Podcast
Turán Explorer
Hosted by T.E. · EN
Adventures on the vast steppe in search of Hungarian origins. This podcast and its accompanying projects are sort of an ethnography of ethnographies, covering magic, war, language, spies, and the stars. Together, we'll peer into the lives and ideas of the Hungarians and others who have gone to unfathomable lengths finding Hungarian and "Turanian" kinship. See you there.
7episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
E7 We Were All Scythians
Jun 1001:26:03Tap to summarizeThe Scythians walk among us! They are not dormant in their kurgans and tucked into piles of bones and gold! They are here, they are you and me!Thousands of self-proclaimed Scythians ride on in Hungary today, proudly celebrating their szkíta identity, even claiming that they speak Scythian at home. These Scythians have consolidated a clear political identity too, inspiring votes for national sovereignty and even one of the most serious coup attempts in the country's modern history.Uh... That's not saying too much though. Our modern Scythians are mostly internet hobbyists and the most nationalist Hungarian pensioners. The blood of this civilization, once among the most noble barbarians known to the Hellenistic world, mostly pumps through the veins of not-so-serious people. Many modern political movements have claimed lineage from the Scythians, but few have done so quite as much as some Hungarians, whose legacy of Scythian descent helped consolidate early modern class power in the country and was set into motion by the nation's very first chronicles.I wanted to cover the legacy of the Scythians in Hungary, but a year ago I realized I couldn't seriously do that without diving into the legacy of the Scythians as a people in and of themselves. It's hard to escape the iconography of and references to the Scythians when in the world of Hungarian Turanists or adjacent nationalist and ethno-enthusiasts for even a few moments. But I soon realized this was a real people and a really interesting civilization that informed everything about the Eurasian steppe world that incubated the ancient Magyars.This is why I’m diving deep into what we know about this massive ancient culture, which left such lasting technological and cultural prints on not just the Hungarian culture but some of the oldest and biggest of Europe and Asia. In this episode, we’re looking at what written historical references we have to the Scythians. Whether in the bible, royal Assyrian records, the literature of the Greeks, or the tombs of the Persians, the Scythians were an extraordinary player on the global stage nearly 3,000 years ago. They innovated a predatory nomadic culture that left no written records of its own — so for thousands of years we only knew them through the legends of their enemies.But oh, what stories those are. Through the Scythians, we see a noble savage that the more widely appreciated ancient cultures both slandered and prided themselves through comparison. In order to understand what these people mean today we must grasp what they meant back then to those with whom they came face to face and sword to sword.Thanks again for the wait and for believing in this work. I hope you enjoy. Also a bit has changed in the Hungarian political dynamic in recent months but the main point of that section still stands. Do your selves a favor and check this out: https://archive.org/details/ScythianArt/page/n61/mode/1up Written by Turán Explorer and produced by Boss Moss. Follow on TikTok and Twitter @Turan_Explorer and support us on www.patreon.com/turan_explorerBoss Moss Records on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-613649429
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E6 Brothers! Brothers! Brothers!
Jan 29, 202401:28:13Tap to summarize"The Hungarian hunters of old pursued the miraculous stag, not because they expected to kill it, but because it led them on in the joy of the chase to new trails and fresh adventures, and so to capture happiness!" So too will we chase the miraculous deer, the csodaszarvas, to find adventure in Turán. First, it will lead us to the 1933 World Scout Jamboree, where they say the whole nation of Horthy's Hungary turned out to support the Scouts of all nations. There, the image of the stag will look down upon us, while the specter of Prime Minister Pál Teleki looks up.Then we will find ourselves waxing poetic about the beauty, complexity, and diversity of the Hungarian language, looking at the etymology of basic Hungarian family-related vocabulary to learn a little more about the history of the tongue.At last, we return to our dear friend Simon Kézai's Gesta Hunorum et Hungarorum. We will join the brothers Hunor and Magor, the forefathers of the Huns and the Hungarians, as they hunt the white stag.We will explore some of the scholarship into where exactly the Hungarian stag myth came from, or at least the debates about the subject. From the Finno-Ugric creation myths to the epics of steppe literature to the modern traditions related to the legend, we may find ourselves so far from where we began, we might as well set up a home here and never return.Thanks for the wait, this one goes everywhere. Written by Turán Explorer and produced by Boss Moss. Follow on TikTok and Twitter @Turan_Explorer and support us on www.patreon.com/turan_explorerBoss Moss Records on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-613649429
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E5 NIMROD
