Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's give it up for
Speaker 1: our one and only. You know him, you love him,
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams, our super producer, So yeah, they call
Speaker 1: me Ben. I'm as always immensely privileged to hang out
Speaker 1: with Mr Noel Brown none other. I get a Mr.
Speaker 1: Let's tie. It's like a let's an honorific. No, not really,
Speaker 1: I guess it would be it was an honorific. Is
Speaker 1: that just like a funny title, like like Nol the
Speaker 1: bold or Nold the pedantic, Nol the dull. That's more
Speaker 1: of an honorific. I have a Mr. Is just more
Speaker 1: of like a prefix. Well, you know, uh, to quote
Speaker 1: Quentin Tarantino in pulp fiction, we're Americans, baby, Our names
Speaker 1: don't mean beepy. We're gonna come back around to Mr
Speaker 1: t a little later in the episode today. And that
Speaker 1: episode is in fact, part two of the Tangled Web
Speaker 1: of Noggins, that is phrenology pseudoscience for the ages. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's a high quackery here Ridiculous History, and we are
Speaker 1: having such a great time. We were. We were talking
Speaker 1: recently folks about the history of our show off air
Speaker 1: Noel Max and yours truly, and we wanted to give
Speaker 1: some space real quick to super producer Max Max. You
Speaker 1: had told us all fair in preparation for part two
Speaker 1: of this episode that you had you had some stuff
Speaker 1: you wanted to air. Yeah, I do so. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna turn to the left here. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: very visual thing. It's gonna be great for you know,
Speaker 1: a podcast. If I scrolled back, I guess we'll see
Speaker 1: the still poster over there anymore. Guess see that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It wasn't that a map of the lands between from
Speaker 1: the sky or I'm still there? But I took down
Speaker 1: the fallout perk tree. That's because yesterday I got a
Speaker 1: new poster and I was so inspired by the Nancy
Speaker 1: Wake episode that I got myself what Nancy Wake film
Speaker 1: no War poster. It is from the artist. I found
Speaker 1: it on red Bubble, which is called the Nable website.
Speaker 1: It's the artist Tom Tom with with the ohs and
Speaker 1: that spelled with zero. It is amazing and I love
Speaker 1: it and I just wanted to give a little shout
Speaker 1: out to that. Now I'm gonna put it back on
Speaker 1: my wall. Classic internet artist name. Uh. The style is
Speaker 1: sort of almost like a cell shading kind of video gaming.
Speaker 1: Look to a new our depiction of Nancy Wake, and
Speaker 1: she's wearing kind of a not a fedora. What do
Speaker 1: you call that thing? Ben, It's like a well, it's
Speaker 1: definitely a hat, Max. Yeah, hold it up again. Let's
Speaker 1: look at this hat. So it's almost like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: tough to tell because of the styling, but it's got
Speaker 1: a big brim. You know, who would know? No, Holly
Speaker 1: Fry would know. Ah, where's a Holly Fry on you one?
Speaker 1: I love our dudes, but initially it was do they
Speaker 1: really not know what a beret is? This is Holly Fry,
Speaker 1: one of the hosts of stuff you missed in history class.
Speaker 1: Holly is a fund of knowledge in many things, including hats.
Speaker 1: But when we talked, Holly seemed very puzzled by Ben
Speaker 1: in nold confusion. Look, I get it, this is a
Speaker 1: stylized piece of art. But if you then look at
Speaker 1: any photograph some Nancy Wake on which this art is based,
Speaker 1: she is almost always wearing a beret, and she wears
Speaker 1: kind of a stiff beret that's like off to one side.
Speaker 1: But I really got confused when they mentioned the large brim.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they think a hat looks like.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's really any hope for these guys
Speaker 1: on them ever figuring out what a hat is? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go with my favorite response in such situations,
Speaker 1: which is, bless their hearts. This sub episode of Ridiculous
Speaker 1: History was written and produced by Max Williams. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Holly Fry. Do you think Ben and Nole will
Speaker 1: learn what a beret is? Let us know on social
Speaker 1: media and we will see you in the rest of
Speaker 1: this episode of Ridiculous History. I mean, but to me
Speaker 1: it appears less of Fedora and more of a cabby
Speaker 1: flat cap meets a beret is. She wears it well
Speaker 1: and it goes along beautifully with her kind of beige um.
Speaker 1: Would you call that a duster or sort of like
Speaker 1: a like a like a like a waistcoat, not really
Speaker 1: a waistcoat of a trench jacket. Trench coat. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: some trench ery. They're all Hail the White Mouse. It
Speaker 1: looks like almost like a summer hat with the brim
Speaker 1: turned up. Anyway, we are point is, folks, we did
Speaker 1: a deep dive with our research associate Zack Williams into
Speaker 1: phrenology and we knew going in this was going to
Speaker 1: be a two parter or so. If you have not
Speaker 1: heard part one, uh just pause, check it out. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that will apply, will give you
Speaker 1: a moment maybe with a waiting room sound cute. I
Speaker 1: love music. It's just slaps, you know, and the kids
Speaker 1: are repurposing it into this vapor waves stuff, which I
Speaker 1: also love. It's just it's good stuff. But yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: All right, so you've listened to part one, back with us.
Speaker 1: We've got the band back together for part two of
Speaker 1: Why was Fornology a thing? In the first part of
Speaker 1: this series, Uh, no, you and I looked at the
Speaker 1: origin and the rise of phrenology, and no, I think
Speaker 1: you and I both were surprised by the at times
Speaker 1: really progressive stance fornologists took, like the equality of the sexes.
Speaker 1: That's something I wasn't expected. Yeah, it was. It's certainly
Speaker 1: a mixed bag in that respect because some of the
Speaker 1: proponents of spreading the gospel, if you will, a phrenology.
