Episode 55 – Evil Twins – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 55 Show Notes

Source: Hindu Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’ll meet some evil demon twins. You’ll discover that disguised gods are dangerous, that immortality is tricky, and that monsters always show up in the weirdest places. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn the tragic legend of a sweet flatbread. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 55, “Evil Twins”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation, is said to have descended to earth in the form of ten different avatars in order to restore cosmic order and defeat evil. The exact list of these avatars can vary in different sects and religions, but our story today covers what is generally understood to be the fourth avatar of Vishnu – Narasimha, which literally translates to ‘lion-man’.
The Satya Yuga, or the Era of Truth, is the first of four epochs of the world. During the Satya Yuga, humanity was governed directly by the gods, allowing them to be as close as possible to the pure ideal. It is also sometimes referred to as the Golden Age, and is said to have lasted 1,728,000 years, during which the goddess Dharma (depicted in the form of a cow) is standing on all four legs. With each subsequent era or Satya, she stands on one less leg until, in the present age of Kali, she stands on one leg.
It was during this Golden Age that Sage Kashyap and his wife Diti had two sons – Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakshipu, and it would be an understatement to say that they were rambunctious, aggressive boys. In fact, once they grew up, they both soon garnered a reputation for causing destruction and chaos everywhere they went. They were unholy terrors, causing headaches for humans and devas alike. The gods quickly grew fed up with their swath of destruction and trail of atrocities and asked Lord Vishnu to do something, to come up with a solution to stop the brothers.
Lord Vishnu heard the prayers of the people and the petitions of the gods, and he agreed that something needed to be done. He descended to the earth and took the form of a giant boar, which is known as his Varaha avatar, which was his third avatar, and set out to kill Hiranyashka and Hiranyakshipu. There was one complication, however – Hianraksha had hidden the goddess Bhudevi, the personification of the earth, in the deep ocean. Lord Vishnu was not fooled, and he found Bhudevi’s hiding place, and Hiranyaksha along with it.
With nowhere left to hide, Hiranyaksha had no choice but to stand and face the deadly god-boar that was bearing down on him. They fought, and their fierce combat shook the world, but Hiranyaksha had never really had a chance. The boar finally mowed the young man down with his razor-sharp tusks, then carried the world in its tusks back to her rightful place in the universe. The balance was restored, and all of the gods and humans breathed a sigh of relief that the danger had passed.
It hadn’t passed, of course, and their happiness was to be short-lived. When word reached Hiranyakshipu that his brother had been murdered by Vishnu, he swore revenge. He lost no time in setting out on a march of devastation, lighting a huge swath of the world on fire. He gathered an army of asuras, a group of powerful superhuman demigods who were constantly at war with the benevolent devas, to follow him on his quest to destroy everything good in the world. An army of devas was gathered to oppose them, led and aided by Lord Vishnu. Hiranyakshipu redoubled his vow of revenge on Vishnu for opposing him and swore to be the one to end Vishnu once and for all.
Hiranyakshipu needed an edge in this fight, with his asuras checked by the might of the devas, so he went out into the jungle to pray to Lord Brahma for a boon. He lost himself in deep meditation, and he forgot all his worldly desires and lost touch with his own senses as he beseeched Lord Brahma for the boon of immortality. He wanted to have as long as he needed to bring down Lord Vishnu.
Back on the fields of war, Lord Indra, who was acting as the general for the army of the devas, noticed that the asura army was suddenly disorganized. He decided, correctly, that this had to be because it was no longer being led by Hiranyakshipu. Indra had no way of knowing how long the opposing leader would be out of commission, so he decided that he needed to launch an attack right the fuck now. He gathered his forces and led them in a fresh assault on the asuras. With no one to hold them together or direct their strength, the asuras were mowed down by the devas and by the end of the day, most of them lay slaughtered on the battlefield. Indra and the devas had won the war.
