You're listening to an I-Heart podcast.

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.

Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting.

Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical

creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

On Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we've discussed the mythical Gorgon, Medusa at length,

but today I want to look at the character with the same name from the Marvel Comics universe.

This Medusa is an inhuman, a branch of Homo sapiens descended from experiments conducted on primitive humans by the alien Cree to give them various emergent powers.

While other inhumans boast devastating offensive powers or highly augmented physiologies,

Medusa's power is all about her long red hair, which she can extend to double its normal six foot length,

and, most remarkably of all, control each strand as if it were a highly prehensile arm or tentacle.

She can cause her scarlet locks to bundle together into reinforcing strands and accomplish everything

from minor tool manipulation to intense physical combat with other super-powered individuals.

Now, as the excellent book Marvel Anatomy by Mark Sumerac and Daniel Wallace,

of illustrations by Jonah Loeb, points out, Medusa's hair is just normal hair.

It's perhaps fuller and longer than most human heads of hair, but its prehensile power stems not from its internal structure,

...