0:00:00
Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So let’s square the strange.

0:00:10
Pascual Romero: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. This is Pascual Romero and with me as always are…

BR: Ben Radford here.

Celestia Ward: And Celestia Ward. How are you guys doing?

PR: Really good.

BR: Sweaty. Hot.

0:00:36
PR: Yeah. You know, normally I find it tacky to, you know, talk about the weather. I guess just it’s, normally it’s like an old guy thing to just talk about the weather, but like I can’t not talk about it right now. It is utter, it’s just misery.

0:01:04
CW: Well, I mean, on the positive side, both you guys and me live in regions of the country that have air conditioning because it was kind of built into our framework. We kind of needed it 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Air conditioning was a necessity. I feel really bad for places that are enduring heat waves that just have never had the need for air conditioning and suddenly it’s 105.

0:01:27
PR: Yeah, well, and now, you know, New Mexico, Albuquerque, Santa Fe especially, but you know, we are kind of a temperate climate and surprisingly not as hot as you would think. I think our record, all-time record temperature was like 103.

0:01:42
CW: Oh, wow.

0:01:43
PR: Yeah, and I mean, we are at the same altitude as Denver. So most places have swamp coolers here, which work really well when it’s 90 degrees, and when it’s 100 plus degrees, it’s a brisk 85 in the house. So yeah, unfortunately, my house isn’t quite equipped for this weather.

BR: Yeah, the evaporative cooling, it works great because of physics, but if the air that you’re bringing into your house is already 105, then you know, cooling it down a little bit, it’s…

0:02:18
PR: Yeah, and now it’s hot and sticky inside.

0:02:21
CW: Well, even the standard non-evaporative cooling ACs that we have in our house here. We do not have a swamp cooler, we have central air. Even they can only do so much when it gets to be about 115, 116 outside. You’re still going to end up with an 82 degree house.

0:02:38
PR: Yep.

0:02:39
CW: Well, this is episode 180 and we are going to be talking about burning things, not like sage or candles or sick burns on your enemies. We’re talking about effigies and burning things as a way to renew and celebrate the passage of a year or to just get rid of bad juju or improve the crops. Now bear in mind that when you talk about effigies they mean a lot of things and there are some there are some sort of inflammatory racist effigies that people may have seen. I know I’ve seen effigies of like a politician being lynched and stuff and we’re not talking about those, to be clear. We’re talking about a bit more of a fun loving effigy tradition for the most part, uh, involving festivals and traditions and also some creepy horror versions that may or may not be linked to actual history. So, um, before we get into our main segment, we got some house cleaning. Uh, Ben, you’ve got a talk coming up, right? You always have a talk coming up.

0:03:38
BR: I do. I look at my calendar and it’s like, OK, what is it this week? Oh, that’s right. Yes, so this upcoming week when you guys hear this, on August 2nd, I’ll be giving a talk for the Phoenix Library. It’s the, I think, second or maybe I think the third in a series. I’ll be talking on bad clowns. So for those of you who don’t get tired of hearing me, I’m shocked and somewhat flattered. But come check it out. You can see it online. You do have to register, but you can hear all about it.

0:04:15
CW: The Bad Clowns is one of your more interesting topics, I must say. I’m a little bit biased there.

0:04:21
BR: Yeah, I mean, of the ones that I’m known for, it’s kind of a fun one to go back to. I don’t really get tired of talking about it. There are just so many weird angles and, you know, scary clowns and phantom clowns and this and that. It’s a good spattering of weirdness for everybody.

0:04:38
CW: It really was sort of serendipitous that you released a book on bad clowns, right, as the whole nation, nay, the entire world, found itself barreling into the great clown panic.

0:04:51
BR: Yes, and I reiterate, I had nothing to do with that. That was not staged by me. So, yeah, it worked out well. I don’t know that I sold a ton of books, but at least at least I helped to educate the public about the menace of clowns.

0:05:05
CW: Yes. Well, believe it or not, I had a talk, too, and I’m sure not as much of a talker as Ben is. But I had a talk that happened at SkeptiCal just a couple weeks ago. And I forgot to mention it on the podcast leading up to it, but I did throw it out on all my socials. If you’re able to tune in and see me talk with a couple of other people known for humor in skepticism, then awesome. If you didn’t get to see it and you would like to see it, I believe you can register and see all the talks. It’s not just me on the humor panel, along with Leanne Lord, Ian Harris, and Emery Emery, all names you should recognize. But they’ve got a keynote speech by Bill Nye and then other interesting talks by Stephen Novella and other prominent skeptics. So it’s worth your ticket price. I think it’s just 30 bucks. 30 bucks, but or you can just wait and wait and wait and they’ll probably become available to the general public and I’ll let you know when that happens. But there is a reason we are talking about effigies and burning things this week. We’re kind of entering a particular season and Pascual, you’ve got some interesting stuff that happened to you recently.

0:06:18
PR: Yeah, yeah. So recently I auditioned to perform as the voice of our local effigy, Zazobra, that we will be talking about on this episode, of course. I thought it would be kind of fun to just talk a little bit about the experience.

0:06:37
CW: So yeah, Zazobra. Now we’ll be covering the folklore kind of behind him and the history, but what was it like auditioning? I mean, could you first of all, give us a little taste of the voice you used?

0:06:49
PR: Sure. So, I guess to preface this, the voice of Zazobra, Zazobra is a 50-foot tall marionette and historically it’s always just kind of been like an older guy and he’d sort of groan and grumble. In the last few years, we lost a person who was a long-time voice, I believe he passed away, and they’ve had a couple of people fill in. In fact, they had an opera singer do it in the last couple years. Oh. Yeah, and it’s really interesting to do that. Now, in my opinion, the opera singer didn’t really, I think people’s opinions were that the opera singer was not as good as the oldvoice. He tried something different, but…

0:07:30
CW: People don’t like different right up front.

PR: Yeah, yeah. And it’s hard because when you’re voicing a 50-foot tall marionette, there’s a certain, you know, you have to kind of try to embody the size of that thing. You can’t just use your normal voice.

BR: You have to bring the gravitas.

PR: Yeah, exactly. And I think the opera singer did a good job, but he didn’t have enough size to his voice. But historically, the voice was always very groany and grumbly. So Zazobra’s never said anything, but he does kind of groan. And most people kind of do it in a kind of angry, Frankenstein voice. Now, as a kid I always thought it would be the coolest thing to do the voice of Zazobra. And I’ve seen Zazobra, boy, at least 30-some times in my life because most years I do go. And so, you know, it was always kind of a dream of mine but it was never an open audition that I can recall. I think there may have been one when I was a kid but not since. So I heard that they were doing auditions. They were gonna do an open audition. So he signed up and he came in. And so that was really exciting for me because I thought that, you know, my years as being a musician and I was an extreme metal vocalist in some of my bands, and I thought, well, what if I brought something a little scarier to Zazobra than just the normal, you know, big lumbering ogre voice and more of a monster.

