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December 10, 2019
Bigfoot, Unicorns and Dragons: Making Sense of Myths, pt. 1
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Where do stories of unicorns, mermaids and Bigfoot come from? And do they have any truth to them? In this four-part series, we're tackling listeners' biggest questions about modern myths and legends.
Today's episode is about mythical creatures that live on land. We'll hear the story of El Chupacabras, learn about the search for Bigfoot, and hear from some animals once mistaken for unicorns. Marc and Sanden have a new project to share, and Gungador has an urgent announcement. Plus, a Moment of Um about how sloths snooze upside down.
If you want to learn more about the history, facts and lore behind dragons and unicorns, check out this fascinating episode of Smash Boom Best: UNICORNS VS DRAGONS!
Audio Transcript
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MOLLY BLOOM: Hey, parents. Just a heads up before we get started. This episode starts with the retelling of a modern myth. Some might find it a little scary, so if you want to skip it, just jump ahead about two minutes. OK, on with the show.
INTERVIEWER: You're listening to Brains On, where we're serious about being curious.
VIOLET: Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
ELLIOT: Many, many years ago in a part of [? Igan ?] City called Canóvanas, strange things started to happen in the night.
[MOOING]
Farmers were the first ones to notice.
FARMER: Oh no. Bessie, my beautiful cow.
FARMER: Gilbert the goat never harmed a soul.
FARMER: My sweet sheep.
ELLIOT: Animals across the city were being killed in a very unusual way.
FARMER: My sheep had a bunch of holes in their chest. What the hay?
FARMER: And it looked like all their blood had been completely sucked out.
FARMER: What kind of creature could have done this?
[BLEATING]
ELLIOT: More and more animals were killed. People were getting scared.
FARMER: My animals are my livelihood. I can't afford to lose any more.
FARMER: And if animals are dying, who's to say we are next?
ELLIOT: And then, a strange creature was spotted in the night.
SUBJECT: I saw it with my own eyes swooping down from the sky. A scaly reptile thing with quills like a porcupine's running down its spine.
SUBJECT: It hopped my yards like a kangaroo. It had big red eyes that glowed in the dark.
ELLIOT: Soon, this mysterious bloodthirsty creature was given a name.
EVERYONE: El Chupacabras!
ELLIOT: Since then, there have been sightings around the world. Is Chupacabras still on the prowl today?
[BLEATING]
[HOWLING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: I'm Molly Bloom, and this is Brains On from American Public Media. And my co-host today is Elliot from Bemidji, Minnesota. Hi, Elliot.
ELLIOT: Hi.
MOLLY BLOOM: Today, we're kicking off a series about modern myths and legends.
ELLIOT: Myths are fantastical ideas or stories that are popular, but not necessarily true.
MOLLY BLOOM: And our listeners have a lot of questions about them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SUBJECT: And mermaids and unicorns real?
SUBJECT: With this being the record year of Loch Ness Monster sightings, I would love to hear about its history and possibly learn the Loch Ness Monster is actually real.
SUBJECT: How do people make up these cool creatures?
SUBJECT: Why do we believe in unicorns or other mythical creatures?
SUBJECT: Is there extraterrestrial life underwater, and do mermaids exist?
SUBJECT: Why are mermaids, unicorns, and things like that not real?
MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks to Avi from Newport Beach, California, Harper from Anchorage, Alaska, Adeline from Wichita, Kansas, Callie from Toronto, Canada, and Molly from Hopatcong, New Jersey, for those questions. We're going to spend the next four episodes talking about these wild stories.
ELLIOT: And why human beings love them so much.
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll go to the jungle and deep under sea.
ELLIOT: To talk about amazing creatures, some that ended up being real and others that were proven fake.
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll also search for lost lands and life beyond our solar system.
(SINGING) From the depths of time up through today, myths and legends wind their way into culture and into lore. But is there truth? Well, let's explore. Scanning the clues of history for creatures on land and in the sea. Lost worlds hidden under your toes. Hey, over there! Is that a UFO? Armed with knowledge and with proof, help us to uncover what is real and what's a spoof. Myths and legends, we'll discover.
In this episode, we're focusing on mythical creatures that live on land.
ELLIOT: Like El Chupacabras.
[BLEATS]
MOLLY BLOOM: The myth of El Chupacabras is a pretty recent one. And there are still sightings happening today. But there are so many creatures of myth new and old that we want to talk about now. Elliot, do you have a favorite mythical creature?
ELLIOT: I would have to go for the centaur.
MOLLY BLOOM: So can you describe what a centaur is?
ELLIOT: A centaur is a half horse, half man. The bottom part is a bottom of a horse.
MOLLY BLOOM: So it's like the top half of a person and then the legs are replaced with horse torso and legs?
ELLIOT: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: So why do you think we like myths so much?
ELLIOT: I think the exciting that it could actually be real.
MOLLY BLOOM: Are there any myths you think could have some truth to them, like centaurs or El Chupacabras or Bigfoot?
ELLIOT: I haven't seen any Bigfoot.
MOLLY BLOOM: You haven't seen Bigfoot yet. So you want proof in order to believe it.
ELLIOT: Yeah. It could actually be a bear.
MOLLY BLOOM: Very true. Well, we've got an expert here to help us dive into the backstories of these mythical creatures. Sarah Burdorff teaches a class all about myths and folklore at UCLA.
ELLIOT: Hi, Sarah.
SARAH BURDORFF: Hi, Elliot. Hi, Molly.
MOLLY BLOOM: Hi.
SARAH BURDORFF: Thanks so much for having me on.
MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks for being here.
ELLIOT: How did people make up mythical creatures?
SARAH BURDORFF: Wow, that's a really good question. There are lots of different ways that we get the stories that we have about mythical creatures. One of them is that there are certain things in the world that everyone experiences. Maybe being scared of the dark. Or looking out at the woods when you're camping and wondering what might be out there.
Those are also really good things to inspire stories that help us try and shape our understanding of the world around us and the parts that seem extra mysterious or maybe a little bit scary.
ELLIOT: Why are some mythical creatures more popular than others?