Speaker 1: Certainly we're trying to make it inclusive for both of
Speaker 1: the sexes. Uh, And there was sort of like a
Speaker 1: women's liberation kind of bent to it, ways of using
Speaker 1: phrenology to empower women and say, oh, women are actually
Speaker 1: good at this stuff. Though sometimes even those things were
Speaker 1: like they're better at maths or like organization stuff that
Speaker 1: well seemingly progressive also kind of put them in a
Speaker 1: box as well. But we were sort of inching towards
Speaker 1: I think where most of today's episode is going to focus,
Speaker 1: which is some of the really nefarious ways that that phrenology,
Speaker 1: somewhat similarly to the idea of like eugenics, were used,
Speaker 1: you know, to keep certain races uh down and certain
Speaker 1: types of individuals down because of perceived proof, you know,
Speaker 1: based on the shape and size of the parts of
Speaker 1: their brain felt through the shape and size of the
Speaker 1: parts of their skulls. Yeah, and in in part one
Speaker 1: you and I gave a shout out to stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you knows episode on standardized testing, which has
Speaker 1: surprisingly similar roots. Yes, yeah, prenology is not real science.
Speaker 1: It is definitely a study in contradiction. And we saved
Speaker 1: a particular bit of history that we thought would be
Speaker 1: illuminating for us to kick off part two of this series,
Speaker 1: and that is this. Yes, phrenology very much had a
Speaker 1: dark side, but it's a dark side that is older
Speaker 1: than phrenology. It's older than Dr Franz gall. You can
Speaker 1: trace the d n A of phrenology all the way
Speaker 1: back to another older pseudo science, physio agnomy. Physiognomy right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one has a similar ring to cranioscopy, but it's
Speaker 1: much much older. Apparently none other than Pythagoras, you know,
Speaker 1: the theorem guy that the triangle guy, was one of
Speaker 1: the early proponents of physiognomy. He would often physiognomize um
Speaker 1: the the the young men who surrounded him and the
Speaker 1: new he was, you know, mentoring and and then acting
Speaker 1: as their their tutor or our instructor. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: is according to the Roman historian Alias Gellius. And by
Speaker 1: the way, a lot of the stuff here that we're
Speaker 1: about to cover in this section comes from a fantastic
Speaker 1: Wired article by uh Matt Simon from January twenty one.
Speaker 1: Not going to read the headline because it gives away
Speaker 1: some of the fun stuff to come, but definitely worth
Speaker 1: a full read. And also the work of Matt Simon
Speaker 1: in general, is is quite a solid agreed agreed, So
Speaker 1: say we all, I love that you're bringing up Pythagoras
Speaker 1: because this idea of seeing people who want to be
Speaker 1: as students literally seeing them and then let's see Gillius
Speaker 1: says that Pythagoras inquired quote into the character and dispositions
Speaker 1: of men by an inference drawn from their facial appearance
Speaker 1: and expression and from the form and burying of their
Speaker 1: whole body. To me, that sounds like either a casting couch,
Speaker 1: I know, or a family show or a vibe check,
Speaker 1: Like what if they were a family show? But we
Speaker 1: just did that doctor finger joke on the first part. Yeah, baby,
Speaker 1: well I probably broke my finger as a result of
Speaker 1: bad karma for that one. For anyone who um, obviously
Speaker 1: we're not audio show. We just described a poster to you.
Speaker 1: I am I am recording this episode with uh a
Speaker 1: weirdly bent left ringing finger, and our own Mr Noel
Speaker 1: Brown is a trooper because this man is recording while
Speaker 1: moving houses. That's from the way to describe it as
Speaker 1: like sort of a vacant white void, sort of like
Speaker 1: where John Oliver broadcast from during the pandemic. I'm just
Speaker 1: in you know, it's my same studio that I've been
Speaker 1: in for years now, but devoid of all stuff except
Speaker 1: for my little desk in my USB mike because I'm
Speaker 1: still waiting on Internet to be hooked up in my
Speaker 1: new place, but that should be any day now, Ben,
Speaker 1: is your would you consider your finger? Is it sort
Speaker 1: of a furled finger? Content? I almost want to take
Speaker 1: my homemade splint off so you can see the the
Speaker 1: the offensive geometry of my finger right now. But what
Speaker 1: we're saying is we're going to power through because we
Speaker 1: are so fast. Speaking of offensive geometry, let's go back
Speaker 1: to Pathaker. Yeah, there we go like like he's just
Speaker 1: He's just like, imagine you're going to You're You're like,
Speaker 1: here is one of the great thinkers of my time.
Speaker 1: Please Pythagoras, teach me your wisdom. And he's like, stand back,
Speaker 1: let me check what you look like. Because the idea,
Speaker 1: and we learned this thanks to Jody Jenkinson in a
Speaker 1: wonderful essay called face Facts, A History of Physiognomy from
Speaker 1: Ancient Mesopotamia to the end of the nineteenth century. The
Speaker 1: idea here that Pythagoras is practicing is that if you
Speaker 1: look like a certain animal. Then you have that animals
Speaker 1: personality and characteristics and attributes as determined by the observer.
Speaker 1: Like have you guys like no, have you ever have
Speaker 1: you ever met someone and thought, if you were an animal,
Speaker 1: you would be this animal? Sure, maybe someone was sort
Speaker 1: of lupine features. There's actually a fabulous illustration in that
Speaker 1: Wired article that I mentioned of of a gentleman with
Speaker 1: sort of a broad skull uh and a slow opening,
Speaker 1: pointing nose in a very small kind of chin and
Speaker 1: mouth area um, posed next to an illustration of what
Speaker 1: looks to be kind of a bloodhound uh. And the
Speaker 1: the the delightful caption um from uh from Matt Simon
Speaker 1: or whomever writes captions for for Wired says, according to
Speaker 1: the theory of physiognomy, the man pictured would behave like
Speaker 1: a dog because he looks like one Robb like teen wolf,
Speaker 1: only without the sick ray bands. That was back when
Speaker 1: ray bands were like affordable, you get them anywhere, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, like Luxotica bought them and
Speaker 1: then they became this like bespoke item. Yeah, they're all
Speaker 1: made by Lexotica, all the sunglasses. Check out our episode
Speaker 1: on that. Also, I want to shout out, I love
Speaker 1: the English language. Man, I want to shout out another
Speaker 1: great word. Volpi v u l p I n E.
