreanism and was

58:05

brought to them by Zelmoxis,

58:08

a fascinating mythological figure

58:10

who's described as a

58:13

human who achieved godhood and

58:15

was either a slave

58:17

to Pythagoras or his immortal

58:19

mentor and then you know

58:21

later in his adventures goes

58:23

off and teaches Pythagoreanism

58:26

to the Celts and that

58:28

becomes Druidism and that's a

58:30

scene that is picked up hundreds of years

58:32

later over a thousand years later by people

58:34

trying to understand who Druids

58:37

are and attribute the values to them that

58:39

they want to attribute to them. Yeah, Zelmoxis

58:41

shows up in the Dracula dossier and probably

58:43

could get his own HUD at some point

58:45

or his own segment anyway because his HUD

58:47

would be underground and full of the blood

58:49

of impaled corpses not to get away. Anyway

58:52

another sort of the

58:54

last great Neo-Pythagorean, a guy named

58:56

Hierocles of Alexandria, assembles the golden

58:59

verses of Pythagoras which is sort of

59:01

greatest hits of the sentences of Sextus

59:03

with some other stuff taken from Aristotle

59:05

and Hierocles basically is writing

59:08

a 600 year later refutation

59:10

of Aristotle saying that is not what he

59:12

meant here's what he really meant and of

59:14

course here's what he really meant is now

59:16

full of Neoplatonic gods wallop but there we

59:19

are but the golden verses

59:21

survive into medieval times as does

59:24

the Timaeus as does Sextus which

59:26

means that medieval Europeans

59:28

are reading what they think is

59:30

Pythagoras and because Pythagoras

59:32

invents music and astronomy and

59:35

arithmetic they are very impressed by him

59:37

he embedded like half of the sciences

59:39

so he is revered as a great

59:41

wise man there is a Byzantine scholar

59:44

named Michael Celes who takes it on

59:46

himself to assemble every existing fragment of

59:48

Pythagoras he's sort of a Neo-Pythagorean himself

59:50

gets himself in all kinds of trouble

59:53

with the patriarchs Dante

59:55

uses Pythagorean numerology as the

59:57

basis of the divine comedy it's an

59:59

ongoing intellectual strand throughout

1:00:01

the Middle Ages and then

1:00:03

in the Renaissance a guy

1:00:05

named Constantine Lascaris who is

1:00:07

also basically a Pythagorean translates

1:00:09

all of Pythagoras into Latin

1:00:12

and into other European

1:00:14

languages Italian brings it

1:00:16

to Italy and it blows up huge

1:00:19

and becomes another giant wave out of

1:00:21

the Renaissance humanist and

1:00:23

specifically influencing Copernicus who goes and

1:00:25

says well I didn't invent heliocentrism

1:00:28

Pythagoras did that as we know

1:00:30

from these three Pythagorean scientists

1:00:32

who studied it he does

1:00:35

not mention Aristarchus at all

1:00:37

who actually invented heliocentrism Pythagoreans

1:00:40

were very clear the Sun orbits a central

1:00:42

fire but right but does it time you

1:00:44

wonder point to somebody else's but

1:00:46

also Copernicus didn't want to point to

1:00:48

the guy who actually did he wanted

1:00:50

to point to the Pythagoreans which implies

1:00:52

that he's got some skin in the

1:00:54

Pythagorean game Kepler basically announces he's a

1:00:56

Pythagorean he's doing the numerical ratios to

1:00:59

figure out the orbits of the planets Isaac

1:01:01

Newton says Pythagoras came up with gravity and

1:01:04

he Isaac Newton just did the math for

1:01:06

it they were really pro

1:01:08

Pythagoras and even Leibniz Newton's

1:01:10

frenemy his version of the

1:01:12

universe the pre-established harmony is

1:01:14

fundamentally that Pythagorean concept that

1:01:16

Philolas and Croton came up

1:01:19

with where the chaos of

1:01:21

the universe hits rational limits

1:01:23

and so this universal harmony

1:01:25

is knowable by every mind

1:01:28

and that's because every mind is a

1:01:30

monad according to our buddy

1:01:32

John D and John D's monad

1:01:34

is Pythagorean he is not the

1:01:36

only occultist Agrippa says the Pythagoras

1:01:38

had super celestial or angelic insights

1:01:40

Reuchlin points out that the cobbler

1:01:43

is basically Pythagoras and says Pythagoras

1:01:45

was the first cobblist and Robert

1:01:47

flood in his own magical science

1:01:49

is a Pythagorean and he uses

1:01:52

Pythagorean numerology and in his musicology

1:01:54

and that's a lot of where

1:01:56

Pythagorean numerology heads into the

1:01:58

mainstream occult as opposed to stray cobbler

1:02:00

