Rambling 126: Mythologies About Nature
/Where do mythologies come from? And do any of them accurately explain Earthly phenomena? Does any mythology unpack nature the way we unpack mythology? Answers to that and more on this episode!
The duo take to exploring the stories told by ancient civilizations in order to explain the reason for the existence of natural wonders. When the Gods get involved, events get weird and the origin of Jesus and Loki’s sexual ventures are revealed!
+Episode Details
Topics Discussed
- Crater Lake
- Devil’s Tower
- Fairy Cycles
- Aurora Borealis
- Chinese Jesus
- Solar Winds
- Spirits
- Greta Thunberg
- The Original Volcano
- The Legend of Zelda
- Dragon Blood Tree
- The Shelter of the Gods
- Loki Horse Son
Art by IG @Zero_Lupo
Our Links:
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+Transcript
Cristina: Warning. This program contains strong themes meant for a mature audience. Discretion is advised.
Jack: Going live in 5, 4.
Cristina: What does live mean? Welcome to Just Conversation, the show where we ground humanity's most absurd and baffling ideas and childish ways. I'm your host, Christina.
Jack: And I'm Jack.
Cristina: And if you haven't yet, remember to hit that subscribe button to get notified the second new episodes are released.
Jack: Yes. And this show is most enjoyable with the listening partners, so be sure to go find someone that can listen with you, whether it be by force, whether it be by, you know, coercion. You bribe somebody. You bring bags of money.
Cristina: Money.
Jack: Bags of money. And be like, hey, you can listen to. You don't have to give them the money. It's got to trick them into taking the money.
Cristina: Trick them into taking the money and.
Jack: Trick them into thinking they're gonna take the money.
Cristina: Oh, okay.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: Yes, yes, yes.
Jack: And then they. They potentially listen to the podcast. Or you show them your gun. What, by any means necessary.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Obviously, you can't kill them because you need them to listen to the podcast. That's the point.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Like, I'm not saying don't throw somebody in the hole you've got in your basement and then just turn on the podcast. Like, I didn't say don't do that.
Cristina: You probably shouldn't do that.
Jack: You probably shouldn't do that. We don't condone kidnapping. But what you do in your private time has nothing to do with me.
Cristina: Yes. As long as we have listeners.
Jack: As long as we have listeners, like, look, you're the type of fan you are is more about you, less about us.
Cristina: We're just encouraging you to share.
Jack: Share the show. Share the show. How you do that. That's not.
Cristina: We don't need to know.
Jack: Yeah, don't blame us for it.
Cristina: Yes, don't blame us for that. I love the Irish mythology so much that I decided to talk a tiny bit. I want to talk a tiny bit about it. If you remember that we talked about how fairies were gods once upon a time, and they shrunk into fairies. So then in those stories, the Irish stories, the people of the story became giants. And one of those stories is about Finn McCool. He's a giant from Ireland. There's a giant from Scotland across from him that wanted to fight him. So he made a bridge to. Over there, and that's a. There's a picture of what that was. I mean, it became. Because he destroys the bridge or they destroy the bridge. If they fought, they destroyed the bridge. In one story, they fought, and he won. But in the second story, he dressed up. He saw the other giant, whose name is Ben, and he got scared, so his wife helped him and dressed him up as a baby. And then Ben saw Finn and was like, if that's the baby of the giant, then the giant must look so much bigger than me. And so he got scared, and when he ran away, he destroyed the bridge.
Jack: So the baby couldn't follow him.
Cristina: What? Finn didn't want to fight him. Why would he want to follow him? Finn dressed up as a baby because he didn't want to fight the giant.
Jack: The giant broke the bridge?
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: In using it.
Cristina: In using it. I don't know how he destroyed the bridge. He just destroyed it with his hands. I don't know.
Jack: The giant crossed the bridge and then broke it.
Cristina: Broke the. He broke it when he went back home. He crossed it to see Finn or to look for Finn, and then he crossed it again, and then he destroyed it when he crossed the river.
Jack: Finn couldn't follow.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Okay.
Cristina: And Finn didn't want to fight him anyway because he was bigger. That other guy was bigger than him. Yeah, but. Yes. And I don't know. I don't think that story is true. I think the other giant, he told me, like, he doesn't believe it either. Like, what makes no sense about the story is why would he destroy the bridge the other giant made? If he's a scare. He's afraid of this giant. You know, Finn made the bridge, right? Then Ben saw this baby and then runs away, destroying the bridge. But Finn could make the bridge again. So that's. That's the giant's argument.
Jack: He's like, he was just scared at the moment.
Cristina: No. He's telling me. No. Ben is like, that's not true. Ben is a coward. He destroyed. He made it. He saw me, and then he destroyed it. But I don't know who to believe. I. I kind of do believe Ben, though. But, I don't know. Nice to imagine Finn dressed up as a baby.
Jack: That's a weird solution to a problem. Like, it makes sense, I guess. If they look at him and they're like, wow, that's a big baby. I can only imagine what the adults look like. Yeah, but, like, how genius of a plan to assume that they wouldn't just believe, wow, he's dressed like a baby.
Cristina: Yes. Like, what if. Like, what if he didn't know what he looked like? Like, that plan only works because he didn't. But if he asked around and was like, hey, how does this giant I'm gonna fight look like? And then they described that guy, or they pointed to that guy. Like, how embarrassing is it for that.
Jack: For Finn, who's just dressed like a baby.
Cristina: Just dressed like a baby? Yeah, yeah.
Jack: It's that guy over there dressed like a giant baby.
Cristina: Is he more scarier to fight than like, he's dressed like a baby?
Jack: I mean, there's an argument to be made that he's way crazier.
Cristina: Yeah, that might be a problem. I don't know. But the story was made because that column that we saw in Ireland, it has the same weird thing that's going on is happening in Scotland right across. So that's why they thought, oh, maybe there was a bridge there or something that connected from both sides to both sides.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: So that's pretty cool. And have other amazing stories like that. There's a place called Crater Lake in Oregon and there's a myth of how it was created. There's like a little island in it. Now they believe that a thousand years ago there was a mountain there. And the God of the underworld was standing on top of the mountain and he saw a beautiful woman. And he was like, I want to take her home with me. And she refused him. So he exploded the mountain out of anger and it shot out and hurt all the people around it. So then the God of the upper world came to save the day and fought him and drove him back down into the mountain. And then he covered the mountain with water. And that's the crater. That's water with a little. The tip of the mountain is reaching out.
