Monsters play a huge role in most of the old religions. From Jormungandr to Leviathan, monsters can embody chaos, or they can protect sacred ground. Generally, they are used to instill obedience in people, but sometimes they simply help to explain why the world is a mess. Join us as we dive into the realm of religious traditions surrounding chaos monsters.
Monsters serve to *demonstrate* or reveal the evil within the hearts of a people--or, that's the theory, anyway. They delineate the realm of chaos from the orderly cosmos, and they preserve that boundary.
Also, we talk about Cthulhu and the outer gods, and the risk of insanity that comes with knowing the unknowable.
From the Litani River, to the Jordan River, to the Norwegian Sea, the great sea monster is a foe of the gods of thunder and lightning. Whether Tiamat or Typhon, the king of the gods will preserve order by putting chaos in it's place.
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[00:00:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. You do.
[00:00:14] Katie Dooley: I know. It's just so boring.
[00:00:16] Preston Meyer: Read your Bible, Katie.
[00:00:20] Katie Dooley: Okay. Pastor Preston, um, how do you podcast?
[00:00:26] Preston Meyer: I don't know. I've only been doing this for two whole years.
[00:00:30] Katie Dooley: As of! No, that was our last one. We didn't celebrate our two year anniversary. No, this one would be because we missed Christmas last year. This is our two year anniversary.
[00:00:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah, this is the beginning of October, two years later.
[00:00:41] Katie Dooley: Ahhhh! This is our two year anniversary episode, guys of.
[00:00:49] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:52] Katie Dooley: So I just squealed but didn't actually do like, a preamble of what we're talking about.
[00:00:59] Preston Meyer: That's okay. I have an idea.
[00:01:01] Katie Dooley: Oh
[00:01:02] Preston Meyer: Well, I guess we should share it with our listeners. The world is a chaotic place, especially in Spooktober. It's filled with children who want to dress up as princesses, cats, culturally insensitive depictions of historical figures, and racial stereotypes.
[00:01:17] Katie Dooley: Of course.
[00:01:17] Preston Meyer: Superheroes, Transformers, pumpkins and monsters of all kinds. How do we explain all of that chaos? So maybe we explain all of the chaos in the world. Monsters.
[00:01:29] Katie Dooley: Monsters! Can we put in. Thriller... That's all I'm going to say so we don't get sued.
[00:01:37] Preston Meyer: Uh. Monsters are messing around with the world. On this episode, the two year anniversary episode of.
[00:01:44] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:01:47] Katie Dooley: I don't know which one we're gonna keep. Maybe both.
[00:01:49] Preston Meyer: We'll see.
[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: All right. So what? Monsters. Why are we talking about monsters?
[00:01:54] Preston Meyer: Cause it's Spooktober.
[00:01:55] Katie Dooley: I guess so, but what? Okay, what do monsters have to do with religion.
[00:02:00] Preston Meyer: Monsters actually have a huge role in a lot of religions, and we'll get into that. They're not necessarily evil. The word demonstrate shares a common root connecting monsters to revelation. Which.
[00:02:13] Katie Dooley: De-monster-ate.
[00:02:15] Preston Meyer: Exactly.
[00:02:17] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:02:18] Preston Meyer: But not in the de- as in like defenestrate but like de-, as in like delineate, to add lines so that you are able to understand what you're looking at. And so this idea of demonstration connecting monsters to revelation brings to mind the monsters of the revelations of Ezekiel and John in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.
[00:02:43] Katie Dooley: Oh, yeah. The one with all the legs and heads and stuff.
[00:02:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:02:46] Katie Dooley: Yeah!
[00:02:47] Preston Meyer: The things that are just insane to imagine.
[00:02:50] Katie Dooley: Oh, or once you see them, you go insane. We'll touch on those.
[00:02:57] Preston Meyer: Sometimes we'll hear stories of monstrous births. These are seen as communications of divine judgment, either on the family or the person giving birth, or the father of the child, or sometimes as the whole community.
[00:03:11] Katie Dooley: Oh....
[00:03:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, lots of fun. And now the monster from 300 comes to mind. And he's not even that monstrous compared to the fellows we're going to talk about.
[00:03:22] Katie Dooley: I was going to say I haven't seen 300.
[00:03:24] Preston Meyer: Fair enough. He's just a severely deformed man.
[00:03:28] Katie Dooley: Oh, that's not very nice.
[00:03:29] Preston Meyer: Right? But when we talk about monsters, historically speaking, that is actually what we're talking about.
[00:03:35] Katie Dooley: Fair. Yeah. You know Frankenstein's monster?
[00:03:39] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Who's just a...
[00:03:41] Katie Dooley: Hodgepodge!
[00:03:42] Preston Meyer: He's not just a deformed man. He is a jigsaw puzzle where you took different pieces from different boxes and hope you got something looked okay.
[00:03:52] Katie Dooley: I mean, we do it with Lego all the time.
[00:03:54] Preston Meyer: Right? Kitbashing is a real thing if you're into building models of cool things.
[00:03:59] Katie Dooley: Right? So Timothy Beal in his book Religion and Its Monsters, says that "the otherness of the monster is not only horrifically unnatural but also horrifically supernatural, charged with religious import."
[00:04:13] Preston Meyer: And Maryellen Hewitt wrote about these monstrous births that they were seen as sometimes the product of the mother's imagination or even unfulfilled desires, which brings to mind the the Jersey devil. That's the cryptid of New Jersey, I guess. I remember hearing about it before I even lived there. And it's this woman had had so many children. I think it was a full dozen. And then this. She was pregnant one more time, and she's like, let this one be the devil. And then it turned out to be the devil.
[00:04:47] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:04:49] Preston Meyer: And a lot of people died. And there's still sightings every now and then. It's crazy.
[00:04:54] Katie Dooley: Wow. Cool.
[00:04:56] Preston Meyer: Even the word awful reveals religious respect. Now I'm thinking of, um, George in the Jungle, where the the narrator says that the people respond with awe and they go, "awwwww," but there's like, a-w-e. "Ooh."
[00:05:15] Katie Dooley: I remember I had a I think it was an English. It must be an English teacher saying that we use the word awesome wrong. Like we use it for everything, but very rarely do we use it for something that actually describes awe.
