Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, where we apply critical thinking and evidence-based analysis to, well, everything from the simple to the strange, the mysterious to the mundane.

Pascual Romero: And welcome back to Squaring the Strange: the show where we take three eligible suitors and put them – no that’s not that’s the dating game. They’re bringing that back incidentally.

BR: I did not know that.

PR: Yeah a friend of mine who’s working on it posted about it and started the post with an apology.

BR: I’d like to apologize for this.

PR: I’m not going to throw you under the bus Steve but anyway. And yeah it’s going to be a fun week this week. We’re covering a really interesting topic that kind of straddles the line of cryptozoology and kind of the mystical demon world and it’s really exciting. Ben, why don’t you give us an introduction to our creature feature this week?

BR: This week’s creature feature is the dreaded Popobawa, known as the skeptic raping demon of Zanzibar.

PR: Yeah, that’s definitely something that we should be afraid of.

BR: Yes, certainly on this show. It’s a strange beast on the east coast of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania and it’s sort of this weird creature that is said to attack skeptics. It comes in a variety of forms, sort of a chameleon type monster, and yet it has interesting aspects going into religion and folklore and ghosts.

0:02:10
It’s a very strange beast and I was fortunate enough to be able to go investigate it personally.

PR: That sounds awesome, I’m really excited to talk about that.

PR: So this week, I guess we should get right into it, Ben. What are you skeptical of?

BR: Well, what came across my skeptical radar was an unusual admission of wrongdoing and an apology by Alex Jones, Mr. Conspiracy theorist himself. Some of you may have been following the news. He was He made statements regarding Chobani yogurt And he’d said that he made many, many false… of course Saying saying that Alex Jones made many false claims It’s it’s it’s sort of like saying that you might notice a little bit of light in the bright sunlight.

0:03:20
PR: He makes only false claims for the most part.

BR: In this particular case, he had made claims regarding Chobani Yogurt and its employees in Twin Falls, Idaho. It spurred a bunch of headlines along the lines of, quote, Idaho yogurt maker caught importing migrant rapists.

PR: Okay, well that’s a pretty strong statement.

BR: It is, it is. And he had all sorts of connections to it. He claimed that the plant was employing people who were involved in the 2016 assault of a child and also a rise in tuberculosis cases. And so again, you have two things that most people are horrified by, right?

0:04:05
Child sex abuse and disease. Tuberculosis, AIDS, take your pick. So he managed to pick two hot-button topics which he knew were going to outrage the masses, and sure enough they did. The founder of Chobaniya, a man named Hamdi Ulukaya, I believe, is a Turkish immigrant of Kurdish descent. And after Trump had made some anti-immigrant sentiments, and you’re wondering, which time, right? And this one took their time. The president of Chobani had vowed to hire more immigrants in his factories, and they had actually, I think, set up an organization to help immigrants as well. So, again, you sort of have this binary setup, right?

0:04:47
You have Alex Jones, very nationalistic, jingoistic you know this and that and the other and you have the founder of Chobani… anyway. So after these statements were made by Alex Jones the founder of Chobani said well excuse me this you’ve made false statements about me and he was asked to retract he failed to and he was then sued. In federal court as as happens when you lie about people. This happens. He was sued for false and defamatory statements, defamation, this and that. And in this particular case, before it went to trial, they settled.

0:05:29
Jones probably realized that being called out on two of his sea of false statements was probably not too bad a thing. He’s lucky that all the people that he defames don’t have the resources to sue him as well. The lawsuit filed by Chobani said that Mr. Jones and his companies had declined to remove the information after it was presented to them that it was false. There’s a quote here from the lawsuit which I just love it says it says Mr. Jones was quote no stranger to spurious statements. Which I I would just love to be the lawyer typing that he’s no stranger to spurious statements. We will just leave it at that. And sure enough, of course, he… anyway, so Jones Jones Decided to settle the lawsuit It’s it’s an undisclosed amount who knows exactly how much Chobani was paid uh… but certainly was enough to uh… to uh… to to get in the civil suit and uh… and what what’s interesting the reason they came across my radar because it’s it’s it’s one of the rare times when Jones was forced to admit that he lied uh… you know a lot of times mom in fact i was a most the time people make false statements you know defamatory statements about people, they let it go, right? It’s not, you’re a public figure, it’s not worth going into, whatever else. In this case, Chobani’s like, no, this is serious, and you need to fix this, and he didn’t, and he was sued, and this is what happened. So it’s interesting, because in the case of Jones, this is actually the second time in the last year or so that he’s apologized for putting out false information the other time as you may recall was the Pizza Gate story, where he was instrumental in putting out this conspiracy theory that there was a pizza restaurant called Comic Ping-pong I think in DC that was somehow connected to You know child sex abuse and yeah, and Hillary Clinton.

PR: I recall correctly. It’s because they there was communication between between Clinton and the pizza place in the form of people ordering pizzas.

0:07:42
BR: Well there you go. Clearly there’s smoke, there’s fire, but let’s be honest here.

PR: Just so we know, that’s pretty much where he took all this information from.

BR: Right, so that then got built up and in fact, as many people probably know, it actually inspired a guy to go in there armed into the pizza and he fired a weapon in there. And so these rumors and statements can have real consequences.

PR: Yeah, and that’s why I think it is, and people like Jones, he gets away with a lot. I mean, he gets away with nearly everything. But again, you look at that situation and fortunately it didn’t lead to anyone getting hurt.

0:08:30
But the truth of the matter is that’s the sort of thing that leads to… I mean, the things he’s saying, the way he’s misrepresenting people, leads to a lot of anger towards those people and the more you rile people up, especially the kind of people who are liable to believe the things that he says. Because there’s a certain, you know, there’s a certain type of person that tends to buy these theories and usually these people aren’t your average, you know, well-adjusted.

BR: They’re not listeners to our podcast.

PR: Exactly. I’m nearly positive no one listening to this listens to InfoWars unless it’s for research or some other ironic reason, but anyway getting back to it it’s it really is something that you know people do need to help be held accountable for because you know kind of like we talked about free speech and the limitations on it like yelling fire in a crowded theater that’s you know where he edges very close to that edge of free speech and and and that case where a person showed up to a family establishment with weapons with the intent to do something.

0:09:43
BR: Right. There’s a reason. Well, I mean, we know why he went in there, and I think we talked about this briefly on a previous show. He went in there trying to do good. I mean, and this is one of the insidious parts of many of these outrage and viral outrage stories is that often times, you know, it’s framed as I’m trying to warn you about this dangerous thing. Oh my god, you know, these Chobani employees, they’re these horrible people, you know, people need to be aware of this. And so it’s all framed within the context of awareness raising.

0:10:16
And, you know, calls to action for justice. And that’s one of the reasons it’s dangerous. If Alex Jones lies about me getting a parking ticket, nobody cares. Okay, whatever. But if he lies about me about other things, then that may be worth suing somebody. So it’s interesting to sort of see how, certainly in the last, say, six months or whatever, people have been held more and more accountable for exactly these types of conspiracy theories. That being said, of course, Trump has been very prolific with his conspiracy theories.

0:10:51
And what’s interesting is that, you know, he hasn’t so far said anything that’s, that’s, I would assume is actionable. I mean, you know, defamatory. He may or may not have, but I mean, you know, his status is just not, it’s not, it’s not where he says so many things, many of which are by most people’s standards, you know, outrageous or provocative or else that it’s like, where do you go with it? But what’s interesting is, I mean, the reason that the Pizzagate story, I think, was, ended up being retracted was because it was getting so much press.

