Scott: That's easy. Puritans. No, yeah -- in a way that's true. Actually, the first sea serpent sightings in New England were in the early 17th century. Although the Gloucester serpent that I talked about. There was a lot of discussion about what that meant and even some efforts later to connect it to the supernatural. The very first sightings byPuritans in 1630s, 1640s, they were convinced these were manifestations of Satan. Big surprise with them, right? Because everything was. These were people who even thought black
particular sheet music was on whoever was the 1850s version of Ryan Seacrest's top ten list of best-selling sheet music. So the Sea Serpent Polka. Very, very popular. Captains started naming their ships the USS Sea Serpent . It just became a very important part of American culture and representation.
And so even when we were making no money, even when it was a couple hundred bucks a week to be a part of the development-- at the Public Has the serpent been revealed?
This may well be his blood brother. with a sort of serpent tail.
But for the most part, unfortunately, they do end in some kind of violence. an unparalleled serpent . So I had a snake pin.
I'll talk about today is first of all the 19th century American obsession with the sea serpent . You may not know that there was a 19th century American obsession with the sea serpent , but after today you will be aware how obsessed Americans were with this creature and then something that you probably know a good bit more about. That is the obsession with the serial killer and with the slasher. Kind of the murdering maniac, hook for a hand.
in Boston featuring a number of kind of America's emerging scientific elite. They took a special interest in the sea serpent , decided they were going to work up a zoological profile of it. Started collecting a variety of eyewitness accounts including the eye witness accounts that came from the Gloucester Harbor siting. And then at one point, actually believed
What sort of rituals are you creating? of "Two Serpents Rise" dying of extreme blood loss and could reasonably be said to have a skewed perspective on the situation.
And so even when we were making no money, even when it was a couple hundred bucks a week to be a part of the development-- at the Public were asking if I was the serpent .
And so even when we were making no money, even when it was a couple hundred bucks a week to be a part of the development-- at the Public LESLIE ODOM JR.: Or the serpent .
was struck into the four directions. It was seen as defeating the serpent enemy of the gods. There was a lot of mythology around it and a lot of ceremony around it.
about that term -- and then a more contemporary one. But let's get to the sea serpent first. Indeed, Americans were obsessed with this creature in the 19th century. And when I say "obsessed," I don't just mean as a pop culture phenomenon. I don't just mean that there were sort of marginal people in American society who were
what I did was I put a macro lens on. That shot in the lower right is how you feel when you look at the shark. Most shark pictures are shot super wide angle or fisheye, and so you get this looooong serpentine look to the shark. That is not what they look like. This shot really shows the girth of these animals. And then as they get closer, you can start to focus on detail. Some gill detail, eye detail. This shot is an uncropped shot
merely a client, just a client, and not a member of the community of which the state is the physical manifestation. My book, "Rehabilitating the Serpent ," tries to analyze and understand and come to terms with this phenomenon, the organization becoming institutionalized, becoming a barrier to the achievement of the very goal that inspired the original organizers.
for science, Louis Agassiz famous zoologist connected to Harvard took a look at at it and said, "you know, this isn't actually a spawn of a sea serpent . This is actually a fairly common New England water snake that happens to have a skin disease, some kind of skin infection that has caused it to have all these strange markings." New England Linnaean Society disappeared about two years later. Essentially in kind of complete embarrassment. They only formed in 1818, so they weren't
around that long. There were other reasons for their dissolution, but I think this was part of it. So after this, the scientific or emerging professionalized scientific community in America sort of takes a turn when it comes to the sea serpent . They start saying things like eyewitness accounts are not enough. That's not what we mean by scientific evidence. Scientific evidence has to do with having a specimen in a lab that
sounds a little excessive to you, that's because Thor never half-assed anything in his life, especially revenge. Don't feel too badly for Loki though, he gets a crack at vengeance eventually and Thor gets a rematch with the Midgard Serpent , but I deal with both of those in a later chapter when I talk about Ragnarok, and that's the Thor chapter. Um, so, that's the sort of stuff that I like to read about and so that's the sort of stuff that I like to write about. And it horrible and brutal but I have a very large following
They're actually just called nasal clicks. I don't think we have time for a serpentine, but I mean-- is there anybody here that can count sheep by their feet
And Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Lightning Fields" project deliberately harks back to earlier technological experimentation, like Etienne Leopold That show on light that was at the Serpentine a while back had some terrific examples of what one could call flash light, but used
days and exploration of the oceans in particular it's it's a ship going off the edge of the Earth they were worried the sea serpents whirlpools scurvy I mean they went through all these things and I think we're sort of
So you can see when we're pushing sort of on the pixel, you can push and hold, and you can measure sort of the lightest finger taps all the way to very, very So we try to accommodate that geometrically by building highly serpentine traces where we can accommodate sort of longitudinally or torsionally
Oh, I should say one thing that made Takamine unique was that unlike most scientists of the time, he didn't mind patenting his processes. What Alderotti also figured out was that if you added a serpentine coil from the top of a still and then immersed that in cold water,
Having served my four years this time on the board, I stood back again in 2012. As I mentioned, my book "Rehabilitating the Serpent " tackles this phenomenon of organizations becoming institutions often with values that are in direct contravention of those of the originators.
