EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (For Spiders)

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Transcript

Source: S05E01 Monstertalk • Sections: 3

This week’s episode includes discussions of child sacrifice infanticide sexual…

Narrator: This week’s episode includes discussions of child sacrifice, infanticide, sexual abuse, religious violence, and moral panics. While we do handle our content through a skeptical and historical lens, some material in this episode may be distressing to listeners. Parental discretion is advised. MonsterTalk. Welcome to MonsterTalk, the science show about monsters. I’m Blake Smith. And I’m Karen Stollznow. Wow, there’s a chill in the air, and as I walked around my neighborhood this week, I saw the first flurries of autumnal leaves whirling about. The oranges and the reds made feeble vortices, not dust devils, perhaps rust devils, taking me like Dorothy to the fantastical world of October. It’s my favorite time of the year, since it’s the harvest time, and as I often joke, it’s the time of year that the rest of the world joins MonsterTalkers in the comfortable place where we can get our spook on. I’m still not 100% comfortable with everyone calling this the spooky season, and when we went to the hardware store this week, they were already cramming the Christmas decorations in and squeezing out the Halloween decor. But pumpkins and candy fill the grocery store end caps. These seasonal festivals are ancient and complicated, and of course, commercialized relentlessly. But if it makes it acceptable for me to adorn my yard like the Addams Family or the Monsters for a few weeks without the HOA adding my corpse to the decor, then I’m for it. This week I’m going to share some observations about one of the oldest scary topics out there, and this is not a definitive episode, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts and reading about a topic that I find endlessly fascinating. I guess this will be a sort of stake in the ground for what will slowly become a series of what I’ve come to call personally the Molokian Hypothesis. I think I’m going to call this episode Think of the Children, because that idea has been used for thousands of years in innumerable languages to transmute people into monsters. The oldest version of it I know is the references in the Bible to the god Moloch, but it’s probably an older idea than that, and ironically, the phrase’s efficacy is still as real today as it ever was, even if the underlying accusations are just as illusory or perhaps elusive. That ambiguity makes it into sort of a liminal space narratively and historically, which is the kind of dark and foggy intellectual forest that I just want to grab a lantern and explore. Am I being too poetic in this week’s intro? I blame the crows and the gray skies and the pumpkins and bales of hay. Welcome to Season 5 of Monster Talk.

Okay Karen I’m excited It’s October and so finally we…

Narrator: Okay, Karen, I’m excited. It’s October, and so finally we can start talking about spooky stuff. Spooky season’s here, yes. So I’m very happy, and with that hopefully some cooler weather, at least in this part of the world. Oh my gosh, it was in the 50s this morning. I was so excited. I got to put on a hoodie and walked around the neighborhood drinking coffee and looking like a fool. I still took in terms of Celsius, so I’m not sure what it was this morning. It was still still pretty warm here. We’ve had some cooler days, but it got up to 29 degrees Celsius. I was talking Celsius. I was wearing an asbestos suit. Is that not what you were talking? But no, it’s a beautiful time of year. I think here at Monster Talk, our favorite time of year, where everyone is talking about thinking about the paranormal and the supernatural. Everybody hops on the bandwagon for one month while we keep the fires of Halloween alive all year long. The rest of the year, exactly. So to that end, I’d like to plug a short story that I have just published. So do you remember going back, I think it was at least a year ago, we spoke with Kian Gill. Who is, at least for the moment, dropped out of podcasting. I loved his work and I miss his voice, which I could still listen to archive. Oh, I didn’t know. He’s taking a hiatus. Is he from the wide Atlantic? Weird. Oh, okay. Well, hopefully he’ll get back to that, but I really enjoyed talking with him. Great voice. Love to have him out there sharing his stories and stuff. So yeah. Oh, absolutely. Love that kind of stuff. And so what we discussed with him was the story of the Walsingham ghosts. And I remember you being quite taken with the story because it supposedly happened in Georgia and yet you hadn’t really heard much about it. No, no, no. Yeah. So I think that Cian had initially thought the story was from somewhere else, but then attributed it to Herewood Carrington. And I know you love that name. The legendary ghost hunter. And so he compiled lots of different stories like this one, but he was, I think, the first person to tell that story. So my short story is basically a retelling of this story that Carrington called a striking story. I guess it kind of poltergeist. Which can be a pun. Yeah. But some weird stuff happens in this case. Things like furniture moving on its own. Yeah. And a family pet that’s killed as well by this creature. And then that spooky part where the blood dripped from the ceiling down onto the dinner table and disembodied heads or all kinds of strange stuff. And some real classic haunting stuff like from a spooky haunted movie or a haunted house. It’s really cool. It’s a very good story. It’s also just different to other stories that are out there and it encompasses so much. So I thought instead of doing a work of short fiction as such, I would do a retelling and kind of tell it from the perspective of Carrington and include some of his quotes. Oh, that’s a fun idea. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s available now and you can get it through Amazon and through Lulu and other outlets like that for ebooks and also for audiobooks. And Matt recorded an audiobook version of the story for me. So nice. That’s awesome. Do go and check it out and leave a review or a rating. We should put links in the show notes. Did you know we have show notes, Karen? We do. I hear your sarcasm. Yes, I do know that. I know. I just mean it because I swear a lot of people just listen to the show and don’t go read them. But if you’re ever interested in one of these topics, go to monstertalk.org. Our show notes there, the links work. They may or may not work in your podcast app, but go there. You can also find episodes by topic, which is great. It’s a great way to look at our archives, our back stuff and find the thing you’re looking for without scrolling through your phone. I lament the state of technology right now, but that is a solid way to go. Oh, boy, we’re going to get into a heavier, more dense topic here tonight. Let me just say, this is one I’ve been looking into for years, multiple years, at least more than four. Oh, I think actually this is pre-pandemic. I started in on this. But I can’t really say that I remember you telling me about it. So I guess this is just a something you’ve been doing on the side. The philosophical opinion here. We live in an age when ignorance is a choice, that you could at any time, if you have a question, you’re curious about something, you could stop what you’re doing and find to some extent the answer to almost anything, right? Especially if it’s historical, that sort of thing. So this is one of those topics that I stopped when I had, I pondered something and then I went and did a little digging and I have just continued to sort of accrue a stack of research. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this is one of those topics that does not have a firm answer, but it is a topic that will require a content warning. We’re about to talk about the cult of Moloch, which is absolutely tied with sacrificial killing, child sacrifice, child harm. Now, a lot of this is heavy weighted towards the archaeological and the historical and the prehistoric. But as we go through this, I think we should remind listeners that while this is a topic that has a lot of historical significance, it’s unfortunately a tactic that is used right now, today, all the time. And it’s one of the, it’s like if you were giving out life hacks for villains, here’s one, say that your enemies murder kids, you know, it still works. Yeah, that seems to be a really common theme just throughout history, throughout mythology and literature and makes me think about things like the blood libel with Jewish people and claims of them killing kids. But yeah, it’s a very difficult topic for a lot of people, me included, but it’s good to know that a lot of this is fiction. It is, thankfully, mostly fiction. But the question is, in history, people, you have to remember that the values of the present don’t extend into history, nor do they extend around the world. Other cultures have different values. I won’t get into that because that just takes you into terrible places. Yeah, it’s an entirely different topic in many ways. We can delve more into this. I think this is a good kind of initial, I guess, breaking the ice with this topic, and we can certainly do some deeper dives and invite on some experts and some authors to try and talk about this more. I think there’s a lot to unpack. I would love that, yeah. And again, as we’ll get into, part of the reason I want to bring in experts is because many of these matters are not settled, and we’ll kind of highlight some of those. Sure. The core idea of this question came up when I was reminded of the statue of Moloch. In the show notes, I’ve actually got a sketch, I think it’s on the second or third page, of this, from the 1800s, a drawing of this horned-headed god with his hands up in the air, and it’s got slots for corpses and a big fire in the bottom so that you could sacrifice your children to it. It’s a god then, it’s not a demon? Right, that’s, yes, exactly, yes, maybe. And are we talking about a pagan god, or are we talking about going back to biblical times? I grew up in a very biblical literalist family, right? So, you know, my family, very evangelical Christian