Jack: Got you. That's really weird.
Cristina: Yes. Alright. There's a place in Bolivia called Salar de Oiuna. It's the world's largest salt flat, where there's a photo of it, super cool looking. And there's. I think there's a bunch of mountains surrounding it. One of them is called Tanupa. And one of the stories, actually there's a few stories about why that is there. And it revolves around this mountain called Tanupa, this volcano named Tanupa. The first story goes that once upon a time the volcanoes were walking around and they were able to talk to each other and stuff. And there was just one female volcano, while the others were male. And one day she got pregnant and none of the volcanoes knew who the father was because she was with all of them. And they got super angry. They fought each other and someone kidnapped her child. Then the gods punished them by not letting them move or talk anymore. So that they're now in place as volcanoes. And she cries all the time. She cried after she realized, I guess, her child was missing. And that created the salt flat that we see in the picture. It's a combination of her tears and breath.
Jack: Okay.
Cristina: Yeah. And in the second story, it's almost the same. It's her tears and breast milk. It's always her tears and breast milk. But it's. She's having problems with another volcano because he's cheating on her with another volcano and she was crying about it. Then there's the Devil's Tower in Wyoming and it looks pretty cool. I wish there was some devil story.
Jack: That does look badass as f***. What the h*** is that?
Cristina: There's a bunch of Native American stories about it. And it's all revolving around bears.
Jack: Right. But what the h*** is it?
Cristina: It's a mountain.
Jack: That's a f****** mountain?
Cristina: Yeah. It's a cool a** mountain.
Jack: Devil's Tower is just a mountain.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: What the h*** happened to the mountain?
Cristina: Bears clawed it. All the stores revolved around bears because of the those lines. They think it's like claw marks.
Jack: Right. I wonder what like in reality happened.
Cristina: Oh, in reality.
Jack: Oh, it is. That's crazy looking.
Cristina: It's really crazy looking. I get the devil's name too. If he's maybe there. Think like the American version is like the devil did it or something.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: Lame or whatever. But in the other stories, it's like kids run up the mountain and then they pray to the their God to save them. And then the mountain rises up and then the claws are from the bears that were chasing them.
Jack: So it wasn't a mountain at.
Cristina: Sorry, no, no.
Jack: They were just standing somewhere and shut up.
Cristina: And then the rocks shut up.
Jack: That's crazy.
Cristina: That's a crazy.
Jack: It looks so unique. I like what it. What the f****** nature could do that though.
Cristina: You don't think it's a volcano related? I feel like a lot of these are volcano related.
Jack: Like it's the tip of a volcano, I guess.
Cristina: I don't know. But the lines going, I mean, who knows? Volcanoes are weird. The things they make are weird. So I don't know. Because the castaway that we saw was because of volcanoes. I think like that had to do with magma, the magic of magma. Then there's these things in southwest Africa in a place called Namibia called fairy circles. Fairy circles. Look at them.
Jack: Fairy circles. They look like drops of water. Not drops, but like if there was like moss on the water and you dropped a drop of water into a lake or something. Okay, so there's like moss on a lake and then you drop like a raindrop into the lake and then the opening that forms in the moss where the raindrop hits the water. That's what this looks like.
Cristina: Yeah. You want to know something super interesting?
Jack: What?
Cristina: They don't really know why.
Jack: Why it happens.
Cristina: Why it happens? Yeah, like there's a bunch of reasonable things of why. Like termites is a big theory. Some combination of termites and the plants. It's type of plants.
Jack: But no, this is on the ground, not water, right?
Cristina: Yeah, it's on the ground. So it's. It's a tough to. It's a toughie to explain. Yeah, the grasslands, that's what it's called. They're barren spots called fairy circles because they're very circular. They're really. They really are pretty nice. But there's also local myths about what caused those fairies circles that are not fairy related actually. So if that's what you were thinking, one of them is their footsteps of giants or spirits. And the other one that tour guides like to use is that they're formed by dragons. That a dragon that's inside the earth, that its breath is like poisonous and it's destroying the vegetation in that type of way.
Jack: Why circularly?
Cristina: Why circularly? I don't know. Those tourist guys don't know what they're talking about.
Jack: Yeah, like that's an unthought out story.
Cristina: Because I guess dragons are cool. So they wanted, you know, dragons. What's cooler than fairies?
Jack: I would argue that the other side of the planet is something like subspace in which it works in opposite. And while on this end it looks like ground, on that end it looks like water. And then when water drops do hit that lake, it creates this void that we see here, these clearings. Which is to say that when we're out here in lakes covered in moss and junk and water from our side lands on their side, it's land and it creates these sort of gaps of vegetation.
Cristina: Is that sci fi? I don't know. What kind of explanation is that?
Jack: I don't know.
Cristina: It's very strange.
Jack: Yeah, it's great.
Cristina: It's great. It's a great explanation. Your explanation is better than these other.
Jack: Because they just don't like take into account what's happening. It's just like here's a thing.
Cristina: Yes, here's a thing. The termites, maybe termites probably. Then the ouroborealis, which is a beautiful thing. You've probably seen this many times. Yes. Like it's still. It's very. It's beautiful. I can't imagine someone that sees this every day. And I mean, I guess if you.
Jack: Saw it every day, anything you see every day, you get over.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: We are surrounded by ginormous buildings that we see every day. And it's like, sweet. Another big building. Yeah, but we're like, man, awesome. To see, like a huge mountain. Meanwhile, people living across from a mountain are like, whatever, dude. I wonder what the city looks like, though.
Cristina: I know.
Jack: We're ungrateful. We all suck. Anybody who's over there seeing this s*** every day is like, oh, this garbage is happening again. Blocking the stars. I wanted the stargaze today. And this stupid Aurora wants to be in the f****** way.