[00:05:26] Preston Meyer: Right. It's a problem. We just get lazy with our language.
[00:05:31] Katie Dooley: I mean, at one point it would have been a $10 word and then it became a ten cent word. We cheapened that word, awesome. Very few things in life are truly awesome, but I know I throw it out far too often.
[00:05:45] Preston Meyer: I think that is just generally the case for our whole culture.
[00:05:48] Katie Dooley: Our show is awesome though.
[00:05:50] Preston Meyer: I think so. But you're already listening. You don't need to be convinced.
[00:05:57] Katie Dooley: But you could share it with a friend and get them in on the Ahhh. Ooh.
[00:06:04] Preston Meyer: So chaos. A wild concept.
[00:06:07] Katie Dooley: Ahhhhhh! yeah. So today we're talking about chaos monsters specifically. And the name chaos comes from the Greek tradition describing the void that existed before the creation of the cosmos. And so, yeah, that's a generally accepted definition. I have a few other quotes and things to flesh that out.
[00:06:26] Preston Meyer: Good old Pherecydes of Syros, who lived like 2600 years ago, described chaos as being the water that surrounds the world that the earth had come up from, which is a pretty cool idea, especially when you're in a nation that's a lot of islands. That makes a lot of sense and pretty easy to to buy into here.
[00:06:50] Katie Dooley: Yes, there's a lot of water descriptions of chaos when you start researching chaos.
[00:06:55] Preston Meyer: Right? And of course, life on the sea. The waves get chaotic. Now we're talking about a guy who lived in the Mediterranean. Not really that big of a body of water compared to any of our oceans. Imagine if this guy had seen the Pacific Ocean. There is chaos.
[00:07:11] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:07:12] Preston Meyer: And from this idea kind of going a different way than Pherecydes of Syros, the Dutch gave us the word gas from a different interpretation of chaos, that it's more ethereal, still fluid technically, but not liquid.
[00:07:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah. We'll, we'll see some examples when we talk about some monsters of both. Chaos is said to be the disorganized, true foundation of reality. That's a good definition.
[00:07:40] Preston Meyer: Sure. Everything comes from chaos. And if you're the kind of person who believes in the final entropy, then that's what everything's going to come back to as well.
[00:07:50] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the term chaos is used in science as well For, you know, what was here before the Big Bang. And it's used throughout religious studies. So yes, it was in the Greek tradition, but we use it as a term in religious studies. And that's what we're talking about today because we're a religious studies podcast.
[00:08:11] Preston Meyer: That's right.
[00:08:11] Katie Dooley: That was a terrible segue over to you, Preston.
[00:08:16] Preston Meyer: Yep. Ovid described chaos as rude and undeveloped mass that nothing made except a ponderous weight and all discordant elements confused were there, congested in a shapeless heap.
[00:08:32] Katie Dooley: Love it.
[00:08:32] Preston Meyer: Right. I think it's interesting, just reminded that a lot of Christian philosophers like to talk about how God created the universe from nothing, and that's not a popular belief among all the world religions. A lot more are inclined to say no, it was a disorganized mess of stuff and the gods formed.
[00:08:58] Katie Dooley: They organized it. Yeah. They're the professional organizers of the skies.
[00:09:02] Preston Meyer: Right? They create order out of chaos.
[00:09:04] Katie Dooley: I like that.
[00:09:05] Preston Meyer: The cosmos literally means order.
[00:09:07] Katie Dooley: Yeah and, I mean, that makes sense from, um, you know, I mean, we shared a post on our discord recently as a reason to believe in God, which I disagreed with. But, you know, that was one of the things is he creates order. He makes things make sense.
[00:09:21] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:09:21] Katie Dooley: There you go.
[00:09:22] Preston Meyer: You don't have to be a god to make things make sense but...
[00:09:25] Katie Dooley: No.
[00:09:26] Preston Meyer: But apparently it was enough for him.
[00:09:27] Katie Dooley: Enough for him. Hesiod um described chaos as the gaping void above the earth, created when earth and sky are separated from their primordial unity.
[00:09:39] Preston Meyer: I guess this connects to the idea of, um, the sky actually being a firmament, a solid dome. So you put all that work into separating these two solid things, and then you get chaos in the middle. I mean, a vacuum is a little chaotic.
[00:09:54] Katie Dooley: I mean, it's the black hole would actually be a great example of chaos.
[00:09:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's the opposite of what I said, but it's still true.
[00:10:01] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:10:02] Preston Meyer: Black hole is very much the opposite of a vacuum.
[00:10:04] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Well, yes, but I... In my brain, it sucks things in.
[00:10:08] Preston Meyer: Absolutely.
[00:10:09] Katie Dooley: So that's a vacuum.
[00:10:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:10:11] Katie Dooley: It sucks. Don't at me. So when we're doing an episode on Chaos Monsters, I was like, you need to write an outline because I have no idea what a chaos monster is. But doing this research here is my definition as we move on to actual chaos monsters, is that they're the creatures that fill the void before whatever god you prefer stepped in to make things happen. Chaos monsters!
[00:10:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Katie Dooley: You take the chaos and you take the monster definition and you smoosh them together.
[00:10:43] Preston Meyer: Sure. Broadly speaking, the wild, everything that is unknown, out in the forest, out in the wilderness, beyond the the boundaries of our community is the visible chaos of the world. So a lot of times you'll see just animal, the wild animals in general, they embody chaos and wildness, and that makes some pretty good sense. And there's also a struggle between chaos and the people who try and impose order. Are you trying to expand the boundaries of your community? You trying to travel safely in the wilderness? You have to impose this order on these creatures. And that's all just microcosms of the great struggle, I suppose. This chaoskampf and I wish I'd written down who had first coined this word some German fella.
[00:11:39] Katie Dooley: Clearly.
[00:11:41] Preston Meyer: That struggle against chaos, usually from Gods trying to impose order.
[00:11:47] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:11:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So my favourite of the chaos monsters is Jormungandr.
[00:11:53] Katie Dooley: Oh, Jormungandr!