with a literal biblical stance. Yeah, I can only imagine, I grew up in a secular household, but yes. Yeah, it’s very different. I have friends, you know, some of my best friends are still very religious, and some of my best friends grew up atheist, which is funny, too, because most of them are not anti-religion, they just don’t see the point, which is an odd, most people don’t want to interact, you kind of want to have a pro or negative stance in those discussions, and I don’t care, it doesn’t bother me. Maybe more humanist, yeah. Yeah, maybe, maybe. So, the god Molech, there’s several different ways it’s spelled and pronounced, which is part of the confusion. It comes up in the Old Testament, and in Leviticus, there’s this scripture, Leviticus 18.21, which says, Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God, I am the Lord. And then, Leviticus 20.2-5 says, Say to the Israelites, any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molech is to be put to death. The members of the community are to stone him. I myself will set my face against him and will cut him off from his people, for by sacrificing his children to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molech, and if they fail to put him to death, I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech. And then, I got one more I want to read now. This is too much for a Friday night. Yeah, so, 2 Kings 23.10, He desecrated Topheth, which was in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fires to Molech. Okay, now, now. Wow, very fire and brimstone, all of this. Yeah, but what I love about this, when I was looking at it today versus when I was looking at it going to church all the time, those scriptures are not saying save the children. Those scriptures are saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I’m God. Don’t be running around looking at other gods. That’s cheating, you know, and it’s kind of like if you go to the Ten Commandments, a lot of those are like, what about me? What about Jehovah? Right, you know, don’t forget Jehovah. Yeah, right, exactly. So, it’s less about protecting the children, which makes sense. Can you consider like how many times in the Bible, it’s, you know, kind of implied that if children disobey their parents, you should put them to death. Seems a little harsh, right, you know, maybe. Much of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, comes across that way, and yeah, I’ve got some thoughts about this, but I guess we’re going to delve into more here. Well, so, when this came to mind, my question suddenly became, well, wait a minute, who exactly was like this the religion of? What is the religion of Molech? Is that a real religion? Yeah, some kind of cult, or. Like, does the archaeology support it? Is it a cult? Is it the religion of a different nation? And there is this site called Tophet, which they mentioned by location, but it does, as far as I could tell, there’s no archaeology that suggests there really was a place there where people routinely sacrificed children. So, the question is also, is Molech a god? I usually say Molech, by the way. I say Molech too. Yeah, it sounds like a marvel. When I talk about him all the time. All the time. Comes up always at Starbucks, you know. Yes, of course, right. You got to get those discounts. Is Molech a god or is it a ritual? The word might not even be a deity. It might be a term for a kind of sacrifice. That’s a good point. Do you know then? No, we don’t know, but we know that there is the word and the research tends to call it Punic, but they’re talking about the words of Carthage, which we have historical records for, archaeology for. There was, I’m going to try, it’s spelled M-L-K, which I assume is not milk, it’s Molk. And there’s Molk, M-O-L-K. And that is a kind of sacrificial practice, but not a god. And there’s similar kind of concerns about Baal, as we said growing up, about what that is exactly. And there’s also a term that the Carthaginians use that is very similar, which means king. So there is an ambiguity there from a historical perspective. I mean, the main thing we take away from the scripture is don’t kill your children in the name of that god Molok. At least not in the name of Molok. Exactly, right. Exactly. Don’t kill your children in the name of Molok. The Molok’s the important part, not the killing your children part. Scriptural and theology people may be mad at me saying that, but that’s what it seems to be saying. Oh, we welcome feedback as always. We always welcome feedback. Blanketmonstertalk.org. Karen didn’t say it. Okay. So I guess the thing is, whether it was a ritual or a deity to whom people were being sacrificed, the idea was it was a demarcation mark between the practices of Israel and the practices of those other guys, right? Yeah, the false gods. It’s a way of othering. For that time, yeah. Yeah. And so without the historical proof, nobody’s found the wreckage of a statue, the word Molok written on it, a bunch of baby bones in it. That would be a smoking gun, but so far this is still ambiguous, right? There is archeology around this and one of the interesting problems that