0:09:14
BR: So something is something more substantive to slay. But, you know, a little threatening. It’s almost like he hasn’t quite resigned to the fact that he’s about to be, you know, go up in flames. He’s he’s got one last rage of howl of anger and spouting it and trying to, you know, defeat all his enemies with this terrifying thing. Yeah, it’s something like that.

0:09:38
CW: Hit us with it. I’m curious.

0:09:41
PR: So I’m just going to give a little taste of it. There’s a whole performance that they had me do, but I’m just going to do one little part, so I don’t want to give it all away. But this will be kind of the more angry roar.

(ROARS)

0:09:54
PR: Cool. Now, are you using any heavy metal techniques in order to sort of get that throaty sound?

0:09:56
PR: Yeah, so actually it is all techniques. So that’s a big thing about extreme metal vocalists. When you hear these growly, screamy guys, the people, there are ways to do it very incorrectly, which is yell at the top of your lungs, but it actually requires some techniques that are very similar to, you know, powerful singing styles, where you use your diaphragm to push the air out, and then you actually get that low sound by shaping your throat and your tongue and your palate in a way that allows it to sort of open up, like make it very cavernous. And so it’s very similar to how you get the really low notes in like opera vocals. But all you have to do is just add what’s called vocal fry to it, which is, it’s a thing that I’ve seen writers in modern times talk about that like women do more often nowadays.

CW: It’s a Californian female thing that gets made fun of a lot.

0:11:04
PR: Yeah, yeah. And that’s actually where you get that gravel out of the vocal is that just that kind of crackle that you can do in the back of your throat when you talk. And yeah, but it’s all technique. And when done correctly, it’s not at all dangerous for your vocal cords.

0:11:21
CW: Yeah, man, simple growling is not so simple, huh?

PR: Yeah, it takes quite a bit.

CW: Now, tell us, who else did you see? What was the gang of people like that was auditioning with you? And did you get the part? I know our listeners want to know.

0:11:39
PR: So so to start with my experience there was really fun. I Really had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know like how you know it’s like how many people want to do this, especially in Santa Fe which is in a huge town and you know like what kind of people want to do this, you know I expected there’d probably be some performers and musicians and stuff. But I just really didn’t know what to expect. But when I got there, I was really surprised to see a huge variety of people there. Of note, really, of course, there were some older guys with really good kind of traditional sounding vocal styles. But there were also a lot of women and several women who did, frankly, a really impressive job with the vocal. I was pretty blown away. There was a little boy who auditioned. He’s nine years old and his father introduced him and said that he knows he probably won’t get it, but he wanted to try because Zazobra is his favorite thing in the world.

0:12:43
CW: Oh, that was so cool of his dad to bring him just for the life experience.

PR: Yeah, I mean, it was cool and he did a great job. He dressed up as Zazobra, which is like extra points for that? It was cool because it was an open audition in front of the other people auditioning and at first to me and that’s actually really intimidating because yes, I’ve performed in front of thousands of people But there’s something about the intimacy of performing in front of people who are also trying to do the same thing as you. It can be really intimidating. But it turns out, after the first couple people went, the vibe of the room was so fun and friendly that we just all had a really good time trying. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. So as of this recording, I cannot say who’s getting the part. They will be announcing it in the coming weeks. So keep an eye out for Facebook. And then, of course, I will, once they announce it, I’ll go ahead and we’ll say it on the show just so the listeners get the verdict. But yeah.

0:13:52
CW: Well, we’re rooting for you.

0:13:53
PR: Thank you.

0:13:55
CW: I can’t help but remember the large-scale big techs that I saw every year when I worked the State Fair of Texas. And about 10 years ago, it did burn down. So technically it is an effigy that burned. And there is a famous voice actor. I say famous. He’s famous in Texas for being the voice of Big Tex. And he did it for years and years and years. And he would sit in a van with the microphone and, you know. And so he’s sort of interacted with people. And again, he’s like 50 feet tall. He’s like a really gigantic looking marionette. Well, not officially a marionette, but he looks very much like Howdy Doody. And he burned down about 10 years ago. And it was a sight to behold. And what everybody wanted to know on the fairgrounds where it was, what did the voice actor do? We heard rumors that he just kind of got out of the van and watched it burn and had like tears rolling down his eyes. And other people speculated, you know, he really should have just gone with it and been like, help my biscuits are burning, my biscuits are burning. So he may have missed a golden opportunity to ad-lib there. But yeah, they did replace that voice actor after he just retired, after being up in years there. And again, the first year, nobody liked the new guy. But then by the next year, everybody got used to him. And they did rebuild Big Tex the next year. And they did not burn him every year, although that idea was floated unofficially among all the carnies. They’re like, that was really wild. They should do that every year. But yeah, Big Tex is back and he looks a little weird and a little stumpier, but you know, the design is slightly changed, but it’s definitely Big Tex.

PR: Do yourself a favor and Google pictures of the fire because they are actually kind of terrifying.

0:15:59
CW: Oh, yeah. When when when Big Tex’s head was burning, that was, I mean, I was watching that live. It was a moving, sort of terrifying spectacle to watch.

PR: Yeah, it’s pretty freaky looking. His face stayed intact through a lot of it, so it’s a lot of really kind of creepy cool pictures from that. I’m glad it got rebuilt. I love me some giant guys, those are always great pieces of Americana.

0:16:31
CW: Yeah. Larger than life. Cowboys telling you to go eat greasy foods. Yeah, but well, we’re going to talk a little bit more about Zozobra and many other effigies that are built to burn after this important message.

0:16:43
Brian Dunning: Hey, everyone, this is Brian Dunning, executive producer of Science Friction, now on streaming services. I wanted to let you know about my next feature documentary film. It’s called, The UFO Movie They Don’t Want You to See. And it’s a science-based look at this whole modern UFO phenomenon. What don’t we know? What do we know? And how do we know it? We’re going to speak with pilots, physicists, image analysts, and, uniquely, experts in optical illusions, and give the audience a good understanding of what’s actually in all these UFO videos. Come and watch the trailer, and if you like, help produce the film. Visit theufo.movie to see it. That’s theufo.movie. Join me, and let’s make this film a real resource that does the world some good for a change. Theufo.movie. I’m Brian Dunning.Thank you.

(MUSIC)

0:17:46
PR: So let’s start with Zazobra, who we spoke about my audition, but let’s talk about the guy himself. He is a giant marionette effigy. So he’s constructed wood, wire, and cotton cloth. And every year at the beginning of September, usually the Friday before Labor Day, we have a big giant ceremony where the entire city shows up and burns him.

CW: As you do, yeah.

