Serpent Gods: The Legend of Nāga
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
iHeartPodcasts
4.2 • 11K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In an increasingly secular world, people often look back on the past with a mixture of amusement and disdain: "Why," they ask, "would our ancestors really believe in fanciful things like demons, Gods, spirits and angels?" Yet in tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel discover one strange trend that calls these assumptions into question: Why did so many ancient cultures across the world worship snakes, or reptilian-human hybrids? Is there a grain of fact to the legends of Snake Gods? What exactly is a Nāga?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. |
| 0:06.5 | You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. |
| 0:12.0 | A production of IHeart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. |
| 0:30.1 | All right, parcel tongue, Matt, that's you, Matt, it's me, Noel. |
| 0:33.8 | That was a Harry Potter reference. |
| 0:35.0 | Dave Colby, Ben, we're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan, the Tennessee pal Fagan. |
| 0:40.8 | Most importantly, you are you. |
| 0:42.9 | You are here. |
| 0:44.2 | That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. |
| 0:49.4 | So shout out to everybody's giving me a hard time about siblings on the podcast over the years. It's a feature, not a bug today, then. Thank you, Noel. I appreciate you. It was never a bug, to be fair. You're a beautiful speaker. The word for today is ophiolatory. It's the fancy term for snake worship. God, you've got to unhinge your jaw to get around that one. That is a serious word. |
| 1:12.3 | It's a mouthful of mouthfeel. |
| 1:15.6 | And it's making me have all the feels because, yeah, snakes are fun and scary. |
| 1:19.8 | And people are freaked out by them and or sometimes worship them throughout history. |
| 1:24.1 | Yeah, of course, because we worship what we fear. |
| 1:27.0 | That's a gem you can take |
| 1:28.5 | and use in hip hop later. This is a fun one, folks. Tonight, we are exploring the origin of not |
| 1:35.0 | MAGA, but NAGA. Sick of those guys. I know. I worked way too hard on that. That was good. No, |
| 1:41.2 | I think it's fun counterpoint, Ben, Naga. Yeah, a different kind of worship. Yeah, yeah. So riddle us to this, what are the Naga? Well, in multiple religions originating outside of Asia, the Naga, and it's got a little line over the eight. Is that mean it's Naga? Does it have a little meow on it? It's more like an ah. Ah, the Naga. They're a semi-divine |
| 2:04.0 | race. This is, you know, in the, in the lore of a half-human, half-serpent creatures said to reside |
| 2:10.6 | in the underworld. So kind of demons, but vaguely demonic? Well, and it varies widely because we're talking about multiple versions of spirituality |
| 2:20.6 | that were around way before the primary religions. |
| 2:24.3 | We're talking about ancient Asia stuff, but also Buddhism, Hinduism, I mean, it goes, |
... |
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