And when I have something important to say or an insight I want to communicate, I must do it through story. And so I want to read you a story from "Rehabilitating the Serpent " in which I oppose the end point of religion with its starting point in the hope that people will recognize that institutional-- institutionalizing religion is another travesty
up and down it. And here's one of these walls going 'round these enclosures with a serpent type figure coming out of it. You see another image of that there, and these sort of bared teeth and fangs of these sort of mythical creatures,
-- one of its spawn essentially -- about three feet in length. And there had actually been a lot of discussion about the spawn of the sea serpent . There was all this talk in 1817, 1818 -- well, maybe this thing has shown up in Gloucester Harbor because it's going to spawn and that's going to be really terrible for the fishing industry. They were taking it this seriously they thought
the same sort of discussion. By the way, just side note, that in fact was an actual set of fossils. It's simply that it was fossils that had been taxidermied together to look like a sea serpent and became so popular that Herman Melville actually mentions it in Moby Dick. There's a reference in Moby Dick to these fossils that have been discovered in northern Alabama that some people believe
I'm not sure that that's how people actually experience the world though. I think that the images that they see in popular narratives -- whether that's more recently in film or longer ago in discussions about sightings of the sea serpent -- has a lot to do with how they experience history. And so, then the monster becomes not just a sort of marginalized entertainment or interesting
What sort of rituals are you creating? But then we see the entire picture from another perspective in "Two Serpents Rise," which is the next book.
And the Aztecs worshipped Quetzacoatl, a god who took the form of a feathered serpent .
And so even when we were making no money, even when it was a couple hundred bucks a week to be a part of the development-- at the Public Well, it says, "or the serpent ," so I guess not.
Beautiful, fantastic. And we have a serpent on the ceilings because I don't build restaurants with architects.
they jump off Kong's shoulders at times and haul his arms into the air to swap the planes or to fight the serpent and this kind of thing.
But for the most part, unfortunately, they do end in some kind of violence. And I said, because Saddam Hussein compared me to an unparalleled serpent .
Minister of Celebrity in Justice, Chief of Staff in Serpent , Blessed Page-turner of the Great Book of Misdeeds and Overestimations,
And the television screens showed us a ship built of dead men's nails, a serpent , a wolf, all bigger than the mind could hold,
that they appear in. That's a little abstract. So let's talk about a couple of very specific examples that I think will help you see this. And what I've decided I'll talk about today is first of all the 19th century American obsession with the sea serpent . You may not know that there was a 19th century American obsession with the sea serpent , but after today you will be aware how obsessed Americans were with this creature and then something that you probably know a good bit more about. That
Thor was also a master of fishing, which seems like it would be kind of incongruous for a guy who shoots lightning out of his hands. Nevertheless, the presumable-superconductive god once went with his buddy on a weekend fishing trip aimed at catching the horrifically-evil Midgard Serpent ; a giant sea monster so enormous that its body measured the entire circumference of the earth. Thor rowed out to the edge of the world in a crappy little wooden boat, threw his line in, snagged the beast, and lifted it up out of the water, but just as
it's called chrysotile, and it belongs to a mineral family known as the serpentines.
Hack into God, stories of creation, serpents and eggs.
interested in the possibility of these creatures. I actually mean that, even in the emerging scientific community in America. Sort of the beginnings of natural science. There was a real interest in whether or not sea serpents were real. In fact, no less a scientific name than Charles Lyell the geologist was absolutely convinced, based on eyewitness accounts, that sea serpents were an undiscovered animal. A creature that we simply
science. There was a real interest in whether or not sea serpents were real. In fact, no less a scientific name than Charles Lyell the geologist was absolutely convinced, based on eyewitness accounts, that sea serpents were an undiscovered animal. A creature that we simply didn't have an exhibit or specimen of and that we were eventually going to find. Now, at least one
China was one of those places where on the map it might as well have said 'beyond here serpents lie'. We just didn't know what was going on there.
view of the empty town far below, with its serpentine streets and quiet houses and shining untouched river.
Odin's gonna die, Thor will die. He'll get killed by one of Loki's children, the Midgard Serpent . Odin will be devoured by a wolf.
of -- and this is not the only -- but one of kind of the trigger points for interest in this creature was a series of sightings not too far from here. In 1817, there were a series of sea serpent sightings in Gloucester Harbor. In fact, hundreds of people claimed that this creature, and they actually drew a picture of it, this creature showed itself in the harbor. Was seen by whalers who got out in
a variety of eyewitness accounts including the eye witness accounts that came from the Gloucester Harbor siting. And then at one point, actually believed they had found a specimen. And here's a drawing of it that a member of the society did. Thought that they had found a specimen of one of the sea serpent 's babies -- one of its spawn essentially -- about three feet in length.
is confirmed. Doesn't have to do with how many people have seen it. And the American public's response to this was, "Well, okay, fine. But sea serpents are awesome. And what if they do exist?" And so, the sea serpent becomes a really important part of American popular culture. As you can see here. This is from the 1850s. This is a piece of sheet music from the 1850s. Sort of the 19th
tradition. And I wanted to show you this image, in part, because you can see where this is going and you can see where the turn away from science fits in with this. This great wonder of the world -- Hydrarchos -- sea serpent . Supposedly 114 feet in length. This traveled all over the country. This is actually from an advertisement for a show in Brooklyn. And unfortunately you can't see
are the bones of fallen angels, he says. Became quite a important part of sort of the American psyche in the 19th century. Now, not all monsters are quite so friendly and interesting as the sea serpent . And in fact in some ways at least one of the new monsters -- the late 20th century monsters -- that have obsessed Americans is sort of the