comes up when people investigate is when you find a site that has the bones of children, is it a sacrificial site or is it a ritual site or is it a graveyard, a cemetery? Because we do know from right here in the United States that before the advent of modern medicine, cemeteries had a lot of dead children in them. Oh, mortality rates here were very sadly high. Thankfully, we have vaccines now and there’s no threat to that and yay. If you apply them, yeah. I’m being sarcastic and I don’t want to get political, but as a person with a, I don’t know what you’d call it, I like to go to cemeteries. It’s not out of darkness or evil, let’s say it’s Gothic, a Gothic sensibility, right? Well, especially some of the gorgeous ones that you have in Georgia, some beautiful examples and me too. I think even when I was a child, I gravitated towards places like that for the history and just for the beauty and peace. They’re lovely parks and as we know, they were historically. It’s so sad to find a family marker and then it’s just died at one, died at one, died at two. The little lamb. The little tiny, oh, the little tiny tombstone, oh, it’s so heartbreaking. Always gets me. Yeah, and that is just the way things were. My grandmother came from, she was born in 1910 and of course came from a family of 12 because you just needed to have lots of kids to ensure somebody got through. That aside, we don’t know. We don’t know what those archaeological sites mean. One of the thoughts that just came to mind when you raised this topic and I just thought about infanticide as well because I know going back to ancient Rome and ancient Greece, I’ve been doing a little bit of research into this for another book that I’m working on, not specifically about this topic, but I came across a story in Greek mythology about Agamemnon and his wife. So I think it’s Clytemnestra. I’m not sure exactly how to pronounce it. We nailed it as far as my reading. Oh, good stuff and he’d sacrificed their daughter because he had wanted her to do so, so that he would have fair weather on his trip to Troy. So she got her revenge. Years later and killed him and very sadly, this was a real thing, infanticide and killing usually girls because they didn’t have as much perceived value at that time as boys. So I’m just wondering if there’s even a link to that because it was sadly a practice going back a long time ago. This goes back to that idea of different cultural values. That’s a real question that’s hard to answer. Yeah, we’re looking at it through a modern lens. Exactly, well, even when you look at it historically through like, is it epigraphy? Looking at ancient writings, I think that’s the right term. I think so, yeah. Sounds like a bit tough, a bit. Yeah, but if you’re looking at like ancient writings, they are not always contemporaneous with the thing that they’re complaining about, right? Oh, it can sometimes be written hundreds of years later. So knowing that the thing they’re saying is necessarily a first eyewitness account, for example, it’s hard to say, but I’ve read often that the Romans would sometimes not really get truly attached to a child until they were one year old, right? Because mortality was high. Something could happen. Or they would send a child out for exposure. And whether that’s literally true as a common practice or sometimes, it certainly exists in the mythology of both Rome and Greece. Oh, yeah. And from what I’ve read, sometimes when they would leave them out for exposure, it was in the hope that someone might adopt the child, might see the child and try to claim it. Yes, which how many myths are they were going to kill the kid and then someone came along and picked it up. I mean, that’s a lot that happens. Mm-hmm, for sure. Or someone escapes with the child. Because it’s hard to argue with the biology that mothers love their babies. I mean, that I think whether you can say that their culture didn’t value a child until a certain point or not. Yeah, the bond is so strong. Cultures change, biology really doesn’t change in that sense. I think that the chemically, hormonally sense, yeah. Well, the pressure is from a patriarchy, but I mean, we could really delve into this a lot more. Yeah. We should probably stick to the matter at hand. But I do want to raise infanticide, because it’s just something that I keep coming across in my research at the moment. And it just came to mind in the midst of this. So the Romans would say that the Carthaginians were people who killed their children. And there is a little archaeological evidence. A rivalry thing going. Well, exactly. They didn’t like each other. I don’t know if you’ve heard of these Punic Wars, but they were, sometimes they got quite violent. So many wars, yeah. People think there’s so much violence and warring today, and it’s a long history. Yeah, for sure. So Carthage and Rome are across the Mediterranean from each other, but they had very strong naval societies. Trade was big. And Rome obviously developed an empire and was at war with the Carthaginian Empire, which was North African. And they did not strictly wage physical war. They also had wars of propaganda