⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of animal injuries and death. Both parts carry an explicit tag.⚠️

Blake and Karen welcome Lee Weiss, a religious studies scholar whose deep dive into the FBI's declassified cattle mutilation files grew into a sweeping study of one of America's strangest panics. Blake first met Lee at the Of Gods and Monsters conference in 2019, and the two reconnected at its 2026 sequel - both contributed to the academic volume Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous. (affiliate link)

In part one of this two-part investigation, Lee lays out the anatomy of the "classic mute" - the missing eyes, ears, and soft tissue, the reportedly bloodless wounds, the absent tracks - and traces the phenomenon back to its 1967 case zero: Snippy the horse, found dead in Colorado's San Luis Valley. From Victorian sheep panics and escaped menagerie cats to the economic collapse of the 1970s American rancher, the picture that emerges is far stranger than dead livestock. And that's before the unmarked helicopters show up.Part two lands next week.

Extended show notes at MonsterTalk.org

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