The army defeated, Indra sacked the capital city of Hiranyakshipu and destroyed it as he marched through the city to the palace. Nothing could stop him anymore, and he soon stood inside Hiranyakshipu’s home with his wife Kayadhu. Lord Indra thought about taking her prisoner and using her as a hostage if Hiranyakshipu ever came out of hiding and tried to take vengeance for his defeat. Before he could do more than contemplate this though, Lord Indra was confronted by Narada Muni, a traveling sage and musician who sometimes acted as the messenger of the gods. “Why are you forcing these women into bondage? What the hell is wrong with you?” Indra tried to explain his plan, and how taking Kayadhu hostage would help stop Hiranyakshipu from getting back on the warpath and attack again, but Narada wasn’t hearing it. “This war is between the asuras and the devas; she is an innocent and helpless woman with no part to play in this war.” Indra caved to the pressure and let Kayadhu go.
Narada sat with her to make sure she was okay. “Yeah, I’m okay. Still a little shaken and a little bit in shock, but otherwise fine. I am, um…a little bit pregnant and I’m afraid of what will happen when people realize I’m carrying Hiranyakshipu’s child. Can I stay with you, maybe pay for my keep by working as a servant, like your daughter? Please? I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
Narada was a compassionate man, and he couldn’t turn down the request for help from a woman in need, so he agreed to let her live with him. She served with grace in the home of Narada and would spend each night listening to Narada tell stories of Lord Vishnu. The stories were incredible, and she soon developed a strong attachment for the powerful deity based entirely on these tales. Her unborn son also listened to these tales while in the womb (because Hiranyakshipu’s sperm was just that powerful) and would go on to become one of Vishnu’s most devoted disciples.
Meanwhile, Hiranyakshipu was still deep in his devotion to Lord Brahma, god of creation, and the aura of his penance was so intense and powerful that the devas could feel the heat of it all the way in the heavens. It was soon unbearably strong, and the devas begged Lord Brahma to give Hiranyakshipu whatever it was he was asking for, just please make it stop! Brahma was, to be honest, already pretty impressed with Haranyakshipu’s devotion and so agreed to grant this man his heart’s desire. “What boon would you ask of Lord Brahma?” “Immortality, although I know you don’t like to give that. Instead, Lord Brahma, I ask that you grant me this boon: allow no man, god, or animal created by you to kill me; nobody can kill me in the day or the night, and nobody can kill me in heaven or on earth; no one can kill me with a weapon, and no one can kill me inside or outside of my house.”
Brahma considered this very specific request and, after some thought, elected to grant it. Hiranyakshipu was now safe from pretty much all modes of violent death, and he would therefore be free to pursue his oath of vengeance. Overjoyed at his new power, he headed back to his kingdom. He thought about it on the way and, by the time he’d arrived at the smoldering ruins of his home, he’d decided that Lord Indra would be the first target of his renewed and now immortal wrath for destroying his beloved city.
The army of devas was waiting for him when he stormed the gates of heaven. They’d expected him to try and gather up the few remaining asuras, but Hiranyakshipu no longer needed anyone’s help. He was unstoppable. One by one, in groups, in hordes, the devas came against the immortal man and were cast down. He defeated them all and banished the devas from Devaloka, leaving Hiranyakshipu as the ruler of heaven.
The devas defeated, Hiranyakshipu sought out his wife and unborn son on the earth and brought them back with him to the heavens. Unfortunately for this powerful man hellbent on revenge against the gods, his son Prahlad had become a devotee of Lord Vishnu in the womb and prayed to him all the time now. Coming to speak to his son, Hiranyakshipu was shocked to hear Prahlad singing praises to Lord Vishnu. He was furious at this betrayal and took his rage out on his son’s tutor, punishing him for his failure and demanding that he keep a closer eye on Prahlad from now on.
Of course, Prahlad’s devotion to Vishnu was not at all based on the lessons of his tutor and so it continued unabated and perhaps even grew stronger. No matter what Hiranyakshipu tried, he couldn’t beat the devotion to Vishnu out of his son. He found that, before long, he could no longer tolerate this betrayal by his son. Prahlad must die.
He ordered his palace guards to murder his son (he wasn’t quite prepared to murder his own child with his own two hands), and they reluctantly agreed to obey. They stormed his bedchamber en masse, drew their swords, and cut down an unarmed child. Or rather, they tried to, for Prahlad was protected by his faith in Vishnu. Each sword strike faltered as it approached his skin, and each sword that touched his flesh crumbled to dust, leaving the faithful son unharmed. The guards fled, terrified of this obviously powerful and well-connected child.