0:11:20
And it, because it didn’t just stay sort of on the down low. People were like, hold on here. This is serious. Somebody went into this innocent business with a gun. And how did this happen? And the, you know, the fingers pointed back to Jones and other people. And so I think that that’s one of the reasons why it did sort of blow up and sort of folded in on itself. The real gist is examining the ways in which people who spread the conspiracy theories are being held more accountable these days. Whether it’s the case of Alex Jones, in the case of Seth Rich, some of Sean Hannity’s advertisers pulled out.

0:11:53
So you know, there’s an interesting trend going on where people are getting less tolerant of, and hopefully more savvy about these sorts of conspiracy theories and rumors. So what’s on your skeptical radar this week, Pascual?

PR: So this week, as everyone knows, there was recently an attack in Manchester at a concert, an Ariana Grande concert, and a number of people were killed and a lot of people were injured, and the press has been focusing, again, on terrorism and what role the Islamic State plays in it. And of course, they did make a claim to affiliation with that attack. But what I want to break down today, because it’s not really important for us to talk about the political side of it, but there is something to be skeptical about in an article I read.

0:12:50
Now, of course, this was in the Daily Mail.

BR: The Daily Fail.

PR: Yes. And it was titled, How Ariana Grande and her revealing stage outfits are a symbol of everything Islamists hate.

BR: Oh, sounds very provocative. Do I want to click on it? Do I want to click on it?

PR: No, you don’t. Okay. It’s in a segment called, or a feature called Right Minds, which I’m guessing is referring to some kind of conservative thing. So, it’s written mostly as an editorial, but I figured, you know, let’s be skeptical about it. I mean, it’s someone’s opinion, but he is making some very strong claims in this article, not just in the title. I mean, the title alone already raises an eyebrow, and obviously that’s the kind of thing that would generate plenty of clicks.

0:13:39
But I’ll kind of go through it and then just kind of give my thoughts, uh, without reading the whole article, obviously, because nobody needs that. But, uh, he basically, he starts with kind of saying that it seems likely that the, the guy who did it was somehow affiliated with the IS, which, you know, yeah, that’s, that seems to be the case. Um, but he pretty much immediately in the very next sentence asks, why would anyone target a concert by the American singer Ariana Grande? And he says that the grim answer may lie in the fact that with her revealing stage outfit, her stockings, pink bunny ears, and unabashed sexual confidence, the 23 year old miss Grande is a symbol of everything Islamists hate. Now, everything is a big word.

BR: I’ve already heard like two red flags in my head, but go ahead.

PR: Yeah, well, yeah. I just, to me, I mean, the fact that he uses the word everything already, I just, he really, I mean, everything.

BR: Everything. You just don’t understand. If you were in your right mind, then you’d understand that everything about her, the name, the outfits, the song lyrics, everything, anyone who is a member of the Islamic State, clearly just cringes and probably throw darts at her poster on the wall.

0:15:07
They probably burn her CD. I don’t know.

PR: And if they really wanted to stick it to her. They just you know illegally download her records But but no yeah, it’s just that word you know they say she represents everything they hate you know So it’s like it nothing to do with Western meddling in the Middle East nothing to do with you know state endorsement of Israel or Occupation of countries. No, it’s Ariana Grande and her damn stockings, right? It just seems so base and and so unlikely that that’s the reason he showed up there. The reason you show up to a crowded place to do something like that is because it’s a crowded place above all else. You know whether or not he likes Ariana Grande and whether or not this this had to do with her specifically there may be an influence there. I have no way of knowing that. He’s not alive. We can’t ask him. But the fact that it was at a concert speaks more to the convenience in terms of attacking a lot of people at once than it does to the content of the concert. I mean, you know, there was another attack about a year and a half ago in Paris, I believe it was, at the Eagles of Death Metal concert. Now, that band couldn’t be more different than Ariana Grande, but a very similar situation happened.

0:16:29
In this case, in the Eagles of Death Metal case, they charged in with weapons. But the point being, the fact that these two happened the way they did speaks a little more to the venue and the situation than it does to who was playing. And if who was playing was that important, they would have gone after who was playing, I think.

BR: I think you’re exactly right. In fact, this reminds me, a couple years ago there was a shooting in a theater that was playing a screen of Trainwreck, Amy Schumer’s film. I remember Schumer being interviewed about it. Apparently, this guy, this sort of lone gunman wacko, wandered in and shot, I think, several people.

0:17:11
I’m forgetting the details at the moment, but I think one person died, several were injured. It was interesting because Schumer assumed that this guy had targeted her film specifically. And that’s what the interview was about. She was talking about how badly she felt, and she hoped that she hadn’t done something to trigger it, and was it because Amy Schumer is Jewish and he hated Jews? I mean, there was this whole thing. And, you know, when I was reading the interview, I was like, well, okay, you can go that way if you want, but in fact, if you know something about terrorism and acts of violence, people do it for any number of reasons.

0:17:51
As you said, oftentimes it’s because they want a big crowd. It’s not necessarily because they’re trying to make a statement about that particular film. You also saw this, for example, in the James Holmes shooting of the Batman movie. I wrote about this in my Bad Clowns book. So the question was, why would people assume, why would he have chosen that particular Batman movie if he wasn’t inspired by the Joker, if it wasn’t Batman themed? And as it turns out, there was no evidence for that whatsoever. The guy James Holmes in Aurora, Colorado, there was lots of media speculation in the weeks and months afterwards that he was inspired by the film or he was inspired by the Joker.

0:18:31
None of that was true. There’s no evidence whatsoever that he chose that particular screening as a reaction to that film or that comic book character. And the same thing in the case of the Trainwreck shooting. There’s no evidence whatsoever that the guy that shot people there did it because that particular screen was going on. Who knows why he did it? He could have gone, if he’d waited another half hour, he could have been at another film.

0:18:58
And so there’s a natural tendency for people to ask why. Why did it happen? That’s always the big question. And from psychology, we know that people want answers. People, they make connections. And sometimes those connections are actually there, sometimes they’re not. And I think that’s what happens here is that people are looking for some, oh, well, you know, what did she do? And in a way, you know, it actually strikes me as victim blaming. It’s this notion that somehow Ariana Grande or her her fans brought it on themselves.

0:19:29
And I think that’s bull. I don’t buy that at all. I mean, are there factors out there, you know, cultural, social factors? But to suggest that, you know, we should have expected this because it’s Ariana Grande and look at those stockings is absurd.

PR: Yeah, and that was kind of where I was going to go next because there’s a line in the article. He refers to the Eagles of Death Metal concert in comparison and says that the jihadis made a blood-soaked statement against Western music and the lifestyle that goes with it.

BR: Let me just interrupt you. So who wrote this? Do you have the guy’s name?

0:20:06
The guy’s name is…

BR: Is it, I’m just wondering if this is, if this is a person with some background in national security, terrorism, counter-terrorism. No, I’m serious. I mean, this person’s putting out lots of apparently well-informed opinions. And I’m just wondering, is this just some sort of blogger that happens to, you know, want to do something, something dramatic and sensational, or is this someone who actually has some knowledge or background or expertise in the topic?

0:20:30
So his little quick bio here says his name is James Harkin and it says he is the director of the Center for Investigative Journalism and a reporter on Syria and the rise of the Islamic State.