[00:11:55] Preston Meyer: I'm pretty sure I've mentioned him before on the podcast, probably in our Norse Mythology episode. Uh, he is the World Serpent. His name Jormungandr literally means huge monster. Not a terribly descriptive name, but a little bit. We have some measure of beauty and some measure of size. He big, he ugly. Jormungandr.
[00:12:19] Katie Dooley: I laughed really hard at that post about Jesus.
[00:12:22] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:23] Katie Dooley: Being bigger than a...
[00:12:25] Preston Meyer: Bigger than a baby and smaller than a temple.
[00:12:27] Katie Dooley: This reminds me. I showed a lot of people that brought joy to my life.
[00:12:32] Preston Meyer: Uh, more reasons to be on our Discord. Uh, the link is in our show notes. Uh, so Jormungandr is the son of Loki and Angrboda. Has a couple of siblings.
[00:12:46] Katie Dooley: Sleipnir would be his...
[00:12:47] Preston Meyer: Sleipnir. There's Fenrir and Hela. Loki and Angrboda are both giants, roughly human-shaped giants. They have one human-form child that I can remember off the top of my head, and that's Hela.
[00:13:03] Katie Dooley: Everything else is a weird animal.
[00:13:05] Preston Meyer: Yeah, well, okay. To be fair, Sleipnir is not the son of Angrboda.
[00:13:11] Katie Dooley: And he's not. I was gonna say he's not even Loki's son. No, Loki isn't his dad. Loki is his mom.
[00:13:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, because you can be gender fluid when you're a shapeshifter. Life is great.
[00:13:22] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:13:24] Preston Meyer: Uh, yeah. So a weird family tree. All weird. Jormungandr was this serpent thing. And there was this prophecy that warned Odin that Jormungandr, Fenrir, and Hela would all be trouble. Sleipnir, not so much. Sleipnir ended up being helpful to Odin. But those three, the three children of Angrboda would all be trouble. So Odin split them up. He sent Jormungandr to the seas of Midgard, where he grew enough to make sure that he was going to be a problem. And when Ragnarok comes, Thor and Jormungandr will kill each other in this epic battle, one of many conflicts that build up Ragnarok.
[00:14:07] Katie Dooley: But Thor's final conflict.
[00:14:09] Preston Meyer: Yeah, Jormungandr does kill Thor. There's... They have a few stories where they are in conflict with each other. Um, there's one time where Thor is having his little contest with the Giants, and they say, here, lift up this cat. It's not a cat. It's Jormungandr with a glamorous spell over it. So..
[00:14:34] Katie Dooley: I was going to say is he wearing cat ears?
[00:14:37] Preston Meyer: It's almost that bad. And Thor is able to lift up Jormungandr a little bit. Now, remember, this is a giant serpent that goes around Midgard, and Thor just pushes him up over his head. And this cat that everyone else can see because they don't see the snake gets one of its feet off the ground because Thor has lifted it so high off the ground. And everyone's super impressed because a bunch of other people recognize this cat is not what it looks like. And so they they start getting a little nervous, because if Thor had lifted Jormungandr off the ground completely, that would symbolically bring absolute chaos to the world.
[00:15:27] Katie Dooley: Yeah, you're lifting something... That displaces a lot of water.
[00:15:30] Preston Meyer: It displaces a lot of water. It's symbolically moving the boundaries of reality. We got problems.
[00:15:39] Katie Dooley: Well, that's a good story.
[00:15:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And then there's another time where Thor goes fishing specifically for Jormungandr, and he is about to pull Jormungandr out of the water because Thor is just that strong to pull a world-encircling serpent out of the water, and somebody else cuts his line for fear of ruining the boundaries of the world.
[00:16:06] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:16:07] Preston Meyer: Because he sees Thor is gonna do it. Thor is the mightiest of all of the gods in Norse mythology, according to the tales that we have. So some fun stuff.
[00:16:18] Katie Dooley: I like it.
[00:16:20] Preston Meyer: The one who is able to control and actually have meaningful conflict with Jormungandr, who will eventually kill him. So Jormungandr is the embodiment of the chaos of transformation. As most specifically, this is a pretty common symbol for snakes throughout most of the Old World, throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa at least that, you know, just as snakes shed their skin, that's a transformation. The symbol comes along, but specifically Jormungandr is also really tied to chaos. And so he's given credit for earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, all of the bad things that are the ground moving.
[00:16:59] Katie Dooley: Then we have Tannin, who is a Canaanite chaos monster, also a sea monster depicted as a serpent. Most of them are, which is interesting to me, like Jormungandr, Tannin embodies chaos, but is a servant of Yam, god of the sea.
[00:17:18] Preston Meyer: Which is different than a sweet potato.
[00:17:21] Katie Dooley: Could have fooled me. Oh, boy, that was a terrible joke. Uh, before the end of all, Tannin is defeated by Baal, or the equivalent of Thor of the Middle East and his sister, Anat. So as the Hebrews monopolize the lands of Canaan, they adopted some of their mythology. Tannin is the great whale from Genesis 1:21 and the King James Version of the Bible. In Isaiah's prophecy, Jehovah takes the are we saying Yahweh?
[00:17:51] Preston Meyer: You can say what you want... I spelled it with four letters.
[00:17:54] Katie Dooley: I know. What do you say?
[00:17:56] Preston Meyer: That depends entirely on who I'm talking to.
[00:17:58] Katie Dooley: I'll say Yahweh, even though it's spelt with a J, and it's going to confuse me. Yahweh takes the place of Baal in the defeat of Tannin. The word Tannin appears more than a dozen times in the Hebrew Bible, variously translated as a sea monster, great whale, dragon, or jackal. The jackal is interesting to me because it's not water-based.
[00:18:17] Preston Meyer: Right? It's more connected to Egypt specifically, and the Hebrew relationships with that nation.
[00:18:25] Katie Dooley: Fair.
[00:18:25] Preston Meyer: Jeremiah and Ezekiel both used the name tannin to refer poetically to the kings of Egypt and Babylon, which is how we get that jackal.
[00:18:34] Katie Dooley: Okay, I get it. Aaron's stick that turned it into a serpent turned into a Tannin.
[00:18:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. I think it's really nifty that the word Tannin in Hebrew today refers to crocodiles, which would have been a way more epic scene in The Prince of Egypt. If... Throws down a stick and it turns into a crocodile instead of a snake, and then we've got crocodiles eating each other in the king's court, that would have been epic.
