Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald. All that's happening on this green jewel in space. When I was a kid, the airport in Bangkok, Thailand wasn't much to look at.

These days, it's like any other modern international airport.

It's got fast food chain, subway sandwiches, more varieties of Cologne than you would ever think necessary for one species to have,

Rolex watches, and there's even a Gucci store, and outside of the Gucci store there's a peculiar sculpture.

And the sculpture, if one isn't familiar with the story it's telling, looks a little like a big game of tug-of-war.

There's a group of guys on one side and a group of guys on the other side, and they're playing

tug-of-war with what looks like a giant snake. The snake is coiled around a central mountain,

and so it looks like if they were tugging on either end of the rope, the mountain would begin to

rotate, to churn. It's an interesting vision

amidst the glitz of a modern-day airport to see this game of Snake Tugawar. If you stand at a

particular angle like I did, you can get a picture of the game of Tug-of-war with the Gucci

storefront behind it. And this is an interesting juxtaposition because, of course, the story

that the

sculpture depicts is thousands upon thousands of years old.

The myth is called the churning of the cosmic ocean, or the churning of the ocean of milk.

If you happen to be fortunate enough to go to Angor Wat in Cambodia

and visit the largest temple structure in the world,

you can see a phenomenal relief depicting this story,

...