BR: Oooooh, so he is an expert. Well, apparently he knows what he’s talking about.

PR: Yeah, and so, and of course, you know, those credits say nothing about his qualifications. They just say he’s involved with what he’s saying. And obviously he reports on it because, you know, this is a big article about it. So reporting on it doesn’t mean you’re using facts or anything. But you know, he’s not only is he victim blaming, but he kind of keeps pushing.

0:21:10
He even moves the goalposts in his own article because first he’s saying Ariana Grande and her sexuality and her provocative show which I don’t make it a habit of watching her shows but I also don’t know for sure that that’s even true. I mean those are mostly kids going to her shows.

BR: I wouldn’t assume that’s true. Let’s just say that it is.

PR: Let’s say it’s true but then he moves the goalposts by going to Eagles of Death Metal and saying that it’s a statement against Western music and the lifestyle that goes with it.

BR: Well you just said everything they hate was Ariana Grande. Specifically not not not Western music, not not not anything in English language, but Ariana Grande.

PR: Yeah you very specifically made her the symbol for what happened and then you’re like well and Eagles of Death Metal and Western music. So let’s be clear here you use the word everything so I’m not being pedantic You’re you’re telling me that that this was motivated by this and he doesn’t really flounder on that that statement much. I mean for the most part he just keeps sticking to that idea the whole way through, But you know and and so he you know And he goes into some of these areas like when one line that kind of bugged me was, well, every line bugged me. One line that stood out was he said, one great irony is that many of these young Islamists have a past of drug dealing, debauchery and petty crime. Indeed, given all their injunctions against Western music, it’s striking how many of those who traveled to the Islamic state from Britain were failed rap musicians. Were failed rap…

0:22:44
Like he goes through debauchery, drug dealing, blah, blah, blah. And then he basically said, rap musicians are those people and then he said every single one of these guys were failed rap musicians specifically. He didn’t say like failed party kids or failed DJs. No, he said failed rap musicians.

BR: I have a theory on where this came from. I suspect that what we’re reading here is the result of deadlines and needing to be, being the token expert for the Daily Mail, he is expected to turn in some sort of commentary, no matter how based in fact or not. And so he’s like, okay, let me latch on to Ariana Grande, and what, you need 1800 words in two hours?

0:23:35
Done. He bangs that out, sends it in, it goes by an editor. That’s my guess on what happened here.

PR: Yeah, I think so. And I think maybe it’s because he is known for being a conservative writer that he needs to do things like, you know, shame people on their sexuality. And again, Ariana Grande performs largely for a teenage female audience. There may be some sexual element to what she’s doing, but to me, I already am skeptical of that being what she’s trying to portray only because the audience for hypersexualization is not one that follows her and again, whatever I mean,  I don’t know enough to say one way or the other but I just think that this person is targeting her for what happened for no no basis? There’s no basis in reality for what he’s saying here

BR: Well, I mean, this is how it approach it is is what your evidence?

0:24:27
Yeah. Is this pure speculation? Do you have some reason to believe that? Now, is it possible? Sure, anything is possible. My question is, in the case of the Manchester bomber, what do we know about his previous actions and his statements in terms of why he did it? And I’m guessing, again, I have not, I’ve only sort of in passing seen the news. I’m guessing that if you look at the statements made by the bomber, he does not reference Ariana Grande or her stockings, or the fact that that that she epitomizes everything that he’s upset about in the Western world. I could be wrong. And if I’m wrong, I’m sure some of our listeners will will be happy to correct me. But I’m guessing that’s not actually what he said. And I think it’s important to, when people are looking for reasons and motivations, is to actually go with what they say.

0:25:19
It’s remarkable. Instead of speculating, guessing, this and that and the other, in the case of these shootings and terrorist acts, the terrorist wants people to know why they’re doing it. They don’t hide their motivations.

PR: That’s pretty much in the definition of terrorism, is that there has to be a political statement tied to it.

BR: They go out of their way to tell people why they’re doing it. There’s no ambiguity here. And in the case of the Manchester shooter, excuse me, the Manchester bomber, links to ISIS, ISIS claimed responsibility for it.

0:25:57
In the case of, for example, Omar Mateen, the guy that shot up the Florida nightclub, he said very clearly why he did it. And it was because of bombing, US bombing in Syria in the Middle East. That’s specifically why he said that. He didn’t go into a laundry list of grievances. He said, if you’re wondering why I’m doing this, this is why I’m doing this. Crystal clear. And, you know, again, we can speculate, we can conjecture, we can create hypotheses all over the place, but at the end of the day, using the skeptical principle of Occam’s razor, we should probably assume that they’re doing it for the reason that they’re telling us they’re doing it, and not just go off on wild speculation.

0:26:42
I just see this all the time, where people, after these tragedies, people want to know why. Of course they do. It’s natural. But the problem is that there’s not always a clear answer of why. And even when there is a clear answer of why, even when the person tells you why they’re doing it, oftentimes that gets ignored.

PR: I mean, people are always going to speculate on things. And it’s entirely possible that the person chose that concert for reasons other than a bunch of people being in a spot walking out of a venue when he blew up a truck in front of It it’s possible the reason this article rubs me the wrong way to such a degree is that again The person makes a very strong claim right at the outset You know saying that she’s everything that they hate and I know the media tends to focus a lot on the attack and very rarely focuses on the message that came with the attack.

0:27:40
But if you listen to what Islamic State says, and this goes back, I mean Bin Laden did it, these people always say why they do it. And this is not an endorsement of any worldview or anything, this is just saying what they say. And what they usually say is Western support of Israel, occupation of Middle Eastern states, bombing of Middle Eastern states.

BR: Killing of children, take your pick.

PR: But it’s very clear and as far as I know, as my memory serves, this is just, you know, there may be some more info out there that I don’t know.

0:28:16
They’ve never said it’s your Western lifestyle, it’s your taste in music, it’s your sexuality, it’s… you know, certainly those are things that they take issue with, but they, I think they take issue with those things in the same way that, you know, fundamentalist Christians in this country do, which is that they hate it and they don’t like it and they, they wish they could do something about it. But to drive someone to kill themselves, to send a message, it’s not going to be about Ariana Grande stockings.

BR: You’re exactly right. And, and yeah, as you mentioned, you mentioned bin Laden.

0:28:48
I mean, it was remarkable to me how, I remember right after that happened, George Bush addressed the public and said, this happened because they hate our freedoms. And I had actually read bin Laden’s statement, and his previous statements, he’d given interviews, and I’m reading through his grievances, and oddly enough, hating American freedoms was not on that list. It was not. And I’m like, well, actually, well, I see three or four very specific reasons why Bin Laden said he blew up the twin towers in a place in 9-11.

0:29:26
Hating American freedoms was not one of them. And so you got me frustrated because if you don’t understand the roots of a problem, you can’t address it correctly. If you think the problem is hating America’s freedoms or hating Ariana Grande’s stockings, then you’re missing the point. You’re pointing the spotlight in the wrong place and you can’t begin to address those issues because you’ve framed the problem incorrectly.