[00:19:03] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I feel like, I mean, there's a wide variety of things.
[00:19:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah,
[00:19:08] Katie Dooley: But if I had to pick between a snake and a crocodile to take on, I'd pick a snake most times.
[00:19:13] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:19:14] Katie Dooley: Just saying.
[00:19:14] Preston Meyer: That's fair. Crocodiles aren't venomous as far as I know, but.
[00:19:19] Katie Dooley: They're big and move fast.
[00:19:21] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. Snakes are pretty quick, though. Well, I guess it depends a lot on the snake,
[00:19:25] Katie Dooley: Right? That's why, i mean, I put an asterisk on the snake, but, uh. Yeah. Anyway,
[00:19:31] Preston Meyer: So as much as we could postulate all kinds of ideas, it is generally agreed that it was a stick turning into a snake. But the word we have is tannin, which usually is treated like a serpent, but could totally be something different.
[00:19:51] Katie Dooley: Words man and ancient history,
[00:19:53] Preston Meyer: Right? Language has changed too much over time.
[00:19:56] Katie Dooley: In the Ugaritic tradition, tannin is also known as lotan, meaning coiled. So definitely a pfth pfth.
[00:20:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we can say with great certainty here that we're talking about a serpent.
[00:20:07] Katie Dooley: And some sources. The Lotan is said to have seven heads.
[00:20:11] Preston Meyer: It's... it's rare enough to see a two headed snake.
[00:20:14] Katie Dooley: Is it Saint John the Baptist?
[00:20:18] Preston Meyer: I doubt it.
[00:20:19] Katie Dooley: Okay
[00:20:20] Preston Meyer: That's a little. A few too many heads.
[00:20:22] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:20:22] Preston Meyer: For John the Baptist, uh, Litani River in Lebanon is named for Lotan. As it winds through the valley. This is the visible representation for their chaos monster in their day to day life.
[00:20:35] Katie Dooley: And the Leviathan, which I think is probably one of the most well known chaos monsters. When you say chaos monsters, that's where my brain went, at least, is also derived from the Lotan referring to the same monster in a very similar story.
[00:20:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, the word Leviathan today is used in Hebrew to refer to whales, but anciently there's still loads of argument about what it is they were actually talking about at the time.
[00:21:00] Katie Dooley: Godzilla?
[00:21:02] Preston Meyer: Who knows? Um. It is theorized that Leviathan's power was deliberately downplayed in the Hebrew Bible by later editors to reflect a stricter monotheism, so that there wasn't.
[00:21:14] Katie Dooley: "Oh the Leviathan was so powerful that..."
[00:21:17] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:21:18] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:21:19] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's still parts of it that are left in. Isaiah talks about how Yahweh will overcome Leviathan, in the same way that we saw Baal and Thor defeat their chaos monsters. But it doesn't jump out at you so much in the Hebrew Bible text as it does in a lot of other traditions.
[00:21:38] Katie Dooley: Cool. The Babylonian tradition calls this serpent the Tiamat, and he is slain by Marduk.
[00:21:47] Preston Meyer: The Babylonian version only has one head, contrary to the D&D Tiamat that has five heads like Hiram McDaniels and John the Baptist, and the Greeks adopted this dragon slaying god king motif from the further East, and this gives us Typhon, who was killed by Zeus, though part of the story is also connected to Set, the Egyptian god of the desert and chaos and destruction and whatnot.
[00:22:11] Katie Dooley: Nice.
[00:22:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but the idea of the many headed dragon is a thing that is also familiar to those who only passively read the Revelation of John. You don't even have to have read it through or been seriously interested. If you've got a passive interest. You've seen images of the dragon.
[00:22:31] Katie Dooley: Absolutely.
[00:22:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Even, um, the Red Dragon, the Hannibal Lecter book, um, all about this imagery of the dragon.
[00:22:39] Katie Dooley: Uh, the. Movie we talked about a couple weeks ago... A Thief in The Night... Mentioned, I think you even see a many headed dragon in the movie from the 70s, so highly recommend.
[00:22:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah. No, every story that's based on trying to set the revelation of John into developing history and the modern world as we see it. If you don't have a dragon, what are you doing? Dragons are pretty cool and pretty popular. And of course, I've shown up all through European mythology.
[00:23:14] Katie Dooley: They're my favorite mythical creature. Fun fact.
[00:23:17] Preston Meyer: Dragons are pretty great.
[00:23:18] Katie Dooley: Right?
[00:23:19] Preston Meyer: All right. Now we've played with some Irish folklore a few times before, and I'm not sure how we let this one just kind of slip away unnoticed.
[00:23:31] Katie Dooley: We I mean, we talked about the Fomorians in passing in our episode, for sure.
[00:23:35] Preston Meyer: Ever so briefly.
[00:23:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah, because we had a whole... However many century history to go through. So we'll deeper dive. Still not a deep dive, but we'll go a little deeper for the Fomorians. So they were the inhabitants of the island of Ireland before the Tuatha de Danaan, and they were said to have embodied the wild aspects of nature.
[00:23:58] Preston Meyer: Chaos.
[00:24:01] Katie Dooley: Also representing darkness, destruction and death. And they either come from the ground or.
[00:24:07] Katie Dooley: You guessed it, under the sea.
[00:24:10] Preston Meyer: Under the sea!
[00:24:10] Katie Dooley: I was literally going to say under the sea.
[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: I'm glad we share wavelengths.
[00:24:17] Katie Dooley: We've been doing this long enough.
[00:24:19] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:24:20] Katie Dooley: They are thought of either as fae folk or as giants. And we'll see the giants being. I don't want to call them chaos, but I guess they are chaos monsters and a lot of traditions that there were giants before there were other things.
[00:24:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Giants Gigantes tend to represent that wild, uncivilized part of the world. Anciently, giants weren't necessarily like eight, nine, ten feet tall or anything. They were just wild, feral people. But we've decided we can make them scarier if we make them bigger. And that that became the standard for giants.
[00:24:57] Katie Dooley: Oh
[00:24:58] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:24:58] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:24:59] Preston Meyer: And now when we talk about giants, you have to think of somebody who's taller than average.
