🐂S05E40 - Cattle Mutilations: Part 2🛸

Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.

I'm Blake Smith.

And I'm Karen Stollznow.

[gentle music] This is part two of our look at cattle mutilations with religious studies scholar Lee Weiss.

I would recommend checking out part one if you missed it, since we're continuing a conversation and you'll be joining in medias res, pretty much just like The Odyssey in that respect.

I mean, the poem, not the movie.

Well, I mean, I say not the movie.

I haven't seen the movie.

But look, can we just get on with this intro? I didn't wanna sidetrack our discussion, but we briefly talk about UFO comics in this episode, and two of my most vivid 1970s weird shit moments are watching Jack Webb's produced TV show, Project UFO, and buying one of these Gold Key UFO comics off the black metal spinning comic book rack at the drugstore next to my pediatrician's office.

When I recently discovered that these Gold Key comics are available on the Internet Archive, I had to go look that issue up and was delighted to see that my recollections about the content matched the actual book.

We do talk a lot about how fallible human memory is, but sometimes it can be rewardingly accurate.

And the older I get, the more pleased I am when any of the dusty garbage in my head turns out to be based on a true story.

The point is that you'll find a link to those comics in the show notes, along with links to Emmy Award-winning Linda Moulton Howe's documentary, Strange Harvest.

I know skeptics and believers won't always agree on what's behind these stories, but at least we're able to go review the same source material for how these ideas propagated out into the wider world back in ye olde groovy disco days.

And this series sure would be improved by a follow-up deep dive into taphonomy, wouldn't it? Because skeptics will tell you that every one of these dead animals had its own cause, it's better if we do take a little trip down taphonomy lane soon and learn how various factors change the forms of animals when they die.

Whether it's predators or humans or disease or accidents, what happens next is fascinating and follows some predictable patterns.

This has led to insights useful in forensics, and some of these patterns are so predictable that they become evidence suitable for helping determine guilt or innocence in court cases.

It's nasty and disgusting and also fascinating, which sounds a bit like how my wife describes me, but that's a different story.

Besides, as useful a tool as it is for helping skeptics win arguments, these wounds were not caused by Occam's razor.

Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.

I'm Blake Smith.

And I'm Karen Stollznow.

[gentle music] This is part two of our look at cattle mutilations with religious studies scholar Lee Weiss.

I would recommend checking out part one if you missed it, since we're continuing a conversation and you'll be joining in medias res, pretty much just like The Odyssey in that respect.

I mean, the poem, not the movie.

Well, I mean, I say not the movie.

I haven't seen the movie.

But look, can we just get on with this intro? I didn't wanna sidetrack our discussion, but we briefly talk about UFO comics in this episode, and two of my most vivid 1970s weird shit moments are watching Jack Webb's produced TV show, Project UFO, and buying one of these Gold Key UFO comics off the black metal spinning comic book rack at the drugstore next to my pediatrician's office.

When I recently discovered that these Gold Key comics are available on the Internet Archive, I had to go look that issue up and was delighted to see that my recollections about the content matched the actual book.

We do talk a lot about how fallible human memory is, but sometimes it can be rewardingly accurate.

And the older I get, the more pleased I am when any of the dusty garbage in my head turns out to be based on a true story.

The point is that you'll find a link to those comics in the show notes, along with links to Emmy Award-winning Linda Moulton Howe's documentary, Strange Harvest.

I know skeptics and believers won't always agree on what's behind these stories, but at least we're able to go review the same source material for how these ideas propagated out into the wider world back in ye olde groovy disco days.

And this series sure would be improved by a follow-up deep dive into taphonomy, wouldn't it? Because skeptics will tell you that every one of these dead animals had its own cause, it's better if we do take a little trip down taphonomy lane soon and learn how various factors change the forms of animals when they die.

Whether it's predators or humans or disease or accidents, what happens next is fascinating and follows some predictable patterns.

This has led to insights useful in forensics, and some of these patterns are so predictable that they become evidence suitable for helping determine guilt or innocence in court cases.

It's nasty and disgusting and also fascinating, which sounds a bit like how my wife describes me, but that's a different story.

Besides, as useful a tool as it is for helping skeptics win arguments, these wounds were not caused by Occam's razor.