and trade. So the propaganda included that you don’t worry about killing those Carthaginians. They’re baby killers, right? Which would be a kind of genocide of sorts internally. Yeah. So sad. I think I want to mention, because often, this is usually my fault, Karen. I’ll take the blame. I do have a tendency to talk about the monsters I know, right? And often forget to mention the monsters and the sort of topic effect of these things outside of the cultures I’m most familiar with. It’s hard to fit it all in. It is. It’s a big world. But it’s important to remember there are other cultures. And so I thought we should mention that archaeologically, we do have evidence that the Inca, the Aztec, and some places in Africa historically had cases where this practice was done, whether it was systemic or occasional. It’s hard to say. I mean, we know the Aztecs killed a lot of people of all ages. Right. Sometimes enslaved people. Yeah. So the archaeology does support Aztec ritual sacrifice. The Inca seem to have had frozen children or not frozen, dead children that are preserved in that dry, frozen mummy sort of state and other places where we’ve found records of that. And I think that’s really important to mention these cases. Yeah, exactly. So historically, it sounds like Israel and Rome were accusing Carthage. And then when Christianity came into existence, the Romans accused the Christians of being child killers. And then when Christianity came into power, Christianity pretty much accused everybody who was pagan or Jewish of being child killers. And it’s just gone on and on. It’s the blame game. Keeping those hips rolling. Yeah, it’s funny. I’m just thinking back. I can’t remember all the details. But when I was writing on the offensive coming across examples like of syphilis, where it had so many different names, the English would call it the French disease. The French disease. Call it the English disease. And the Spanish would call it the Turkish disease. Yeah, Spanish flu, right? Spanish flu is not the flu from Spain. That’s propaganda, right? Yes, absolutely. There were many names given to COVID that tried to tie it specifically to China, whether it originated there or not, whether it was from a lab or from evolution. Yeah. Politicizing it with accusations is historically the norm, sadly. We’re not special. Yeah, doctors try to avoid that kind of thing nowadays. But yeah, certainly when they name diseases after particular districts where they’re found, it can cause a lot of problems for the people who live there. A lot of blame. I mean, if you take the time to have the empathy and curiosity to go look at any of these places, their cultures, usually you don’t find anything to substantiate the claim, right? So, you know, Christians claiming Jews did this for the blood libel makes no sense for a variety of reasons, right? Oh, yeah. While there’s mixed archaeology and research around the Celts, there doesn’t seem to be much proof that this idea of human sacrifice in that culture was particularly rampant. But that being said, one of my favorite horror movies for the season is The Wicker Man. And that’s really about a neo-pagan. Yeah, I was thinking of that, too. Absolutely. Yeah, you can’t talk about sacrifice and live in these times and not think about that movie. And listeners should go and check out our Debased on a True Story commentary on that movie. Yeah, I’ve still got that burned literally and figuratively into my brain. Wow, that was the first time I’d seen that. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. But it’s that that’s propaganda, too, that the whole idea of the Wicker Man comes from the Caesar era when Rome was pushing into northern Europe and Roman historians said, oh, yeah, those guys, they suck. They kill people and they put them in giant wicker people, you know, and burn them alive. Right. Aren’t they terrible? Yeah, they’re so primitive and savages. Again, it’s such it is the most absolutely reliable accusation to get people to turn and demonize another. Right. And so. Oh, yeah. But we’re almost to Halloween, Karen. So I had to mention, you know, I the this is not a beloved movie by most people, but I didn’t watch Halloween three until very recently. Oh, I still haven’t seen it, so. It is it’s called Season of the Witch. It’s rare for you to have not seen a horror film. Yeah, but it’s so universally hated by horror fans that I just didn’t give it a whirl. Right. OK. And do you regret it? Oh, I loved it. I absolutely. OK. I had set the bar so low, basically, unless it was just boring, I was going to have a good time. Right. And it was not boring. And even though Nigel Neal, it’s one of my favorite horror writers, and he wrote for TV, he did Quatermast in the pit. He was the original screenwriter on Halloween three, and he directly was going to tie in the idea of how that Salwyn, that word that looks like Samhain, Salwyn, is is this pagan festival that happens at the time of the harvest. And it’s when the barriers between living and dead become thin. And so all this magical energy is potentially unleashed. So the whole plot is around child sacrifice. That’s what