In one of the world's foundational origin stories, humans are descended from the fleas of a dead, hairy giant. This episode treats Pangu, the primordial creator of Chinese mythology and Taoism, as a biographical subject: the 18,000 years in which the formless void of Wuji condensed into a cosmic egg, the moment yin and yang reached balance and Pangu awoke, the axe blow that split heaven from earth, and the grueling ages he spent growing ten feet a day to hold them apart.

It examines the anatomy of his death, in which his eyes become the sun and moon, his blood the rivers, and his hair the stars, and compares him with the Norse Ymir and the Babylonian Tiamat. Then it explores the stranger regional variants, including a Taoist version where he fathers celestial royalty and a Bouyei tale where he becomes a rice farmer in a stepmother drama, be ...