Cristina: Yes, well, Aurora has so many. So many explanations, I guess from all over the world. Because a lot of places. See, it's not just a one location specific thing, I think. Right. So in Norse mythology, the lights are from the shields of the Valkyrie. If you remember the Valkyries, they're getting the soldiers to Valhalla.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: So that's them. That's pretty cool.
Jack: That's their spirit.
Cristina: That's their shield shining. But it could be their spirit. It could be the spirits that they're grabbing. Who knows? Because a lot of them involve spirits.
Jack: Right. But like, this is just a floating Valkyrie that is not in spirit form and happens to be in the sky. If it's not a spirit of a Valkyrie.
Cristina: Well, it's not. Well, to them it's caused by the light reflecting off the shield and armor. So I don't know.
Jack: Right. Which means there's a floating Valkyrie. Or hundreds of thousands. Thousands of floating Valkyries.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: And they're not even dead.
Cristina: No, they're just.
Jack: They could fly. Yeah, it's a thing they could do.
Cristina: Why not? They're. Why. But you think it would be their spirits.
Jack: No, I'm saying that if they don't think it's their spirits, they're idiots. Because how are they trying to comp. How are they explaining this? It's just like. Yeah, we see Valkyries in battle all the time. Sometimes they die. It's like, why don't they just fly over their opponents?
Cristina: They don't see Valkyries.
Jack: Valkyries are soldiers.
Cristina: No, Valkyries are taking the souls of the soldiers that are dying.
Jack: Valkyrie is a female soldier in.
Cristina: Yeah, Valhalla. But we don't see them. I don't think we see them.
Jack: So they do float?
Cristina: Maybe. I don't know. Like, do they. Would they say they see Odin?
Jack: I Don't know.
Cristina: I don't know how, you know, that stuff works compared to their reality.
Jack: I wonder how the h*** Valkyrie is taking the soul then. Because they're not even. Based on the logic, they're not even here.
Cristina: But if they are here, they'd be floating.
Jack: Yeah, they had to travel here and then they're just, you know. They float.
Cristina: Yes, I guess they float.
Jack: So Norse mythology, Valkyries are like a.
Cristina: God Lesser because they're working for a God.
Jack: Okay.
Cristina: I don't know.
Jack: Even gods work for Odin.
Cristina: Oh, okay. I'm not sure. I don't know where the Valkyries fit in. The gods in Norse mythology. They're in the low tier, though. They're probably C tier.
Jack: Yeah. They're like soldiers for gods.
Cristina: Yeah. And then China has the oldest records of the aurora borealis. One of their stories is on autumn of 2000 BC, there was a young woman who was sitting alone in the wilderness, and then she saw the lights and it was so beautiful that she got pregnant and she gave birth to us. To a boy Jesus.
Jack: Okay, so let's. Let's go back a couple of notches. Lady's sitting outside, the sky turns. Beautiful. It's so beautiful.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: She got pregnant.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: And Japanese Jesus is born.
Cristina: China.
Jack: Chinese Jesus is born.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: So that's. That's the order we're going with here. She sits outside. It's so beautiful. Whoops. I guess it got me pregnant.
Cristina: Well, this Chinese Jesus does more than Jesus, though.
Jack: I like random street performers, do more than Jesus did.
Cristina: Yes. Well, this guy, he grows up to be the emperor, and he's known for starting the Chinese culture and the ancestor of all of China, all Chinese people come from him. He's the beginning of China.
Jack: So he's like, wait, what the f***? How the f*** was this lady there then?
Cristina: She was before the Chinese culture. Okay, she was there, but she was like the native before Chinese.
Jack: Random lady walks into totally abandoned, empty lands. There's nobody been here before, ever.
Cristina: She was the first born.
Jack: She traveled who knows how far to reach an area where she can look up and see something that the nearest person can't see because they're that far. It's in the sky and the nearest person can't see it. They must be hundreds of feet, thousands of miles. She just. Crazy walking journey. She was like bear Grylls in this s*** on her.
Cristina: Maybe God told her to do this journey.
Jack: Then she got to this abandoned land, and then one day she's just looking up and she's like, hey, that's a cool little. Oh, my God. It keeps getting brighter. Wow. It's so big. It's so big. It's inside me.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: I'm pregnant now.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: That thing, that must have been God. Now I start China.
Cristina: Yes. Well, she doesn't. Her son does. Her Jesus.
Jack: But she started China.
Cristina: She started.
Jack: Technically, she started China. She had the first life on that soil.
Cristina: No, because Mary isn't the starter of Christianity. It's Jesus.
Jack: Well, to be fair, Mary is the starter of Jesus.
Cristina: Exactly. But it's two separate things.
Jack: No, 100% not. Because Mary's creation of with Jesus came Christianity. Jesus didn't start Christianity. Jesus was just a preacher.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Mary gave birth to the word of God.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: As did Asian Mary, who started Chinese Jesus. And thus the Chinese culture.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: So she began the Chinese culture.
Cristina: Okay, so you're saying Mary started it all too.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: Mary is the reason that Jesus and Christianity touches children.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Because of Mary, priests touch children. That's the connection I'm making here.
Cristina: What we didn't have.
Jack: If we didn't have Mary, this wouldn't be a problem.
Cristina: Do you think Mary was touched by the aurora borealis?
Jack: I don't know. Maybe. It's just that this Asian Mary is calling God the aurora. What does God look like? He's anomalous.
Cristina: He's a bright light. But she would have been blinded by his light.
Jack: She was apparently very blinded.
Jack: It was so beautiful. She thought it was inside her. She wasn't really capable of telling distance anymore. She was pretty blind. The story tells us a lot.
Cristina: Well, we got a lot from Australian natives. They have the light that shows up in Australia. They commonly see it as fire. Because it's red. Because it's red like fire. Look at that. Look at it. It's red. It's burning and. Yeah, so it's thought of as fire. And the people from the Western Victoria call them ashes, while people in the eastern Victoria see them as bushfires of the spirit world. It's a lot of spirit world stuff. South Australia sees them as evil spirits creating a large fire. And South Australians that see over the Kangaroo island see as a campfire of the spirits in the land of the dead.