[00:25:03] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I have a friend, and her dad is one inch shorter than me and considered a giant. And her mom is one inch taller than being considered a little person. The daughters are all average height.
[00:25:16] Preston Meyer: I like this.
[00:25:17] Katie Dooley: There you go. The Fomorians are also described as sea raiders. So connecting to the Vikings at the time, that would have raided the island. So it's easy to make someone look extra bad.
[00:25:30] Preston Meyer: Right? But it's also a great way to make your tradition more concrete, more real. Something that somebody has actually experienced. But Vikings.
[00:25:42] Katie Dooley: They lost the Battle of Montura, and the mythological value of this battle is comparable to the battle between the Greek Olympians and the Titans. So the Titans existed before the Olympians and to the battle between the Norse AEsir and the Vanir. But this. But this Irish tale is more about overcoming chaos than the other two are.
[00:26:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's. The other two are more about just taking power rather than \
[00:26:11] Katie Dooley: Organization.
[00:26:11] Preston Meyer: Organization, yeah.
[00:26:12] Katie Dooley: So they weren't eradicated, just pushed out of the land. But they reappear in stories occasionally.
[00:26:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I, I would imagine you still hear stories that are like recent history of somebody talking about the fomorians.
[00:26:25] Katie Dooley: We'll have to check.
[00:26:26] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:26:27] Katie Dooley: In the weird way that the British are obsessed with connecting to the Bible, the Rawlinson manuscript connects the Fomorian Bres to a line of 25 generations to the biblical Noah.
[00:26:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:26:39] Katie Dooley: We'll see that actually, in the Hawaiian tradition when we talk about it as well.
[00:26:43] Preston Meyer: Sure. Cool. I remember when I started doing my family history, I right away had a line all the way back to Adam. Because you go back enough generations and I connect to the royal family through William the Conqueror, who, of course, I mean, if you're English, you got like a 50% chance of connecting to William the Conqueror. It's terrible and questionable in legitimacy. But then he connects himself through a line that's almost 100% made up into the royal family of Israel, of which, of course, family history from royal family of Israel is is written down in the Bible all the way back to Adam. So I've got a line that's recorded. It is dubious.
[00:27:32] Katie Dooley: Uh, Bryant, my husband and our sound guy, we got him all the way back to the year 100.
[00:27:36] Preston Meyer: Nice.
[00:27:38] Katie Dooley: For the same reason he hit some royal family on one side or the other. And then it's then the work is done.
[00:27:45] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:27:46] Katie Dooley: But yes, dubious at best when someone hopefully someone's fact checking it. But I remember hearing on Qi that anyone of like white Caucasian Anglo-Saxon descent is related to Charlemagne. Because if you do the math of like, I have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, 32 on and on and on that there were more fewer people on the planet than you would have ancestors in the time of Charlemagne.
[00:28:24] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:28:24] Katie Dooley: Right. So if you did the math and.
[00:28:26] Preston Meyer: Then you're good.
[00:28:27] Katie Dooley: Right? So I thought that was interesting that, you know, at some point you have because it's all exponential.
[00:28:33] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:28:34] Katie Dooley: Eventually you hit more ancestors than there were people on the planet. So ergo, you are your own cousin.
[00:28:42] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The math of the constantly exponentially expanding tree becomes a problem when you do. When you fail to recognize that a lot of these people are the same people in separate branches.
[00:28:55] Katie Dooley: Yup. Bryant's my 10th cousin.
[00:28:59] Preston Meyer: Only 10th. Yeah. Look at that.
[00:29:02] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Just so our listeners know, 10th is not actually very close at all. It's not weird.
[00:29:07] Preston Meyer: It's not the 10th child of your uncle. No.
[00:29:10] Katie Dooley: He's ten removed.
[00:29:14] Preston Meyer: Ten degrees of separation genetically?
[00:29:16] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:29:17] Preston Meyer: So that's A-ok.
[00:29:18] Katie Dooley: We're not having kids anyway. So this.
[00:29:20] Preston Meyer: One, you first cousins are legal in a lot of the world.
[00:29:24] Katie Dooley: I think even where we are, I think where we are.
[00:29:27] Preston Meyer: It's not a thing I've looked at.
[00:29:28] Katie Dooley: You haven't looked into that? No interest. Okay.
[00:29:32] Preston Meyer: I'm married to somebody who's not my cousin. It's not something I've been stressed out about.
[00:29:38] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy. This was a digression. So anyway.
[00:29:42] Preston Meyer: Back to chaos.
[00:29:43] Katie Dooley: The Fomorians are related to Noah. That's all you need to know. Maybe.
[00:29:46] Preston Meyer: That's what they say.
[00:29:47] Katie Dooley: That's what they say. If they have too many ancestors, that's probably what they mean. 25 generations.
[00:29:56] Preston Meyer: I think it's interesting. I'm going to carry off on this tangent just a little bit again. Um, in genetics we talk about a genetic Adam and a genetic Eve. Y chromosome Adam and mitochondrial Eve specifically. And I think we because of the biblical narrative, it's a little bit weird that we do that. We could talk pretty fairly about a y-chromosomal Noah.
[00:30:24] Katie Dooley: I was going to I was actually I was going to say, yeah, I would talk about it later, but God wiped off everyone on the planet except for Noah and his family. So Adam and Eve are moot.
[00:30:34] Preston Meyer: Well, so we can still talk about a Y, a y chromosomal Noah and a mitochondrial Eve.
[00:30:40] Katie Dooley: But you'd never be their descendants.
[00:30:42] Preston Meyer: No, that's that's the whole point that you you have. Okay. You are connected to what is scientifically designated mitochondrial Eve.
[00:30:50] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:30:50] Preston Meyer: And I am for sure scientifically proven connected to Y chromosomal Noah or Adam, depending on which label you want to prefer to use. But there is absolute certainty that these two speculative figures in, in our scientific world, scientific certainty that they are far removed in time from one another.
[00:31:15] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:31:16] Preston Meyer: So.
[00:31:16] Katie Dooley: Oh, so even Noah isn't...
[00:31:18] Preston Meyer: Adam and Eve. You do want Noah and Eve for this analogy.