SARAH BURDORFF: Ooh. Well, one of the things that makes stories persistent, and that's a word that just means it keeps going for a long time and lots of people keep retelling it, is that they mean something to the people who are telling them. So for example, if you live in a place that's near the ocean, you might have more stories about creatures that live in the ocean. And so if a story matches up with something that a culture is already wondering about the sea, then that story is more likely to persist.
ELLIOT: But what about dragons? People don't live in the sky.
SARAH BURDORFF: That is a really, really good point. People do not live in the sky, you're right. But there is a theory that if you think about what a dragon looks like and all of the things that make up a dragon--
ELLIOT: Yeah, scaly.
SARAH BURDORFF: They're scaly. That's right. What else is scaly? Like a snake.
ELLIOT: Lizards. Dinosaurs!
SARAH BURDORFF: Dinosaurs. That's right.
ELLIOT: Yeah. They're like copycatting dinosaurs.
SARAH BURDORFF: Well, that's a good point. And there's actually a scholar called Adrian Mayer who has written a lot about how she thinks a lot of the creatures that we have stories about, including dragons, might have come about originally because people a long time ago were plowing their fields or digging foundations for their houses or places to store things. And they would find a dinosaur skull.
Imagine how you would explain a dinosaur skull if you didn't know what a dinosaur was. So we used stories to do the best that we could to try and make sense of the world around us.
ELLIOT: Thanks for being here today, Sarah.
SARAH BURDORFF: Thank you so much for having me, Elliot and Molly.
AUDIO TRACK: Brains On!
MOLLY BLOOM: There are a lot of mythical creatures we've closed the case on.
ELLIOT: Like flying unicorns or fire breathing dragons. They're super fun to imagine. But there's no real evidence of them.
MOLLY BLOOM: But some communities think the jury is still out on certain mythical beasts.
LAURA KRANTZ: Bigfoot has been seen all over the United States in every single state but Hawaii. And I guess that's because Bigfoot can't swim that far.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's Laura Krantz. She hosts a podcast called Wild Thing.
ELLIOT: It's about Bigfoot and the people who think it's real.
MOLLY BLOOM: Many of our listeners are curious about this creature, like Cormac from Colorado.
CORMAC: Is Bigfoot real? And if he is, is he a monster?
MOLLY BLOOM: Bigfoot is also often called Sasquatch, which is a word borrowed from the Coast Salish tribes.
LAURA KRANTZ: There's a lot of different descriptions about Bigfoot. But most seem to say that Bigfoot's about anywhere between 6 and 8 feet tall, weighing 500 to 900 pounds, maybe even more. Covered in hair. Except for maybe part of the face doesn't have hair on it. Big hands. Big feet, obviously.
MOLLY BLOOM: People say this big, hairy creature walks upright like a human.
ELLIOT: No one has ever proven Bigfoot is real. But true believers say that there's plenty of evidence.
LAURA KRANTZ: A lot of people think Bigfoot exists because they found things out in the woods that are really unusual, like big giant footprints.
MOLLY BLOOM: Some people think they've found Bigfoot poop--
LAURA KRANTZ: Which is kind of gross.
ELLIOT: Other people say they found Bigfoot hair.
LAURA KRANTZ: There are people who hear noises, like they hear these howls or these weird yells out in the forest that don't sound like any other animal they know.
[ANIMAL NOISES]
And then, of course, you have people who think they've seen Bigfoot. One of the most famous of these happened about 50 years ago. There were two cowboys out riding around in the forests of California. And they saw this giant hairy creature walking on two legs away from them across this forest clearing.
[WHINNYING]
COWBOY 1: Whoa, nelly!
COWBOY 2: What in Jiminy Cricket's ghost name is that?
LAURA KRANTZ: One of them had a video camera, and he shot video of it.
COWBOY 1: Are you getting this?
COWBOY 2: I'm recording.
COWBOY 1: By golly, it's looking right at us.
COWBOY 2: Its feet. They're so, so big.
LAURA KRANTZ: And you just see this huge thing walking away from them. And it looks back over its shoulder at these two cowboys. And then it continues on into the forest and disappears.
[STOMPING]
This is seen as one of the best pieces of evidence for Bigfoot's existence. But the problem is we haven't really had another sighting like that for 50 years. And so there's questions about whether this was a hoax, if it was totally made up, or if it's the real thing.
MOLLY BLOOM: The scientific community is not convinced. They want hard evidence.
ELLIOT: Like DNA.
LAURA KRANTZ: If you're a scientist and you want to prove that there's a new species out there, that there's a new animal or plant or creature that nobody knows for sure exists, you have to have what they call a specimen. And a specimen would be you dig up a plant and you'd bring it in. Or you bring in a dead bird.
ELLIOT: You could use a specimen to analyze DNA.
MOLLY BLOOM: And find out if this is a totally new animal.
ELLIOT: Like Bigfoot.
MOLLY BLOOM: So far, no one has found any Bigfoot DNA.
ELLIOT: But there are definitely people still on the lookout.
LAURA KRANTZ: I think a lot of people want to believe in Bigfoot because they like the idea that the world is still undiscovered. That you can go out to the woods and find something that no one has proven exists. And how cool would it to be out camping with your family and you maybe walk off to get some firewood and you see Bigfoot? I mean, how exciting would that be? It gives you a little bit of a thrill.
[VOCALIZING]
AUDIO TRACK: Brains On.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's good to be skeptical when someone makes a big claim. Like catching Bigfoot on camera.
ELLIOT: Because sometimes people are trying to fool you. That type of trick is called a hoax.
MARC SANCHEZ: Did someone say hoax?
SANDEN TOTTEN: I heard it, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Hey, Marc. Hey, Sanden.
ELLIOT: I said hoax. Why?
MARC SANCHEZ: See? Hoaxes are totally trending.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Hoaxes are hot, dude. It's the perfect time to debut our new YouTube channel.
MARC SANCHEZ: Hoax Hunters!
(SINGING) We like myths, but we hate getting tricked, yeah. We like myths, but we hate getting tricked.
All right!
(SINGING) We like myths, but we hate getting tricked.
We hate getting tricked. No, we don't like it.