Jack: A campfire in the land of the dead?
Cristina: Yes, because they need to get warm, too. In Southwest Queensland, the ouroborealis was fires of the spirits who spoke to people. And only male spirits as males. Only male elders were allowed to look at and speak to these spirits.
Jack: And what were these spirits?
Cristina: Their ancestors. Their ancestors were the spirits.
Jack: So they can Speak across time?
Cristina: Basically, yeah. Yeah.
Jack: There's a bridge to the past.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Now, these are the spirits of the ancestors. Or is it like they think this is, like, by spirit, they mean they can communicate through time to their ancestors in the past?
Cristina: I think it's true. Spirits. I don't think they're thinking of time travel.
Jack: Okay, so it's not like in the past, their ancestors are looking at the same thing speaking to the future.
Cristina: I don't think so. That'd be cool. But then that kind of interesting plot device, that would have been an example of time travel in some religious way or, you know, some myth or something. That'd be amazing.
Jack: That'd be interesting. There's a bunch of that, though. Anybody who could tell the future, anybody making predictions, it never just happened in a vision. So, like, I guess some of them did. But there wasn't. Like, there were other situations in which there was, like, a thing they were talking to or somewhere. They were seeing it. And this is some sort of bridge through time.
Cristina: Yeah, I mean, if you think about.
Jack: It logically, I guess.
Cristina: But they weren't saying it like that.
Jack: No, they were saying, like, you know, I'm talking to a flaming bush that's telling me the secrets or whatever. But it's like, maybe this is a catalyst and it's connected to something.
Cristina: Yes. And if you believe in aliens, it's aliens. Pretty much, it's aliens communicating. So ridiculous. And the first Old Norse account, one of the first written, one of the first things written about it, or one of the oldest things written about it. In 81,230, the author heard about the phenomenon from people returning to Greenland. He gave three explanations to what was making the lights. They were. The ocean was surrounded by vast fire. The fires. That's one. One is the ocean is surrounded by a vast fire. Two is the sun flares could reach around the world to the night side. And three is glaciers could store energy so that they'll eventually become fluorescent.
Jack: That would be an awesome world to live in.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: If glaciers just glow.
Cristina: They just glow.
Jack: They just glow.
Cristina: An ocean being surrounded by fire. That's crazy.
Jack: That's flat Earth.
Cristina: That's like, whoa, it's ice to them. What if we found out it was fire? What?
Jack: I guess, like, far enough. It would have to be. Right. If it's infinitely flat, that'll just. S*** happens.
Cristina: Eventually you will find fire.
Jack: Yeah, eventually. It's encircled by fire.
Cristina: Yeah. What about his second theory? The sun flares are reaching around the world at night.
Jack: Literally happens. But when There's a solar flare, and our magnetism causes that.
Cristina: What do they look like?
Jack: Usually the. They light up the aurora borealis. That's kind of what's happening. That's pretty accurate.
Cristina: Oh, look at him. That.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: What? Well, I like his other explanations better.
Jack: Yeah. Solar flares hitting the magnetic field of the Earth causes that. Not a solar flare, but a solar wind, which is essentially a solar flare. Basically, it's just a radiation flying towards us. And our magnetic field protects us from getting baked by all the radiation coming down. And it curbs around the magnetic field, causing the answer.
Cristina: He wasn't there, but he's like.
Jack: He's like, close. He was close. That was, like, pretty on the spot for somebody who had no. The. No clue what he was talking about.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Like, he's like that guy from. From the Good Place that he just kind of, like, guessed what heaven was like.
Cristina: Oh.
Jack: And, like, got it real f****** accurate. And then he became a hero to everybody.
Cristina: Yeah. Except it turned out that he was totally wrong.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: Gotta forget about. That's so sad. And that show. So good. Why is it over? Although I love the solution. I do like the ending of that.
Jack: Yeah. They really explored it beyond the most philosophical points.
Cristina: That's pretty good then. The Native American myth is that the lights are spirits of their friends dancing.
Jack: In the sky because they're being trolled by their friends.
Cristina: I guess when they're very happy, the lights look brighter. So you know how your friends are doing. If it's dim, then they must be not so happy.
Jack: H*** must be happening. It's wartime.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: That's interesting. Did they believe that? Man, there's my problem with spirits. All right. If spirits are watching you at all times, Right. Like, at some point you got to f*** your wife, your grandma. Spirit is just watching you now. It's uncomfortable.
Cristina: I don't care about that. I do care about, like, if I'm pooping. That's kind of disturbing.
Jack: Do you care about being watched, pooping more than being watched f******, yeah.
Cristina: Yes, I do.
Jack: That's weird.
Cristina: Why is that weird? Because, like, they've done it. They know what it is.
Jack: They've also pooped, and they know what it is.
Cristina: I don't know. Mines could be special, Right? I don't know. There's a lot of situations where I wouldn't want someone to be watching me, I guess.
Jack: But sex is not one of them.
Cristina: Sex is one of them, but I feel like pooping is higher on my list. Sex is a close second. I'm guessing maybe just Your grandma watching you bang.
Jack: You don't give a f***.
Cristina: I'm sure she is. It's like, would she rather watch me bang or she could.
Jack: She probably cleaned your a** after you took a poop at some point, so.
Cristina: She should be more okay with watching me.
Jack: Yeah, she's way more familiar with that than watching you get b****.
Cristina: Would you rather watch someone have sex or take a poop?
Jack: Interesting. I like how you flipped it. I see what you're saying now, but I guess what you're thinking about is the wrong way, though. I like how you flipped it. Because if you're the ghost, what's your preference? Yes, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about you as the person. Why would you care what the ghost's preference is? If they're watching both, they're watching both. Yeah. Why do you care which one?
Cristina: I don't know if they. They might be watching one over the other. But then, you know what?
Jack: Okay, now let's think about how much worse this is.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: Your grandma is like, h***, yeah, I'm gonna watch her have sex instead.
Cristina: I don't think she would be watching me have sex. I feel like she'd be watching.