0:29:54

Celestia Ward: Hey, everybody. Celestia here with your Skeptical Fortune Cookie. Let’s see what we’ve got this week. Unfold this and oh, caveat emptor. Hmm, a Latin phrase meaning let the buyer beware, caveat emptor is regarded as an ancient rule of sorts, a way to say there’s no warranty. It even implies that the seller might be purposely swindling you, so it’s up to you to look out for yourself. Though the phrase has been interpreted to many different degrees as a legal principle in our modern world, and it certainly rings of common sense, it is far from being as ancient as it might seem. Back in 1931, Walton Hamilton traced the phrase’s lineage for the Yale Law Journal and said that, quote, no Roman author whose works survive seems to have scribbled the two words down, and further, that it was, quote, not to be found among the reputable ideas of the Middle Ages either.

0:30:56
In those days, church manuals laid down conduct for merchants, and not surprisingly, concealing any defects in merchandise was looked upon as a sin, though certainly a sin that happened quite a lot. But as he says, in the early days when piracy and commerce had not been clearly distinguished, or when trading with a potential enemy, those words may have been uttered. The phrase seems to have been born of the folk thought of the byways and highways, then finally found its way into print around the middle of the 16th century. In his book of husbandry, Anthony Fitzherbert warns of buying horses, “‘If he be tame and have been ridden upon, then caveat emptor”. So regardless of their pedigree, the words remain a concise warning and a guide for anyone considering a purchase large or small or four legged. Well, I’m going to eat this stale fortune cookie now. So let’s get you back to Ben and Pasquale.

0:31:53
PR: All right, Ben, what gives? What’s the Popobawa?

BR: Well, the Popobawa actually comes in several different forms. That’s actually a fairly common theme with cryptozoology and monsters in general. You see this with Bigfoot, for example, Chupacabra. There’s sort of a generalized conception people have of these things, but when you look below the surface, when you start looking at individual eyewitness sightings and reports, they actually vary quite a bit.

PR: That’s kind of like the rolling calf in our episode.

0:32:35
BR: Exactly. So in this case, the Popobaba, again, depending on who you talk to, some people say that you can’t describe it because it’s invisible, and it literally can’t be seen. Other people say that you can’t really describe it because it always changes forms. So, you know, it might look like a dog, it might look like a bat, it might look like anything. So to some people, the chameleon nature of it means that it is indescribable, in a sort of Lovecraftian sense.

0:33:12
But other ones, other people say that, for example, it looks like an ogre with huge bat wings and a gigantic penis. Yes. Some people say it’s a dwarf with one eye, like a cyclops dwarf with small pointy ears and talons. Other people say it looks like a large bat or a tall man. So really, that’s one of the fascinating and frustrating things about the Popobawa is it takes on any number of forms. But that’s essentially what it’s said to look like. The overall take on it is that it’s a sort of ghost, bat, demon, ogre thing that attacks people, primarily skeptics.

0:34:04
It is said to attack and actually rape skeptics. It’s known for raping skeptics.

PR: Sounds like an awfully convenient bad guy.

BR: Yes, yes. And I knew about this when I first went looking for it. I went to Zanzibar. It’s actually, it’s primarily seen and reported on the East African island of Zanzibar, which is off the coast of Tanzania. It’s also seen in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. But primarily on the island of Zanzibar itself. And that’s the general sense of what it is.

0:34:43
You know, I first heard about it around 2004 when I read an article by Joe Nickell who did a piece called The Skeptic Raping Demon of Zanzibar, which I couldn’t have written better. That is, you know…

PR: Cut right to the point.

BR: There you go, boom, right?

PR: If only the media could write headlines like that still.

BR: Exactly. It’s evocative. I give Joe all credit for coming up with that. And it’s fairly accurate. I mean it’s sensational, but it’s fairly accurate. So I’ve actually been to Zanzibar twice. And-

PR: I ate there once in Manhattan, just for the record.

0:35:20
BR: Was it good stuff? It was good. There was a club, I think on Yonge Street in Toronto, that I think it was a topless club. I didn’t go in there. But it looked very exotic. It looked suitably exotic. That’s not the Zanzibar I went to. So essentially, there’s this weird, creepy creature. It’s received relatively little scholarly or academic treatments.

0:35:41
There’s been a handful, but in terms of, compared to, for example, Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster, it’s a relatively unknown creature, certainly among the general public. And so that was one of the things that intrigued me, was what is this weird thing? And it’s in Zanzibar, and there’s all this cross-cultural baggage to it and aspects to it. That was really what sort of jumped out at me.

PR: So you went to Zanzibar in 2006, and so what did you find?

0:36:12
How did that investigation go?

BR: It was fascinating. I’ve traveled a fair amount in Africa, and my family’s traveled there as well. I love the continent. fascinating and rich and diverse and just bizarre and strange and wonderful in many ways. I just love the word Zanzibar.

PR: Yeah, it’s a great word.

BR: It’s just so cool. How do you not love Zanzibar?

PR: It’s a very classically exotic word and everyone’s heard it and it’s so cinematic and it’s really cool.

BR: You can just picture some great white explorers in London in 1818, I say, Nigel, you know where you should go?

0:36:58
The Zanzibar looks quite nice. And sure enough, in fact, the island of Zanzibar has been at the crossroads of trade and travel for millennia. You know, the explorer David Livingston was there for a while. In fact, you can find his house there. Freddie Mercury grew up there and was born there.

PR: That seems appropriate.

BR: Exotic and strange.

PR: A very exotic man.

BR: And one of my personal heroes, Sir Richard Burton, who was a co-discoverer of course of the Nile, he launched his 1858 expedition to find the source of the Nile from Zanzibar.

0:37:43
So it’s historically rich, they have traders coming through there of course, Muslims, you have Indians, just this huge mix of people and cultures. Now most of Zanzibar, it’s important to understand the context here, because as I’ve mentioned before in other cases, context is important. These sorts of weird things don’t occur in a vacuum. So whenever I’m investigating something unusual, something strange, one of the first things that I do is try and understand what is the social and cultural context?

0:38:20
Because there’s always something that feeds into people’s beliefs. And that was certainly the case with Zanzibar. And what you find is that most Zanzibar is overwhelmingly Muslim. And so, keeping that in mind, I know a fair amount about Islam and read the Quran and things like that, so I have some idea of their perspective. I don’t claim to be an expert on Islam, but I know more about them than most people do. One of the things that most Muslims believe is the existence of jinn or genies and shaitan, which are demons.

0:38:58
There’s multiple references in the Quran, for example, to genies and they’re taken literally, very much in the same way that Christians believe, many Christians believe that angels are literally, it’s not metaphorical. They’re actually guardian angels or angels doing… There’s parallels all over the place. Again, when I began researching it, I had read Joe Nickell’s piece on it. There was work by a guy named Parkin. I think it was Alan Parkin. Not the Alan Parkins Project, someone else.

0:39:32
David Parkin, I’m sorry. He’s an ethnographer. He did some research on Popobawa. Other than that, there really wasn’t much there. I mean, it’s, again, I don’t want to suggest that no one had researched it before I did, but certainly no skeptics that I had known, that I could find, had actually gone there. Joe Nickell had written about it in 2004. He hadn’t been to Zanzibar, and he hadn’t gone sort of on the ground field research.

0:39:56
PR: Which is kind of surprising, because that seems like a really awesome place to visit. Be a good excuse for a vacation if nothing else.

BR: Absolutely. And there was also a TV show called Destination Truth with Josh Gates. And he did an episode on the Popobawa. And so again, to sort of set the stage, I’ll read you very quickly Sir Richard Burton’s description of Stonetown, which is the capital of Zanzibar. He called it “a filthy labyrinth, a capricious arabesque of disorderly lanes and alleys and impasses, here broad, there narrow, now heaped with awful, there choked with ruins”.