A hoax is when someone makes something up, then tricks people into believing it.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah. We wanted to avoid that. So we figured, if we don't want to get tricked in the future, maybe we should learn how people got tricked in the past.
[REWINDING]
MARC SANCHEZ: Today, we're bringing you a hoax from the early days of film photography.
SANDEN TOTTEN: In 1917, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths borrowed Elsie's dad's camera to take some photos. And somehow, they managed to pose with fairies. Seems a little suspicious.
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah, definitely. The photos blew up a few years later when they appeared in a magazine called Strand. And along with the photos, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote an article about how fairies could be real.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Doyle was pretty famous. Before this, he wrote Sherlock Holmes. His articles on fairies caused quite a stir. Elsie and Francis stood by the photos for decades. The hoax lived on.
MARC SANCHEZ: It wasn't until nearly 70 years later that Frances admitted that the photos were a practical joke.
[TRUMPET SOUND]
Turns out, the fairies were just drawings.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Frances and Elsie had used big hat pins to stand the drawings up for the photos.
MARC SANCHEZ: At the time, people had a hard time understanding how the girls could have faked the photos. And lots of people wanted to believe that fairies were real.
OK, two takeaways from this hoax. Number one, not all photos are real. Number two, even if your favorite celebrity believes something, that doesn't mean it's true. Hoax Hunters!
SANDEN AND MARC: Because we love myths, and we hate getting tricked.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, here's something tricky for you, Elliot.
[MYSTERY SOUND CUE]
AUDIO TRACK: Mystery Sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Are you ready for the mystery sound?
ELLIOT: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Here is today's mystery sound.
[LOW GROWLING]
[LOW GRUMBLING]
What is your guess?
ELLIOT: It could be an elephant or maybe a car.
MOLLY BLOOM: Both very good guesses. We're going to be back with another chance to hear and guess a little bit later in the show. We'll also answer this question later during our Moment of Um.
LEVI: My name is Levi from Knoxville, Tennessee. My question is, if sloths sleep upside down, why don't their hands let go when they are sleeping?
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you have a big question for Brains On or a mysterious sound you think will stump our listeners? Maybe you made an awesome drawing of Bigfoot or El Chupacabras.
ELLIOT: We love hearing from you. Head to brainson.org/contact.
MOLLY BLOOM: We're all ears for your questions and mystery sounds. And we love to put up artwork on the fridge. Send them to us at brainson.org/contact.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ELLIOT: You're listening to Brains On. I'm Elliot.
MOLLY BLOOM: And I'm Molly. Today, we're talking about mythical creatures that-- Gungador just came into the studio and passed us a note?
ELLIOT: It says, please share microphone. Somebody has urgent announcement.
MOLLY BLOOM: Who's making an announcement, Gungy?
GUNGADOR: Somebody equals Gungador. It me. Music, please. Listen up, people. Very important. Gungador not Bigfoot! Last weekend, Gungador went hiking. Very relaxing. Until--
[CLICKING]
People take photos and post all over internet. They call Gungador Bigfoot. No. Gungador's feet perfectly proportional to body. Then Gungador hit up the mall looking for ordinary size sneakers. Size 16 and 1/2. And it happened again.
[CLICKING]
Internet say, terrifying Sasquatch creature spotted at local mall in shoes too tight for its massive feet. Not true. Gungador not Bigfoot. Gungador totally normal foot. Please stop calling Gungador names. Also, Gungador still needs sneakers. Please send email if anybody having shoes sale. Thank you. Goodbye.
MOLLY BLOOM: Wow. Thanks for that announcement, Gungador.
ELLIOT: Yeah, good info. Also, I just sent you an email about a sneaker sale.
GUNGADOR: Thanks. See ya!
MOLLY BLOOM: Just goes to show you, even the wildest myths usually have roots in reality.
ELLIOT: Like maybe somebody saw an animal that was new to them.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then they started telling other people about it, and the stories got more and more fantastic until they became myths. All it took was some imagination.
ELLIOT: Yeah. Or a good costume department.
MOLLY BLOOM: Wait, what?
ELLIOT: Yeah. You know. You can also make a mythical creature with a good costume or even a makeup team or maybe be a green screen.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, I'm confused.
ELLIOT: I learned all about it watching the behind the scenes extras for the new movie Unicorns-- Horns of Justice.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh yeah. That MythFlix original feature. I heard it's good.
ELLIOT: It is. Check out this clip from when they were trying to cast the unicorn to see what I mean.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DIRECTOR: OK, people. We've got to find the perfect animal to play our star, Eunice Cornwallis, AKA Agent Unicorn.
DIONNE: Ooh, look. That name is pulling so well with millennial women who occasionally wear cardigans.
DENNIS: Our key demographic.
DIRECTOR: Dionne, Dennis, focus. Obviously unicorns don't exist. So we're going to need to find an animal that people once thought was a unicorn. Here's a tape of our first candidate.
[RUSTLING]
RHINO ZELLWEGER: Hi. I'm Rhino Zellweger. I'm a rhinoceros, obviously. Many historians think early reports of unicorns were actually based on rhinos. Yeah. In fact, Pliny the Elder, this famous Roman author from the first century, he wrote about unicorns saying they had a horn and feet like elephants and a boar's tail, which, I'm just saying, sounds a lot like a rhino.
So anyway, I think I'd be great for this part because--
DIRECTOR: So what do you think? Dennis, go.
DENNIS: Well, I loved Rhino Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Prairie. But I was picturing a different horn, you know? Like a spiral one.
DIONNE: The makeup people can make it look spirally.
DIRECTOR: OK. Well if spirals are what you want, this horn well's got that. Check out Narwhalie Portman.
NARWHALIE PORTMAN: Hey. First of all, I'm honored to be up for this part. When I read the script, I was like, yes! You go, girl. This hero is truly my kind of character. Strong, wise. Has a long spiral horn. Well, narwhal horns like mine are actually a tooth. But it can play a horn for sure. By the way, I do all my own stunts. So--
DIRECTOR: Thoughts?
DIONNE: Narwhalie is always trending. Look. This report says she's the number one celebrity among moody teenage babysitters, plumbers from Baltimore, and weird neighbors with hamsters. But she's not that popular with second cousins or waitresses named Barbara. So--
DENNIS: Do I have to point this out? She's a whale. She doesn't have legs. Unicorns have legs.
