OMNIA EXEUNT IN MYSTERIUM

Dr Justin Mullis drops into the Explorers Club to discuss the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island. Topics include:

-Japanese cryptozoology

-The depiction of apes in popular culture

-Kong as a colonial Lost World story?

-the ecology of Skull Island

-The significance of the 70s Vietnam setting

-John Goodman and the Monarch organisation

-Kong’s reinvention as a Kaiju

-Some of the best CGI in a recent creature film?

-The Skullcrawlers’ link to the original 1933 King Kong

-Cryptozoology in the Monsterverse

-The mystical gateway that often guards the Lost Worlds

Links:

-Justin’s academia edu

-Justin's Notes for the episode (availability pending)

-Justin at Adventures In Poor Taste

-From Cryptids to Kaiju

-Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, John Rieder

-Kaiju Transmissions episode

-G-Fest 2024

-King Kong Cometh, Paul A. Woods

-Kong Unmade, John Lemay

-Encyclopedia of Weird War Stories, Paul Green

-The Great War and Prehistoric Memory, Ross J Wilson

Return to Skull Island back in 1933 with Eddie Guimont to see whether there's more to the overlooked SON OF KONG than you've heard. Topics include:

-UPDATE ON PERCY FAWCETT’s LOST CITY!

-Occult beliefs in Bolsonaro’s government

-Was Kong intended to be sympathetic?

-The origins & making of Son of Kong

-The real-life colonial adventures of Kong’s creators

-The social and economic world of Kong’s 1933

-The trope of the ancient lost monument-builders

-The ethnicity of the Skull Islanders

-Willis O’Brien’s special effects

-Lovecraft and Mysterious Islands

Links:

Jason Colavito on Percy Fawcett

https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/a-plausible-explanation-for-the-lost-city-of-manuscript-512

Kong: The History Of A Movie Icon, Ray Morton, 2005

https://www.raymorton.com/books/king-kong-the-history-of-a-movie-icon-from-fay-wray-to-peter-jackson/

When The Stars Are Right, Edward Guimont and Horace A Smith

https://www.hippocampuspress.com/other-authors/nonfiction/when-the-stars-are-right-h.-p.-lovecraft-and-astronomy

From Crypto's to Kaiju, Justin Mullen (currently restricted access)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03080188241234141

Cian chats with Michael Robinson, author of The Lost White Tribe. Topics include:

-the story of Henry Morton Stanley and his 'white' Ruwenzori tribe, a story that was famous at the time but is almost never mentioned today even in biographies of Stanley

-the birth of adventure fiction, the obsession with plots about lost cities and lost races

-connections to the life and work of HR Haggard, his place as a founder of lost world literature, his fictional lost white tribes in King Solomons Mines and She

-Richard Ogelsby Marsh's white tribe in Panama

-Ernst Schafer and the 1938 Nazi Tibet expedition

LINKS:

The Lost White Tribe book

Time To Eat The Dogs podcast

Buy Me A Coffee

A lost race in Panama and some man-eating trees show up in this Amazing Stories tale from 1926, written by traveller and finder of Lost Worlds in fact and fiction, A. Hyatt Verrill!

Buy Me A Coffee

Read the story here

A lost world comic book from the 50s drawn by the great Frank Frazetta!

Cian explains changes coming, a new show, a slight change of theme, and some behind-the-scenes info!

Cameron McCormick returns to discuss cryptozoological bestiaries that stretch the boundaries of belief with huge numbers of undiscovered critters running around.

*NOTE: I made an error in referring to The Bigfoot Filmography. The book I actually had in mind was Cryptid Cinema by Stephen Bisette. I’m away from home for a few days but I’ll fix that when I’m back!

LINKS:

WoW on BuyMeACoffee:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wideatlantic

Cameron on Mastadon:

https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]

Cameron’s blog:

https://thelordgeekington.wordpress.com/

Trey The Explainer: The Native Bigfoot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zJhJsdoTYQ

The Screaming Skulls by Elliot O’Donnell:

https://archive.org/stream/CreepyStories/OdonnellTheScreamingSkullsAndOtherGhosts_djvu.txt

‘True Giant’ source article, the Straits Times, 196:

https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19610212-1.2.77

Commendable Commotion Podcast

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/matthew-tannam-elgie

Blake Smith’s article on the Kentucky Goblins:

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/01/guns-and-goblins-what-really-happened-during-the-kentucky-alien-invasion/

In celebration of the book 'When The Stars Are Right, HP Lovecraft and Astronomy' by Edward Guimont and Horace A. Smith, Eddie returns to the cabin. We tackle the Old Gent Of Providence and his fascination with turn-of-the-century astronomy, as well as his various connections to the great and good of early planetary science fiction! Including, but not limited to:

-Teenage Lovecraft meets Percival Lowell, and worries he's been too harsh on the latter's Martian canal theories

-Lovecraft plays a skeptical Scully when the good people of Providence think they've seen a Christmas mystery airship!

-Lovecraft writes amateur astronomical columns for various newspapers

-Lovecraft writes a (rather fantastic) short story set on what we'd now call a charmingly old-fashioned Venus

-How Lovecraft used elements of old Mars literature to plot At The Mountains Of Madness

-And HPL's thoughts on Jules Verne, the War of the Worlds, Edison's Conquest Of Mars, and LOADS MORE.

LINKS

When The Stars Are Right by Edward Guimont and Horace A Smith

Edward Guimont on Twitter

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We chat with Dr Francis Young about that favourite WAW topic, the theory of 'Pagan survivals!' Subtopics include:

-what we do know about pre-Christian European socities

-how did the Pagan survival theory come about in Victorian times

-the significance of yew trees

-the Green Man

-connections to alien greys

LINKS

Francis Young Twitter (that’s what I’m calling it)

https://twitter.com/DrFrancisYoung?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

Twilight Of the Godlings (and other books by Francis Young)

https://drfrancisyoung.com/publications/

Buy Me A Coffee

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wideatlantic