0:40:41
Which is about, it hasn’t changed much in 150 years. That being said, it’s delightful. It’s just this exotic, hot, dusty, weird, wonderful place. It’s somewhat touristy, but it’s managed to retain a lot of its older traditions and stuff. And that’s one of the things I really liked about it. So I began by researching what there wasn’t in the published, what there wasn’t published literature about, and there wasn’t much, there was a little bit. And so I wanted to look into different aspects and try to figure out what’s going on here.

0:41:22
Is this a real monster, is this a real creature? And if so, what could it be?. Following up on research into lake monsters and chupacabras and ghosts and Bigfoot and things like that. So what I found is that the Popobawa has been seen according to some people as early as the 1960s, 1970s. Researcher David Parkin talked about this in a piece he wrote, but there was a panic.

0:41:56
There was a real panic in 1995. In which the sort of latent concerns just exploded. And people were, there were rumors, the spread around Stone Town and Zanzibar in general, that the Popobawa was looking to find victims in populated areas. And so people freaked out. People didn’t want, people, they would spend the night outside because they were concerned that if they huddled together in their homes, that that’s where the Popobawa would strike.

0:42:30
So there was an actual, a real scare. In fact, it’s interesting, there’s parallels to the Chupacabra scare, in which at some points in Puerto Rico, there were groups of villagers and ordinary people looking for the Chupacabra with machetes and guns. Basically a mob who are terrified by this evil creature that strikes at night.

PR: They didn’t get them because they didn’t have pitchforks and torches.

BR: That was the problem. Therein lies the problem. But again, at one point in 1995 with the Popobawa, I read one account that said that there was actually someone who was accused of being Popobawa, because again, it can be a shapeshifter.

0:43:18
And so there’s no reason to assume that it couldn’t be a person. I read an account where a person was actually killed. It turned out to be probably a mental patient who may have been acting strangely, or may have confessed to being Popobawa. It’s not clear. But yeah, so there can be real consequences. So, I went to Zanzibar and I just started asking around. I’d read a fair amount of, again, whatever literature I could get my hands on. It’s just as sparse here or there. For example, there was a small entry in the encyclopedia of cryptozoology by Michael Newton.

0:43:58
I think it had a paragraph or two. And so, again, just sort of taking whatever I could, comb through it, try to find the commonalities, try to understand what are the parameters of the claims, and then work from there. So I showed up in Stonetown and began asking people, and I got a guide. It’s not that hard to get guides in this. If you’re just a white guy looking around, they’re like, oh, you need a guide, my friend. But of course, you have to be careful. I did do a little bit of weeding out of the ones who were clearly just trying to get a little tip.

0:44:36
So I found a pretty good guide, and I talked to him, and I said, look, I need you to help me do some research here. This is who I am. I said, what do you know about the Popobawa? And he laughed. And I was like, why? He says, basically he said that he didn’t believe in the Popobawa. So he made that clear. So I quickly learned a couple things. Number one, the assumption that I had gotten from, for example, the Destination Truth episode was that the belief was widespread. It was everywhere. And you know the entire island is gripped by panic. And I saw the same things again with the Chupacabra research.

0:45:24
It’s like, the entire island is concerned about Chupacabra. It’s like, no, not quite. So there’s a natural tendency on behalf of mystery mongers to exaggerate the claims. Everyone is terrified. Like, no, some people genuinely are, but not so much. And that was the same case with Popobawa. So what I found was that my guide’s name was Juma, Juma Haji Juma, and as we went around Stonetown looking for people to interview, and he was pretty well-connected.

0:45:57
I mean, I could tell he knew people. I know a guy who knows a guy, right? Hold on a second.

PR: You know a guy who knows a Popobawa?

BR: Exactly, that was my question, right? In the end, I interviewed, I think, maybe three or four people that I could find, just sort of in the time that I had available, and most of them seemed to think it was a joke, but they didn’t discount the possibility it was real. It was interesting. They sort of expressed some skepticism to me but they didn’t really want to go on the record like, well I’m not saying it’s not true, but we joke about it. And of course, if you think about it, it’s often the case where we find humor in things that frighten us.

0:46:48
So the mere fact that many people treat it as a joke didn’t necessarily discount the possibility that they thought it was real. So those two things can coexist. I did find a couple people who believed in the existence of the Popobawa. One of them was an artist and I actually commissioned him to create a sketch for me. So I have a cool depiction of a Popobawa done by a Zanzibar… I am actually looking at right here.

PR: Awesome, we’ll make sure to post the picture on Facebook or something.

BR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a creepy looking sort of bat-like thing with breasts and apparently a cod piece covering what is presumably a giant penis. And this goes back to, again, why are people laughing about it? Because it’s a weird ghost thing that has a big… So it’s a natural thing for a scatological humor.

0:47:48
But then I started getting more into it and trying to parse out what’s true and what’s not true. So for my interviews it seemed like the Popobawa was unusual but hardly unique. And so I grouped it in with other phantom attackers. I’ve researched other phantom attackers, including, for example, the Spring-Heeled Jack, India’s Monkey Man that Bob Bartholomew and I wrote about in a couple of our books, the Mad Gasser from Mattoon, Illinois. Many listeners may be familiar with those, but they’re basically figures that are either unseen or barely seen that are said to strike at night. There’s never any hard evidence for this. And this is what I found with the Popobawa was that there’s no photographs of it, there’s no videos of it, there’s no evidence, there’s no tracks, there’s no scat.

0:48:40
It’s just something seen and believed. So there’s no hard evidence. And in fact, this also ties in, for example, with the phantom clown panic in my book, Bad Clowns, where I talk about the phantom clowns that were said to have been seen stalking strangers and stalking kids. And there’s all these reports of little kids saying they saw these things, but the police investigate and there’s never… And we could do a show on that, but I lump these things together because I think there’s commonalities there. So anyway, so that was the first thing that jumped out at me was there’s an underlying theme of these sort of phantom attackers for which there’s no good evidence.

0:49:26
And yet there is some tradition of folk belief about them. But the Popobawa is different than the other phantom attackers because it attacks its victims sexually. You know, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon was said to gas people. Spring Heel Jack is said to have slashed people or cut them or stabbed them in some minor way. Same thing with the Monkey Man. But the Popobawa specifically is said to assault them sexually. And that’s weird.

0:49:55
PR: Yeah, that’s a very specific thing that must have some kind of cultural element or some kind of social element to it, I imagine.

BR: Yeah. I asked Juma Haji Juma, he says, quote, he says, “it does bad things, especially at night when it comes into houses. It tries to make sex with the victims, mostly men”, he told me. So again, this correspondence of what I read about the Popobawa elsewhere, and so I had a local informant, you know, basically bolstering that part of the story. And so, but that was the weirdest thing. Like how? What? And so actually I had read in Michael Newton’s Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology, I’ll just quote it from, I have it right in front of me, he says, Newton says, quote, Zanzibar’s main hospital treated numerous alleged Popobawo victims.

0:50:52
So I was thinking, again, one of the things I look for in my investigations is falsifiable facts. Person X makes this claim, can we determine whether it’s true or false? In this case, yes. So I went to the main hospital and I checked in with, there’s only one hospital in Stonetown, it’s not a big place and Zanzibar isn’t that big either. I talked to Dr. Omar Sala Omar at the hospital and he laughed, he said that, I interviewed him, he said, quote, “I’ve never treated anyone with Popobawa injuries” and he didn’t know of anybody who had.