DIRECTOR: Oh, please, Dennis. We can add legs in post. Besides, in medieval Europe, people bought and sold narwhal horns because they thought they were unicorn horns. Her horn, tooth, whatever. That spiral thing coming out of her head fooled ancient people. It can fool modern people, too.
DENNIS: I don't know.
DIRECTOR: Fine. One more to consider.
BILLY GOAT EILISH: Hi. I'm Billy Goat Eilish.
[BLEATING]
Mostly a singer, but I'm trying to branch out, you know? I do have one horn, though. Had two, but one got knocked off when I stage dove at Cacoachella.
[BLEATING]
So yeah, that makes me a unicorn, I guess.
DENNIS: Oh my gosh. I love Billy Goat Eilish.
DIONNE: Apparently, so does everyone. She's even popular with toaster ovens that burn bagels but not English muffins. They never like anyone.
DENNIS: Ooh, also, goats pretending to be unicorns is a thing. In the early 1980s, the Ringling Brothers Circus actually featured a one-horned goat they called a unicorn. So there's a precedent here.
DIRECTOR: Then it's settled. We found our Agent Unicorn. This billy goat is going to be bigger than Angelina Jolemur.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, how about we hear our mystery sound one more time. You ready?
ELLIOT: Yup, I am.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, here it is.
[LOW GROWLING]
[LOW GRUMBLING]
So what do you think? Last time, you thought elephant or some kind of animal. You still thinking something like that?
ELLIOT: Not Bigfoot. Not Loch Ness Monster.
MOLLY BLOOM: I have to say, if we had a recording of Bigfoot, this podcast would be very different today.
[LAUGHTER]
I think people would be very interested in what we had to say. All right, are you ready to find out what that mystery sound is?
ELLIOT: Yep.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here is the answer.
JOHN MILLER: The sound you just heard was a gorilla.
ELLIOT: Gorilla?
MOLLY BLOOM: Uh-huh.
JOHN MILLER: In the 19th century, people described the sound a gorilla made as a thunderous roar or a hideous roar. And that's quite a bit different than the sound you just heard.
MOLLY BLOOM: John Miller studies what people in Europe wrote about animals and the environment in the mid to late 1800s. People in Africa knew gorillas were real at the time. But Europeans had never seen one in person, and there were no photographs. So they thought the gorilla could be made up.
JOHN MILLER: No one had seen a gorilla in Europe until 1861.
MOLLY BLOOM: 1861 was a big year for gorillas. That was the year a guy named Paul Du Chaillu came back to Europe with stories from Africa about gorillas. In his book, Du Chaillu described the gorilla as a beast with fiery eyes, big fangs, and a thunderous roar.
JOHN MILLER: So he told all these stories, published this book. And people were like, wow, this is amazing. We never thought anything could be so sensational. And there's loads of really fantastic pictures of the gorilla as this big Yeti-like creature.
MOLLY BLOOM: Europeans knew about other primates. But they had never heard of an anise quite like this.
JOHN MILLER: Some people say, this is going to change the way we think about everything, the way we think about animals and humans. And some people say, he's making it up.
MOLLY BLOOM: The other reason they weren't sure gorillas were real is that some people had a hard time believing Du Chaillu. His stories were pretty dramatic, and he wasn't the typical European scientist. He was more of an explorer. Scholars also think he was mixed race, which meant that many Europeans didn't trust him because of their own racism. So these people weren't sure what to believe about this animal that he was describing.
There was one detail in these gorilla stories that seemed totally outlandish at the time.
JOHN MILLER: The gorilla beating its chest, which now is an iconic part of how we think of gorillas. And people were like, no, he's just making this up. So some of the things that seemed most preposterous actually have now entered science.
MOLLY BLOOM: Now, we know that gorillas are real, and they do sometimes beat their chests. But they're also nowhere near as aggressive as Du Chaillu made them out to be. Nature can be surprising in lots of different ways.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ELLIOT: From unicorns to El Chupacabras, we humans love sharing stories about mythical creatures.
MOLLY BLOOM: They help us make sense of things we have no explanation for. Like when people found dinosaur bones in ancient times.
ELLIOT: Some of these creatures are so captivating that some people keep searching for them. Like Bigfoot.
MOLLY BLOOM: After all, some people thought gorillas weren't real. They didn't believe it until they saw one for themselves. But remember, it's always good to be skeptical.
ELLIOT: Not all photos are real.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's it for Brains On today.
ELLIOT: Stay tuned for the rest of our myth-tastic series.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes. You'll hear episodes about lost worlds, mythical creatures of the sea, and aliens.
ELLIOT: Brains On is produced by Menaka Wilhelm, Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: Elissa Dudley, Ruby Guthrie, Rosie DuPont, and Tracy Mumford made this mythical series a reality. We had engineering help from Veronica Rodriguez, John Edgar, Valentino Rivera, and Eric Romani. We also had production help from Christina Lopez. Special thanks to John Miller, Austin Cross, Rosie DuPont, Hans Buetow, Max Nestorack, Sam Choo, Kathleen Bradberry, Will Lager, Hannah Yang, Eric Wrangham, Taka Zan, Laurie Gallarada, Taylor Kaufman, Millie Langford, and Micah Kilbaum.
ELLIOT: Before we sign off, it's time for a Moment of Um.
AUDIO TRACK: Uh. Um. Um. Um. Um. Um. Um. Um.
LEVI: If sloths sleep upside down, why don't their hands let go when they are sleeping?
LUCY COOKE: Well that is a brilliant and very thoughtful question. So thank you for asking me that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
My name is Lucy Cooke, and I am a zoologist and founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society. First of all, sloths have what's known as high fatigue resistance. So their muscles, they're not made for sprinting, they're made for endurance. They can hold one pose for a very long time without getting cramped. And secondly, they've got these long curved claws which basically hook on. And they just hang like a happy hairy hammock. They just clamp onto the trees. And the only muscles that are having to work are the ones that are holding those claws shut.
