A shadow blocks out the sun over a pristine beach, and it is a bird large enough to pluck a full-grown elephant from the ground. For centuries, merchants, sailors, and explorers believed this creature was real. This episode traces the anatomy of the roc legend, starting with the word's journey from Persian to Arabic to French to English along the same trade routes that carried spices and silk. We weigh competing origin theories: Rudolf Wittkower's link to Garuda carrying off an elephant locked in combat with a crocodile in the Sanskrit epics, the elephant-hunting bird of Sri Lankan lore, and Ahmed al-Rawi's case for the pre-Islamic Arabian Anqa with its four wings and human face.

We then follow the roc's rise to global fame through the Arabian Nights, including Sinbad's turban ride off an island and the boulder-dropping parents that sank a  ...