Know Thyself

In this episode we begin a full immersion experience into that most infamous of offices, The Inqusition.  From the forces at play in the persecution society where it began, through a few early burnings, to the papal bull that started it all, we refuse to shrink from staring it in all its repressive sanctimony. We also cover some of the early heretical movements and groups that caught the -- very unwanted -- attention of the ecclesiastical inquisition.  Finally, the Albigensian Crusade gets off to a brutal and sadistic start, as the Pope calls another crusade, this time against the Cathars -- in what historians call the first ideological genocide in history. Artwork by Ian Armstrong

In this episode Steve Rathje, social psychologist specializing in social media and political polarization, explains to us why we are prone to conspiratorial thinking, and how we got into the state we find ourselves in Western societies.  Virality, engagement, fake news, motivated reasoning, negativity bias, and much more are covered the way only Steve can explain them. A long overdue episode 24 of HBH. But hey, it's summer, and we can finally travel, so it's better late than never.            

In this episode I speak to Professor Jan Bremer about human sacrifice. We touch on Greek, Roman, Maya, Indian, Aztec, Druid, Egyptian, Chinese, and other instantiations of this most intentionally terrifying of all practices. Who were the victims? How common was it? What motivated it? The answers, from Prof. Bremer, were suprising. I will not say he is a human sacrifice skeptic, but he believes it was less common and less costly than sensationalized accounts would lead us to believe.   Art by Ian Armstrong Music Icy Vindur by A. Himitsu    

Conclusion (at last) of a three-part episode on the ways our perceptions and processing distort reality.  For the stalwart (and patient) seekers of knowledge only. 0:00  Groupthink 6:13   Halo Effect 10:41  Just World Fallacy 17:21  Negativity Bias 22:16  Optimism and Pessimism Bias 27:19   Reactance 31:44  Self-Serving Bias 34:41  Sunk Cost Fallacy 39:40  The Spotlight Effect 40:51  The Dunning-Krueger Effect as you never knew it   Art: Ian Armstrong          

Today I begin a pedantic journey into the tragicomic ways our perceptions and judgments are altered and distorted by our own cognitive processes -- goofy, heartbreaking, and humorous all at once,  Index of topics included: 0:00    Intro 04:52   Anchoring Bias 08:59   Availability Heuristic 13:25   Backfire Effect 16:05   Barnum Effect 19:45   Belief Bias 23:06   Bystander Effect 27:22  Confirmation Bias and Belief Perseverance                Including Wm. Flinders-Petrie vs the Pyramidologists 33:56   Curse of Knowledge 35:10   Declinism aka Old Fartism  36:49   Framing Effects 40:06   Fundamental Attribution Error (Salience of the Actor)            Empty Boats   I will finish the topic in a few weeks, but in order to not bore you to death with this laundry list, I will interject a few historical vignettes between now and then.      

In which we continue to Dumbest things in history series by looking at some of the glitches in us that make them possible.  And also that they are not the result of our lizard brain, because we don't have one. In this episode, we cover conspiracy thinking and theories and the  apophenia that makes them possible, including pareidolia, the gambler's fallacy, motivated reasoning, and of course our ability to talk ourselves into things through repetition.  

A bad decision for the ages--welcoming a pretentious narcissistic ignoramus into your family to weaken your already precarious hold on power, ignoring all warnings and thumbing your nose at the public outrage it engendered.   And worse, taking said lecher's advice on all matters, sacred and secular, because he claimed it came from God himself.  It sounds like a path to disaster, as indeed it was. In this episode we uncover what can be known about the life and strange death of Grigori Yefimovich Novykh, aka Rasputin, the so-called Mad Monk of Siberia and his tragic relationship to Tsar Nicolas II and his family.  Cover Art by Ian Armstrong    

This is a release of an interview I did a year and a half ago, but have not released due to some technical -- and technique -- difficulties. Despite that, I have always wanted to clean it up as much as possible and release it, in large part because Dr. Tiesler is a world renowned expert on the topic and was very generous to grant the interview.          

We have a lot going for us, which is why we are currently a very successful species. But we have a lot of problems, defects, deficiencies, dysteleology, and outright glitches in our systems. This episode, the first in a two part series on our glitches, catalogues some of the maladaptive elements that make us who we are. This episode: anatomical, physiological, and genetic human defects.  HBH 18: Mental glitches that allow us to make very stupid decisions, thought distortions and cognitive biases.          

There are countless stupid events, decisions, policies, and people in history, so it was a great surprise to see how easy it was to decide on the dumbest thing ever. It was, to put it bluntly, no contest. The Great Leap Forward had it all -- poor planning, poor execution, newspeak, happy talk, brutal repression, and tens of millions of deaths.  And you couldn't think of a more perfectly ludicrous name. Today's episode is a little complicated, as the topic is VAST and I made a vain attempt to cover it all.  Listen to it twice if you have to -- or if you have a stomach for it! Better yet -- Read about the Great Leap Forward: Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine by Xun Zhou        

In this episode I get distracted while working on another topic.  Because of that failure to focus, we cover the origins of left and right political ideologies, the beginnings of fascism, its symbolism, and what special recipe makes a fascist regime fascist.  We also briefly discuss Antifa -- which is, depending on who you ask, either the most dangerous shadowy terrorist group in America with billionaire funding and extensive secret networks, or a total boogeyman invented by the right as a scapegoat. Cover art by Ian Armstrong