0:51:27
So again, part of the process is taking claims about the Popobawa and where possible, testing them against, you know, going to the place, doing field research and cross-checking. And in this case, Newton’s claim is just simply false. I don’t know where he got it, but it was disputed by someone who works at the hospital. If anybody would know, he would know. So again, it was just one of many things where I’m trying to parse out what’s real and what’s not.

0:51:57
And it turns out that in terms of the assaults, it attacks people, especially men at night, but then it warns them that they have to tell other people about their violation. So it’s not just that it attacks men, but it says, if you don’t tell other people that I attacked you, I’ll come back. So there’s this sort of threatening element to, you need to tell our people and of course who wants to be really in in a Muslim country I mean right you know gay sex and anal sex is not… that ain’t cool

PR: Yeah that’s kind of that was kind of the thing that jumped to mind about the the kind of cautionary nature of a lot of legends and things like that is I mean is it does it come from those beliefs or maybe does it have an element of reality to it and that maybe throughout history someone who had to protect themselves from the social issues that happened from having engaged in anal sex or something like that.

0:53:05
It sounds like there’s a lot of things that kind of come into play with that.

BR: Yeah, and that was one of the parts that was, again, there’s all sorts of weird things about this monster and that’s only one of them. I’ll come back to that a little bit later because I think I know how that ties back in. But, you know, again the question was, so not only does it attack people who don’t tell others about it and sort of confess to being attacked by it, it’s interesting from a folkloric point of view, is one thing that does is it removes responsibility and agency from the attack. Because it’s like I’m a victim. Like I didn’t want this to happen, but if I don’t tell you, I will be attacked myself.

0:53:53
So it sort of takes like, if I had my way, no one would know about this horrible thing that happened to me. But we all, and again, it’s understood among the culture that this is part of the Popobawa story. And so it’s a way that people can talk about taboo topics and not take personal responsibility for doing it. And that’s one of the themes here. And so again, one question comes back to me, the essential question was, is this real? Is the Popobawo real? Now in Joe Nickell’s piece, he came down on the explanation of it being a waking dream. Basically, it was a form of nightmare. There’s a long tradition.

0:54:40
There’s the succubus stories, these evil entities that come and have sex with both men and women at night, sometimes pressing on their chest. David J. Hufford wrote an interesting book called The Terror that Comes in the Night that talks a lot about that. I interviewed Hufford as well. That was Joe Nickell’s basic explanation for it. It was essentially that the people who reported Popobawa attacks were in fact experiencing waking dreams. And again there when you look at the accounts, you know, some of them do, you know, some of them do appear that way. I mean, you have An unseen creature coming at you at night Not necessarily raping you keep in mind, but certainly attacking you in in possibly a sexual way and as I mentioned there’s a long tradition of succubus stories evil he’s alluring both men and women that have sex and there are stories of ghosts that do the same thing.

0:55:41
So it’s part of a larger tradition. So that’s where he came down on it. In Josh Gates’ TV program Destination Truth, he seemed to be looking for a real monster. If you watch the series, he begins looking for the Popobawa using searching night skies above Stonetown. He’s basically looking for a giant bat figure with glowing eyes that’s circling Stonetown. I looked at that and I sort of rolled my eyes because, really? But to be fair, I know where he’s coming from, having done some TV myself, is that a lot of times you have to act stupid in order to tell the story.

0:56:33
PR: Sure, sure. I mean, it’s a very common teaching device, too. You know, you kind of, you want the mystery to unravel along with the audience.

BR: Exactly, exactly. And so he has to play it, go, hey, let’s see if this thing is real. Oh, I guess it’s not. Okay, yeah, we got it, yeah. Good job, Josh, good job.

0:56:53
So, you know, I mean, that was a little, again, it’s TV, it’s entertainment, was really much beyond that. But anyway, at the end of the day, again, the question I was really trying to figure out was number one, is this thing real? And at the end of the day, I figured it can’t be real. They’re just, you know, real animals can’t turn invisible. They can’t shape shift.

0:57:16
Real animals have at least some evidence for them. Photographs, you know, tracks, something or other. And also keep in mind the notion of targeting skeptics. That implies that the Popobawa somehow knows if you’re skeptical of its existence. It’s like, it has this skeptical radar, it’s like, oh, hold on, someone in that village over there doesn’t think I exist. Zero in, right?

0:57:46
So this implies telepathy or something, right? Mind reading. And again, the Pobobawa is said to communicate and give orders, like, you know, you have to tell other people about my attack or I’ll come back. So that’s communication. And at the end of the day, I’m like, this, the real animals, I mean, that doesn’t, this is too fantastic.

0:58:17
There’s no way this is a real creature.

PR: So back when we talked about duppy attacks in Jamaica, you know, we talked about ways to prevent it. Now, do they have kind of a set of rules for preventing attacks from Popobawa?

BR: They do. They do. It’s interesting. Almost all legendary or cryptozoological, well, I shouldn’t say cryptozoological, but almost all sort of mythical legendary creatures have some sort of caveat, some sort of way to avoid.

0:58:43
You think of vampires and garlic or steaks, right? In some cases, it’s trolls. And you know, do you differ? So there’s, for every one of these sort of evil boogeyman, there’s usually at least a couple ways like, well, now if you see one, here’s what you do, right? So, you know, humans scare ourselves in many different ways, but we always give ourselves a little caveat, a little asterisk, you know?

0:59:09
We’re like, this is terrifying, but if you do the right thing, you know… Anyway, so in the case of Popobawa, there’s a couple ways. One of them is to recite the Quran. And you see, again, there’s parallels with Christianity, in which case, you know, you see people who, fundamentalist Christians, for example, believe that people can be possessed by demons. One of the classic ways is to recite the Bible. Sure.

0:59:35
Bible verses and that sort of thing.

PR: Pray the rosary or, you know, those kinds of things.

BR: Sure, sure. So the idea is that the holy word scripture is that you’re not strong enough but if you invoke Allah or you invoke the power of God then there you go. Besides reciting the Quran there’s also possessing holy verses and again so this is instead of physically reciting the Quran it’s having pieces on you. For example inscriptions in the amulet, for example, or having, it could be as simple as just having written on a piece of paper. And having it in your pocket.

1:00:10
PR: So maybe next time I go to Zanzibar, I should just have a tattoo. Super easy, then I’m 100% protected.

BR: You’d be covered there. There’s also, also one of the alleged ways of preventing a popobawa attack is pig oil.

PR: Pig oil.

BR: Right, now keep in mind, the origin of course is that in Islam, It’s pigs are unclean.

1:00:35
Pigs are unclean as in Judaism. And so the idea is that it’s so foul that even a Popobawa….

PR: But then who ultimately wins in that situation?

BR: Exactly, exactly. And as I mentioned also sleeping outside was said to prevent attacks and people were concerned that the pawpaw would have to come in through a window. And if you sleep outside, there’s no window so the pawpaw is confused or something.

1:01:04
There’s all sorts of these really interesting, bizarre little rationales for that. And it’s important to understand in the mindset that many Africans don’t necessarily equate seeing with experiencing. So that’s a somewhat Western distinction and it’s one that I embrace as a skeptic and I get that. And I’m not being ethnocentric here, I’m just explaining this is part of the Western empirical view, then yeah, I mean, there are invisible things, radio waves are invisible, for example, but there’s evidence for them. We can access, these are falsifiable.