[00:31:22] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Okay, thanks.
[00:31:24] Preston Meyer: Some nifty science.
[00:31:25] Katie Dooley: That was interesting on a religion podcast. Who would have thought?
[00:31:29] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:31:32] Katie Dooley: Our next chaos monster is from the Japanese Shinto tradition, Amatsu-mikaboshi.
[00:31:38] Preston Meyer: It's a little bit of a mouthful.
[00:31:40] Katie Dooley: I saw it hyphenated a lot, and that helped a lot. Yeah, I'm Amatsu Mikaboshi. So originally the origins of this deity are of malevolent Shinto god also known as Primal chaos.
[00:31:56] Preston Meyer: I love it.
[00:31:56] Katie Dooley: This. This is great. You'll love this one. His name translates to the dread star of Heaven. Metal song in the making.
[00:32:05] Preston Meyer: That's a great name. I'm curious which star in the sky is connected to this figure. For this to be a name, there has to be one star in the sky that's connected.
[00:32:15] Katie Dooley: I feel like it'd be something like Venus, where like they didn't realize it was not.
[00:32:21] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:32:21] Katie Dooley: But it'd have some color to it and...
[00:32:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Something that moves a little bit in the sky. Like not reliable. Yeah, I'm on board. Something that deserves a little bit more research later, I suppose.
[00:32:32] Katie Dooley: Yes. You know it was tough because records are spotty on this guy, but the general consensus is that he doesn't have a corporeal form, but is instead described as a dark force that existed before the universe. Chaos.
[00:32:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah, sure. Before the universe, you got darkness. It was cool.
[00:32:49] Katie Dooley: Some sources say that he is an aura or energy that kind of floats around the world and influences things.
[00:32:56] Preston Meyer: Right now, I'm thinking of that weird green smoke from Charlton Heston, the Ten Commandments. Except that was actually an agent of God, not chaos.
[00:33:07] Katie Dooley: How do we know?
[00:33:09] Preston Meyer: We only have the story to go on.
[00:33:12] Katie Dooley: That's an old story.
[00:33:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:33:15] Katie Dooley: Shinto, the the religion, religion Shinto promotes balance, so Amatsu-Mikaboshi is associated with the negative emotions that bring the world out of balance, like greed or anger or envy. And I also read that he's attracted to those people feeling those things and he like, amplifies it in them. Which kind of makes sense, right? If you're an angry person, you have a really chaotic, angry life and.
[00:33:41] Preston Meyer: Well you can see this in mob mentality. If you see somebody who's got a little bit of negativity and if it has any value to the group, they will amplify it.
[00:33:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's a good way to describe this guy.
[00:33:54] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:33:55] Katie Dooley: I like that. Another descriptor I saw of him that I really liked was destructive disharmony. This guy is super badass.
[00:34:04] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:34:04] Katie Dooley: Which is exciting because Amatsu-Mikaboshi is actually in the Marvel Universe. That was actually a lot of the records I found on him were like Marvel Comics, and I was like, that's not a good source for this.
[00:34:15] Preston Meyer: This isn't religious stuff. Maybe he'll show up in the future Shang-Chi project.
[00:34:20] Katie Dooley: Right. So I actually am excited to see what I don't know. I just saw a bunch of stuff on phase six, so I'm sure we'll start to see. We're going to start pulling more obscure characters now that the popular ones are retired.
[00:34:33] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:34:34] Katie Dooley: Or Dead.
[00:34:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah. A lot of dead superheroes.
[00:34:37] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So maybe he'll show up soon.
[00:34:40] Preston Meyer: All right, next on our list of chaos monsters. I want to throw in some fiction just 'cause.
[00:34:45] Katie Dooley: How do we know it's fiction?
[00:34:46] Preston Meyer: Well, the fellow who wrote about Cthulhu, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, introduced Cthulhu and never said, oh, yeah, this is a real thing I think about. He was an atheist. He just really liked writing stories about cosmicism, the idea that nothing on earth matters and only persists because the chaotic forces, the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods. Actually, he never used the term Elder Gods. That was later writers, the Outer Gods, allowed the world to persist.
[00:35:19] Katie Dooley: H.P. Lovecraft has an extensive pantheon, to the point where I think it almost deserves its own episode. I also just want to point out that H.P. Lovecraft was a huge racist.
[00:35:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:35:30] Katie Dooley: So I always a little torn on, like, enjoying his novels.
[00:35:33] Preston Meyer: As he aged, he did become less problematically racist. He was he.
[00:35:39] Katie Dooley: Problematically racist though.
[00:35:40] Preston Meyer: He wasn't wildly racist compared to his contemporaries back when racism wasn't thought to be a problem. Um, but yeah, he was super racist relative to what we're familiar with in the world today. He definitely, really, really preferred people who were white or who were doing a good job of adopting white culture. Um, and not just all whites, specifically English. So you could be German. Polish, Irish, French...
[00:36:17] Katie Dooley: Doesn't like you. No jobs for Italians or Irish.
[00:36:21] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's not as good as English, but that's neither here nor there. I have spent a lot of time reading Lovecraft. I had a nice little stint for a little over a year where that was the only fiction I was reading for a little while, just because some fun stories.
[00:36:37] Katie Dooley: Did you go insane?
[00:36:39] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:36:39] Katie Dooley: Oh.
[00:36:41] Preston Meyer: Of course, that's not how you get that answer. You can't ask somebody if they're insane.
[00:36:45] Katie Dooley: That's true. That's catch-22.
[00:36:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Because in reality, everybody on this planet is insane. Except me. Wow. If you believe this, this sentiment for yourself, get checked.
[00:37:00] Katie Dooley: So, back to the Great Old Ones. They defy any laws of space and time. So this is why they fall under chaos.
[00:37:06] Preston Meyer: Well, on some of them exist outside the universe as we know it. H.P. Lovecraft wrote about different dimensions. He wrote about gods that existed in weird ways that don't even make sense, and that exposure to them would cause you to be insane. For sure. 100% of the time, which is actually a really cool form of internalized chaos. That madness. So I think it's kind of interesting. So I've decided to to highlight a couple of my favorites for you. I've got Nyarlathotep, who is modeled after the old Egyptian styles. Mostly when you see him, he's described as looking distinctly like an old pharaoh. He is called the Crawling Chaos, and he manifests the mockery of the universe against the attempts of mortal man to understand and rule the world. It's just he's here to mess you up. It's really the short form of it. Um, he doesn't like murdering people. That's not a thing that's entertaining to him. And he's all about fun. But his fun, not your fun. It brings him great pleasure to make you go insane.