Ok, so it wasn't a world-historical level disaster, or maybe even close to the dumbest thing humans have ever believed. But it was pretty stupid. Nations gripped by a fear of covens of witches, repressed memories of ritual Satanic abuse, demonic rock-and-roll, ouija boards stealing your soul, and don't forget those blue-as-death animated corpses, the Smurfs!  All, of course, without any credible evidence whatsoever. If you wonder where the Q phenomenon began, and how it can possibly have legs, look no further than the Satanic Panic. This is an interview I did with Paul Corupe (http://www.paulcorupe.com/) since I seem to mostly interview men named Paul(?!). It was originally produced for the series on mob behaviors and mass delusions but I am releasing it now due to some sound glitches that took me a while to correct (and since it applies to this series also). Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Satanic-Panic-Pop-Cultural-Paranoia-1980s/dp/1903254868 Cover Art by Ian Armstron      

Today we embark down a very ignoble road and consider a few of the most dismal failures in history.  We begin with a big one -- something that failed spectacularly, at a very high cost, creating misery and infamy in its wake: The People's Crusade of 1095-6! Index of this episode, in case you want to skip to the juicy parts: 0:00      Intro: The Three Poisons 5:20     Why and When the Crusades? Intro to Crusading, Pilgrims; The Houses of Abbas, Fatimids, and Seljuks; Pope Urban II and Alexius I Komnenos. 25:57     The Council of Clermont and Urban's Call to Arms 30:31     Peter the Hermit Inflames the Yokels 33:48     What was the People's Crusade? 34:20     Walter sans Avoir Sets Off for Glory 37:32     The Vicious Little Count and His Holy Goose Crusaders 46:15      Peter the Hermit Storms Anatolia 56:09     Cost:Benefit Analysis of the People's Crusade, or What Does it Take to Be One of the Dumbest Things in History?          

Today we discuss the mystery of 3Q15 -- also known as the Copper Scroll. One of the most mysterious, and potentially valuable finds, in archeology.  An enigmatic and totally unique document, scratched onto copper, that hints at the locations of over 2 billion USD worth of hidden treasure, left in a cave almost 2000 years ago. Who wrote the copper scroll? Is the treasure real? If so, whose treasure was it? And why, after decades of searching, has none of the treasure been found? Since we can't definitively answer any of those questions, we will detour into the history of the Essenes, the commune and caves at Qumran, the finding and controversies around the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the defeat and subsequent victory of the Romans in the first Jewish War.     Graphic Artwork by Ian Armstrong Music Icy Vindur by A. Himitsu  

The whole world seems pretty down on 2020. And let's face it, so far 2020 has not distinguished itself for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence.   But is it, as some have argued, the worst year ever? And if it is not, which year carries that dubious honorific?  Which year in history was the worst ever to be a human? Which year in the bigger history of forever was the worst ever to simply be a life form? And why? Many historians have thrown in on this question. Here are some of their answers, and the current consensus champ of the worst historical year ever to be human. At the end I offer my contender for worst year to be a life form ever. Graphic Art: Ian Armstrong  Music: Icy Vindur by A. Himitsu and Hard Times by John Lee Hooker  

In today's episode we get heroically pummeled by one of the most intractable -- and maybe insoluble -- mysteries of our existence. A topic that strikes at the core of who we are and what it means to be human.   A short intro to and history of the problem of consciousness. What it is, what it does, how it can (possibly, ever?) be explained, and why it is such a perplexing phenomenon. 'Graphic The History of Being Human by Ian Armstrong Contact me at thobhpodcast@gmail.com  

In this episode we square off against some of the many, many puzzles remaining about who and when we came from, including: 0:00  -  0:58   Intro 0:58  -  4:30   The Hominins 4:30  -  6:52   The Earliest Ancestral Human 6:52  - 22:50   The Mystery and Controversy of H. naledi 22:50 - 41:40  The Walking Anachronisms of Red Deer Cave 41:40 - END    The Final Fate of the Neanderthals      

Rushing in again where angels fear to tread. This time into the deep end of the mysterious life of arguably the most influential person in the history of the West, if not the entire world. Who was Jesus? What did he think about himself? Where did he come from, what did he do, how did he die and why?  What were his influences? Was he a disciple of John or not?  Was he married or not? What happened after his death? How do we know any of this? Although not even close to exhaustive, there is a wealth of information in this episode about some of the episodes in the life of Jesus, about what we can and do know about the times and place he lived, about his motivations and influences, and about what happened after his death to vitalize a movement that would take over the Western World.    

In this episode I cover: --The Brutal Roman Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE --Christ Mythicism, or can we know whether Jesus of Nazareth ever existed? --Mysteries about the genealogies of Jesus --Questions about the location of Jesus' birth    --Especially what on earth were two natives of Nazareth doing in  Bethlehem?   --Was there ever a time that Cesar declared that "all the earth should be taxed"? --What year was Jesus of Nazareth born?  What decade? Art: The History of Being Human by Ian Armstrong Debate on "Christ Mythicism":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzjYmpwbHEA Song: Done too Soon by Neil Diamond

In this episode we rush into a mystery where angels fear to tread and search for the Jesus of History.  We visit Palestine of the 1st Century and discuss: --its brutal Roman occupation --its geopolitical situation --the various sects and parties vying for power --Herod and the Herodians --slaughter at the temple --Pontius Pilates complex persona --and even a little Roman intrugue. Now that's something everyone can enjoy!