Speaker 1: If you hear someone described as having a volpi face,
Speaker 1: it means they look kind of like a fox. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the Pokemon vulpis if I'm not mistaken, is is
Speaker 1: it fox like Pokemon? That's correctly false into nine tails? Yes?
Speaker 1: Do it? That sneaking enough and peaceful, and it's just
Speaker 1: for you right now, there's still facts, even if they're tangents.
Speaker 1: It's totally factual. It's totally we need to know about
Speaker 1: the evolution of Pokemon. And I'm not going to talk
Speaker 1: about anything after second generation because I do not know
Speaker 1: all nine billion Pokemon. They have not That's where you
Speaker 1: draw the line max second generation. That's when I call
Speaker 1: second generation is the last time you could catch them
Speaker 1: all in one game corre, you see the past generation,
Speaker 1: but you could actually catch them all. It was actually
Speaker 1: feasible after that. Now that doesn't that that that doesn't
Speaker 1: count be catching all the Pokemon is a fool's air
Speaker 1: And at this point it's not possible, is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying? And I think by the third generation, you
Speaker 1: couldn't catch like charmanders and Pika choose and stuff like
Speaker 1: that anymore. I don't replayed them. But second, jan second
Speaker 1: is worth that. I respect you. A man's got to
Speaker 1: have a code and shout out to our ride or
Speaker 1: die Mr Matt Frederick for the amazing performance in one
Speaker 1: of our favorite sound cues. So we know basically that
Speaker 1: this is judging people's appearance right with all the confidence
Speaker 1: of the very incorrect. And it almost becomes a medical diagnostic,
Speaker 1: like you could look at someone and say, hey, you
Speaker 1: have you are obviously ill, or you are given to
Speaker 1: being profligate or something like that. This practice, from from
Speaker 1: the age of Pythagoras continues sporadically throughout Europe in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century it has what
Speaker 1: pr folks will call a moment. It really like it
Speaker 1: goes nuts. People are all about it. And a lot
Speaker 1: of this is due to an Italian guy, Jean Batista
Speaker 1: de la Porta, who legitimizes this study of physiognomy as
Speaker 1: what he calls the product of natural science. He writes
Speaker 1: a book called the Humana Physiogneumonia, and uh, he has
Speaker 1: a lot of like I think his illustration is the
Speaker 1: one that's in that Wired article. Nol Right, it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of illustrations of human beings next to animals
Speaker 1: that he thinks they look like. Obviously he's got his
Speaker 1: thumb on the scale because he's drawing both of these illustrations,
Speaker 1: and then he kind of makes some caricatures. These are
Speaker 1: not photo realistic drawings of people. And you know, much
Speaker 1: like where we have landed with phrenology. Uh, physiognomy was
Speaker 1: also pretty fully discredited by the end of the seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: But of course there are those who continued to grasp
Speaker 1: on to the past and say, no, no, everyone else
Speaker 1: is wrong. I know what's going on here. Uh So
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century you had a guy named Johann
Speaker 1: Casper uh Lavader uh lavataire Um who was a an
Speaker 1: evangelist kind of. For physiognomy Um, he actually published a
Speaker 1: four addition um treatise. Is more than a treatise. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really like a like a tomb multi volume tome
Speaker 1: on the subject. Saying, quote again from this Wired article, uh,
Speaker 1: one could better love one's neighbor by classifying him according
Speaker 1: to his facial features. Okay, is that really what you're
Speaker 1: after to love one's neighbor by bye bye pigeon holing them,
Speaker 1: like because they look like a pigeon. Perhaps I don't know,
Speaker 1: there we go, yeah, you know, let me go. I
Speaker 1: know we've got a lot of tangents here, but let
Speaker 1: me go on on a tangent real quick. Let me
Speaker 1: set up a soapbox, Noel max Fellow, ridiculous historians. I
Speaker 1: have always objected to the old idiom in English. You
Speaker 1: can't judge a book by its cover, because what do
Speaker 1: you see at bookstores? What do you see at libraries?
Speaker 1: You see books with covers. There's a reason those covers exist. Uh,
Speaker 1: And and maybe it's a little personal at this point.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a little close because we just wrote a
Speaker 1: book that's coming out in October for stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. But anyway, yeah, absolutely correct. This
Speaker 1: guy Lavatar is saying it's good to look at people's
Speaker 1: faces and draw your own conclusions. He thought that the
Speaker 1: more attractive a person was, again in his estimation, the
Speaker 1: more moral, the more ethically sound, the better they were.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's a really cool example that Matt Simon
Speaker 1: uses by by way of comparison. Uh, like palmistry. He's
Speaker 1: applying the um the assumptions of reading palms to the
Speaker 1: assumption of reading faces. I've always kind of felt there
Speaker 1: was a kinship between palmistry and phrenology. You know. Palmistry
Speaker 1: is less about um othering and kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: figuring out how people's brains work. Uh, it's more about
Speaker 1: like divining future events, you know, based on like the
Speaker 1: layout in the lines and all that of people's palms.