the movie’s about. And but using really, really funny, not funny, but Halloween masks and strange Halloween masks and electronics as a modality of executing thousands and thousands of children in the name of opening up the gates between here and there. So that’s a very Nigel Neal sort of thing to try to do. So, yeah. Oh, well, you have to check that out. You should. I mean, I would say it’s maybe, I’m just ballparking it here, a three glass of wine movie. I think that’ll put you in the right place. I usually stop myself at two, so that’s the same. Yeah, I’m saying three, with that in mind. Yeah, yeah. I’ll bear that in mind. So, but enough on Halloween three. That’s not what this is about. So, the archaeology is undefinitive. The historical records exist, but clearly have the taint of propaganda. Clearly. Yeah. And the practice of making that accusation extends all the way up into the present. And, you know, a topic near and dear to both you and myself is the satanic panic, which. Oh, yes. That immediately came to mind, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. In terms of modern times, for sure. Yeah. So without any physical evidence, in fact, with plenty of contradictory evidence, people were sent to prison for decades under the accusations of child abuse through, you know, ritual child abuse. Right. So, satanic ritual, SRA, that’s what they would call it. Right. And I would like to believe we learn from history, Karen. Not that we could, but that we do. I still hear people talking about this all the time. It still happens. All the stuff that went around in 2016 with Pizzagate and QAnon, what was it really about? Save the children, Karen. Save the children. They’re sacrificing the children, Karen. So honorable, doesn’t it? It really does. On the surface of things, as you say. And if you speak out against it, don’t you sound terrible? I don’t believe we need to save the children from satanic cults. Yeah. I mean, I don’t, but that’s because I don’t believe there are satanic cults trying to kill children. It’s a really tricky thing, too, if you’re just having a casual conversation with someone to try to educate them about it. Here’s the dark part that I really hate to talk about, but the reality is, and this is why it’s such a complicated topic, is there is real life child abuse that happens. It’s terrible. Sadly, there is. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s Rotterham or Rotherham, but in the UK, there was a multi-decade child abuse scandal. Jimmy Saville famously had a child abuse scandal, hundreds of people affected. Here in the United States, of course, we have Jeffrey Epstein. We don’t know the scale of that, but it ain’t good. More and more is coming out all the time. And of course, I think we would be remiss in our duty if we don’t mention the Catholic Church. Yeah, that’s such a good example. Really sad, all the stories and the evidence that’s come out in the past 20 years. Very, very sad. We should probably treat that in another episode. Oh, for sure. There are so many points of nucleation from which we could derive future episodes. These are, I think, honestly, good topics to talk about from a monster perspective, both the folk horror perspective and the harsh reality of using this in real-world propaganda campaigns that have resulted in death in massive scale. Oh, yeah. Separate fact from fiction. Yeah, exactly. It speaks to our core purpose here of trying to promote critical thinking around these topics. These can be highly emotional topics, but you have to separate the emotion when you’re trying to evaluate these things, step back a step and try to see if you can’t use real evidence to evaluate. The claim can be horrific. Have a heart, be human, but don’t use your emotions as the sole way that you try to evaluate these questions. Oh, yeah. And often the reality is actually a comfort and the truth is much better than the stories. Absolutely. So I would hope that people who listen to this show would develop a skill set or at least be aware that there can be a skill set where one can use those skills to figure things out on their own, to find the tools to use to get reliable evidence to solve these mysteries. Don’t just take our word for it. Use the things we talk about. Look at our sources. We have show notes, Karen. Did I mention our show notes? I don’t like – oh, you know one more. Witches. Witches were accused of stealing children and killing them. Oh, yeah. Even stories of changelings. Exactly. So that fits into maybe not so much in modern times, but definitely in the witch trial period. Early modern period. Yeah. And so many horrific things spawned from false accusations. I mean, the first, I guess, historically known – Even recently. But I was going to say that the blood libel, which we all know about with Jews being persecuted, started in 1144 after the death of William of Norwich. A kid died. They blamed the Jews and the blood libel, the idea that the Jews – so the idea was already out there, but they turned it into a moral panic with horrendous consequences, which we’re still feeling today. Yeah. And really, I think talking about