So it actually doesn't involve a lot of muscular work for them to remain in that position for hours and hours on end, which they frequently do.
AUDIO TRACK: Um. Um. Um.
MOLLY BLOOM: I am going to show great endurance as I read through this list of names. It's the Brains Honor Roll. These are the amazing listeners who keep us going with their ideas, mystery sounds, questions, and drawings.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
AUDIO TRACK: Brains Honor Roll. High fives.
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll be back soon with more answers to your questions.
ELLIOT: Thanks for listening.
INTERVIEWER: You're listening to Brains On, where we're serious about being curious.
VIOLET: Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
ELLIOT: Many, many years ago in a part of [? Igan ?] City called Canóvanas, strange things started to happen in the night.
[MOOING]
Farmers were the first ones to notice.
FARMER: Oh no. Bessie, my beautiful cow.
FARMER: Gilbert the goat never harmed a soul.
FARMER: My sweet sheep.
ELLIOT: Animals across the city were being killed in a very unusual way.
FARMER: My sheep had a bunch of holes in their chest. What the hay?
FARMER: And it looked like all their blood had been completely sucked out.
FARMER: What kind of creature could have done this?
[BLEATING]
ELLIOT: More and more animals were killed. People were getting scared.
FARMER: My animals are my livelihood. I can't afford to lose any more.
FARMER: And if animals are dying, who's to say we are next?
ELLIOT: And then, a strange creature was spotted in the night.
SUBJECT: I saw it with my own eyes swooping down from the sky. A scaly reptile thing with quills like a porcupine's running down its spine.
SUBJECT: It hopped my yards like a kangaroo. It had big red eyes that glowed in the dark.
ELLIOT: Soon, this mysterious bloodthirsty creature was given a name.
EVERYONE: El Chupacabras!
ELLIOT: Since then, there have been sightings around the world. Is Chupacabras still on the prowl today?
[BLEATING]
[HOWLING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: I'm Molly Bloom, and this is Brains On from American Public Media. And my co-host today is Elliot from Bemidji, Minnesota. Hi, Elliot.
ELLIOT: Hi.
MOLLY BLOOM: Today, we're kicking off a series about modern myths and legends.
ELLIOT: Myths are fantastical ideas or stories that are popular, but not necessarily true.
MOLLY BLOOM: And our listeners have a lot of questions about them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SUBJECT: And mermaids and unicorns real?
SUBJECT: With this being the record year of Loch Ness Monster sightings, I would love to hear about its history and possibly learn the Loch Ness Monster is actually real.
SUBJECT: How do people make up these cool creatures?
SUBJECT: Why do we believe in unicorns or other mythical creatures?
SUBJECT: Is there extraterrestrial life underwater, and do mermaids exist?
SUBJECT: Why are mermaids, unicorns, and things like that not real?
MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks to Avi from Newport Beach, California, Harper from Anchorage, Alaska, Adeline from Wichita, Kansas, Callie from Toronto, Canada, and Molly from Hopatcong, New Jersey, for those questions. We're going to spend the next four episodes talking about these wild stories.
ELLIOT: And why human beings love them so much.
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll go to the jungle and deep under sea.
ELLIOT: To talk about amazing creatures, some that ended up being real and others that were proven fake.
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll also search for lost lands and life beyond our solar system.
(SINGING) From the depths of time up through today, myths and legends wind their way into culture and into lore. But is there truth? Well, let's explore. Scanning the clues of history for creatures on land and in the sea. Lost worlds hidden under your toes. Hey, over there! Is that a UFO? Armed with knowledge and with proof, help us to uncover what is real and what's a spoof. Myths and legends, we'll discover.
In this episode, we're focusing on mythical creatures that live on land.
ELLIOT: Like El Chupacabras.
[BLEATS]
MOLLY BLOOM: The myth of El Chupacabras is a pretty recent one. And there are still sightings happening today. But there are so many creatures of myth new and old that we want to talk about now. Elliot, do you have a favorite mythical creature?
ELLIOT: I would have to go for the centaur.
MOLLY BLOOM: So can you describe what a centaur is?
ELLIOT: A centaur is a half horse, half man. The bottom part is a bottom of a horse.
MOLLY BLOOM: So it's like the top half of a person and then the legs are replaced with horse torso and legs?
ELLIOT: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: So why do you think we like myths so much?
ELLIOT: I think the exciting that it could actually be real.
MOLLY BLOOM: Are there any myths you think could have some truth to them, like centaurs or El Chupacabras or Bigfoot?
ELLIOT: I haven't seen any Bigfoot.
MOLLY BLOOM: You haven't seen Bigfoot yet. So you want proof in order to believe it.
ELLIOT: Yeah. It could actually be a bear.
MOLLY BLOOM: Very true. Well, we've got an expert here to help us dive into the backstories of these mythical creatures. Sarah Burdorff teaches a class all about myths and folklore at UCLA.
ELLIOT: Hi, Sarah.
SARAH BURDORFF: Hi, Elliot. Hi, Molly.
MOLLY BLOOM: Hi.
SARAH BURDORFF: Thanks so much for having me on.
MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks for being here.
ELLIOT: How did people make up mythical creatures?
SARAH BURDORFF: Wow, that's a really good question. There are lots of different ways that we get the stories that we have about mythical creatures. One of them is that there are certain things in the world that everyone experiences. Maybe being scared of the dark. Or looking out at the woods when you're camping and wondering what might be out there.
Those are also really good things to inspire stories that help us try and shape our understanding of the world around us and the parts that seem extra mysterious or maybe a little bit scary.
ELLIOT: Why are some mythical creatures more popular than others?
SARAH BURDORFF: Ooh. Well, one of the things that makes stories persistent, and that's a word that just means it keeps going for a long time and lots of people keep retelling it, is that they mean something to the people who are telling them. So for example, if you live in a place that's near the ocean, you might have more stories about creatures that live in the ocean. And so if a story matches up with something that a culture is already wondering about the sea, then that story is more likely to persist.
ELLIOT: But what about dragons? People don't live in the sky.
SARAH BURDORFF: That is a really, really good point. People do not live in the sky, you're right. But there is a theory that if you think about what a dragon looks like and all of the things that make up a dragon--
ELLIOT: Yeah, scaly.