Hiranyakshipu was furious and so he summoned a horde of poisonous snakes and commanded them to bite his son and stop his heart with their poisons. They slithered across his skin and drew back to strike, but each and every serpent was stopped from biting and they eventually slithered away, leaving Prahlad alive and unharmed. He sent in a pack of mad elephants to trample his son to death, but they passed him by without once stomping on his head, and Prahlad was still unharmed. Hiranyakshipu was furious. It was time to send in the big guns. He sent a message to his sister, Holika.
Now Holika was a demoness associated with the destructive power of fire. She loved to destroy and so she didn’t even bat an eye when Hiranyakshipu asked her to go to his young son, convince him to sit in his dear Auntie’s lap, and then burn him to death as she held him to her. She smiled, a wicked gleam in her eye. Holika liked this plan. She went directly to Prahlad and beckoned him over to her. Dutifully, Prahlad went to his Aunt Holika and obligingly crawled up into her lap. She cackled gleefully as she summoned her flames to burn the poor child alive. Her laughter turned to agonized screaming as the power of Prahlad’s faith in Vishnu protected him from her dark flames and turned the destructive power back on her. In some versions of the story, she instead has a magical cloak that protects her from the burning touch of the flame and the winds from the fire lift the cloak from her shoulders and drape it over Prahlad instead, saving him. She howled in blinding agony as she was consumed by her own wicked fire and died, leaving Prahlad alive and unharmed, although probably a little scarred psychologically from all of the attempted murder and watching an adult family member burn alive in one such attempt.
Hiranyakshipu was more enraged than ever from losing a powerful ally in his sister, but he was also stumped. She’d been his trump card, and he was at a loss as to how to kill his son now. If Holika couldn’t pull it off, what was he supposed to do? He sent his guards to seize Prahlad and drag him before his father’s throne to answer questions. “You keep evading death through your faith in Vishnu, which is crazy annoying. Is Vishnu here now?”
Prahlad smiled serenely. “Lord Vishnu is everywhere, father.” “Oh really, you little shit? He’s everywhere, huh?” He gestured at a decorative pillar at the center of the throne room. “So he’s in that pillar, then?” “Of course he is, father. He’s everywhere.” “You arrogant little prick! He’s in this pillar? Then why doesn’t he fucking show himself!” In a blind rage, Hirayakshipu stalked over to the pillar and drove his foot through the stone, knocking off a giant chunk of marble. The pillar roared in anger at being kicked, scaring the shit out of Hiranyakshipu, who stumbled away from the unexpected sound. Out of the hole in the pillar climbed a ferocious, roaring beast that was half man, half lion, and all magical killing machine.
Into the stunned silence that greeted the unexpected and completely impossible emergence of this terrifying monster in the middle of the palace, the lion beast roared in a voice that shook the walls that he was Narasimha, one of the ten avatars of Vishnu, and that he had come to earth to kill Hiranyakshipu and put an end to his march of destruction. Hiranyakshipu’s eyes grew wide in fear before remembering the boon that Brahma had granted him. “Good luck, asswipe! I can’t be killed!”
Narasimha grinned a toothy grin and seized Hiranyakshipu in one massive clawed hand. “We’ll just see about that.” Hiranyakshipu quickly realized that letting this divine beast lay hands on him had been a huge mistake. He was held fast in that iron grip and struggle though he might, he couldn’t break free. Narasimha dragged the wicked man to the threshold of the door to the palace, which was neither inside nor outside his house; he wrestled the man into his furry lap, which was neither on the land nor in the heavens; he took his claws, which were not a weapon and belonged to a creature not created by Brahma that was neither man nor animal, and ripped Hiranyakshipu’s throat open at twilight, which was neither day nor night. His eyes went wide with pain and terror as the savage claws ripped open his flesh all the way to his spine, and he dropped twitching, bleeding, and dying to the floor. This incredible loophole of immortality had been closed.