Nov 20, 202301:24:45Tap to summarizeNimrod: the mighty hunter before the Lord — the God-hating builder of the Tower of Babel — the idiot. This one might be my favorite episode yet, wherein we examine one of the most infamous biblical characters with the most extra-biblical lore, whose name maddeningly transformed to mean "dummy" in American pop culture during the 20th century.It is because of this that few people appreciate the extraordinary legends about the greatest emperor and most evil villain who may have ever lived — a half-remembered Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian king (or possibly Gilgamesh). But for millennia, many theologians and writers spent a lot of energy examining Nimrod's legend.We'll step into ancient Mesopotamia and review the wide array of apocryphal interpretations of Nimrod's story. Then we'll look at the way Nimrod has been embraced by two different modern political and aesthetic movements: the Israeli "Canaanites" and the Hungarian Turanists.For these so-called Canaanites of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, who were inspired by European movements of the extreme right wing, Nimrod's pagan strength represented a turn away for Abrahamic religions and toward a new national identity inspired by taboo mythologies and modernist theories about language families.For the Hungarian Turanists, Nimrod's legend in Simon Kézai's Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum has similarly inspired visions of an ideal national ancestor. Paradoxically though, some of these Turanists interpreted his legends inversely to the Canaanites — as a great enemy of the Semitic peoples and ideal Hungarian emperor who proudly ruled over his conquered nations.This is also technically part 2 of the Hunnorum et Hungarorum mini-series where we'll gradually move through Kézai's Gesta, but you don't really need to listen to the first one to fully grasp most of the content in here tbh. It goes a lot of places all on its own.Written by Turán Explorer and produced by Boss Moss. Follow on TikTok and Twitter @Turan_Explorer and support us on www.patreon.com/turan_explorerBoss Moss Records on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-613649429
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E4 To the Most Invincible and Powerful Lord Ladislaus the III*
Oct 31, 202300:49:04Tap to summarizeSometimes the true GOATs are underrated because even though they were the best to do it, they weren't the first to do it. This was Simon Kezai's problem, writing a more enchanting and masterful chronicle just a few decades after Anonymus did the same, with more interesting myths and more feisty opinions. In this episode, let's explore the prologues of two of my favorite books together. We'll leap from the pages of the winner of the 1938 Newbery Medal for children's literature to my middle school library. From there, we'll pour one out for one of my favorite Hungarian kings: Laszlo the Cuman, and the honored muse of Kezai's Gesta.We'll then explore the dynamic world of medieval Europe and the rocky transformation of many societies from newly converted "barbarians" into kingdoms accepted among the rest of Christendom. Finally, we will unpack the strange accusation of terrible slander Kezai seeks to debunk in the opening pages of his Gesta — that Huns/Hungarians are the spawn of demonic incubi.Apologies for the bad Latin, all my language learning braincells are used up on Hungarian lol.Written by Turán Explorer and produced by Boss Moss. Follow on TikTok and Twitter @Turan_Explorer and support us on www.patreon.com/turan_explorerBoss Moss Records on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-613649429
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E3 Here Comes the Blood
Oct 16, 202301:01:00Tap to summarizeFirst, we'll take a perilous drive to Kecskemét, underneath the boom of jets and beside of the most remarkable frescos in Hungarian art. We see that — like Kecskemét City Hall's turn-of-the-century architect Ödön Lechner — our old friend Anonymus was trying to imagine a vision of the future as much as he was trying to authentically chronicle the past.Then we'll look at some research into whether or not the myth of the Hungarian blood oath really happened, and if not, what ancient texts or political motivations would have inspired it. Finally, we'll peer into the disaster of King András II's reign and the class upheaval of his time, and how that may have inspired the mythological creation of this bloody "first constitution" of Hungary.Written by Turàn Explorer and produced by Boss Moss. Follow on TikTok and Twitter @Turan_Explorer and support us on www.patreon.com/turan_explorerBoss Moss Records on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-613649429
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E2 Blood Oath?
Oct 2, 202300:58:50Tap to summarizeLet's kick back at the house party of High Prince Álmos along with our closest friends and take an oath that our kids will be good buddies just like we are.Then we'll visit the oldest existing history of the Hungarian people: the Gesta Hungarorum of Anonymus. Fraught with mythmaking, propaganda, and guesswork, this 13th Century text was foundational to the development of Hungarian art, mythology, and origin theories.We'll look at the context of the Scythians, the Huns, and the biblical figures of Gog and/of Magog. What would a writer like Anonymus have known about these subjects, what sources would he have been drawing from, and why would he have used them to explain where the Hungarians came from?Written by Turàn Explorer and produced by Boss Moss. Follow on TikTok and Twitter @Turan_Explorer and support us on www.patreon.com/turan_explorerBoss Moss Records on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-613649429
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E1 What Even Is Hungary?
Sep 18, 202301:00:21Tap to summarizeIn this introductory episode, we step off the train to visit the Buddha Park just outside the Hungarian town of Tar. Then, we'll take a look at why the language spoken in Hungary is so different from that its neighbors. What's the biggest language family in the world, what language family does Hungarian belong to, how did the Magyars get to where they are today, and why is this linguistic peculiarity a source for so many new age movements, nationalist projects, globe-trotting exploration, and mystery? After that, we — like the Turanists themselves — will venture far away from Hungary to medieval Persia and learn about the first literature to explore the concept of "Turàn": an epic poem about three sons given three pieces of an empire and the envy that. It is from this cosmic struggle that the dichotomy between the settled world and nomadic steppe was born. This is a project about Hungarian history, but as we'll see, the many characters and theories who constitute it and this search for origins and kin extend far beyond the Carpathians. Written by Turàn Explorer and produced by Boss Moss. Follow on TikTok and Twitter @Turan_Explorer and support us on www.patreon.com/turan_explorer
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