Jack: She's watching everybody all the time, but she gets to choose one of two moments. She only gets to choose one of two moments. She has to throw one moment away, and she's like, I can either watch her poop and respect her sex privacy or f*** watching her poop and I can watch her get f*****.
Cristina: That's your girl watching me, though. She'd be watching a stranger.
Jack: No, she'd be watching everybody have sex.
Cristina: No. What? Ghosts can't do that.
Jack: Ghosts are like God. And in this case, your grandma hovers over your life.
Cristina: She hovers over a stranger.
Jack: She has no option. She only wants his family. She only watches family. No, that's why you see your family dancing in the aurora. Because they're watching over you. Or your friends. People you know are watching over you.
Cristina: No, they're not.
Jack: That is exactly how the stories go.
Cristina: That's horrible.
Jack: How is that any better than. I mean, how's that any worse than strangers?
Cristina: I don't.
Jack: Complete, total strangers who were probably gonna grab your hand in a train one day without your permission. Now they can just. Like, I get to watch your f***. Anyways, whatever. I won the lottery.
Cristina: I don't know. I just think about myself, though. I would rather not watch someone poop.
Jack: But you rather watch somebody have sex in that exchange.
Cristina: If there's still only two.
Jack: There's only two.
Cristina: And it's like, okay, one is gonna be like watching p***, which is whatever. And then one is watching poop. And that is disgusting.
Jack: Yeah, but you're thinking about you being the ghost.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Why do you care what the ghost is doing if you're. Who's being watched?
Cristina: Just the ghost Doing what?
Jack: Why do you think? Why do you care what the ghost prefers?
Cristina: I don't know.
Jack: If you're the one being watched?
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: How does that affect your life? What they prefer? It doesn't matter what they prefer. Yeah, they're watching. You don't even know what they're watching. You just know they're watching one or the other. You're not uncomfortable with the fact that they're probably just like, I'm a watcher. F***, that's awesome. Yeah, she's my granddaughter. But f*** it, I'm a watcher.
Cristina: It's all disturbing.
Jack: Get that D?
Cristina: It's all disturbing.
Jack: Or if it's a complete stranger. Yeah, she didn't let me touch her hand when I was in the train. But you know what? She doesn't know I got hit by a bus immediately after that. Now Imma just watch her forever.
Cristina: No, no one's watching.
Jack: That same creep who was gonna go home and beat off to touching your hand without your permission anyways is now infinitely for all of eternity, beating off to you f****** people for free. Not even. Only fans charges or anything.
Cristina: Maybe I get something special when I die. If I had a bunch of ghost viewers, we don't know that.
Jack: That'd be crazy, right?
Cristina: Yeah, like I'm winning ghost points right now.
Jack: I don't know, man. Or you get to ghost location and get raped immediately by all the people that were watching you because now you're a superstar.
Cristina: But if you're a ghost, like, can you even rape?
Jack: I don't know.
Cristina: Maybe because I thought the whole point of watching other people that are alive is because you can't do anything.
Jack: Who said based on what?
Cristina: Why are you wasting your time watching people then?
Jack: I don't know.
Cristina: You do whatever you want.
Jack: They probably do whatever they want and watch people. They can watch you without being seen. Why would they not do that?
Cristina: Because they could do other things. I don't know.
Jack: Yeah, they're gonna watch you get and then they're gonna go with you. In their mind.
Cristina: They just watch p*** because they can watch.
Jack: They are watching p***. That's exactly what they're doing. Except you're the channel.
Cristina: I don't know. I feel like their lives have to be a little different.
Jack: Why?
Cristina: Why would it be just like this?
Jack: Why wouldn't it?
Cristina: It's so lame. It's so lame.
Jack: If it isn't like this, you're basically saying you believe in God and there's a laid out plan and map that we're following. Or we just move forward to another plane that we adjust to and live there until we move from that one.
Cristina: We can't be stalking the past though.
Jack: We literally own photos.
Cristina: We gotta burn those photos.
Jack: We have video recordings. We do nothing but stalk the past. That's 99%. Yeah, 99% of everything is us fixated on what's already happened.
Cristina: That's horrible. It's the worst thing ever. You gotta stop that.
Jack: Good luck. Call Greta Thornburg. Maybe she'll help you.
Cristina: Okay. Wow, it's so disturbing.
Jack: Isn't Greta Thornburg a teenager or some s***? Now she's over here like her rebellion sage. Probably like smacking cigarettes back. Just throwing them into the wood heads, not giving a. She's like the environment. These old people think they can hold us down. I don't even care anymore.
Cristina: The whole robots and like we gotta destroy all humans.
Jack: Nah, man. I think she's probably just going through her rebellious teenage face. Probably like a goth right now. Smoking hella cigarettes and just throwing them into the driest part of the wood. She's like, watch it burn.
Cristina: She's gonna go visit California.
Jack: She wants to recreate California elsewhere. She's like, let's see if we can do this in Florida.
Cristina: I guess that's fine. I don't know.
Jack: She's not even like Amer. Which the f*** is she from? Some other place, Some other Scotland.
Cristina: She lives in German, I think. I don't know. Oh, maybe. Anyway, the next place is in Italy. I don't know if you know about this place. It's an island. It's the volcano. It's the volcano that other volcanoes are named after. It is the original volcano.
Jack: It's called Volcano. Volcano.
Cristina: It's called Volcano. It is called volcano.
Jack: So it's volcano. It's Volcano. Volcano.
Cristina: Yeah, it's Volcano. Volcano. It is the volcano. Look at it. It's huge. It's island, but it's a volcano. And this volcano. Volcano. The volcano from Volcano. In Roman mythology, the volcano on the island is the chimney from Falcon, the Roman God of fire and metalwork. He has a workshop there. And that's the chimney of it in.
Jack: The center of the earth.
Cristina: Yeah, I guess that's co. Under the volcano is the workshop.
Jack: Interesting, interesting. So there's a workshop at the center of everything because isn't that how Thor's hammer was made?
Cristina: In the center of a star? Oh, I don't know. Yes. That's not just in the galaxy movies. I don't know. That was based on Norse mythology too.