Speaker 1: A little more tied to like you know, astrology or
Speaker 1: spiritualism and stuff like that. But I've always kind of
Speaker 1: felt like that they were they were sort of a
Speaker 1: kinship there. I think it's interesting how even to this
Speaker 1: day they're like kind of echoes of these things in
Speaker 1: terms of like they say that people with beards are
Speaker 1: less trustworthy or people perceive them that way, or like
Speaker 1: clean shaven people are more trustworthy. And then of course
Speaker 1: there are much more race sho really motivated in the
Speaker 1: negative way. I'm not sure what other way there is,
Speaker 1: ways of examining people's faces and noses and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: have you got nose that looks like this? You must
Speaker 1: be from this particular ethnic group, and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: So there certainly are kind of like remnants of this
Speaker 1: kind of thinking still active to this day. Absolutely. And
Speaker 1: let's give a very dubious shout out to another character
Speaker 1: in this conversation, Caesar Lombrasso. This guy Lombrasso is convinced
Speaker 1: that you can look at someone's face, regardless of their age,
Speaker 1: and tell if they are a criminal, if they are
Speaker 1: destined to be a criminal. And this is something that
Speaker 1: you and Max and I were joking about off air.
Speaker 1: This guy is doing something that a lot of scientists
Speaker 1: were doing in this age. He was grading facial features,
Speaker 1: and somehow every time he found a positive attribute it
Speaker 1: happened to be correlating with one of his own facial features.
Speaker 1: And every time there was a negative attribute, it was
Speaker 1: a facial feature that he himself did not possess. So
Speaker 1: if he had a small nose, he would say, big
Speaker 1: noses mean you are you know, like given to gambling.
Speaker 1: If he had a weak chin, he would be like,
Speaker 1: prognatic chins are you know? Those are for adulterers. It's
Speaker 1: not super sound methodology, is what I'm saying. I want
Speaker 1: to pop back to something I said in the last
Speaker 1: episode where I made a blind stab in the dark
Speaker 1: about the origins of the expression cut of your jib.
Speaker 1: I got the jim. Yeah, I've got it too, but
Speaker 1: I totally got it wrong in my mind. I'm like,
Speaker 1: jib you know, usually refers to like liking the way
Speaker 1: someone looks, so like the cut of their face or
Speaker 1: their bone structure. That's not what it is at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's to see a naval term a jib, of course,
Speaker 1: being like the sail or the mast I believe, are
Speaker 1: part of a warship. And the term was used, I
Speaker 1: believe popularized by Sir Walter Raleigh UM and the idea
Speaker 1: of liking the cut of someone's jib referred to being
Speaker 1: able to identify the nationality of the ship based on
Speaker 1: the shape of their jib before you could actually see
Speaker 1: the flag they were flying. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: drop that out there, correct my my past self, and
Speaker 1: then then now we can move on. But it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought this up because this stayed
Speaker 1: with me and I want to give it a shout
Speaker 1: out to one of the friends of the show on
Speaker 1: Instagram who actually asked me nol to talk about this etymology.
Speaker 1: You're right, the jib is a triangular sale that is
Speaker 1: between the four top mast head and what's called the
Speaker 1: jib boom. Uh. So it's weird triangle in the front
Speaker 1: of the ship for sailing. And some have more than
Speaker 1: one jib. But like you said, every country had its
Speaker 1: own style of jib, and so you could see you
Speaker 1: could see a ship and say, well, that's a Spanish
Speaker 1: ship or that's a Portuguese ship. It didn't become an
Speaker 1: idiom the way we use it today until eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: four when Sir Walter Scott said in a book Scott
Speaker 1: not Raleigh, thank you. Well, we got our Walters. We
Speaker 1: got our Walters, we got our Walter. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of just to keep in Saint Ronan's well this uh,
Speaker 1: this guy Walter says, quote if she disliked what the
Speaker 1: sailor calls the cut of their jib, and it's and
Speaker 1: then later it becomes kind of phrenological, right, kind of physiognomic,
Speaker 1: the idea, the idea that you could perceive something inborn
Speaker 1: about a per soon or an object based entirely on
Speaker 1: its appearance. So I would say, dude, this is the
Speaker 1: perfect time. This isn't even a tangent cut of your jip.
Speaker 1: We explained it. Uh, we gotta we gotta another idiomatic
Speaker 1: for the people episode. I think this would have been
Speaker 1: a real good one for that put put a pin
Speaker 1: in that. For now. I think we're we're we're doing
Speaker 1: another one. But lombroso much to your point. Been similarly
Speaker 1: to to the way a psychic might rely on reading
Speaker 1: someone's palm and the layout of the of the lines
Speaker 1: and all of that to determine some future event or
Speaker 1: some you know, prognosis about love or whatever it might be. Uh.
Speaker 1: This gentleman believed he could tell whether someone was destined
Speaker 1: for a particular lifestyle, for example, a life of crime,
Speaker 1: based on the shape and arrangement of their facial features. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also said that criminals, again is classified by him,
Speaker 1: were out of vistic, meaning they were evolutionary throwbacks. He
Speaker 1: believed that criminals were closer to apes than they were
Speaker 1: to human beings. And by apes, we mean like guerrillas,
Speaker 1: because technically all of those are primates. Uh. He would
Speaker 1: also talk at length because he was an avowed enthusiastic racist.
Speaker 1: He would also talk at length about quote unquote savages,
Speaker 1: and he thought anybody with anybody with the following features
Speaker 1: and will read amount to you was given to being uncivilized, barbaric,
Speaker 1: and criminal. He talked about oblique eyelids, which he called
Speaker 1: a Mongolian characteristic. He also referred to the projection of
Speaker 1: the lower face and jaws, something he classified as prognathism,
Speaker 1: which he associated with people of African descent. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then he also had a lot of trash to talk
Speaker 1: about noses spoiler alert, folks, noses that looked like his
Speaker 1: are the best, and knows and knows is that it
Speaker 1: don't look like his are the worst. He specifically was
Speaker 1: pretty focused on nostril size, at the idea of larger
Speaker 1: the larger the nostrils, the more inclined to uh raping
Speaker 1: and pillaging you might be. Yeah, yeah, anyway, Thank goodness
Speaker 1: he didn't steer history too far askew and that his
Speaker 1: ideas were later debunked. So physiognomy surprisingly came very close
Speaker 1: to changing the course of science and research in human history.