SARAH BURDORFF: They're scaly. That's right. What else is scaly? Like a snake.
ELLIOT: Lizards. Dinosaurs!
SARAH BURDORFF: Dinosaurs. That's right.
ELLIOT: Yeah. They're like copycatting dinosaurs.
SARAH BURDORFF: Well, that's a good point. And there's actually a scholar called Adrian Mayer who has written a lot about how she thinks a lot of the creatures that we have stories about, including dragons, might have come about originally because people a long time ago were plowing their fields or digging foundations for their houses or places to store things. And they would find a dinosaur skull.
Imagine how you would explain a dinosaur skull if you didn't know what a dinosaur was. So we used stories to do the best that we could to try and make sense of the world around us.
ELLIOT: Thanks for being here today, Sarah.
SARAH BURDORFF: Thank you so much for having me, Elliot and Molly.
AUDIO TRACK: Brains On!
MOLLY BLOOM: There are a lot of mythical creatures we've closed the case on.
ELLIOT: Like flying unicorns or fire breathing dragons. They're super fun to imagine. But there's no real evidence of them.
MOLLY BLOOM: But some communities think the jury is still out on certain mythical beasts.
LAURA KRANTZ: Bigfoot has been seen all over the United States in every single state but Hawaii. And I guess that's because Bigfoot can't swim that far.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's Laura Krantz. She hosts a podcast called Wild Thing.
ELLIOT: It's about Bigfoot and the people who think it's real.
MOLLY BLOOM: Many of our listeners are curious about this creature, like Cormac from Colorado.
CORMAC: Is Bigfoot real? And if he is, is he a monster?
MOLLY BLOOM: Bigfoot is also often called Sasquatch, which is a word borrowed from the Coast Salish tribes.
LAURA KRANTZ: There's a lot of different descriptions about Bigfoot. But most seem to say that Bigfoot's about anywhere between 6 and 8 feet tall, weighing 500 to 900 pounds, maybe even more. Covered in hair. Except for maybe part of the face doesn't have hair on it. Big hands. Big feet, obviously.
MOLLY BLOOM: People say this big, hairy creature walks upright like a human.
ELLIOT: No one has ever proven Bigfoot is real. But true believers say that there's plenty of evidence.
LAURA KRANTZ: A lot of people think Bigfoot exists because they found things out in the woods that are really unusual, like big giant footprints.
MOLLY BLOOM: Some people think they've found Bigfoot poop--
LAURA KRANTZ: Which is kind of gross.
ELLIOT: Other people say they found Bigfoot hair.
LAURA KRANTZ: There are people who hear noises, like they hear these howls or these weird yells out in the forest that don't sound like any other animal they know.
[ANIMAL NOISES]
And then, of course, you have people who think they've seen Bigfoot. One of the most famous of these happened about 50 years ago. There were two cowboys out riding around in the forests of California. And they saw this giant hairy creature walking on two legs away from them across this forest clearing.
[WHINNYING]
COWBOY 1: Whoa, nelly!
COWBOY 2: What in Jiminy Cricket's ghost name is that?
LAURA KRANTZ: One of them had a video camera, and he shot video of it.
COWBOY 1: Are you getting this?
COWBOY 2: I'm recording.
COWBOY 1: By golly, it's looking right at us.
COWBOY 2: Its feet. They're so, so big.
LAURA KRANTZ: And you just see this huge thing walking away from them. And it looks back over its shoulder at these two cowboys. And then it continues on into the forest and disappears.
[STOMPING]
This is seen as one of the best pieces of evidence for Bigfoot's existence. But the problem is we haven't really had another sighting like that for 50 years. And so there's questions about whether this was a hoax, if it was totally made up, or if it's the real thing.
MOLLY BLOOM: The scientific community is not convinced. They want hard evidence.
ELLIOT: Like DNA.
LAURA KRANTZ: If you're a scientist and you want to prove that there's a new species out there, that there's a new animal or plant or creature that nobody knows for sure exists, you have to have what they call a specimen. And a specimen would be you dig up a plant and you'd bring it in. Or you bring in a dead bird.
ELLIOT: You could use a specimen to analyze DNA.
MOLLY BLOOM: And find out if this is a totally new animal.
ELLIOT: Like Bigfoot.
MOLLY BLOOM: So far, no one has found any Bigfoot DNA.
ELLIOT: But there are definitely people still on the lookout.
LAURA KRANTZ: I think a lot of people want to believe in Bigfoot because they like the idea that the world is still undiscovered. That you can go out to the woods and find something that no one has proven exists. And how cool would it to be out camping with your family and you maybe walk off to get some firewood and you see Bigfoot? I mean, how exciting would that be? It gives you a little bit of a thrill.
[VOCALIZING]
AUDIO TRACK: Brains On.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's good to be skeptical when someone makes a big claim. Like catching Bigfoot on camera.
ELLIOT: Because sometimes people are trying to fool you. That type of trick is called a hoax.
MARC SANCHEZ: Did someone say hoax?
SANDEN TOTTEN: I heard it, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Hey, Marc. Hey, Sanden.
ELLIOT: I said hoax. Why?
MARC SANCHEZ: See? Hoaxes are totally trending.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Hoaxes are hot, dude. It's the perfect time to debut our new YouTube channel.
MARC SANCHEZ: Hoax Hunters!
(SINGING) We like myths, but we hate getting tricked, yeah. We like myths, but we hate getting tricked.
All right!
(SINGING) We like myths, but we hate getting tricked.
We hate getting tricked. No, we don't like it.
A hoax is when someone makes something up, then tricks people into believing it.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah. We wanted to avoid that. So we figured, if we don't want to get tricked in the future, maybe we should learn how people got tricked in the past.
[REWINDING]
MARC SANCHEZ: Today, we're bringing you a hoax from the early days of film photography.
SANDEN TOTTEN: In 1917, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths borrowed Elsie's dad's camera to take some photos. And somehow, they managed to pose with fairies. Seems a little suspicious.