1:01:48
If you believe there’s a radio wave going through somewhere, you can turn the source of that off and either it goes off or it doesn’t. But in this case, many Africans, particularly in West Africa and Muslims, they, as I mentioned before, they believe in the existence of unseen entities, such as the genies, the djinn. Sure. And so the lack of hard evidence for the Popobawa isn’t necessarily a problem for them because they’re like… and?

1:02:16
Of course, why would you be expecting hard evidence to Popobawa? There’s unseen things all around us that affect us that we can’t prove. I’ve encountered this before, for example, in looking at Sub-Saharan witchcraft beliefs, for example, and the ways in which those manifest themselves, sometimes in witch hunts. I’ve written about that before.

1:02:49
PR: Sure, there’s been a lot of scary stuff that’s happened around that.

BR: Yeah, and the hunting of albinos and the muti-murders, and we can do a show on that. I just love throwing out things we should just show off. Pascual, write that on the board. We’ll do that, right? But yeah, but again, there’s a whole worldview. It’s important to understand that worldview. And so when you’re looking at, as I mentioned before, when you’re looking at a phenomena, it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. These things emerge from somewhere. They emerge from different beliefs. And that’s very much the case with the Popobawa. So what you find is that there’s a couple explanations. One of them, as I mentioned, is waking dreams.

1:03:32
And Joe Nickell touches on this in his investigation in 2004, and he attributes many or most of the experiences to people having hallucinations, hypnopompic and hypnagogic, you know, coming into and out of sleep. You know, the brain does weird things, we misperceive things, sleep paralysis, I’ve experienced that myself, and it’s scary.

PR: Yeah, actually I grew up suffering from it quite a bit, and it hasn’t happened in a long time. I’ve always been struck by how similar the experiences are from people, between individuals who have it. So that was the first thing that jumped in my head when you mentioned waking dreams and also the idea that sleeping outside could change that because I also noticed in my own experience that if I was sleeping somewhere else or camping or something, I never experienced it.

1:04:27
It was always in my own bedroom at home. So, I don’t know if that’s a totally anecdotal thing, but I don’t know if there’s any science to the change of venue affecting it. So, I think that Joe is right in that it does explain some of the experiences. I mean, it very clearly tracks some of the claims about, because again, they typically occur at night. They occur in darkness when people are fearful. There’s psychological priming.

1:04:54
So I do think that the waking dream experience and sleep paralysis, I do think that plays a role, but I don’t think it’s the entire explanation.

PR: Yeah, I agree. It seems a little narrow to be the whole thing.

BR: Well, I mean, part of it is it doesn’t really account for the patterns. Because you would assume that if it was a sleep paralysis, this would, they would occur more or less randomly. Right, unless there’s some reason that’s triggering this particular thing. And at least some researchers, including Parkin, as I mentioned earlier, believes that there is a specific pattern to this, to the Popobawa attack.

1:05:35
So that gets to the second explanation Which is that it’s a folk belief that’s been co-opted by politicians And yeah this is and this is this is one that Josh Gates in his destination truth episode sort of touches on at the end and Gates sort of as I recall it’s been a while since I’ve seen the show, but as I recall he sort of He he offers this as the explanation. Which, I think is also wrong. I don’t think the sleep paralysis is THE explanation. I don’t think the political aspect is THE explanation either. I think it’s a variety of things. But a political explanation for the Popabawa is rooted in a couple of things.

1:06:14
There were some claims that it happened right around election times. Particularly, again, in 1995 there was a huge scare. That was sort of the height of the Popabawa scare. And it continues to this day. Not the scare, but the belief in it. But it certainly did peak in 95, and this was right around the time of widespread elections on the island. There were two political parties that were fighting, and there were accusations and apparently some evidence that politicians were using the Popobawa to threaten voters.

1:06:53
You know, if you don’t vote for us, the Popobawa will come and get you. In fact, that’s one of the origin stories of the Popobawa that I discovered when I was interviewing people.

PR: I do believe our current president also used that.

BR: There you go, right? So, you know, one of the… when you ask people, where do you think the Popobawa came from?

1:07:21
There’s a couple explanations. One that I heard over and over again was that the Popobawa was essentially created by a sorcerer, a magician, on Pemba, which is another island nearby, or maybe in Zanzibar, or maybe in the mainland, in Dar es Salaam or elsewhere, but that it’s this notion that bad things happen to people in partly because an evil entity is cast on them. And it’s akin to the magical thinking of dueling curses. There are people who believe if something bad happens to you, why did this bad thing happen, why did my house burn down, why did I get cancer, why did my husband leave me? And sometimes when you go to a psychic or a shaman, the answer is, well, you’ve been cursed.

1:08:12
Then the question is, well, why was I cursed? Do you have any enemies? Of course you have enemies. Who doesn’t have enemies over the age of five, right? So all of us can think of somebody who might be out to get us wherever else, and then so then that sort of in the realm of magical thinking, there’s like, well I can, you know, I can cast a counter curse. So you have these sort of these dueling magical elements and of course the shaman and witch doctor are getting paid either way. Oh yes, there’s a curse on you! Oh, another curse!

1:08:46
Oh, this one’s even more…

PR: Now your money’s cursed. Better fix that.

BR: Bring it over here. But that notion is actually not uncommon, particularly among genies and djinns. So, for example, in Iranian politics, I wrote about this a couple years ago, there were accusations that a politician was actually killed by a genie who had been sent by a rival. That’s part of the world view. And so that’s not unusual in politics to attribute bad things or threaten bad things by some evil entity.

1:09:23
And of course, you know, Westerners may dismiss the idea of the Popobawa being a political scare tactic as sort of bizarre and quaint, but in fact, of course, politicians have long used fear, both real and imagined, to hype social issues. America has a long tradition of this.

PR: We are no stranger to that, especially right now.

BR: Especially these days, right? In American politics and political advertising, the scary boogeyman isn’t Popobawa, it’s the terrorists, it’s the immigrants. It’s the threatening outsider that’s going to come in and lead your children astray and burn your houses.

1:10:08
Politics is rife with finding outsiders to blame and scapegoats. And so this is not unique by any means to the Zanzibari politicians.

PR: Right, it appeals to our basest instincts and no matter how modern and evolved we are as a culture or anything, we still act with the same instincts that even the earliest humans. I mean, that’s how we got here. Fear is how we got here, but unfortunately now we don’t have enough to fear, so we have to create things.

BR: You have to make new ones. So again, there’s about three or four different explanations. The waking dreams, which I think is partly the answer.

1:10:55
The political boogeyman, which I think is partly the answer. And then there’s another aspect that I don’t claim to have discovered it, but I certainly figured it out for myself, which was, I kept coming back to when I would ask people, what is the Popobawa, often they would say it’s a genie. It’s a djinn. And so I realized that in order to understand the Popobawa, I had to understand more about genies. And in a previous episode, I referenced a very good book by Robert Lebling called Legends of the Fire Spirits. And I recommend it if anyone’s interested in learning more about genies and djinn, particularly in the Arab world. It’s a great resource. But as it turns out, the template for creating the Popobawa, as far as I could tell, lay in the cultural and religious fabric of Zanzibar society, which again is Islam. The bulk of Zanzibaris and those in the mainland are Muslim.