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin almost this is a true story, Charles Darwin.
Speaker 1: Yes that Charles almost did not hop on the HMS Beagle,
Speaker 1: which meant he almost didn't write about evolution because the
Speaker 1: captain of the beagle. A guy named Robert fitz Roy
Speaker 1: was a fan of this learning about people via their
Speaker 1: facial features thing, this whole debacle. Uh, and he loved
Speaker 1: Lavatar And when he first met Charles Darwin, Captain fitz
Speaker 1: Roy was like, I don't like your nose, though you might.
Speaker 1: You kind of got a criminal nose. Bro, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I want you on the ship. Follow your
Speaker 1: nose right off this this vessel, sir. He believed that
Speaker 1: the shape of Darwin's nose inclined him to be less
Speaker 1: resilient on a long sea journey. Yeah, he was like, uh,
Speaker 1: you got you got a low energy nose, my guy,
Speaker 1: in the way that Darwin put it was. But I
Speaker 1: think he was afterwards well satisfied that my nose had
Speaker 1: spoken false beautiful. And also shout out to our pal
Speaker 1: Jack O'Brien of Daily Zeitgeist. We always have him and
Speaker 1: Miles Gray over to talk about weird historical flexes. Jack
Speaker 1: is the guy who told us that Darwin prided himself
Speaker 1: on eating a sample of every animal he discovered. Is
Speaker 1: a hungry, hungry hippo. So we've got this setup. We
Speaker 1: know now that phrenology is descended from older equally flawed
Speaker 1: attempts at science. We tease this in part one, and
Speaker 1: we wanted to give everybody a heads up because this
Speaker 1: is uncomfortable for many people, but it's true. Phrenology was
Speaker 1: used to justify some unclean, absolutely unforgivable stereotypes, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it. Again, phrenology reached its heyday in the
Speaker 1: United States. A lot of the converse Asian round phrenology
Speaker 1: was used two perpetuate slavery. It was used to combat abolition,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because you also mentioned in the last
Speaker 1: episode been that it took off so well in America
Speaker 1: because of our kind of attitude of like self determination
Speaker 1: and like being able to kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: become our best selves in the new world or whatever.
Speaker 1: And uh, it was used to kind of bolster those
Speaker 1: kind of feelings of like, you know, empowerment for the individual.
Speaker 1: It was also used to completely disempower, disenfranchise, and in
Speaker 1: fact enslave or at the very least, you know, give
Speaker 1: a pseudo scientific um justification for enslaving other, you know, people,
Speaker 1: including including indigenous populations, including the actual Americans who were
Speaker 1: here long before the Europeans. So the US as an
Speaker 1: institution in the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties, during the
Speaker 1: height of phrenology, this institution was trying to justify the
Speaker 1: continuation of slavery, although many many people were saying, hey,
Speaker 1: every human being should be treated equally, right, didn't we
Speaker 1: have a whole thing about the pursuit of happiness? Several
Speaker 1: people said, and several pro slavery forces said, ass paperwork,
Speaker 1: don't sweat it. Let's introduce and I want a really
Speaker 1: nasty sound cue for this guy because I don't respect him.
Speaker 1: Let's introduce Charles Caldwell. There it is double thumbs down
Speaker 1: from Mr Max Williams, who Charles called who Charles Caldwell
Speaker 1: was a key player in this pro slavery movement. He
Speaker 1: used phrenology as a way to justify enslavement of human beings.
Speaker 1: And he said that people from the African diaspora, no
Speaker 1: matter you know which specific part of that huge continent,
Speaker 1: details aside, he said, anybody who is somehow descended from
Speaker 1: the African continent had to be enslaved, because he said,
Speaker 1: I've looked at a bunch of skulls, I've I've rubbed
Speaker 1: a bunch of bumps on a bunch of craniums, and
Speaker 1: I went to Paris to do it. So believe me,
Speaker 1: I went to Paris, studied the muse a different any gay,
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, I know I'm the guy you
Speaker 1: should listen to. And it was one of those confirmation
Speaker 1: biased things where it was exactly the data or the
Speaker 1: pseudo data or whatever you wanna call it, that folks
Speaker 1: needed to justify their behavior. So in thirty seven he
Speaker 1: put out a conclusion um stating that skulls of African
Speaker 1: people um again, which is in a of itself, an
Speaker 1: incredibly generalized view of a massive, very um diverse and
Speaker 1: rich culture of of people. That the skulls, the skull
Speaker 1: shape based on the study of phrenology, belied a certain
Speaker 1: tamable nous, a certain need to be subjugated, a certain
Speaker 1: passiveness that that really wanted to be um exploited like
Speaker 1: like not exploited, like it was like this is what
Speaker 1: this is what they want, this is what they're they're
Speaker 1: made for the people in question here, which again incredibly
Speaker 1: narrow view. It's absurd. First of all, it's completely self
Speaker 1: serving to those who would have loved to continue to
Speaker 1: own and exploit slaves for their own purposes for as
Speaker 1: long as humanly possible. Yeah. Absolutely, And this unfortunately added
Speaker 1: fuel to the fire of the pro slavery institutions, and
Speaker 1: it gave slave owners and supporters of chattel slavery, it
Speaker 1: gave them something that appeared to them very much like
Speaker 1: quantitative AMMO. They felt like they could point to this
Speaker 1: and say, oh, it's not me, these are just the facts.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a very dangerous thing. You're probably wondering
Speaker 1: at this point how phrenology was applied to Native American populations. Well,
Speaker 1: we have more bad news for you. There's a guy
Speaker 1: named Samuel Morton and uh, several other people. This was
Speaker 1: a movement who used phrenology to justify things like the
Speaker 1: trail of tears, to justify removing these communities from the