PR: Yeah, so this is a really cool tradition. It dates back to 1924 when an artist named Will Schuster, who’s a very famous Santa Fe painter, originally from the East Coast, but he was one of the original artist transplants in Santa Fe. So Schuster in 1924 backyard and decided to burn an effigy like you do. Just kind of as a celebration. So he made this little six foot tall character. I don’t even think he was a marionette at the time. Not real clear on the history of that. But he made a little white effigy out of cloth and wood and burned him. Eventually he decided to name this character Zozobra. Now, in Spanish, the word Zozobra is a word that kind of translates to like anxiety or worry or like when you have a sinking feeling.

CW: Is that related to the English word sober?

0:19:33
PR: Maybe a little, yeah. So, but yeah, it’s one of those words, one of the few Spanish words that doesn’t have a direct English translation, but generally speaking, it’s kind of that bad gut feeling you get when you’re anxious or.

0:19:47
BR: Like dread.

0:19:48
PR: Yeah, dread is a good one. So yeah, so Will Schuster did this and then eventually it just started kind of attracting more people, so then they moved it to a public venue, which is this park in Santa Fe called Fort Marcy Park, where there used to actually be a fort a long, long time ago. And so they started burning it there, and it started out, you know, again, about six feet tall, and it slowly grew until I believe in the 60s when it started really getting tall, and it actually reached 50 feet at that point. And that is his current height. The city actually built a special rig, about a 55 foot pole with pulleys on it that’s made all of metal so that it won’t get burned down. And it’s there permanently year round and every year they hoist Zozobra up on it. At one point it actually had the world record for the tallest marionette in the world.

0:20:42
CW: Wow, Santa Fe is an interesting place. I was happy to hear you say that the city built the thing for it rather than just tried to lock it all down with permits and fines and everything, because it’s an interesting kind of clash between artistic sensibilities and, well, you know, city considerations when you have something like this going on.

PR: Public safety. So, yeah, I mean, I think the timing probably was great because it started during a time when things were definitely a lot looser. And so the community kind of embracing it sort of forced the city to just adapt to it being part of what happens. It is attached to the Fiestas de Santa Fe, which is the Santa Fe Fiestas. It celebrates actually the reconquest of New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. So it’s actually that part of the celebration has a lot of historical conflict going on to this day and for good reason.

0:21:47
CW: Yeah, I was about to say that doesn’t sound like a thing that you personally would celebrate.

0:21:50
PR: Yeah, so it has evolved quite a bit. The fiestas themselves are becoming much more about community and celebration and less about celebrating the Spanish reconquest of the region. But also, Zozobra itself has always been sort of outside of that, but just the marker of the beginning of the celebration because it’s, you know, completely unrelated in terms of theme. It’s not, you know, celebrating anything other than just burning Zozobra. Again, the anxiety, the dread, it’s It’s symbolizing a release of your worries and your fears.

0:22:29
CW: I mean, do you really need another thing to celebrate besides that?

PR: Exactly, yeah.

CW: Now you mentioned the first one happened in 1924, so the 100-year celebration is coming up, right?

PR: Yes, yes. So for the last, let’s see, this will be the eighth year. They’ve been going decade by decade. So Zazobra’s theme has been based on the decades. Eight years ago, it was the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. COVID hit, so we actually had a COVID-themed Zazobra in 2020, because the thing about Zazobra is when I say the city celebrates it, it’s basically the population of the city is there. In 2019, I believe it nearly reached 70,000 people in the park there.

CW: So if you want to rob a house in Santa Fe…

BR: that’s the time to do it.

0:23:25
PR: No doubt. Everyone’s there, including the cops, in a heavy presence. And, yes, so, of course, 2020 came, and there was no way we were going to put 70,000 people in a park. So we did it virtually and Zsobra was COVID themed. He actually had little coronaviruses as buttons on his suit. He kind of wears a suit with a gown, just to give a little description. He’s white with various accoutrements depending on the year. It always changes. But yes, so that was kind of fun. It was a little weird. It’s not as fun watching it on TV as it is standing there watching this huge thinggo up in flames.

0:24:04
BR: And I’ve been there, I think, two or three times. It’s been a long time. Unlike Pascual, I never lived in Santa Fe. But I remember as a kid going up there, and the first time I think I was 13 or 14, and I’d heard about it, but, you know, because we see it on the news. I mean, it’s, it makes the news like all the preparations and then the, there’s a whole unveiling thing. And it’s a, it’s a fun little thing. But I remember my dad saying, where are you going to go? So he’s over. I’m like, Oh, this would be cool. So he’s like, so he wanted me to write down on a piece of paper, all the things that I was like frustrated about, angry about, and fearful. And you know, I was 14. So I was like, you know, well, zits. My unrequited love for a girl named Stacy. These things are tragic in my life that were, you know, so.

0:24:58
PR: Yeah. And speaking of writing down your worries on a piece of paper, that’s part of the tradition is that in the weeks leading up to the burning, they collect. It’s usually nowadays it’s at the mall. They used to have boxes like at the bank and random places throughout town. You would write down your worries and shove them in the box. Some people would actually put divorce papers, credit card bills. One time there was actually a wedding dress that made it inside of Zozora.

0:25:32
CW: Oh, that’s great.

0:25:35
PR: So there’s all kinds of cool things. And so yeah, you can, in the weeks leading up to it. Nowadays, it’s at the mall and you can go into the mall and, you know, write down your worries or put any paper item that you want to burn.

0:25:47
CW: What a fantastic opportunity for the local press to do stories on human interest. Stuff this week, we’re going to look at what’s in the suggestion box for Zazobra. Here we have a wedding dress and a bad caricature somebody got at the fair. And you know, wow, that’s great. I particularly like again, this is one of those topics that kind of combines art and superstition and folklore. And I love that about it. And you mentioned the coronavirus shaped buttons on his jacket. And I came across that. We’ll get into it later, but there’s definitely a theme of these things being used in a satirical sort of way to like, like take a giant, scary, awful thing and put it into a smaller, flammable form that’s often funny.

0:26:41
PR: So nowadays, Zozobra is run by the Kiwanis Club, which is a nonprofit organization here in the US that a lot of people’s grandpas are in. Although, I will say, when I did do the audition for Zazobra’s Voice, the people from the Kiwanis Club were actually my age or younger, so I’m glad to see that people are still involved in the community in that way, especially just because Zazobra is run by them, and I’d hate to see that go, ever.

0:27:11
CW: Yeah, I hate to break this to you, Pascual, but there are grandparents your age.

0:27:15
PR: Yeah, no, I know. I’m actually a great uncle. So that’s, yeah. And speaking of grandparents, grandparents and parents alike have used Zazobra as a cautionary tale. So when I was a kid, it was very common, kind of like La Llorona. It was that Zazobra will get you. And so that was a big thing, you know, to kind of scare kids because he was up in the mountains somewhere waiting. But, you know, the thing is, it’s kind of weird because on one hand, a giant 50 foot tall monster is scary. On the other hand, you’re going to see him coming. So I’m still a little more scared of La Llorona. Plus, you get to put like pieces of paper up his ass. I mean, that’s a lot of the fear out there.