Everyone stared at the corpse in stunned silence for a long moment before jumping at the triumphant roar of the lion-beast. The few asuras who had survived the previous wars fled at the sound, terrified that he would end them next. In fact, everyone at the palace was terrified of the deadly, blood-soaked beast that had murdered the seemingly invulnerable warlord in one fierce stroke. Everyone, that is, except the young Prahlad, devotee of Lord Vishnu. He had heard the beast declare itself an avatar of Lord Vishnu and so he approached without hesitation, the light of devotion shining in his eyes, and thanked the creature for saving him from the fury of his father. “Say, while I have you here Narasihma, what’s the deal with my dad, anyway? Why was he so evil and so hellbent on keeping me from worshiping you?”
“Ah, yeah there’s a story there. Your father and his brother are the reincarnated souls of my gatekeepers, Jaya and Vijaya (your father is Vijaya). Many years ago, the Four Kumaras (Sanaka, Sanandana, Santana, and Sanatkumara) came to visit me at my home, Vaikuntha. These four sages are very old and very wise, being the manasputras of Brahma, or sons born from the very thoughts of Brahma, and they decided to wander the world in the guise of children. Jaya and Vijaya stopped the Kumaras at the gate to Vaikuntha and told them that I was resting and could not be bothered to speak to mere children. The Kumaras, enraged at this insolence, informed the two gatekeepers that I am available to my devotees at any time and cursed them both to give up their divinity and be born as mortals and live and die as normal human beings. I came to see what all the noise was about and found the two gatekeepers arguing with the Kumaras. They told me what had happened and asked me to remove the curse, but I told them it could not be reversed. I could, however, give them two options to make the curse a little less terrible: they could either live and die seven times as seven different reincarnations, all a devotee of Vishnu, or they could take three incarnations as my sworn enemy. They decided that they couldn’t stand being away from my side for seven lifetimes and so chose the shorter sentence, even though it meant they were bound to be my enemies each time. They have now ended their first lives. Once they are born and die two more times as my foe, they can return to the heavens to resume their gatekeeper duties.”
Prahlad nodded sagely at this frankly batshit story, although a fully-grown lion-monster avatar of a god did just appear from a solid stone column to murder an immortal man, so maybe the story is actually totally sane and normal in that context. I mean, it does explain why two different avatars of divine retribution manifested on earth to kill his uncle and then his father. Pleased at the unwavering devotion of this young man, Lord Vishnu raised Prahlad up to be king in his dead father’s place. This proved a wise decision as now-King Prahlad ruled the kingdom wisely and well. He was such a good king, in fact, that he even managed to change the ways of the asuras, making them a lot less shitty. And also from that point on, Narasimha became known as the Great Protector, sworn to defend devotees of Vishnu from evil. In some places, especially in the northern parts of India, the death of the demonic terror Holika and the demon king Hiranyakshipu is celebrated as Holi, the celebration of colors, with the first night of Holi being known as Holika Dahan or the burning of the demon Holika and celebrated with a bonfire to symbolize the internal evil that needs to be denied and destroyed.
So that’s it, right? The demon twins dead, the good prince made king, order restored, and all is well? Not quite. See, Narasimha had been created to be a being of rage and vengeance, and now that his great enemy was dead, he was still filled with rage and a lust for destruction, but with no legitimate target to unleash it on. The world trembled in fear at what might happen next, and even the gods themselves were uneasy. First, Vishnu’s great devotee Prahlad was sent to try and calm the avatar of Vishnu down, but with no success – Narasimha raged on. That left only one option, and everyone knew it. The Devas therefore went to Shiva and begged for his help. Shiva is commonly known as the Destroyer, but this appellation includes both benevolent and fearsome portions. Sometimes, you need a little destruction to make things right and right now, there was a big scary avatar of a god just itching to set the world aflame that needed destroying for the good of the world. Shiva is a lot more complicated than this in the full understanding of him, but this thumbnail sketch is enough for what’s happening in this story.