1:11:54
And as I mentioned, the Quran is filled with stories of the genies, the smoke figures that we do. And they have their own societies, and they do evil things, and they have children, they have jobs. It’s this bizarre parallel universe that they believe exists. And you see the same thing, for example, in fairy lore in the British Isles. It’s the notion that these figures live in a sort of a nearly identical, but separate world.

1:12:23
And it’s, and every now and then, the two worlds collide when we see when we see the fairies when we see the jinn. Anyway, so there’s a whole mythology behind this that is just fascinating. And of course, you know Non Muslims typically don’t recognize the actions and signs of the genies so of course is gonna typically Go to to of course can typically apply to skeptics. So and I think that I think that that helps explain a couple things about the nature of the Popobawa. One of them is of course white targets disbelievers. And you know a clue can be found in the in the cultural religious context. If you read the Quran, it has multiple references to to attacking disbelievers. I don’t mean to start a big thing here, but it’s right there.

1:13:16
PR: It’s a common theme in a lot of religious things.

BR: Yes, it is not at all unique to the Quran. For example, Surah 9, 5, I mean, there’s lots of them. I’m not singling out the Quran. I’m just saying it’s a fact that targeting disbelievers is a theme in Islam. It’s also a theme in Christianity as well.

PR: It’s been a really big theme historically

BR: But but again, I bring it up not to not to cash you on Islam But because…

PR: cultural context

BR: cultural context and so if you believe that the Popobawa is a form of the the jinn Then that makes perfect sense because that’s one of the things that the the jinn do is they they carry out the the commandments in in in the in the in the Quran. And of course the Islamic influences may also explain why the Popobawa attacks male victims.

1:14:10
Sexually. As we mentioned before, you know, homosexuality is taboo in Muslim countries. And the notion of a man being raped by an entity, certainly a beast with a large penis, is particularly scary to Muslim men. And you know, the idea of being forced into submission by a male entity is frayed with taboos that as Westerners we don’t necessarily bring to it. But in that context, it can be very scary.

1:14:45
In the end, my conclusion was that the Popobawa is a chameleon. It’s a way of talking about taboos and traditions in Zanzibar and in Islam in general. Some of it is waking dreams. Some of it is djinn folklore. Some of it is folk beliefs co-opted by politicians, there’s not one thing. And this is what you find, for example, with ghosts. People often like, you know, hey Ben, Mr. Expert, what is the explanation for ghosts? It’s like, there is no the explanation for ghosts. There are a wide variety of explanations for ghosts.

1:15:32
It really depends on the context and the specific claim. And so, just as it’s a mistake to look for a singular explanation for the other things, the Popobawa, it changes itself and it sort of adapts to whatever its speakers want it to be. And so that was sort of my take on it. There was actually a book that came out recently called Popobawa by Katrina Daly Thompson. And it’s the first in-depth scholarly book on the Popobawa that I’ve seen. And I’m mentioning in there, as is Joe and others. And it’s a generally good book. The author is an ethnolinguist. And her focus is specifically on how Popobawa talk reflects broader concerns in the society.

1:16:27
So hers is a very specific take on it. I think some of it is interesting, I think some of it’s wrong, but it’s certainly good and in-depth, so I would recommend it as, again, on the subject, there’s not much out there. For those who want a broader view of the topic, I would recommend it. Some is kind of tough going because it is very linguistically oriented and she she goes into a lot of detail how different words are used in Swahili and it’s all well and good but at some point I’m like, all right, all right… Anyway, but yeah, it’s a fascinating topic. I’m pleased to have had some some, you know, done some original research for whatever that’s worth on it.

1:17:16
It’s a weird, bizarre thing and that’s my best explanation for it. And, you know, that in a nutshell is the story of the Popobawa.

PR: And that about does it for us this week.

BR: What do we have on tap next week, Pascual? What exciting, sexy topic are we going to be gracing our listeners with next week?

PR: This is a topic that’s very near and dear to me and it’s the satanic panic.

BR: That’s creepy as I look over at you with your tattoos and your pentagram shirt.

PR: Yeah, it’s, you know, we’re gonna cover a couple of specific stories that have to do with it. There’s a documentary out there if you folks want to see it ahead of time. It’s called Until the Light Takes Us and it revolves around Norway’s black metal scene in 91 through 93 roughly when a series of church burnings occurred and a couple of murders happened all surrounding a small group of black metal bands. What we are kind of focused on is how the media portrayed these events and how there was a lot more to it than just being blasphemous in the name of Satan

BR: I think a lot of American skeptics are familiar with a satanic panic through one or two prisms maybe through the McMartin preschool case or you know the the you know the heavy metal case the Judas Priest trial things like that sure, but there’s lots of different angles to it. So this is sort of an interesting European angle.

PR: yeah, it’s a very specifically European thing and and I think over time we’ll probably touch in on on a number of the the stories and things that happened during the satanic panic because it’s much too broad of a topic to just cover in one episode. So yeah, stay tuned for that and as always we want to thank our sponsor Amy Freshour Kelly for her sponsor level patronage If you are interested in what a patron is, go to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange. It’s basically how we pay the bills and pay to keep the website up and pay to keep all this stuff hosted. It’s it’s listeners like you to paraphrase PBS but also don’t forget to go to our website every week squaring strange dot com. We always post the new episodes there at midnight every Thursday, Thursday morning that is, not Thursday midnight.

1:20:06
Midnight is such a weird time. It’s always hard to explain to people whether it’s the next midnight or the midnight that happened, zero hundred hours Thursday. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at squaringthestrange or Twitter.

BR: We still have some gifts for our generous donors.

PR: Yeah, how’s that going? Do we still have some of that sweet duppy repellent left?

BR: We do, we do. We have a limited supply for those who missed the mention of it earlier.

1:20:41
We’re giving away a very handsome card of duppy repellent, which is a Jamaican ghost, including the rolling calf. I’ve had these bags in my home for going on a month now and I can tell you from personal experience, this is an anecdote granted, but I have not seen any duppies, rolling calf or other evil spirits from Jamaica in my home.

PR: Yeah, and I think just by virtue of you coming over here every week, it’s also extended to my home. So that just to speak to how powerful that is, because I have not, also not experienced any duppies, any rolling calves. I can’t speak for my neighbors or Ben’s neighbors, but it’s powerful stuff, so get it while it’s hot.

1:21:24
BR: That’s right, and it’s available for the first 10 patrons, and there’s still a few slots left, so get it while it’s hot.

PR: Awesome. And also, as Ben mentioned, you get a little card that’s signed by both of us. I don’t know that my autograph’s worth anything.

BR: The card’s designed by our content producer, Celestia Ward.

PR: Yeah, and she’s an amazing artist if you haven’t seen her work. Well, you have seen her work, I’m pretty sure, because our logo design was done by her.

1:21:56
She also does some really great character work and other kind of…

BR: Well, she’s actually pretty diverse. I’ve been impressed. Some artists like there’s that distinctive style and then but yeah she’s got a wide variety. I’ve seen some stuff like did you use that? She’s like of course. Because it looks totally different than this and they’re both brilliant.

PR: Yeah it’s really cool. It’s much much different from from our our mugs on the squaring the strange logo.

BR: So anyway we got a cool little card designed by Celestia and signed by the two of us with some genuine duppy repellent that I purchased from a pharmacy in Jamaica. If you have any questions about its authenticity, I have a receipt.

PR: Yes, and if you have any questions about how we got it here, don’t ask. So, until next Thursday at midnight.

1:22:45
BR: Bye, thanks for listening.