[00:38:23] Katie Dooley: That's cool, I guess...
[00:38:25] Preston Meyer: Right? He is actively engaged in ruining the world instead of being asleep at, like a lot of the gods, or drifting out in space in exile, like a lot of Lovecraft's old gods. Just an absolute agent of chaos. It's perfect. Then there's Azathoth, who is chaotic in what I think is a really interesting yet weird way that he is the accidental creator of the universe. A little. It's a little bit deistic, but even in deism it's usually acknowledged that the universe is created on purpose. But like a watch, you just let it go. And here we have a God who is called the blind idiot, because Azathoth has no idea that this universe even exists. He isn't paying attention to it, but it is the product of his sleeping imagination.
[00:39:18] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:39:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah. He's just unaware. And chaos populates this world with everything. And as he shifts in his sleep, the universe shifts. Which sounds terrifying. At any given moment the things that you are familiar with. Gone. Or terribly changed. Insanity. Lovecraft is a weird kind of nuts.
[00:39:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah. He had a great imagination. I'll give him that.
[00:39:51] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:39:51] Katie Dooley: He's probably really fucked up.
[00:39:53] Preston Meyer: I mean, probably.
[00:39:54] Katie Dooley: I mean, um, I just want to point out that during a contentious political election one year, I had a sign that said, why choose the lesser evil? Cthulhu 20. Whatever. I don't remember what year it was. It's 3 or 4 years ago.
[00:40:11] Preston Meyer: I think you printed a few of these when we bought one, I think.
[00:40:13] Katie Dooley: Yeah, that's when we were neighbors.
[00:40:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:40:16] Katie Dooley: And I don't remember what year that was. Clearly it was at least...
[00:40:19] Preston Meyer: It's been a little while.
[00:40:20] Katie Dooley: 3 or 4 years ago now. Yeah so why choose the lesser evil?
[00:40:29] Preston Meyer: The sounds mixed with the miming of the face tentacles? Why not vote Cthulhu?
[00:40:34] Katie Dooley: Why not vote Cthulhu? That's his debate.
[00:40:41] Preston Meyer: The great thing is, if you see Cthulhu and most of these great old ones, you just go nuts.
[00:40:48] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:40:49] Preston Meyer: So show up to a rally, and you might just vote for him.
[00:40:53] Katie Dooley: Right? Oh, boy. So let's, uh, move on. We're gonna maybe go to something less terrifying and talk about Ku-Kaua-Kahi, a Hawaiian chaos god.
[00:41:10] Preston Meyer: That's. That's a lot of Ks.
[00:41:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Did you know the Hawaiian alphabet has, like, 11 letters in it? And k, u and a are definitely three of them. Also, H and W. Uh.
[00:41:24] Katie Dooley: I'm pretty sure. And then I have a brackets Hawaiian, so we know what we're talking about. That's like the entire alphabet.
[00:41:31] Preston Meyer: Ku-Kaua-Kahi
[00:41:34] Katie Dooley: Oahu. O because Oahu, I can't.
[00:41:39] Preston Meyer: Ku-Kaua-Kahi.
[00:41:40] Katie Dooley: Thanks.
[00:41:40] Preston Meyer: That's how I read that. I hope I'm doing it right.
[00:41:45] Katie Dooley: That guy. Wow. Ku-Kaua-Kahi is a triad of three gods Kane, Lono, and Ku. And they existed before creation. Ku and Kane are twin brothers, and Kane is, like, at the top of the Hawaiian pantheon. So think of Zeus, even though he's in this triad.
[00:42:05] Preston Meyer: Right? Zeus was in triads we talked about.
[00:42:07] Katie Dooley: Oh, right. Thank you. Yeah. And Hawaiian chiefs are said to be the descendants of Kane. And the three of them represent sound, substance and sunlight, which I really like. That alliteration. That encompasses a lot of stuff.
[00:42:23] Preston Meyer: Right? And also, that's some great poetry when we're talking about things across linguistic boundaries. That's good work.
[00:42:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Po is the Hawaiian name of chaos in their creation myth. So at some point, Cain realized that he was a separate entity from Po, and he worked to separate himself. But there are there are multiple versions of the Hawaiian creation myth. So one is where Kane is the initial mover, and he existed in this chaos before time, light or space, and he created Ku and Lono, and all three of them created the universe together. And another version of them has all three of them existing in a deep and intense night, and then creating the universe together by shattering into pieces.
[00:43:06] Preston Meyer: Wow.
[00:43:07] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And then to the point of the everyone likes to make things part of the Bible. They talk about Kane as like the sun of the universe, and they talk about the land of Kane. It's like they're really just trying to get those in there.
[00:43:24] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:43:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:43:25] Preston Meyer: Cool.
[00:43:25] Katie Dooley: So that's the Hawaiian story. And reading this, I... We have it on our list. But I'm very excited to do the Hawaiian religion. I read a lot of cool stuff.
[00:43:35] Preston Meyer: Yeah, we'll definitely have to get on that.
[00:43:36] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:43:38] Preston Meyer: All right. So I figure some of these biblical figures deserve just a little bit extra attention. Um, we talked about Leviathan already. That it's a primeval sea monster, generally considered specifically to be female, as opposed to Jormungandr that was male and, of course, connected to other Near Eastern and Middle Eastern and Mesopotamian sea monsters as well. But Leviathan is very often paired with this other fellow called the Behemoth, which of course is a word that's tricky and loss to us in the antiquity, just like Leviathan and sometimes the word is used to describe an ox or an elephant or a hippopotamus. We don't really know for sure what the monster looked like. Uh, yeah. And there's a there's a third monster that in rabbinical writings and in Jewish mythology, you'll hear about paired with them. Uh, Ziz the a primeval bird monster. Some versions of the monster. He looks a lot like a griffin. Persian version of Ziz is very certainly a griffin. Um, but he's also equated with the phoenix of Greece and similar things. But he is so huge. I think it's pretty fair to compare him to Roc of Northern European traditions, where he's just this giant bird. He is mentioned twice in the Hebrew Bible, but not given any detail at all. It's just, and this animal does this thing, he eats stuff. Cool this context. It could have been a dog.