Jack: Yes.
Cristina: Okay. And the island grows bigger because the cinders and the ashes that he cleans out of his workshop go onto the island. Although it's really the magma, it's really just the magma of the volcano. And earthquakes that come before or within the explosions of ash is due to Vulcan doing his work. He's making weapons for their God, Mars. It's for his armies to wage war and stuff. So he's making their weapons and that's explaining the volcano and it exploding and all that stuff.
Jack: Okay, so when it erupts and has a big explosion, is that. There's a lot of work going on?
Cristina: Yeah, it's a lot of, well, him working on the weapons going on, so. That's cute. Yeah. Look at that volcano. It's a huge volcano. Pretty cool volcano. Okay. I don't care for this place. Okay. And then there's this really interesting looking place in Turkey. They're called the fairy chimneys. They're like little. If you can see, it looks like little homes inside the cave or something, like little doors or windows or something happening on the chimneys. The stories are that the chimneys were built from fairies who live underground. Because fairies do that sometimes. They live underground. They live in random locations. Wait, where is this in Turkey? They're called fairy chimneys in Turkey. And they're like mountains with a bunch of holes in them. If I zoom in, I guess you'll see closer. Looks like.
Jack: Right. So is this what the characters in Legend of Zelda, Wind Waker, are based on? The bird people.
Cristina: The bird people?
Jack: Yeah. They were originally some of the people who lived in Kokiri Village, one of the villages. And they. The. The town below got flooded because the whole world got flooded. And the people evolved to be these.
Cristina: Bird things and they live on in like chimney looking. Oh, they live on the mountain.
Jack: In and out of the mountain.
Cristina: Oh, crap. Oh, maybe. They probably take things from all over. So. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they have fairies, but I don't know. Those birds aren't seen as fairies in that world though, right? No, just that little thing is a fairy. They haven't seen more than one type of fairy.
Jack: I mean, I guess humans probably consider a lot of these creatures to be equal to fairies. Even if they don't use that exact same word. They're all like mythical things. And to people they're still like, wow.
Cristina: Yeah. Oh, really? Okay. In that. In the world. You mean those people are.
Jack: Yes.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: Like if you look at the. They used to call the Kokiri village people the children fairy kids.
Cristina: The fairy kids?
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: That's adorable.
Jack: Like, that was literally the term they use on them.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: They used to say Link was a fairy boy.
Cristina: Well, they were fairies. Wait, did they grow up? They didn't grow up, right?
Jack: No. Link was the only one. Because he wasn't a fairy.
Cristina: No, but the kids. No, they stayed the same size. They probably did. Age? No, not age, age. But like time did pass by in that village or. No, like time was frozen there.
Jack: What do you mean?
Cristina: Like they were still young, in their 40s. They're still kids in their 40s or whatever.
Jack: I mean, if you choose to count time, I guess.
Cristina: Yeah, that's what I mean. Like they're. They. In a way that sounds very fair. Like if.
Jack: But I don't get what you do. Referencing time. That part doesn't make any sense though.
Cristina: Because if it was no time, then they're just children. Like they're not aging or nothing. Because there's no time.
Jack: Aren't aging. They're not little old people. Yeah, they're always kids.
Cristina: They're always kids.
Jack: Yes. They don't stop being children.
Cristina: Like their minds don't change.
Jack: I don't think so. No.
Cristina: You know.
Jack: No.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: I think they are literally just kids. They depend on the great Deku tree to be like the father figure.
Cristina: Oh, okay. They don't ever want to not be kids.
Jack: They don't know anything else.
Cristina: Oh, they don't know anything. Yeah, I guess.
Jack: Jan, they can't leave.
Cristina: They can't leave. What? Alright then. In Yemen, there is a place that has these trees called dragon blood trees. And they look really cool and strange. And one of the stories is that the first dragon blood tree was created from the blood of a wounded dragon after battling an elephant. And then the tree's blood is the dragon's blood, which the locals use as medicine. And then the second story from the dragon tree, it has to do with Hercules and he. In the Greek mythology, Hercules has a bunch of tasks that he has to do. The 12 Labors of Hercules.
Jack: Right.
Cristina: And in the 11th task, he has to steal the golden apples that the dragon is protecting on that island in that location. And Hercules has to kill the dragon. And then that's the dragon's blood that's flowing in the island and that's what made the dragon trees. Because I guess the dragon's tree does have something that looks like blood oozing out of it, but it's just the SAP, the SAP of the tree SAP.
Jack: Tree SAP? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cristina: Unique. So it looks like.
Jack: Oh, there's red tree SAP is pretty common.
Cristina: Red tree SAP. What? Oh, well, to them it looks. Well, the trees look really unique too. Yeah, it's all twisted and weird looking and so they think it's like part of the dragon or whatever. So. Yeah. And then there's the sleeping ute in Colorado. It's a man. Look at it, he's sleeping. See the man sleeping?
Jack: Oh yeah, I see him.
Cristina: Okay. In the story, he's a great warrior God who was battling evil and he got injured and now he's recovering by sleeping, so he just sleeps there until he gets better.
Jack: What's the origin of this? The origin, like who told the story?
Cristina: Native Americans told this story. Which group? I'm not sure. Pretty sure. Native Americans.
Jack: Okay.
Cristina: And his wounds became rivers and the rains come out of his pocket. For some reason, his pockets have clouds in them.
Jack: It's the lint collected.
Cristina: Yes. On each season the warrior changes his blankets for the four seasons. So I guess like the clouds above him look different in every season. So they, they're describing as the blanket that he's using. So like in spring he's using a light green blanket, so I guess the sky has a really green look to it, while in fall it's reddish yellow. So he's using a red blanket or whatever. Clouds are changing color every time he changes his blanket and it represents the different seasons in Iceland. There's this giant like hole, this dense looking hole in the ground. You see, it's a huge dent and it's called the Shelter of the gods. And it's explained that it was created by one of Odin's horse. It's an eight legged horse. Only one of its foot though, for some reason touched the earth's ground. The earth. And that's the mark of it. Now gods hang out in there, I guess.