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah, definitely. The photos blew up a few years later when they appeared in a magazine called Strand. And along with the photos, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote an article about how fairies could be real.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Doyle was pretty famous. Before this, he wrote Sherlock Holmes. His articles on fairies caused quite a stir. Elsie and Francis stood by the photos for decades. The hoax lived on.
MARC SANCHEZ: It wasn't until nearly 70 years later that Frances admitted that the photos were a practical joke.
[TRUMPET SOUND]
Turns out, the fairies were just drawings.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Frances and Elsie had used big hat pins to stand the drawings up for the photos.
MARC SANCHEZ: At the time, people had a hard time understanding how the girls could have faked the photos. And lots of people wanted to believe that fairies were real.
OK, two takeaways from this hoax. Number one, not all photos are real. Number two, even if your favorite celebrity believes something, that doesn't mean it's true. Hoax Hunters!
SANDEN AND MARC: Because we love myths, and we hate getting tricked.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, here's something tricky for you, Elliot.
[MYSTERY SOUND CUE]
AUDIO TRACK: Mystery Sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Are you ready for the mystery sound?
ELLIOT: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Here is today's mystery sound.
[LOW GROWLING]
[LOW GRUMBLING]
What is your guess?
ELLIOT: It could be an elephant or maybe a car.
MOLLY BLOOM: Both very good guesses. We're going to be back with another chance to hear and guess a little bit later in the show. We'll also answer this question later during our Moment of Um.
LEVI: My name is Levi from Knoxville, Tennessee. My question is, if sloths sleep upside down, why don't their hands let go when they are sleeping?
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you have a big question for Brains On or a mysterious sound you think will stump our listeners? Maybe you made an awesome drawing of Bigfoot or El Chupacabras.
ELLIOT: We love hearing from you. Head to brainson.org/contact.
MOLLY BLOOM: We're all ears for your questions and mystery sounds. And we love to put up artwork on the fridge. Send them to us at brainson.org/contact.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ELLIOT: You're listening to Brains On. I'm Elliot.
MOLLY BLOOM: And I'm Molly. Today, we're talking about mythical creatures that-- Gungador just came into the studio and passed us a note?
ELLIOT: It says, please share microphone. Somebody has urgent announcement.
MOLLY BLOOM: Who's making an announcement, Gungy?
GUNGADOR: Somebody equals Gungador. It me. Music, please. Listen up, people. Very important. Gungador not Bigfoot! Last weekend, Gungador went hiking. Very relaxing. Until--
[CLICKING]
People take photos and post all over internet. They call Gungador Bigfoot. No. Gungador's feet perfectly proportional to body. Then Gungador hit up the mall looking for ordinary size sneakers. Size 16 and 1/2. And it happened again.
[CLICKING]
Internet say, terrifying Sasquatch creature spotted at local mall in shoes too tight for its massive feet. Not true. Gungador not Bigfoot. Gungador totally normal foot. Please stop calling Gungador names. Also, Gungador still needs sneakers. Please send email if anybody having shoes sale. Thank you. Goodbye.
MOLLY BLOOM: Wow. Thanks for that announcement, Gungador.
ELLIOT: Yeah, good info. Also, I just sent you an email about a sneaker sale.
GUNGADOR: Thanks. See ya!
MOLLY BLOOM: Just goes to show you, even the wildest myths usually have roots in reality.
ELLIOT: Like maybe somebody saw an animal that was new to them.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then they started telling other people about it, and the stories got more and more fantastic until they became myths. All it took was some imagination.
ELLIOT: Yeah. Or a good costume department.
MOLLY BLOOM: Wait, what?
ELLIOT: Yeah. You know. You can also make a mythical creature with a good costume or even a makeup team or maybe be a green screen.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, I'm confused.
ELLIOT: I learned all about it watching the behind the scenes extras for the new movie Unicorns-- Horns of Justice.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh yeah. That MythFlix original feature. I heard it's good.
ELLIOT: It is. Check out this clip from when they were trying to cast the unicorn to see what I mean.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DIRECTOR: OK, people. We've got to find the perfect animal to play our star, Eunice Cornwallis, AKA Agent Unicorn.
DIONNE: Ooh, look. That name is pulling so well with millennial women who occasionally wear cardigans.
DENNIS: Our key demographic.
DIRECTOR: Dionne, Dennis, focus. Obviously unicorns don't exist. So we're going to need to find an animal that people once thought was a unicorn. Here's a tape of our first candidate.
[RUSTLING]
RHINO ZELLWEGER: Hi. I'm Rhino Zellweger. I'm a rhinoceros, obviously. Many historians think early reports of unicorns were actually based on rhinos. Yeah. In fact, Pliny the Elder, this famous Roman author from the first century, he wrote about unicorns saying they had a horn and feet like elephants and a boar's tail, which, I'm just saying, sounds a lot like a rhino.
So anyway, I think I'd be great for this part because--
DIRECTOR: So what do you think? Dennis, go.
DENNIS: Well, I loved Rhino Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Prairie. But I was picturing a different horn, you know? Like a spiral one.
DIONNE: The makeup people can make it look spirally.
DIRECTOR: OK. Well if spirals are what you want, this horn well's got that. Check out Narwhalie Portman.
NARWHALIE PORTMAN: Hey. First of all, I'm honored to be up for this part. When I read the script, I was like, yes! You go, girl. This hero is truly my kind of character. Strong, wise. Has a long spiral horn. Well, narwhal horns like mine are actually a tooth. But it can play a horn for sure. By the way, I do all my own stunts. So--
DIRECTOR: Thoughts?
DIONNE: Narwhalie is always trending. Look. This report says she's the number one celebrity among moody teenage babysitters, plumbers from Baltimore, and weird neighbors with hamsters. But she's not that popular with second cousins or waitresses named Barbara. So--
DENNIS: Do I have to point this out? She's a whale. She doesn't have legs. Unicorns have legs.
DIRECTOR: Oh, please, Dennis. We can add legs in post. Besides, in medieval Europe, people bought and sold narwhal horns because they thought they were unicorn horns. Her horn, tooth, whatever. That spiral thing coming out of her head fooled ancient people. It can fool modern people, too.
DENNIS: I don't know.
DIRECTOR: Fine. One more to consider.