Speaker 1: land they had lived on for thousands of years. No,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking specifically about a book called Crania America, know,
Speaker 1: which Morton wrote in eighteen thirty nine. And I want
Speaker 1: to give a big shout out to Kate Tatowski, who
Speaker 1: over at Vassar wrote phrenology and scientific racism in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Tatowski gives us a very um somber view
Speaker 1: of Morton's actions. A lot of good articles that are
Speaker 1: there on that blog for the archaeology department over a
Speaker 1: Vasser highly recommend giving that a browse some good rabbit
Speaker 1: holes to to fall into. But yeah, this was all
Speaker 1: a way of using quote unquote science to determine that
Speaker 1: another race was inferior. M Yeah, he said there are
Speaker 1: natural differences. In his mind, there were four quote unquote
Speaker 1: separate species, and he studied. He was like rubbing up
Speaker 1: a bunch of skulls, right, and then he said, based
Speaker 1: on my vibes, because vibes they were. This was not objective,
Speaker 1: he said. He said, the minds of the Native American
Speaker 1: populations are different than that of the white men. And uh,
Speaker 1: he got cited in so much propaganda because there were
Speaker 1: Western settlers right making their way toward what we call
Speaker 1: California and the Pacific Northwest today, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: hear good things about themselves, so they would read this
Speaker 1: and they would say, oh, it's not me, it's the science. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They referred to uh, these people in the Native American
Speaker 1: people as um being quote adverse to cultivation and slow
Speaker 1: in acquiring knowledge, so just basically completely character assassinating them
Speaker 1: in just about every way. Yeah, I like that phrase
Speaker 1: character assassination. Yeah. Another fan of Morton's work, President Andrew Jackson,
Speaker 1: that as Yeah, so phrenology, that's the dark side. It
Speaker 1: did a lot of bad stuff, and it supported a
Speaker 1: lot of evil actions by people against other people. But
Speaker 1: we do have to recognize that this is one of
Speaker 1: the earlier trains of thought that led to some actual breakthroughs,
Speaker 1: the recognization that different parts of the brain have different functions.
Speaker 1: And this is really exciting to me. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course phrenologists didn't ever figure out what those actual
Speaker 1: functions were, but the concept the different parts of your
Speaker 1: brain can do different things pretty amazing. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: like accurate, you know. And in the same way we
Speaker 1: were talking about there were parts of the ground word
Speaker 1: for phrenology that weren't like that far off. It was
Speaker 1: just kind of taking something that ended up being true
Speaker 1: to an iological conclusion. M m. Yeah. You know. Now
Speaker 1: we we know that different regions of the brain control
Speaker 1: things like motor skills or language or perception, right, nurse,
Speaker 1: you know, was it appropri exception the sense of one's
Speaker 1: body and space? That's right, Yeah, Like that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of the root of a lot of modern day science.
Speaker 1: We call it neuroscience, and that's where we take the
Speaker 1: final act of phrenology. Here. Contemporary neuroscience continues to kind
Speaker 1: of wrestle with some of the accidental progress made by phrenology.
Speaker 1: You know what it reminds me of I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this. I didn't want to tell you till we're
Speaker 1: on air. But like alchemy, right, Alchemy a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who thought they were learning magic, right, they thought
Speaker 1: they were doing sorcery, and then they accidentally became the
Speaker 1: predecessor of chemistry. I mean that how it goes, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean it's this, you know, a trial and error
Speaker 1: thinking you're pursuing one thing and then happy accidents lead
Speaker 1: to another discipline entirely. Um. See that in technology, We
Speaker 1: see that in you know, innovations of all kinds. Even
Speaker 1: if the original thing is is entirely kind of gross
Speaker 1: or bad, it doesn't mean that it can't lead to
Speaker 1: interesting discoveries that can then be used in positive ways
Speaker 1: down the line. Yeah, and this is this is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a guy who has now appeared across several of
Speaker 1: our shows still, the Harvard Psychologists Professor Edwin G. Boring.
Speaker 1: We mentioned him in Standardized Testing as well, so old
Speaker 1: Doc boring In he writes a book called History of
Speaker 1: Experimental Psychology, and he says, quote, it is almost correct
Speaker 1: to say that scientific psychology was born of phrenology out
Speaker 1: of wedlock with science. I think that's so poetic. The
Speaker 1: idea of being born out of wedlock is usually considered
Speaker 1: kind of like a bad thing or in some way unnatural,
Speaker 1: or like the idea of being a bastard or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a negative term, being unholy or something.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean that that person can't go on
Speaker 1: to do great things. And it all goes back to
Speaker 1: this understanding that physiological characteristics of the brain can influence behavior,
Speaker 1: and that behavior can alter our physiology. You know, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: for instance, the best examples of mind over matter that
Speaker 1: I have ever encountered have been London taxi drivers who
Speaker 1: take a test called the Knowledge, which you know, doesn't
Speaker 1: allow them to use Who's any sort of GPS or
Speaker 1: any sort of maps. They have to keep it in
Speaker 1: their head and over time, over decades, the physical structure
Speaker 1: of their brain changes. You can also see this with
Speaker 1: certain monastic orders. Your thoughts can alter parts of your brain,
Speaker 1: and the principle is the same, the idea that the
Speaker 1: mind is not a uniform thing but more kind of
Speaker 1: a mix tape of these independent wait for it, faculties.