Jack: But the gods are so big. The horse's footprint is that size.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: So gods are squeezing in there.
Cristina: Yes, yes they are. And this horse's backstory is amazing. He is. Besides that, he's like an egg legged creature with runes for his teeth. It's kind of bizarre looking. But he is a baby of Loki and it's a weird story, as is.
Jack: Every other child ever.
Cristina: There was a builder who went to the gods, who was like, I want to help you guys. I want to build you a defensive wall for your castle. And they agreed, but they didn't really believe he could do it. So they were like, okay, you can do it, but you have to do it alone. And then he said, alright, but could I at least have my horse help me? And for some reason they agreed. Until they saw that he's his horse was actually very helpful. So then Loki was like, all right, I gotta stop this from happening. So he turned into a female horse and to distract the male horse. And then soon after that, he gave birth to this eight legged freak.
Jack: Loki did?
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Fire. Loki turned into a woman, got pregnated, then gave birth to a freak.
Cristina: Yes. Oh, a female horse. Not like. What? Like that's your distraction. I know he's like the pranking God or whatever, but that prank doesn't sound like a prank. Sounds like.
Jack: Sounds like he wanted to f*** a horse.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: And have. Raise a family with it.
Cristina: I don't know about that, but I feel like he wanted. He was curious about that horse.
Jack: Yeah. He started a family with the horse when a head became a horse. And then he had sex with the horse and then he started a family with the horse and it's that time Loki settled down.
Cristina: I don't think he settled down. I just think he was curious about that horse.
Jack: Right. And then he got pregnant. But he could have stopped that pregnancy.
Cristina: He's Loki.
Jack: He's a God. But no, he kept playing wife.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: He saw this all the way through.
Cristina: Then he had an egg legged freak and then it somehow became Odin's horse.
Jack: Yep. It's a weird family tree happening right here.
Cristina: Yeah. I wonder what is my grand.
Jack: I ride my grandson around her.
Cristina: Yeah. Oh my gosh. That what? How did that happen? There's some mythology for you, but what is the explanation of his other children now? Now I'm like, was he curious about other things?
Jack: Like had the world snake happened?
Cristina: Yes. Like what was he curious?
Jack: Maybe he just became a woman snake and he banged another snake and then boom.
Cristina: Like how often. Yes. Did he give and his jackal children?
Jack: Maybe he just became some sort of jackal woman. Got plowed by some jackal boom God jackal things.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: He just likes to get.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: What we've landed on is Loki likes sex, but not even like being the dom. He's like way sub.
Cristina: Yes. He doesn't want to be a dude getting.
Jack: He's got hella little spoon energy.
Cristina: A woman and he gives birth. Yeah.
Jack: Yeah, he wants the whole experience.
Cristina: Exactly.
Jack: He is committed, bro. He's here for the ride. It ain't about no destination. He's here for the whole ride.
Cristina: I wonder if he has any, like, human children and what the explanation of that is?
Jack: Mad boring. After you f*** the snake the size of earth like humans. That feels like a step back.
Cristina: I thought the snake the size of Earth is his child.
Jack: Yeah, but like, what the f*** did he f*** to get that thing?
Cristina: I want to know. It has to be way bigger.
Jack: Fair enough. Either way bigger or he f***** just a normal snake, but because he's a God, he gave birth to this thing.
Cristina: Yes. Well, that's something. We both learned so much from the story. It's a great story.
Jack: Loki's awesome.
Cristina: And besides locations that are explained through myths and stuff, there's also natural disasters that myths are used to explain as well. Like tsunamis from a sea God. The Mochan people that live in some islands near Earth island, they believe in a sea spirit God who sends monstrous waves to pretty much clean out the humans and to eat them. And one time they collected a bunch of fallen coconuts and went to the sea to beg the wave to not destroy their boats or their island or whatever. To not destroy their boats. And the wave, I guess, listened to them and they were saved. That's the story that they tell to themselves. Like, that's the Myth. But in 2004, they remembered that story and it actually saved their lives. Because they remember the story of how they survived the first time, but not by getting the coconuts, but because they remember the whole wave going back and then coming, but it didn't, like, destroy them. But in this time, it was there to destroy them. They went somewhere up higher and they all survived, except for one person, I think died. But around them, a bunch of people died from this. Just them specifically, this group of people were able to make it out alive thanks to a myth. So that's pretty awesome.
Jack: That is kind of badass. Sort of went full circle. It began as an explanation, and that explanation turned out to be the saving grace of a couple of people. Yeah, because it was based on truth.
Cristina: Yes.
Jack: Which then goes to say, how many of these myths are based on truth? Like, one dude almost got magnetism and solar winds. Yeah, like, he got pretty close. So how many of these things, although wrapped around the crazy veil of whatever the beliefs were at that time, are, like, actually accurate? Like, if you sift through them enough and you pick the right things, truth is just there.
Cristina: I don't know that's interesting. I like that this actually worked for someone.
Jack: Yeah, it actually worked. The story was built on a fact about tsunamis.
Cristina: Yeah. In Japan, they have this creature called the namazu. The Namazu, which is a giant catfish who causes earthquakes with his tail. Originally, he was there just to warn people before a flood or rain so that they know, like, oh, no, something bad's gonna happen. But he wasn't like a bad creature or anything. Then the tail changed through time, and then he became something called the yokai, which is a creature that's a creature that just destroys things.
Jack: Not necessarily. The yokai, as told to us by the host of Obscure Anomalies when he was guesting on the show, was that his name is Chris Rustic, and he was telling us about the yokai and how the yokai are creatures created to tell stories that couldn't be explained in any other way.
Cristina: Okay. Well, they decided that now he's the one destroying everything with his tail. He's making the earthquakes and the tsunamis with his tail fascinating. Which originally he was a good guy, but whatever. And then later he, I guess, sort of became the good guy again. But now he's punishing people for human. For greed.
Jack: So Santa Claus.
Cristina: Yes. Because his destruction was pretty much destroying the property of the rich people. Because tsunamis and earthquakes are destroying wealthy people's properties, and then they're seeing it as a good thing.