0:27:56
CW: Has any frustrated parent ever tried to send their kid in and get their kid stuffed into Zazobra?

0:28:05
PR: I would hope not, but I guess we probably wouldn’t have heard about that one.

0:28:10
CW: As gruesome as that sounds, we are going to get into that and not in a funny ha ha way later.

0:28:15
PR: So now Zazobra actually doesn’t really, historically Zazobra actually didn’t have a backstory, back story, but there was a ritual around him. There’s always been a ritual where we have these little kids. They’re usually Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts or Cub Scouts usually. They’re little kids. They wear sheets over themselves and we call them gloomies. They sort of parade out in front of Zazobra, there’s bonfires around, he starts moaning and groaning, and then the little gloomies come out. So it’s just this little parade of ghosts that come out and kind of go in formation and walk across him, or walk across the front of him and walk down the stairs. And it’s a lot of song and dance. His arms are moving, he’s looking around. Very articulate these days. He’s got a, his mouth moves, his eyes look back and forth, his arms move all over the place. And as he’s doing that, of course, you’ve got your little gloomies, and then you have people holding torches, very kind of villagers with torches style.

0:29:29
CW: The gloomies sound really cute.

0:29:31
PR: They are extremely cute. I never had a chance to do it. A lot of my friends did it. Yeah, they just, it’s usually like 20, maybe even more at a time. So you just see all these little tiny kids kind of hanging out in front of the Zazobra, waving their sheets around. And that whole part of the ceremony sort of wraps up and the kids sort of shuffle to the front so they’re kind of far away from the fire. And then usually, depending on the year, they change it up a little bit. There’s usually the people with the torches, and then the fire dancer comes out. Now, this is a really important part of the ritual. It’s usually, it’s historically been a woman, and she, usually we have local dancers. One of the most recent ones, I believe, still the fire dancer is Helene Luna, and she’s been doing it for well over a decade. She’s in this very elaborate costume with a big headpiece and kind of spandex on and shiny and red and covered in rhinestones and stuff. And she dances up and down the stairs doing all these very elaborate moves and kind of, you know, suggesting that she’s like, enchanting’s as Zazobra basically, with a lot of arm waving and kicks and running up and down the stairs. It’s really cool.

CW: It sounds muy caliente.

PR: Yes. And usually, yeah, and it’s always set to music. And so historically, at least when I was a kid growing up, it was usually just a very heavy drumbeat kind of tribal almost. But more recently, they’ve added music to it. And in fact, last year, because it was an 80s theme, it was to kind of a modified version of the Ghostbusters theme, which was kind of fun. And the torchbearers were all dressed as Ghostbusters, so that was cool.

0:31:17
CW: So do the torchbearers themselves actually light Zazobra on fire?

PR: No, they actually, they just light the bonfires in front and just kind of wave their torches. When I was a kid, the fire dancer actually had torches in her hands, and she would actually start Zazobra on fire and actually start it on his gown, Nowadays they have it rigged with incendiary devices inside of it. So the fire dancer-

0:31:49
BR: No, come on. I mean, if you’re going to do it, do it.

0:31:54
PR: So, yeah, so they, it’s just timed out. So the fire dancer does some spectacular move. She’ll throw up her arms and fireworks will shoot out of the ground and then, you know, these big long strands of fireworks will kind of run up to his head and then all of a sudden from the inside out, he starts on fire. And it’s a very spectacular burning. It’s not just lighting something on fire, it’s quite literally just almost like spontaneous combustion. And then a huge fireworks show ensues and Zazoobra is burned and then we celebrate the burning of all our worry for the year and getting on with our year. It’s a nice start to the fall season in Santa Fe. It always is a lot of fun to just kind of have that cathartic moment of burning this giant monster in front of a crowd of 70,000 people nowadays. And just kind of getting together as a community and, you know, getting some mob justice on a giant monster.

CW: I did not know that that was on my bucket list, but now it is.

PR: Yeah, absolutely.

BR: Next time you come out, we should do a show there.

PR: And it is said that the Zobra actually did inspire Burning Man. It’s this is unsubstantiated so you know it’s it Santa fans like to think we started everything but but said long before the first Burning Man they actually say that the the creators started it after experiencing as a Zazobra festival in the early 80s so I don’t know how true that is it’s really hard to find any information to confirm that but that’s been the local legend since Burning Man became popular.

BR: It’s plausible. I’ll allow it.

PR: Burning Man and Santa Fe have a lot of crossover.

CW: That makes sense. There’s definitely a shared sensibility that you can certainly see in Meow Wolf in terms of the Burner culture. I’m going to talk a little bit about Burning Man. I have been. I’ve been twice. In fact, I took my mother there in the year 2000. That was fun. She dyed her hair blue. It was a lot of fun.

0:34:08
PR: Cool.

0:34:09
CW: Burning Man is, although Zazobra predates it by a good 60 years, Burning Man is now probably the most familiar effigy burning festival in America we have now. The first one was not in the Black Rock Desert. It was on Baker Beach in San Francisco. That was on June 22nd of 1986. It was put together by Larry Harvey and Jerry James, two makers who created the first man. The effigy is not known as anything in particular. It’s just called The Man, so it doesn’t have a name like Zazobra. It’s just The Man.

PR: But I mean, I feel like symbolically The Man is exactly who we should be burning in effigy.

CW: Stick it to the man. Yeah, exactly. So the first man was around eight feet tall and also accompanied by a small wooden dog, which I would feel bad about burning, but.

PR: Yeah, I’m not too into that.

CW: The next one in 1987 was 15 feet tall and then 88, it was 30 feet tall. So you see, it started just doubling right away, right out the gate. Now, in 1999, when the festival was in Black Rock Desert, I first attended that year, the man had already grown to 54 feet. And the tallest one that I can find was 2017 when the man reached a height of one hundred and five feet.

PR: That is tall.

CW: Yes. And there’s no metal structure. It’s just built out there in the middle of the playa, the dry lake bed out in the desert. In 1990, the festival, which, you know, up until then had been taking place just in the area by San Francisco, the festival sort of moved to the Black Rock Desert that year in 1990, but it was kind of a spin-off of the original. And the original was still happening, but right around that time, the San Francisco event started facing some permit issues and it kind of disbanded just as the one in Nevada started taking off. So a quick description of the whole festival, it’s kind of hard to summarize, but I’ll try. There is a theme each year, much like you mentioned Zazobra has a kind of a theme decade per decade. The two years that I attended, the themes were the Wheel of Time and then The Body. So the theme kind of influences how the campgrounds are organized, because people camp for this festival about a week, sometimes nine days, and the grounds are kind of laid out ahead of time for camping so that people can organize themselves, know where they are and know how to get to various places and people by the addresses, the quote unquote addresses and the landmarks that are set up. So to attend this, you buy a ticket from organizers and the one I had had giant letters printed on it. You voluntarily assume the risk of death or serious injury by attending this event. You bring, you have to cart in everything you need because it is in the middle of the Black Rock Desert, which is about an hour and a half away from Reno, I think, maybe might be a little shorter, but you bring everything that you might need to survive plus some stuff to barter with and some stuff to be art and play with and wear. There’s no commerce allowed at Burning Man, at least there wasn’t when I went. But they do allow selling water and ice at the main tent because you kind of need that to survive.

