When It Was Cool Dark

We return to our metaphorical museum of curiosities this week for a very curious object indeed. Spoken of only in passing in the Bible but in greater detail in Khabbalic literature, we examine The Ancient of Days. The Ancient of Days seems to be a device of some sort which had to be assembled and cleaned in a specific manner during the Biblical Exodus. One author believed the device to be a machine which produced manna. He then built a working model based on the text and produced food with it. What is the strange Ancient of Days?

This episode we enter our mythical museum of curiosities and find a real object that can be periodically seen and studied- the Shroud of Turin. Many Christians over the centuries have revered this cloth as the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. The reason? A faint, but distinct image of a man is somehow visible on the cloth with evidence of injuries to the areas one would expect from a man crucified. There is conflicting evidence concerning the dating of the shroud and the Catholic Church, despite revering the shroud, has yet to officially venerate it. Let's examine the Shroud of Turin.

There is a carving in the ancient Egyptian temple of Dendera that seems, on first sight, to show an Egyptian holding a giant light bulb. The image is striking and seems obvious which begs the question: What were the ancient Egyptians doing with an electric light bulb? Is the explanation that simple? Come inside the DragonKing Dark museum of curiosities and let's examine this seemingly out of place artifact and let's try to determine what is really going on here. This week let's discuss the Dendera Lights.

We return to our mythical museum of curiosities again this week looking at objects of mystery and power and examine a fictional object this time - The Helmet of Fate. Though the Helmet of Fate is a fictional object of comics and television it tells us something about our fascination with magic, ancient Egypt, and forbidden knowledge. The stories of Dr. Fate and mystical helmet reflect other stories from literature and tells us something about a world beyond our ability to see.

Join host Karl Stern as we open the museum of curiosities again this week and pull out an actual real artifact. An artifact that we can really see in a museum, study, and make models of: the Antikythera Mechanism. The Antikythera Mechanism is a vastly complex analog computing device dating to presumably 200 BC or earlier with hugely complicated gears and switches that track celestial movements, eclipses, and more, sometimes down to the very hour. The lost wisdom of our ancestors is astonishing and this artifact seems out of place in the timeline. Let's talk about it.

DragonKing Dark returns relaunched and rebranded with a new focus. It's DragonKing Dark 2.0 and we are now curators of a massive and mythical museum of curiosity. Some items are real and some imagined and some are something in between. But all the items and objects we will study tell us something about who we are, what we believe, what we imagine, and speak to our fears and hopes. Today, we study the best theories and ideas about the Biblical Ark of the Covenant. What was it and where might it be? Join us for the new DragonKing Dark Podcast.

Next week DragonKing Dark Podcast relaunches with a new theme and ideas. This week we present an episode of our sister podcast Those Who Wander, where Karl is joined by Tonya from When It Was Cool to discuss near death experiences and how they have effected those who have had them. Have some people caught a glimpse of the after-life? Is there a scientific explanation for the similar experiences shared by those who may have momentarily died? All this and more!

This week on DragonKing Dark we continue our countdown to episode 250 where we will be starting a new fresh season of our podcast. This week we present to you a Patreon special called Night of the Bullshido, where host Karl Stern takes a look into the fictional world of not so effective martial arts. We look at some martial arts "masters" who claim fantastic or supernatural powers and look at how this scam became so widespread, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Grab your nunchucks and ninja stars and let's go defend our style and school.

We conclude our seven deadly sins series this week by examining gluttony and the sin that Karl thinks is the most sinister of them all- pride. Are these "sins" simply religious dogma or is there honest truth in avoiding them? We examine these questions and more in this bonus size edition of DragonKing Dark Podcast.

The second of our three part series on the seven deadly sins takes a look at two vices that go hand in hand: envy and greed. While they may seem like one and same they actually, together, cover a multitude of emotions that cause tremendous trouble for people. From Black Friday fist fights over towels, to theft, envy and greed have caused humankind a lot of trouble.