Jack: Fair enough. Because the argument here is if you don't own anything, you don't have anything to lose. And the people who do own anything are the ones who are getting f***. It's when natural disasters happen. Which then comes to put the argument forward that only the greedy people suffer in tragedies. Because the homeless people were already homeless.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: And already owned nothing. And nomads and people who just live roaming freely don't own anything to lose. An earthquake hits, your building collapses. Even if there were people renting those apartments, they can go rent somewhere that didn't collapse. The owner of the building is f*****, though.
Cristina: Yes. Yes.
Jack: House owners are f*****.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: House renters can just go rent somewhere else.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Owners of stuff get screwed in an earthquake.
Cristina: Mm.
Jack: Same thing happens in hurricanes. People who own s*** lose s***. People who don't own s*** don't lose s***.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: Natural disasters attack only the wealthy.
Cristina: Yes. Except for the deaths. That's pretty much everyone but the property, though.
Jack: Yeah. Property wise, wealthy. Yeah.
Cristina: Yeah. So, yeah.
Jack: That's why nothing else that could be attacked. Anyways, we are running out of time.
Cristina: Okay. What?
Jack: Yeah. But pretty fascinating I like that some of these people are pretty spot on on what their lessons are. Even if, you know, some of it is crazy.
Cristina: Some of it.
Jack: But it's like a lot of it is crazy in grounded ways. Like they thought about it enough to make it make sense and then told the story with it.
Cristina: Yeah.
Jack: And then that story turned out true.
Cristina: The best one though was the Chinese. Jesus. Yeah, like, how could you?
Jack: Lady came out of f****** nowhere and started Chineseism.
Cristina: Started. Yeah, those lights were magical.
Jack: Chineseism was the Chinese, the first Asians. Is every other Asian culture, like branching out of Chinese?
Cristina: Maybe Because a lot they're the old. Like they have the oldest, then the.
Jack: Answer is if they are the oldest, then yes.
Cristina: Like not that they're the oldest, but they have the oldest records, I would say from others. Because they were writing before anyone else.
Jack: The Chinese invented record keeping.
Cristina: Well, in the Chinese, I mean the Asian culture, they were the ones that were writing.
Jack: Oh, okay.
Cristina: And that's why everyone else got writing from their writing.
Jack: Because my understanding was that the Jews were the ones who invented record keeping.
Cristina: Well, then maybe they were. I don't know. One passed it to the other, who knows?
Jack: Yeah, but anyways, if you guys like stuff like this.
Cristina: Hey, what about the Egyptians? Are they not older? They were writing, although we can't understand their writing. So do they count? That doesn't count.
Jack: I mean, record keeping as we know it now, where names are written down and family trees are kept in track and that kind of stuff. Yeah, the modern day record keeping that we still do now with just better things. But it was more or less the same thing. That was. I believe I could be mistaken and this could be misinformation, but I don't. The f*** who thinks I'm telling the truth anyways when I'm talking? Yeah, it could totally be the Jews.
Cristina: Okay.
Jack: Well, in fact, whether or not it's the Jews, it's the Jews.
Cristina: Well, I'm saying it's the Chinese.
Jack: Yeah, fair enough. Anyways, if you guys like things of this nature, there are actually many episodes on random crap like this. The closest thing I could think of to like disasters like this would actually be the mass hysteria episode.
Cristina: Oh yeah.
Jack: Because it's talking about large scale things that happened which kind of falls in line with these large things. Except that's way leaning more towards, you know, trying to dissect the psychology of crazy people.
Cristina: Yeah. But we also, I think, go a little into the weird explanations they came up with.
Jack: Yeah.
Cristina: Before actually figuring it out.
Jack: Interesting, interesting.
Cristina: It's pretty Cool.
Jack: Anyways, you guys can find that stuff on the official website greatthoughts.info on Apple podcast, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcast.
Cristina: And you can reach us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok on just convopod.
Jack: Yes, and remember to subscribe, rate and review the show if you feel so inclined.
Cristina: And let someone who might like this show know about it.
Jack: Yes. Word of mouth is the most important thing in the world. I tell you this at the beginning, always, and I tell you this at the end, that you have to approach somebody with the kindest heart and ask them. Look, I would love if you listen to the show and if you don't, it's totally cool. There's no pressure, but I hope you can listen to the show. I think you'll enjoy it a lot. And when you're genuine like that, people will just be like, man, this guy, a good guy. And they'll just listen.
Cristina: Of course.
Jack: They'll give it a shot. So just know you share your kindness.
Cristina: They will listen, of course.
Jack: Love is the way.
Cristina: Love is the way. Uhhuh. This has been the Just Conversation podcast. Take nothing personal and thanks for listening. Bye.
Jack: He might have taken a poop in the litter.
Cristina: Boxing all the poop.
Jack: He's scooping all the poop. He didn't say scooping all the poop.
Cristina: That's not a thing.
Jack: No, I think he's just scooping the poop.
Cristina: His poop? Just once.
Jack: His poop? Yeah, he took a poop and I was scooping it. He's a good citizen.
Cristina: That's it.
Jack: Huh?
Cristina: I don't know.
Jack: He exists in a universe where he took a poop and he just picked the poop up.
Cristina: There has to be more to that song.
Jack: Maybe he grabbed the poop with his bare hand.
Cristina: Yes. I don't know.
Jack: Just a bare grip. Just a bear grip on a poop log.
Cristina: No, if he's scooping it, then he has a something.
Jack: Some sort of poop scooper.
Cristina: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, scooper. To scoop the poop.
Jack: Yeah, he has a scooper to scoop.
Cristina: Then that would make it seem like he's done this before.
Jack: He had a scooper to scoop the poop with.
Cristina: Like, unless that scoop is used for something else.
Jack: I don't know. I don't know. Let's. Let's dive deep into this.
Cristina: We're gonna break down the lyrics. Good morning, Good night. Good morning. The Just Conversation podcast is hosted by Christina Collazo and Jack Thomas, produced by Lynn Taylor and published bygreat dots.in fox. Art by Zero Lupo and logo by Seth McCallister with social media managed by Amber Black.