0:37:31
BR: Your tickets were free?

0:37:33
CW: No tickets were kind of pricey. I remember paying like well over $100. I looked back at the internet archives and apparently it was like $65 if you bought it early, but for the whole week, it was like $100.

0:37:47
BR: What is it these days?

0:37:49
CW: I don’t know. I haven’t priced it. Are you going to go?

0:37:52
BR: No, I’ve heard it’s ridiculously expensive. It’s just funny to hear you say there’s no commerce allowed unless you pay $500 to get in.

0:38:01
CW: Yeah, they were just they were they were pretty big on the rule being like nobody can show up and start like selling energy drinks. That’s just forbidden. You know, so the whole theme of it is basically you party with a lot of artsy weirdos for about a week. And there’s some nudity, there’s some drugs. And then at the last night, the man is burned. The burn usually takes place on the Saturday before Labor Day. There is, of course, a spiritual component. People kind of interpret it as they will. In addition to the very popularized theme of, quote, radical self-expression, the burning man is also supposed to symbolize out with the old and with the new, burning everything that upset you over the past year, rebirth, renewal. Some participants have gotten a little too into the idea, either due to their actual fervor for the whole spiritual idea or just a lot of drug and alcohol use. One article I read quoted Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen, and he was quoted by CBS as saying that in the past people have tried to run into the flames while the man is burning. Organizers have taken a lot of precautions to keep this from happening. There’s layers of security to prevent this. But one man did get through in 2017 and he died as a result of his burns.

0:39:19
BR: So that’s another tragedy. So you said this began in 1986?

CW: Yes.

BR: So, and of course that was a tragic year as you guys, do you guys remember some of the tragic things that happened in 86?

PR: The space shuttle, uh,

BR: The Challenger exploded.

0:39:33
CW: Okay. I was in grade school, but I do remember the Challenger exploding. What else? Did Reagan also get shot that year?

BR: No, but he did, the US did bomb Libya. No, that was Chernobyl. Oh, Chernobyl happened, oh wow. And not quite as bad as the other two, but that’s when the Oprah Winfrey show premiered.

CW: Oh, geez.

BR: You know, evil and bad comes in many forms.

0:39:57
PR: Fair.

0:39:58
CW: Different degrees, yes. Challenger Chernobyl Oprah. Okay, the triumvirate there. Well, people have not regarded Burning Man as a bad thing. In fact, people have flocked to it. Attendance continued to grow. About 78,000 people attended in 2019. And then obviously 2020 we had the pandemic. They canceled it for 2020 and then 2021 was also supposed to be canceled but in May the organizers decided to sort of run with an unofficial smaller event and that did take place with a roughly 20,000 people showing up. For that burn because the BLM had imposed some restrictions, they did not actually burn an effigy of the man. Rather, they illuminated drones and had a little drone show that took the place of the actual man, which would have been so cool to see. That’s another thing on my bucket list I would like to see, an illuminated drone show in real life.

PR: That would be cool.

CW: Not just on TV, because it’s not as impressive on TV. The festival does not like to look at itself as a business, but it has been organized under the first it was organized under the auspices of Black Rock City LLC, which, as you can tell from the initials, is a limited liability for profit company. And now it’s run by the Burning Man Project, which is officially a nonprofit.

0:41:30
PR: Oh, OK.

0:41:31
CW: Yeah. And they’ve got their fingers in a whole bunch of other stuff like regional celebrations arts projects and even a clean energy initiative, the Black Rock Solar Company. Now, the one thing the originators have said about where they got the idea is they say, in no way was the event inspired by Wicker Man, the film.

PR: Yeah, that’s a good disclaimer to make.

CW: Yeah, early on, they tried to do all these flyers that like called it something kind of slightly different and like made sure it was not, you know, referencing anything that could be taken as the Wicker Man. Speaking of, let’s turn to some films about burning effigies. The Wicker Man is a 1973 classic horror film. Have either of you guys seen it?

PR: Oh, yeah.

BR: Oh, yeah.

CW: Okay. I’m embarrassed to say I have not yet seen it, but it’s going on my list. It’s apparently a seminal horror film starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, which it’s gotten a lot of critical acclaim. And I’m going to do a quick summary. And since I’m the dope that hasn’t seen it yet, please stop me if I make a mistake, Ben and Pascual. It was apparently remade in 2006 with Nicolas Cage, and that version did not get critical acclaim.

PR: Although I would like to give my glowing review to the bee scene. I love that part.

0:42:52
CW: The bee scene.

0:42:54
PR: Yeah. The bees, the bees. Just, just look up the video. If you haven’t seen the movie, you don’t need to watch the movie. It really isn’t good, but, uh, I’ve seen the bee’s part. It’s funny. Uh, Nicholas Cage is a gem.

CW: Yeah. In fact, uh, the, the one phrase I came across on Rotten Tomatoes was unintentionally funny.

PR: Yeah, that’s fair.

CW: Okay, so now the original 1973 version was based on a 1967 novel called Ritual by David Pinner, and the plot involves Woodward playing an investigator named Howie who’s looking for a missing girl in a remote Scottish island that turns out to be populated with a bunch of Scottish pagans. He ends up finding the girl who had been named the May Queen by the islanders. And he’s a little bit worried that these, you know, ungodly pagans, he was very Christian, so it bothered him that these pagans existed. He was worried that they were going to sacrifice her, this young girl, to help ensure a good harvest. Well, it turns out he needn’t have worried because they didn’t want to sacrifice her, they wanted to sacrifice him. So they do it by putting him and some animals into a giant wicker man and they set it on fire. The end.

0:44:07
BR: Spoiler!

0:44:09
PR: If you have not seen it by now, well 50 years is enough time.

CW: Well, a more recent movie, have either of you guys seen Midsommar?

0:44:16
BR: Yes.

PR: Also, yes.