Shiva listened sagely to the words of the devas and agreed that this was a delicate situation, and he was just the god for the job. He too descended to earth in the form of a powerful avatar, this one specifically designed to counter the powerful Narasimha beast. On the earth, Shiva appeared as Sharabha (although some stories claim that Sharabha was a name for Vishnu, and that he pacified himself, while others hold that Sharabha was a previous birth of the Buddha, and still others claim it was just a run of the mill monster). Some stories say that he first tried his incarnation as Virabhadra, one of his most ferocious forms, but Narasimha was not afraid, so he made something new. There are multiple conflicting reports of what Sharabha looked like exactly. Some say he was a thousand-armed creature with a lion face, matted hair, huge wings, and eight feet. Others say that he has two heads, two wings, eight lion legs tipped with razor-sharp claws, and a long tufted tail. Still others describe him as a deep black, with four feet facing downward and four uplifted to the heavens, an enormous body, a long face, eight legs, eight tusks, a cluster of manes, and a long tail. Still another story says he is a bird with golden feathers, two uplifted wings, two red eyes, four legs on the back halves of two different lion bodies touching the ground, four legs with claws upwards, a tail, a human torso, lion faces, and tusks. Some versions say that his wings are formed from Pratyangira and Soolini, Shiva’s female energies. There are still other versions I haven’t covered, but you get the idea. There’s a lot of thoughts on Sharabha.
Anyway, Sharabha is some combination of human, bird, and lion, more powerful than a lion or an elephant and capable of leaping over a valley in a single leap. He was bigger and meaner than Narasimha by design. He roared at the lion beast, but Narasimha refused to back down and squared off for a fight. He was severely outclassed by Sharabha though, and the bird monster seized the smaller lion beast by the tail, dragged him up into the sky and prepared to cast him down to his doom.
This sudden powerlessness shocked the avatar of Lord Vishnu back to his senses, and he quickly took stock of his situation. He looked up at the terrifying, man-eating bird monster about to smite him, and he stopped fighting. Instead, he prayed to Shiva for forgiveness for his earlier uncontrollable rage. Sharabha heard this fervent prayer and realized that Narasimha had come back to himself and could be safely brought back to earth. In thanks to Shiva for his aid, Vishnu removed the lion skin from his body and presented it to Sarabha, later known as the Sharabeshwaramurti, and it is with this peace offering that our story actually comes to a close.
I love the way that this story shows the necessary tension and balance between creation and destruction. Either without the other leads to chaos, and both are needed to maintain the peace. It’s also an interesting variation on the traditional story about bad hospitality leading to extreme punishment, although in this version, the bad hosts are themselves divine beings, which is cool and unusual. And now that you know not to tell children to let the adults nap in peace lest they secretly be very old gods, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s hero slash baked good is Agha Baker Khan, namesake of bakarkhani.
The legend of the bakarkhani, a type of sweet roti bread, dates back to the 18th Century, and is still part of Bangladeshi, Awadhi, Kashmiri, Mughlai, and Pakistani cuisine today. The legend begins in Mukhusabad, now known as Murshidabad, a town in the Indian state of West Bengal. Around 1670, according to historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Murshid Quli Khan was born on the Deccan Plateau in India. He was sold as a slave to a Persian noble as a boy, who raised him as a Muslim (he had been born a Hindu) and named him Muhammed Hadi. He went to Persia with his master until he grew to manhood. In 1698, at the age of 28, he returned to India as a free man to work under the Diwan of Vidarbha, the chief officer or general of the Maharashtra state in northern India.
He had a knack for administrative matters, refined during his service with the Persian noble, and he soon caught the attention of Aurangzeb who promoted him to Diwan of Bengal in 1700. He had changed his name to Murshid Quli Khan by this point, and he returned from Persia to India with his young protege Aga Bakar Khan. He raised the boy to be a warrior, military commander, and administrator like himself. Aga Bakar was bright and industrious, and he soon became a military strategist as well as a scholar in Arabic and Persian.
During the reign of Nawab Shiraj-ud-Doula, the last independent Nawab of Bengal before it was taken over by the British East India Company, Aga Bakar was appointed to his first military command in the Chittagong district of modern-day Bangladesh. There, the young Diwan met a beautiful nartaki, or dancer, from Arambagh near Dhaka named Khani Begum. She returned his affections, but alas, all was not well for she had also caught the eye of Minister Jahandar Khan’s wicked son Jainul Khan, who served as kotwal or police chief.