Speaker 1: Dr gall loved calling stuff faculties. Yeah. For example, like
Speaker 1: any sixty one. A French surgeon named Paul Broca, who's
Speaker 1: also an anthropologist, demonstrated that by damaging a particular region
Speaker 1: of the brain just about four square centimeters large, it
Speaker 1: can actually make a person unable to speak coherently, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't affect their comprehension of other people's speech. It's
Speaker 1: the same way like you know, if you have like
Speaker 1: a stroke, for example, it can affect your bill to speak,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't mean that you can't completely understand what
Speaker 1: others are saying. Like I think of the character and
Speaker 1: breaking bad Um Hector Salamanca, who this isn't a spoiler
Speaker 1: because you meet him at the beginning and he's already
Speaker 1: liked this. Uh. He has some sort of events that
Speaker 1: leads him leaves him um somewhat paralyzed and also lacking
Speaker 1: the ability to speak, but he clearly can understand everything
Speaker 1: that everyone is saying to him and can communicate with
Speaker 1: a series of bell dings, a little yeah, exactly, a
Speaker 1: little lobby bell that's sort of like wrapped around is
Speaker 1: his wheelchair. And he can also do the thing where
Speaker 1: he points to letter. He you know, does a series
Speaker 1: of beeples depending on what letters someone's pointing to, and
Speaker 1: he can communicate perfectly well. Another example of this in
Speaker 1: history is the story of a New England railroad worker
Speaker 1: named Phineas Gage. There is in fact a full episode
Speaker 1: about this on our sister podcast, Stuff You Miss in
Speaker 1: History class who got an iron bar like like like
Speaker 1: final destination of the styles rocketed into his his his
Speaker 1: his head, and it peers his brain right through his cheekbone,
Speaker 1: exited to the top of the skull. Not only did
Speaker 1: he live, but his sense of reasoning and language were
Speaker 1: completely intact. But it did change kind of his dude,
Speaker 1: it turned him to a pill. It's a true story.
Speaker 1: I have been fascinated with this. I'm so glad we're
Speaker 1: mentioning it. Before his injury, Phineas what snow around like swell, dude,
Speaker 1: you know you could kick it. You cant hang with him.
Speaker 1: He was genteel, he was amicable, but afterwards this guy
Speaker 1: was like always down to fight. He was full of vices.
Speaker 1: He was super irresponsible and flaky. He started cursing like
Speaker 1: a sailor as the idiom goes, and his behavior was
Speaker 1: so dangerous that women in the area were warned not
Speaker 1: to be around him. Basically calling back to our etymology
Speaker 1: reference that iron bar changed the cut of his jib
Speaker 1: in a very real way. Yeah yeah, yeah. And this
Speaker 1: guy named Antonio Demasio is a neuroscientists the University of
Speaker 1: Iowa College of Medicine actually studied the Gauge case. Demasio
Speaker 1: and his wife, who's also a neuroscientist, recently created a
Speaker 1: three D image of Gauge's injury UM, and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of mapped the bars path through his brain. They
Speaker 1: found that it had damaged the same region of his
Speaker 1: brain that had been injured in patients of THEIRS who
Speaker 1: had very very similar results. Yea, and fun call back here.
Speaker 1: In eighteen a lot of people came to examine the
Speaker 1: case of Phineas Gauge, and one of those people was
Speaker 1: a phrenology expert, a disciple of the Fowlers called Nelson
Speaker 1: Sizer and Dimazio. Actually, Um had some pretty interesting things
Speaker 1: to say about what parts of you know, the unit
Speaker 1: working of the brain. Phrenologists got right. He had this
Speaker 1: to say in an article from Smithsonian mag called Facing
Speaker 1: a Bumpy History about phrenology. He said that the work
Speaker 1: of phrenologists was in fact, quote quite astounding for their time,
Speaker 1: but that they quote did not understand that even the
Speaker 1: areas we have identified, quite different from their organs, are
Speaker 1: interdependent parts of a larger brain system. Yeah, there are.
Speaker 1: It's almost like fingers on a hand, right, Like your
Speaker 1: fingers can move independently, but they're all part of a
Speaker 1: larger superstructure. And you know, it's pretty amazing that people
Speaker 1: could come up with these concepts, and it's also very
Speaker 1: disappointing that they misdirected these innovations. Uh yeah, for a
Speaker 1: long time. You can argue again, And I think I've
Speaker 1: got harped on this in the last episode. By sheer
Speaker 1: force of will and and enthusiasm and confidence, they probably
Speaker 1: set back the course of science quite quite a few clicks.
Speaker 1: I was trying. I was thinking about this as well. Man,
Speaker 1: the the like, um, what do you call it? Meditation
Speaker 1: for the day for me after we finished part one
Speaker 1: was may I always have the strident confidence of the
Speaker 1: aggressively wrong, Like it's like to espouse my crackpot theories
Speaker 1: even if I'm not quite sure they're true. Right, let
Speaker 1: me turn my correctness down to one and my confidence
Speaker 1: up to a twelve. This science continues, though, science that
Speaker 1: is in some ways um precedented by phrenology. There was
Speaker 1: a recent study at the University of Oxford where researchers
Speaker 1: use their own brain scanning software to ask empirically for
Speaker 1: the first time ever, whether there is truly any correlation
Speaker 1: between the bumps on your head and the aspects of
Speaker 1: your personality, between the outside of this car you call
Speaker 1: your body and the interior engine of your mind. And
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting. I think this is something people
Speaker 1: are waiting for. What did they used m r I
Speaker 1: brain analysis? Yeah, they use the kind of software that
Speaker 1: does brain analyzes um of of of mri I UH
Speaker 1: data and these the software would typically be used to
Speaker 1: kind of do a cross section of the parts of
Speaker 1: the skull, allowing analysis to be done on just the
Speaker 1: brain UM. But what they did was they kind of
Speaker 1: reverse engineer the software, at least reversed its instructions to
Speaker 1: allow the skull to exclusively be mapped and UH and
Speaker 1: and dissected electronically. Yeah, and what they and of course
Speaker 1: proves that phrenology is a pseudoscience. It's quackery of the
Speaker 1: highest order. But they they did find some pretty funny
Speaker 1: associations when they were looking at these brain bumps, as
Speaker 1: he said, hackey, their software. They said there was a
Speaker 1: strong positive association between the trait a massiveness, the arousal
Speaker 1: or feeling of sexual desire, and words. This means that, uh.