CW: Oh god. I was actually a little afraid to watch that one. It looked really, it’s this new genre called folk horror. There’s a few of those out like that. They’re kind of weirdly sort of foreign filmy feeling. And I didn’t watch Midsommar, but I watched a long thing on YouTube that was pretty much a breakdown scene by scene. And I watched this a few months ago and it gave me nightmares. It was really creepy. It’s not a cop this time who ends up in the Wicker Man. It’s a few tourists and they go to Sweden and fall in with a dangerous cult of Swedish pagans who force them to eat meatballs and wander endlessly among reasonably priced furniture. No wait. Okay, so, all right, not really. It centers on a woman named Dani who she’s dealing with her own trauma and she’s also undergoing a slow breakup with her crappy boyfriend. And both of them end up going to what’s billed as a once every 90 years festival in Sweden. And things get really weird really fast. Two old people jump off a cliff in a ritual suicide, and the pagans explain that this is totally normal. They apparently in that particular cult, they take the movie Logan’s Run quite to heart and instead of offing yourself at 30 you get to live to 72 and then you gotta kill yourself. Along the way there’s quite a few horror tropes. Young people get lured off and do some sexual stuff. They get drugged and do some sexual stuff. Or they’re doing other stuff that they’re not supposed to, like photographing forbidden texts. Dani, the traumatized woman I mentioned earlier, is drugged and ends up being crowned the May Queen. And we slowly find out that the pagans here want to burn not one, but nine people as a sacrifice. And her group of outsiders are the first four. The boyfriend ends up stuffed in a bear, alive.

0:46:15
BR: I remember that very, very clearly.

CW: And along with it, yeah, this is one of the scenes that they showed in the recap that I saw, and it made me not want to watch the movie at all. There are a few other members of the cult also kind of end up volunteered to round out the nine. And everybody’s burned in a big wooden temple. And it’s icky. The end.

0:46:35
PR: Yeah, that icky is a good, a good description of a lot of folk horror. Maybe especially for skeptics because a lot of it is about beliefs that are, you know, unfounded beliefs driving people to, you know, kidnapping people. And the idea of being taken in or just taken against my will by a cult, it is scarier to me than any, you know, masked madman chasing me.

0:47:08
CW: Yeah, I’ll watch Giullermo del Tormo, like, till the cows come home. I love, you know, Pan’s Labyrinth and all that. There’s like so many amazing supernatural, you know, horror films that I can watch. But, oh, Midsommar just iffed me out. At the very last scene, you see the woman who was crowned the May Queen, and she’s being, you know, paraded around and, you know, they’re dancing around as her friends burn up. And she’s just finally at the, she kind of cracks a smile. And you can tell her brain is broken. And she’s going to be in with them.

0:47:39
BR: To be fair, you might have enjoyed it had you actually watched the movie instead of seeing the very long summary of it.

0:47:45
CW: I don’t know. The scenes I saw.

0:47:50
BR: If you’re going to invest the time to watch a very long summary of it, I would say, you know what, go ahead and bite the bullet, add the extra 40 minutes and watch it until.

0:47:58
PR: It is very unsettling, but I did think it’s great. And that genre has some very good movies in it.

0:48:08
CW: See, unsettling. I found I couldn’t take my eyes off of the summary I was watching, but it was so unsettling that I did not want to relive it by watching the whole movie.

0:48:16
PR: That’s fair.

0:48:17
CW: Okay, moving far away from serious horror movies like Midsommar, I was happy to find that a lot of the effigy burning that goes on today is, like I said, tongue in cheek. I’ll just go through a few here. In Panama and Ecuador, effigies are burned as part of the New Year’s Eve celebrations. Now, Ben, you’ve you you you’re our resident South American traveler. Have you ever been south of the border on New Year’s Eve?

0:48:41
BR: I have not. I’ve been a fair amount of Latin America, but I never on New Year’s Eve. So I have not witnessed it.

0:48:48
CW: You might want to put it on your bucket list. Apparently the Año Viejo, am I saying that right?

PR: Yep.

BR: Close enough.

CW: Apparently in Panama and Ecuador, the Año Viejo figures or effigy dolls are either made or purchased and they sort of represent the old year. Now the dolls are sometimes called muñecos, is that correct?

0:49:14
PR: Mm-hmm. Okay.

0:49:16
CW: I’m glad I have you guys to help me correct my terrible Spanish pronunciation.

0:49:20
BR: Believe me, we’ve heard much worse. This is fine.

0:49:23
CW: So, these things are called muñecos or Judas dolls, and they’ll often be displayed outside of homes, sometimes one or two, sometimes a whole fleet. One article that I read on how it’s celebrated in Ecuador, the dolls resemble celebrities or politicians. And it didn’t have to be somebody you hated. It could be somebody you it could be somebody you really hated. Or it could be somebody you really love, like a pop star or some somebody who was just very prominent that year, some public figure that kind of represents the year that you’re sending out. There are neighborhood contests for the best Año Viejo dummies. And at midnight, everybody takes theirs out and tosses it onto a bonfire. And some people who are drunk enough or brave enough or a little of both try to jump over the fire three times for good luck.

0:50:13
PR: And I mean, if you make it over three times without catching on fire, that is very lucky. So it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

0:50:22
CW: You may have used up all your luck. Now, in Panama, unlike what I was reading in Ecuador, in Panama, the effigies tend to represent something only that you dislike. And they’re not just burned. They’re often stuffed with firecrackers that are loud and drive the evil spirits away when they go off. And it’s very reminiscent of Burning Man, you know, and Zazobra, who are set with pyrotechnics and neon, you know, as well as the bonfire fuel. So, bigger the boom, the better. I found a lot of really fun images from Panama, some very intricately crafted, you know, you can tell a lot of papier-mâché and paint and effort went into these. One was like a giant coronavirus with all the spikes around it and he had little boxing gloves on and he was ready to beat up everybody. And I found one of Dr. Fauci, who, you know, he wouldn’t be a figure that I personally would hate. But Dr. Fauci certainly represented 2020 and maybe even 2021. One writer did say that she knows personally Panamanians who instead of making an entire doll, just write a list of the people that they feel have wronged them during the year. And they burn the list instead on New Year’s Eve.

0:51:39
PR: So how will you get your revenge if you burn all the names?

0:51:42
CW: Yeah, you’ve got to keep that list.

0:51:44
PR: Keep it secret in a really well hidden place because that’s evidence. Maybe that’s why they burn it.

0:51:51
CW: Now, moving to Europe, in Spain, around the springtime, thousands of puppets and sculptures called ninotes are paraded around and then burned in the streets and squares to celebrate the coming of spring. It’s considered a rejuvenation process that kind of blends ancient ritual and what one writer called a mordant sense of humor. The puppets are often satirical and sometimes they take months to craft. Crafting these things actually falls to a neighborhood council which is called a casal faillure. Now the targets of course are controversial politicians and political figures, especially ones that have been either caught in a controversy or had some political gaff that year. Interestingly, UNESCO, just a couple of years ago in 2016, recognized the ceremony and the lead up to the festival with heritage status, adding these effigy puppets to the list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

0:52:53
BR: Well, you know, the dolls sort of strike me, the puppets strike me as sort of being parallel to the voodoo dolls and the association of sort of, association with representation, right? Where you’ve got something that’s representing, you know, you think of voodoo dolls as being, you know, stuck with pins, right? It’s representing some enemy, but you can also, you might, you know, make a figure of somebody you’re trying to make fall in love with you, whatever.