demonization and dehumanization presented these people as monsters with horns and warts and all kinds of disfigurement. Yeah. Frequently, these topics are so emotional that people are too outraged to take a moment, step back and say, I’m outraged, but is the thing I’m outraged real? And I think in this case, that’s a really important question people should take the time to figure out. But that’s the trick and why it’s so powerful, this accusation, which I’ve come to think of as the Milwaukeean method. You just save the children. That’s all you need to say. And you’ve hacked the minds of most people. I think we can say that even as skeptics that critical thinking and using these tools is something that we have to practice all the time, something that we’re still learning about. And it sometimes is easier to see things, I think, from the outside than being on the inside for certain groups who might be more prone to having these kinds of beliefs. But I think it’s a work in progress, being a skeptic and using critical thinking. It is. So as I mentioned, many of the topics discussed today, historically and archaeologically, are still being debated. There is not a consensus on all of them. And I find that really interesting. And if we do decide to dive in on some of these topics, especially around the archaeological and especially in the Mediterranean, I’d like to try to get some people, I don’t want to say both sides, but I’d like to make sure that whoever we have on is able to speak to both sides of the evidence, why interpretation is so important. Because I don’t know that there is necessarily a hard and fast answer to all these questions about whether some of these cases were strictly one thing or the other. And sometimes I think complexity is the norm. And it’s the human tendency to make things simple that causes a lot of problems around here. Oh, yeah. And our understanding, too, is provisional. So we’re certainly always open to new findings. But yeah, I think we need to delve into this topic with more depth when we can. Absolutely. So that’s why I wanted to cover this today. It’s been churning around in my mind for several years. And I just want to lay some foundational work here that we can use to build out future episodes. And I hope that when we get to those, we can focus on the science, the methodology, why people have particular views, and look at the historical methods. History, folklore. Exactly. I don’t really want to focus on the dead kids. That’s sad. But there is some fascinating stuff here. Think of this more like forensics files. Yeah. And a profile about the victims. The victims, I’m very sad about whether they died naturally or not. But it is really interesting what we can say and to what degree of certainty we can say it about these stories and these cases. Oh, yeah. And maybe the truth will give us some comfort as well. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. We’ll see. More to discuss. All right. Well, in the meantime, I think we should work on luring those kids to our house with candy. Am I right? Am I right? Yeah, it is definitely time to start prepping for that. And I know we don’t want to talk too much about shows that we’re going to do in the future, but I think we should do a live episode for Halloween. I would really like to. We’ve had so many requests. So I think we’d be letting everyone down if we didn’t do that. So we need to start. Well, happy October, everybody. I promise you we’ll do our best to make the rest of this month a little more lighthearted, but I’m really excited. Lighthearted. Next week we’re talking to Brian Sharpless about cannibalism. Yes. Yeah. And your point being? The nature of the show. It is indeed. I guess it’ll be cannibalism, but with more puns. So, yeah, that’ll be fun. Oh, that’s scary. Happy October. Happy October.

You’ve been listening to Monster Talk the science show about…

Narrator: You’ve been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I’m Blake Smith. And I’m Karen Stollznow. You just heard an introductory discussion of the complicated topic of the Molokian hypothesis. Were there real cults that sacrificed children? Or has it always been mostly propaganda? And what about the accusations of cult activity today? I’m skeptical of any of the supernatural or cult accusations, but the real world cases of horrific abuse do take place. So how do we square the conspiratorial and supernatural with the mundane yet horrific? I promise we won’t relentlessly explore this topic. It’s got too many bleak avenues and cul-de-sacs mixed onto the map. But I do want sporadically, but seriously, to explore the topic because, as I said in the intro, that phrase, think of the children, is still ruining lives today. It takes work to figure out which claims are real and which are slander and propaganda. And as we occasionally return to this topic, I hope we can equip you all with the means to bring some critical thought to the conversations that such a thing inevitably spurs. Monster Talk’s theme music is by Peach Stealing Monkeys, but you know, I’ve always got this little ditty to fall back on. [Silver Shamrock theme plays us out]