[00:45:26] Katie Dooley: Smaller than a temple. Bigger than a baby.
[00:45:29] Preston Meyer: Right? Though, Zia is generally thought to be much larger than a temple.
[00:45:35] Katie Dooley: Okay. Bigger than a temple.
[00:45:37] Preston Meyer: There's there's one spot where he's written in the rabbinical writings as bonking his head against the firmament. He is that big.
[00:45:45] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:45:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Now, imagine having a creature that size in this world. That would be a very bad thing.
[00:45:52] Katie Dooley: Terrifying. I like how there's an earth, water and air monster.
[00:45:55] Preston Meyer: Right? Those are the three big monsters. And they are all connected to chaos, though, Leviathan more than the other two in within the Hebrew Bible. But in greater tradition, they're all pretty chaotic, and they'll fight each other. All kinds of fun.
[00:46:12] Katie Dooley: Cool.
[00:46:13] Preston Meyer: And we had talked about giants before. We have the Gibborim and the Nephilim, or the Gibborim and Nephilim.
[00:46:23] Katie Dooley: You're the one who speaks Hebrew, right?
[00:46:25] Preston Meyer: And even I don't have a solid answer for this. They are basically the giants before the flood. Of course, we could be talking about two different groups, maybe giants and Titans. Being a mediterranean people, their cultures were borrowing myths all around that body of water for a long time. And so things get a little bit fuzzy. But the stories are very similar in a lot of ways, and I'm pretty sure we're looking at giants and titans, and I think that's kind of nifty.
[00:46:56] Katie Dooley: Nice.
[00:46:57] Preston Meyer: And the unicorn shows up in the Bible, too. I don't think it's ever been a chaos monster. It's just an animal that gets mentioned a few times. And for some reason, King James Version and and later versions that like it a lot, stuck with the word unicorn. It's wasn't a unicorn.
[00:47:17] Katie Dooley: What.
[00:47:18] Preston Meyer: The re'em is, what is translated as unicorn. Um, a lot of people were pretty sure that it means a one horned animal. It may have been a rhino. It may have been a wild buffalo. It could potentially. Actually, even a lot of people are very sure it was very likely the extinct aurochs, or it could have been a ram or an antelope. There's so much the language has changed too much since then that we just don't know for sure what they're talking about.
[00:47:48] Katie Dooley: Hey, is this why people believed in unicorns? Like, well, into the 1400s?
[00:47:52] Preston Meyer: Probably.
[00:47:53] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:47:54] Preston Meyer: Well, okay, we can't blame the King James Bible translation for the belief in unicorns, because that wasn't published until 1611. But people talking about unicorns and labeling things as unicorns that were definitely not... A long tradition of white folks.
[00:48:12] Katie Dooley: Yes. Neigh.
[00:48:16] Preston Meyer: Chaos monsters are a lot of fun, and it's a great answer for why things are the way they are. You know, we pray to God for good weather and we have these storms. Is there a God of storms that we've angered? No, it was a chaos monster. Earthquakes? Well, it's not the gods in the heavens giving us earthquakes. It's the chaos monster underneath the short, easy answers.
[00:48:44] Katie Dooley: Easy answers!
[00:48:44] Preston Meyer: Easy answers that develop into really cool mythologies over time.
[00:48:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I also think it's really interesting how many of these creatures have entered pop culture. Great weather. I mean, Brant was reading a book called Leviathan, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:03] Preston Meyer: It's all civil politics and whatnot, though.
[00:49:06] Katie Dooley: Sure. But the fact that the name appears elsewhere and there's Marvel characters and I'm sure there's other comic books or.
[00:49:14] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah. For sure.
[00:49:15] Katie Dooley: I mean, man, even googling Chaos monsters, I had to, like, omit Yu-Gi-Oh! I googled chaos monsters it was all Yu-Gi-Oh! So I had to, like, figure out how to eliminate a search term when I was googling.
[00:49:26] Preston Meyer: Google needs to learn your...
[00:49:28] Katie Dooley: Fun fact. If you put a minus sign in front of a Google search term, it will admit it. So I said Chaos monster minus Yu-Gi-Oh!
[00:49:36] Preston Meyer: It didn't even give me Yu-Gi-Oh stuff.
[00:49:38] Katie Dooley: It gave me so much. What?
[00:49:40] Preston Meyer: No. I don't know. It knows my patterns better.
[00:49:43] Katie Dooley: Okay, I was gonna. What does it say? Why does it think I like Yu-Gi-Oh?
[00:49:48] Preston Meyer: I don't know.
[00:49:49] Katie Dooley: I'm offended. Google. Uh, anyway. Yeah so.
[00:49:54] Preston Meyer: We get get.
[00:49:55] Katie Dooley: We get what we get. Wow. If you want to make order from chaos, you know how you can do that?
[00:50:03] Preston Meyer: Join our discord.
[00:50:04] Katie Dooley: Join our discord. I actually got a message from someone recently that said they are obsessed with our discord.
[00:50:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's some good.
[00:50:12] Katie Dooley: Yeah, it made me very happy. So if you want to be obsessed with social media too... Check out our discard. Lots of memes. Lots of great conversations. We're having a movie night. Movie nights on a semi-regular basis.
[00:50:27] Preston Meyer: Of course. We've also got our Facebook, our Instagram, YouTube. We've also got Spread Shop where you can buy some pretty cool gear mugs, aprons, onesies, t shirts, tote bags, whatever you're after, we've got some great pictures to slap on those things.
[00:50:43] Katie Dooley: Help us. Yeah, help us support the podcast and keep it going.
[00:50:47] Preston Meyer: And if you don't want to buy stuff but you still want to help us out. Patreon is great. We've also got a lot of exclusive content on there that you can't get anywhere else, so help motivate you to pay a little bit to help support our show. Thanks for joining us.
[00:51:02] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.