BILLY GOAT EILISH: Hi. I'm Billy Goat Eilish.
[BLEATING]
Mostly a singer, but I'm trying to branch out, you know? I do have one horn, though. Had two, but one got knocked off when I stage dove at Cacoachella.
[BLEATING]
So yeah, that makes me a unicorn, I guess.
DENNIS: Oh my gosh. I love Billy Goat Eilish.
DIONNE: Apparently, so does everyone. She's even popular with toaster ovens that burn bagels but not English muffins. They never like anyone.
DENNIS: Ooh, also, goats pretending to be unicorns is a thing. In the early 1980s, the Ringling Brothers Circus actually featured a one-horned goat they called a unicorn. So there's a precedent here.
DIRECTOR: Then it's settled. We found our Agent Unicorn. This billy goat is going to be bigger than Angelina Jolemur.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, how about we hear our mystery sound one more time. You ready?
ELLIOT: Yup, I am.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, here it is.
[LOW GROWLING]
[LOW GRUMBLING]
So what do you think? Last time, you thought elephant or some kind of animal. You still thinking something like that?
ELLIOT: Not Bigfoot. Not Loch Ness Monster.
MOLLY BLOOM: I have to say, if we had a recording of Bigfoot, this podcast would be very different today.
[LAUGHTER]
I think people would be very interested in what we had to say. All right, are you ready to find out what that mystery sound is?
ELLIOT: Yep.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here is the answer.
JOHN MILLER: The sound you just heard was a gorilla.
ELLIOT: Gorilla?
MOLLY BLOOM: Uh-huh.
JOHN MILLER: In the 19th century, people described the sound a gorilla made as a thunderous roar or a hideous roar. And that's quite a bit different than the sound you just heard.
MOLLY BLOOM: John Miller studies what people in Europe wrote about animals and the environment in the mid to late 1800s. People in Africa knew gorillas were real at the time. But Europeans had never seen one in person, and there were no photographs. So they thought the gorilla could be made up.
JOHN MILLER: No one had seen a gorilla in Europe until 1861.
MOLLY BLOOM: 1861 was a big year for gorillas. That was the year a guy named Paul Du Chaillu came back to Europe with stories from Africa about gorillas. In his book, Du Chaillu described the gorilla as a beast with fiery eyes, big fangs, and a thunderous roar.
JOHN MILLER: So he told all these stories, published this book. And people were like, wow, this is amazing. We never thought anything could be so sensational. And there's loads of really fantastic pictures of the gorilla as this big Yeti-like creature.
MOLLY BLOOM: Europeans knew about other primates. But they had never heard of an anise quite like this.
JOHN MILLER: Some people say, this is going to change the way we think about everything, the way we think about animals and humans. And some people say, he's making it up.
MOLLY BLOOM: The other reason they weren't sure gorillas were real is that some people had a hard time believing Du Chaillu. His stories were pretty dramatic, and he wasn't the typical European scientist. He was more of an explorer. Scholars also think he was mixed race, which meant that many Europeans didn't trust him because of their own racism. So these people weren't sure what to believe about this animal that he was describing.
There was one detail in these gorilla stories that seemed totally outlandish at the time.
JOHN MILLER: The gorilla beating its chest, which now is an iconic part of how we think of gorillas. And people were like, no, he's just making this up. So some of the things that seemed most preposterous actually have now entered science.
MOLLY BLOOM: Now, we know that gorillas are real, and they do sometimes beat their chests. But they're also nowhere near as aggressive as Du Chaillu made them out to be. Nature can be surprising in lots of different ways.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ELLIOT: From unicorns to El Chupacabras, we humans love sharing stories about mythical creatures.
MOLLY BLOOM: They help us make sense of things we have no explanation for. Like when people found dinosaur bones in ancient times.
ELLIOT: Some of these creatures are so captivating that some people keep searching for them. Like Bigfoot.
MOLLY BLOOM: After all, some people thought gorillas weren't real. They didn't believe it until they saw one for themselves. But remember, it's always good to be skeptical.
ELLIOT: Not all photos are real.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's it for Brains On today.
ELLIOT: Stay tuned for the rest of our myth-tastic series.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes. You'll hear episodes about lost worlds, mythical creatures of the sea, and aliens.
ELLIOT: Brains On is produced by Menaka Wilhelm, Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: Elissa Dudley, Ruby Guthrie, Rosie DuPont, and Tracy Mumford made this mythical series a reality. We had engineering help from Veronica Rodriguez, John Edgar, Valentino Rivera, and Eric Romani. We also had production help from Christina Lopez. Special thanks to John Miller, Austin Cross, Rosie DuPont, Hans Buetow, Max Nestorack, Sam Choo, Kathleen Bradberry, Will Lager, Hannah Yang, Eric Wrangham, Taka Zan, Laurie Gallarada, Taylor Kaufman, Millie Langford, and Micah Kilbaum.
ELLIOT: Before we sign off, it's time for a Moment of Um.
AUDIO TRACK: Uh. Um. Um. Um. Um. Um. Um. Um.
LEVI: If sloths sleep upside down, why don't their hands let go when they are sleeping?
LUCY COOKE: Well that is a brilliant and very thoughtful question. So thank you for asking me that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
My name is Lucy Cooke, and I am a zoologist and founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society. First of all, sloths have what's known as high fatigue resistance. So their muscles, they're not made for sprinting, they're made for endurance. They can hold one pose for a very long time without getting cramped. And secondly, they've got these long curved claws which basically hook on. And they just hang like a happy hairy hammock. They just clamp onto the trees. And the only muscles that are having to work are the ones that are holding those claws shut.
So it actually doesn't involve a lot of muscular work for them to remain in that position for hours and hours on end, which they frequently do.
AUDIO TRACK: Um. Um. Um.
MOLLY BLOOM: I am going to show great endurance as I read through this list of names. It's the Brains Honor Roll. These are the amazing listeners who keep us going with their ideas, mystery sounds, questions, and drawings.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
AUDIO TRACK: Brains Honor Roll. High fives.
MOLLY BLOOM: We'll be back soon with more answers to your questions.
ELLIOT: Thanks for listening.
Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.