0:53:17
CW: Voodoo dolls are so serious, whereas it’s almost like these are voodoo dolls light. They’re like the, they’re like the parody of voodoo dolls.

0:53:25
BR: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s, that’s one thing about effigies is that, is that they serve a lot of different functions and, and they’re, you know, some of them are sort of very serious and mordant, as I think you just said, and other ones are sort of lighthearted. And you’re talking about some of the burnings and most leaders at some point have been burned in effigy at some point.

0:53:50
CW: Oh yeah, repeatedly.

0:53:51
BR: Yeah, Obama and Bush and certainly Trump and it’s a form of performative protest, I would say.

0:54:00
CW: Yeah, yeah. Now talking more specifically about effigies as part of a festival, though, which is kind of what we aim for this episode. There’s a couple others that are noteworthy in Europe, in northern Portugal. There’s the Carretos Festival, which ends with burning a giant human effigy with horns on it. And then if we hop the pond over to jolly old England, we have the yearly effigy burnings in Lewis. Unlike many of the other festivals we talked about, the effigy burning in Lewis, which is in southeast England, does not correspond with spring, but rather it takes place in early November to correspond with Guy Fawkes Day. You guys know what Guy Fawkes Day is, right?

BR: Yes.

PR: Yep, I saw that movie.

CW: Yeah, so I’ll assume listeners are somewhat familiar as well. Bascially to celebrate Parliament not getting blown up. The English like to blow a lot of shit up, kind of like our 4th of July.

BR: Yeah, I actually saw one of these festivals.

0:54:55
CW: Oh, really? Where were you at?

0:54:58
BR: I was in Lewis, as you said.

CW: Like, not just the Guy Fawkes Festival, but you actually saw the effigies and everything.

0:55:04
BR: Yeah, so in 2019, when I went to go see Shriek Back, who listeners know did our theme song, and I met the band, and it just so happened that shortly after we met the band, they were in Eastbourne, not too far away, this celebration was going on at the time, and there were a couple of Brits and us Americans were just baffled. And yeah, in fact, I have photos of it, and it was pretty remarkable. We sat on this rooftop, and there were all these people carrying these almost like wheelbarrows full of flames and dragging them behind them.

0:55:44
CW: Wow.

0:55:45
BR: Going down the street near the shore and it led to this giant skull and crossbones, which was then set on fire.

0:55:55
CW: So there’s this big bonfire and then that was followed up by fireworks. Sounds awesome.

0:56:01
BR: It was pretty cool, actually, yeah.

0:56:02
CW: Yeah.

0:56:03
PR: My kind of party.

CW: Yeah, you buried the lead there. Had I known you were there, I’d have been like, you take care of this whole section. Now according to what I found out, the effigies are, you know, they’re not just life-size, they’re huge, like Macy’s Day Parade floats. Did you see some gargantuan creations that were set ablaze?

0:56:22
BR: Yes. The main one that I remember was a huge skull and crossbones. It was probably 12, 15 feet high. I don’t remember any figures, although I think there were different ones going on different places. I think there was more than one. But just where we happened to be, there were, again, people dragging, carrying coals and burning flames in a procession. It was actually very striking. People gathered and then there was a whole production and they set it aflame. So it was just as you described.

0:56:58
CW: Awesome. Yeah. Now I dug into some coverage of the ones over the past several years and Trump and Boris, yes, they both figured pretty prominently in recent years among the giant effigies. Now, one organizer that was interviewed by the New York Times said that, quote, “you are not to take it seriously. It’s a statement of people’s reaction to the news. It is not meant as incitement. It’s like a political cartoon. It is exposing certain things to ridicule.” And I love that quote because, I mean, like a giant political cartoon. That’s fantastic. Now that hasn’t stopped some politicians from trying to politicize the effigy burnings in Lewis. And one incident that’s chronicled in the book Burn Holy Fire by Jeremy Goring mentions a particular time in the 80s when Ian Paisley, a Protestant lawmaker from Northern Ireland, came to Lewis on bonfire night and he tried to distribute anti-Catholic leaflets, which I mean, fair enough that he thought it was a good place to do that because I mean, popes are one of the more popular figures that get burned on this night. So according to the book, quote, his intervention backfired badly for the following year. He himself was burned in effigy.

0:58:17
PR: Yeah, that’s a little bit of a Streisand effect there.

0:58:19
CW: I imagine. Good point. Yeah. Now, incidentally, before I leave Lewis here, a few listeners might be interested to know that Thomas Paine, a very popular founding father among humanists and the author of Common Sense, once called Lewis home. That’s where he’s from. But that pretty much covers the fun, cartoony, happy festival type stuff about burning effigies, which I didn’t expect to be a fun, happy, light-hearted topic when I first dug into it, because you think of grim, dire folklore. And Ben, that’s your department. What did you find out?

0:58:55
BR: Grim, dire folklore. Wow. Thanks. Thanks for passing that off to me. I actually don’t have a whole lot on it. I mean, again, other than some of the general ideas of how effigies have been used. One thing I did come across was kind of interesting that portraits and illustrations in books in 1700s were called effigies. And it wasn’t necessarily, like for example, if a person was being described or, you know, many of the tracks were, you know, were political in nature. And so if they had a portrait or, you know, in those times, of course, it would be photographed, it would be an etching of some sort. they were typically there not to necessarily illustrate the person and depict them, but to characterize their social role. And we see this thread going through effigies in general, right? So you have this role or this character that’s being fulfilled. So you have the Zazobra being old man gloom and the release of worries. And so you have this characterization. And that was one of the things that I came across.

1:00:04
CW: That’s an interesting angle in terms of the artistic representation, too, because you obviously have these satirical caricatured effigies that are made specifically to look like a certain person in a clever, funny way. And then you’ve got effigies that their purpose is to remove any sort of markers of a particular individual.

1:00:23
BR: Yeah. And of course, depending on the time and the context, I mean, this was taken very seriously. I mean, you can look at the role that likeness plays in terms of holding power, right? There’s, for example, in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, I think it’s Exodus 24, I believe, there’s the prohibition against graven images.

1:00:45
CW: Yeah, yeah.

1:00:46
BR: And essentially, that’s what an effigy is. It’s a graven image. It’s something that is representative of something else. And of course, in that context, it’s idols and things like that. But there’s always been this sort of this almost magical thinking. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, but just that’s basically what it is. This linking of the part for the whole and the representation of this figure depicting leaders or personification of evil or whatever else. One of my favorite examples I came across was the baby Trump balloon.

1:01:20
CW: Oh, yeah, there were so many.

1:01:22
BR: Yeah, so this is the 20-foot peanut-shaped scowling orange baby holding a smartphone.

1:01:29
CW: They kept bringing it to places that they knew Trump was, right?