Khani didn’t much care for that asshole Jainul but, being an asshole, he didn’t care whether she liked him back or not – he was bound and determined to make the dancer his and he pursued her relentlessly. When he learned that Khani was all about that Aga Bakar, Jainul said fuck it and straight-up kidnapped her. He wasn’t secretive or subtle about it, so word quickly made its way back to Aga Bakar and he rushed off to the rescue. In a dashing bit of heroism, he confronted the evil police chief and they fought. Aga Bakar quickly gained the upper hand, being a professional soldier and all, and after taking a nasty wound from the Diwan’s sword, Jainul fled and disappeared.
Almost immediately, rumors swirled that Aga Bakar had staged the whole ‘kidnapping’ thing to assassinate the police chief, murder his romantic rival, and hide the body. Aga Bakar and Khani Begum were arrested for their plot and brought before the judge, who happened to be his old mentor Murshid Quli Khan. Khan knew his protege and completely believed that he would never have murdered a man in cold blood. Unfortunately, the evidence said otherwise. Several policemen spoke about the rumors racing through the city like wildfire, although none of them had actually seen the crime. The two lovers only had each other as witness (and your codefendent makes a poor alibi) and so Judge Khan had no choice but to find his surrogate son guilty of the murder of a police chief. Because the old laws of Bengal were apparently written by Bollywood screenwriters, his conviction carried with it a sentence of death by tiger.
The sentence was carried out swiftly, and so it was that Aga Bakar was cast into a large cage with a hungry, snarling tiger a few days later. Alone and unarmed with a savage creature, death seemed certain, but Aga Bakar was not a famed warrior for nothing. He fought valiantly and, after a thrilling fight scene, he managed to kill the tiger with his bare hands. This incredible upset was taken as a sign that Aga Bakar was innocent of the charges against him (which he was), and he walked away a free man and went to find his beloved Khani.
As you’ve probably guessed, Jainul Khan was very much alive. He and his police squad had planned this whole thing and so, while Aga Bakar was busy fighting for his very life against a blood-thirsty tiger, Khan returned from his supposed death to kidnap Khani a second time, dragging the protesting dancer deep into the forests of southeastern Bengal. As soon as he was a free man again, Aga Bakar set out in search of his stolen love and the dick responsible for everything wrong in his life.
Accompanied by his commander Kala Gazi, Aga Bakar tracked down the evil Jainul Khan and cornered him. With no way out, Jainul took the villain’s way out, plunging his sword into the beating heart of the woman he claimed to love. Khani collapsed to the earth covered in her own life’s blood and died in the arms of a heartbroken Aga Bakar. Screaming vengeance to the sky, Aga Bakar attacked Jainul, killing him.
Despondent, Aga Bakar and Kala Gazi brought Khani Begum’s body to Chandrahip, where he buried her and built a tomb over her grave in memorial. Devastated, he stayed in Chandrahip where he soon rose to command over the district, along with Selimabad and Buzurg Umidpur, and the combined district was renamed Bakerganj in his honor (in present day Barisal). It’s entirely possible he would have lived and died a bachelor, wed to the ghost of his beautiful dancer, but Judge Murshid Quli Khan persuaded and/or ordered Aga Bakar to marry the daughter of a respectable Shia family, who in time bore him two sons – Aga Sadek and Mirza Medhi.
Aga Bakar was an effective ruler, and the small district soon became a major trading port. The people adored him for his tragic love story, and the local bakers were inspired to rename his favorite bread Bakarkhani after the man and his dead dancer love, and the sweet bread went with the traders out from Bakerganj to the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Some versions of the story claim that Aga Bakar loved to cook and developed the special roti himself and named it after the woman he never stopped loving, marriage and children or no.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll visit the Italian countryside and get acquainted with the local wildlife. You’ll discover that sometimes ogres don’t surprise you, that husbands make terrible decorators, and that man-flesh is back on the menu. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll find out why you should never hit an invisible fairyhat you didn’t know was there in the first place. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.