as through Robert Flood. So Pythagoras is

1:02:03

still getting it done there in the

1:02:05

1600s. Right. And that's

1:02:07

around the period when people are looking

1:02:09

at the druids, picking up that little

1:02:11

snippet that says it's a moxus, taught

1:02:14

them Pythagoreanism, and says, oh, well, they

1:02:16

were great scientists, the druids, just like

1:02:18

us and just like Pythagoreans. Exactly. And

1:02:20

so basically at a time before there's

1:02:23

a split before the esoteric and the

1:02:25

scientific, people can look to Pythagoras

1:02:27

and his disciples and say

1:02:30

either here is where the science

1:02:32

comes from or here is where the mystical insight

1:02:34

comes from. And this is why all of the

1:02:36

occultists that you've named are assigning

1:02:38

it. And then again, this sort

1:02:40

of thought, this attempt to salvage Pythagoras for

1:02:43

science, continues down into at least the 1970s,

1:02:46

where people are saying, remember our old

1:02:48

Akusmatikoi and Mathematicoi, the attempt to say,

1:02:50

well, there's real science that Pythagoras taught

1:02:52

and a bunch of goofs who couldn't

1:02:55

do science. And that's where all the

1:02:57

mysticism comes from. And that line of

1:02:59

thought goes down pretty much to the

1:03:01

turn of this century. And it's not until

1:03:03

you have the sort of new classicists who

1:03:06

come in and say, after

1:03:08

ER Dodds, who said this in the 40s,

1:03:11

but anyway, who say the classics are not

1:03:13

one thing and another. It's not Neapolitan. It's

1:03:15

fudge ripple at best and are

1:03:17

beginning to sort of, I think, get to the

1:03:19

actual truth, which was, as you say, that there

1:03:21

just was no separation, certainly in the sixth century

1:03:23

BC. And when

1:03:26

you're inventing the monastery, there is going to

1:03:28

be an unescapable amount of ritual that has

1:03:30

to go along with it, just like there

1:03:32

is in, say, the academic year now. So

1:03:35

you can have your occultists in pretty much

1:03:37

any era, say Pythagoras,

1:03:40

as their influence. You can associate

1:03:43

a whole bunch of different mystical artifacts

1:03:45

with him that you could find as

1:03:47

original one stringed instrument, where

1:03:49

he proved his harmonic theory. You could

1:03:52

sense the power of unity in the

1:03:54

universe. There's all sorts of kind of

1:03:56

background details that you could use in

1:03:58

order to do that. order to put

1:04:00

him in something depending on what your cosmology

1:04:03

is, certainly his idea

1:04:05

of a universal, essentially

1:04:08

benevolent harmony is another thought that

1:04:10

would be ripped away from you

1:04:12

by your encounter with the

1:04:15

Lovecraftian Old One. If you're doing sort

1:04:17

of a spell jammer or even down

1:04:19

to 17th century space pirates, you could

1:04:23

maybe sail around the Fagorean universe, not

1:04:25

the boring old solar system that we

1:04:27

have, one with a counter-Earth and

1:04:30

a central fire and all the things ratcheting

1:04:32

around in the constant beautiful music of

1:04:34

heaven that gives you the ability

1:04:36

to harmonically tune your ship's ropes

1:04:39

to carry you from planet to planet in

1:04:41

all manner of exciting ways. Well, on that

1:04:43

note, I think it's time for you and

1:04:46

I Ken to board our harmonic spaceship and

1:04:48

sail around the strange

1:04:50

Fagorean universe for about a week and

1:04:53

then come back with another episode of

1:04:55

this year podcast. While

1:04:58

having once again been talked about, it's time to thank our

1:05:00

sponsors. Atlas Games. Pelgrain

1:05:02

Press. Arc Dream. Dork Tower

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and Pro Fantasy Software. Music

1:05:07

as always is by James Semple. Audio

1:05:10

editing by Rob Borges. Support

1:05:12

our Patreon at patreon.com backslash

1:05:14

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1:05:16

podcast's pocket squares by joining

1:05:18

estimable backers. Jan Zaleski. Adam

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1:05:23

And Sean Daniels. Where the show

1:05:25

or drink it from a mug with Ken and Robin

1:05:27

merch at tpublic.com/users slash Ken

1:05:30

Robin. Grab our latest design. I

1:05:32

hate this stupid argument. Please start

1:05:34

the next stupid argument. On X

1:05:36

he's at Kenitite. And on Blue

1:05:39

Sky he's robindylaws.bifke.social. See you next

1:05:41

time and once again we will

1:05:43

talk about stuff. Thank

1:05:54

you.