1:01:34
BR: Yes! It was created by an artist named Matt Bonner in July 2018 and it was flown over Parliament Square and also France, Ireland and elsewhere. It followed him around every time that Trump was in town. It would be this crying, scowling, diaper-clad baby man. Not all effigies are meant to be destroyed. Some of them are there to satirize.

1:02:05
CW: Now, do we know what came of that baby Trump balloon?

1:02:09
BR: Well, there was that there were several. So there was a again, we know who the artist was, was a guy named Matt Bonner. And other people asked if they could make copies. And he said, absolutely go for it. So there’s more than one. I don’t know where they are now. It’d be cool to have in your backyard. But maybe they’ll come out if Trump tries to run again. We’ll see.

1:02:33
CW: Hmm. OK. Well, now swinging again from the laughable to the cringeworthy here, I wanted to look a little bit into the historical origins, if there are any, to the actual wicker man. The 1973 film is widely held up as what brought the idea of wicker man into popular culture, and it wasn’t like it was just invented out of whole cloth, at least not in 1973. Historians claim that most, even all, of what has been recorded about alleged Celtic tradition of burning people and animals, maybe alive, maybe already dead, in a giant wicker man comes from Julius Caesar. And he got it from a guy named Poseidonius. It’s like Poseidonius with an IUS at the end of it here.

1:03:26
PR: Wow, okay, that’s a mouthful.

1:03:27
CW: The Greeks are known for that. A writer who had done this, this Poseidon guy was a writer who had been through Gaul decades earlier, and he was definitely a Roman sympathizer, and he was not on the side of the Celts or the Druids or anybody in Gaul. So he was informing this, and we don’t even know exactly what he wrote. What we do know is what Caesar wrote of Wicker Men, and I’ll read it to you here. Others have figures of vast size, the limbs of which formed of oysers they fill with living men, which being set on fire, the men perish enveloped in the flames. They consider that the oblation of such as have been taken in theft or in robbery or any other offense is more acceptable to the immortal gods. But when a supply of that class is wanting, they have recourse to the oblation of even the innocent.” So I’m sure Ben, as a folklorist and as somebody who studies rumors and exaggerations and xenophobic tropes, many hints in what Julius Caesar wrote there stand out that he might be painting a picture that’s a little bit more barbaric than reality.

BR: Yes, definitely a bit of a demonization thing going on there.

CW: Yes, and he kind of, you know, it’s this huge thing. He doesn’t just say they stuff a guy in a wicker suit. He says they fill the arms with men, like this thing is just huge, like this skyscraper, you can like just shovel cattle and tons of men into it and then burn it down. So he could have been exaggerating or fabricating the whole thing entirely. We don’t have any eyewitness accounts at all. So there’s no solid writing about somebody who is actually claiming to have seen this happen. And we don’t have any solid archaeological evidence either. I did find a couple of instances of some possible archaeological evidence in the form of some silver Celtic coins that on one side depict a colossus with a burning head. These might be references to the thunder god named Tyrannus, who apparently did prefer that his sacrifices be delivered to him by fire. But human sacrifice among the Celts, it happened, but it was really rare. So beyond this theory, the existence of wicker men in the Celtic tradition as a real way that humans were burned to death is sketchy at best. In reading what historians have to say about wicker men, you come across the phrase urban legend and the word hearsay quite a lot to describe the practice.

BR: So, the thing about bees and Nick Cage, can you clarify?

1:06:09
CW: I believe that was also hearsay. I’m not putting any of my reputation on that ever happening either.

(MUSIC)

1:06:12
BR: Well, that was a fun dive into effigies and effigiana, if that’s a thing.

1:06:30
CW: Effigiana. I don’t know.

BR: Whatever it was. But that was a fun little romp. So what do you think we’re going to be talking about next?

1:06:39
CW: Probably something less flammable. We got a number of things on the back burner. Oh, I mixed my metaphors there. Flammable back burner. But yeah, we’ve got some creepy stuff, some cryptid stuff, some straight up psychology and media studies stuff. Ben, you’re going to probably bring some chapters of your book to life for us pretty soon, right?

1:07:09
BR: Yeah, you know, I’d like to do an episode or two based on my book, America the Fearful, not necessarily because I want to plug it that much, but just because there’s a lot of really interesting media literacy skeptical angles to it. So listen for that in the not so distant future.

1:07:25
Okay, cool. And I just want to give a shout out to any new patrons we’ve got. We don’t do that thing really that other podcasts do where you read your name out. I always kind of feel like I need special permission to read somebody’s name out on a podcast. I mean, names are private, although some people have some clever names, so maybe we should start. But thank you for joining our patron community. The dollars you pledge and you could, you know, you could pledge a dollar an episode or all the way up to five dollars an episode or really you could you could pledge a thousand dollars an episode patrons that I send out skeptic crates to and I do still really enjoy this. And you know, I find little baubles and knickknacks and things that can be sent in an envelope and you get an envelope for me every month and that’s kind of fun. So if you want to look forward to what’s in your mailbox, you can try it out for a month or two. Or if you just want to, you know, help us pay the bills over here, just throw us a buck an episode and you’ll be among our favorite people.

1:08:32
Yeah, definitely. And you can actually find all our links at squaringthestrange.com, including

1:08:37
a link to just send us a little tip so you don’t even have to subscribe. So, yeah, people who want to avoid Patreon, thank you for setting that up, Pascal. You buy us a coffee through PayPal or something, instead of giving Patreon your information. So anyway, thank you for those of you who have given, and I hope you’re enjoying your squaring the strange swag, and we’ll talk to you in two weeks. Until then, everybody, take care.

1:09:06
Bye-bye. See ya.

1:09:14
We would like to extend heartfelt thanks to our top-tier, sponsor-level patrons, Amy Frusciauer-Kelley, Dr. Angela Matkey, Elizabeth Leggett, and Laura Ellis. Thank you for your continued support of our podcast. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor, or just throwing us a buck or two, please visit Squaring the Strange on patreon.com and browse our selection of patron rewards. Every bit helps us keep the lights on here, and we are grateful to our generous friends who help us bring you quality content. If you are short on cash and want to just give us moral support, remember to recommend us to a friend, mention us on social media, or give us a review on your favorite podcast dispenser. If you have comments or topics you’d like to see covered, come join our community on the Squaring the Strange podcast discussion group on Facebook. Squaring the Strange is a production of Two Heads Studio LLC. Copyright 2021. Theme music provided by Shriek Back. Additional music by Memory, Keytard and Feathered, and Pascual Romero. Additional support by Ashley Romero, Robert Sundin, and Alicia Jarvis. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of Squaring the Strange and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of two heads studio Kronos creative Center for inquiry our advertisers or any other affiliated organizations and employers

1:10:36
Yep and

1:10:38
Started going

1:10:40
OK.

1:10:40
I love it. I’ve heard of having pod dog and pod cat, but it’s the first pod cuckoo clock. but it’s the first pod cuckoo clock.

1:10:49
Yep, yep.