Speaker 1: And again take this as it is. This is just
Speaker 1: one study, folks, but we thought this was delightful. Uh
Speaker 1: and and very funny. What they found in plain English
Speaker 1: is that the more sexual partners a person has had,
Speaker 1: the more likely they are to have verbal fluency in
Speaker 1: a word naming task. Fascinating, weird, weird, They're just bombs this.
Speaker 1: This topic just kind of keeps on going. I proposed, Ben,
Speaker 1: there's there is there's some stuff in here that I
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna get to. But I do propose
Speaker 1: that we end or at least come close to ending
Speaker 1: um in stwards, wrapping up with something that we sort
Speaker 1: of teeth. At the beginning of the episode, we promised
Speaker 1: we were going to get back to Mr. T. And
Speaker 1: that's t for Tarantino. Um. You may recall we spoke uh.
Speaker 1: I believe we all gave him thumbs downs and booze uh,
Speaker 1: Mr and Mr Caldwell, Right, yeah, yep, we're going to
Speaker 1: Charles Caldwell. Yeah, we're going to Django, aren't we going
Speaker 1: to Django? Charles Caldwell was a doctor from Kentucky who
Speaker 1: was a big fan of slave ownership, uh and a
Speaker 1: big fan of phrenology and and was a big reason
Speaker 1: or it was he was the person to travel to
Speaker 1: Paris and all that stuff to kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: bring that medical fad uh to the masses here in
Speaker 1: the United States in an effort to justify the barbaric
Speaker 1: practice of slave ownership. And you'll recall the character of
Speaker 1: Calvin Candy you may know from the memes. He's he's
Speaker 1: the one that's got his pinky up and making that
Speaker 1: little face, you know. Leonardo DiCaprio, I actually saw a
Speaker 1: funny thing that miles of Daily Zeitgeis pointed out where
Speaker 1: it was like an image of a poster you could
Speaker 1: buy that's just that image, um. And he argued that
Speaker 1: that image, devoid of meme text, is really just an
Speaker 1: image of of an excited slave owner. He's probably just
Speaker 1: talking about slave stuff. But you'll recall that that character
Speaker 1: in the movie he he he breaks out a skull
Speaker 1: of of what he describes as as an African man. Yeah, yeah, Candy, gentleman,
Speaker 1: you will have my curiosity, but now you have my attention,
Speaker 1: he said to phrenology, because again it made that character,
Speaker 1: who was based on real people, feel good about the
Speaker 1: evil things it was doing. And uh, Tarantino, excellent, excellent writer.
Speaker 1: It's very much aware of this. Phrenology is thoroughly debunked. Obvious, Lee.
Speaker 1: If you are rubbing people's skulls, you're not gonna learn
Speaker 1: whether they are good at math or whether they are
Speaker 1: talented linguistically. But it was so popular across the entire world,
Speaker 1: not just the US, not just Europe. We're talking about India,
Speaker 1: Australia and so on. And Candy, as you said, is
Speaker 1: definitely based on Charles called Well. And you have to
Speaker 1: wonder what called Well would have thought about Django Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, aside from the bloody end revenge fantasy style
Speaker 1: of of of his character and many of his compatriots,
Speaker 1: I bet he would have been proud of the depiction.
Speaker 1: You know, I think if he was the same version
Speaker 1: of himself that he was in those days, I think
Speaker 1: he probably would have been like, yeah, that was a badass,
Speaker 1: because you know, he brings out that skull, he hacks
Speaker 1: away at the back of it. He points to the
Speaker 1: size of a particular region or ridge as being a
Speaker 1: indicative of submissiveness. Umame ability. That yeah, tame ability. Another
Speaker 1: one of those horrible things that we talked about called
Speaker 1: Well himself actually espousing. So this was all real stuff
Speaker 1: Tarantino pulled from history to you know, really flesh out
Speaker 1: this character. And I think it's a It's a fascinating character,
Speaker 1: absolutely abhorrent, but really well done and well played by
Speaker 1: by DiCaprio because he just kind of despised the guy
Speaker 1: from the moment he walks on the scene. But I
Speaker 1: don't think he's doing anything that Carl himself wouldn't have
Speaker 1: thought was like yeah, rights me also called well as
Speaker 1: a as a traveler to the modern age, would have
Speaker 1: been fascinated if we said this in another show. He
Speaker 1: would have been amazed by the idea of moving pictures.
Speaker 1: He would have freaked out when he knew you could
Speaker 1: get sentnamon easily anyway, Uh, this is this is the
Speaker 1: end of our series on phrenology. We hope that you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. And as Noll said, we are scratching the surface.
Speaker 1: There are many, many, many other characters and events in
Speaker 1: history that are oddly related to this strange, distinct pseudo science.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear what you think. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thanks also to our super producer,
Speaker 1: Uh Noel, you gave him the street name smooth Head
Speaker 1: Mr Max Smooth called smooth skull excuse me, which actually
Speaker 1: if you, if you're a if you're a Fallout player
Speaker 1: like I know Max is, I think that's what the
Speaker 1: super mutants refer to humans as not smooth skulls, but
Speaker 1: smooth skins, So it's appropriate there, Max Williams for the
Speaker 1: whim and huge thanks to Max's bro, the very talented
Speaker 1: Alex Williams. Long may you wander on your sojourn of
Speaker 1: this fair uh country of ours. Alex, hope you're well
Speaker 1: for composing this banging bob. Thanks also to Christopher Osciotis,
Speaker 1: thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat, thanks to our awesome research
Speaker 1: associate Zach Williams. Can't wait to have him on the
Speaker 1: show one day soon and of course, of course thanks
Speaker 1: to avowed for knowlogists Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister.
Speaker 1: Do you think he's going to hear that? I don't
Speaker 1: think he'll hear We'll see you nice timebox. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows