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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Christian Saga, and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And here we are again for another

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Speaker 1: listener mail episode where we get all of the beautiful

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Speaker 1: magic that you send us through the Internet. We wrap

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Speaker 1: it up in a tight little bundle and we set

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Speaker 1: it on fire. No, wait a minute, no, we read it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's right. Well, you know, Carnie, our mail bot goes

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Speaker 1: through it first and then games what is appropriate for

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Speaker 1: our eyes and then brings it to our eyes. And

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Speaker 1: he deemed some really good stuff this time. There are

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Speaker 1: some great letters here. Well, yeah, because this is incorporating,

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Speaker 1: of course, our October month, so a bunch of stuff

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Speaker 1: about monsters. It's gonna be incorporating all the drug stuff

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Speaker 1: about Timothy Leary, and it's going to be incorporating all

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Speaker 1: the responses to the Bicameral Mind episodes, of which there

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Speaker 1: were about ten. Building I was gonna say, people, that's

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Speaker 1: like a hit, Like you guys got a ton of

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Speaker 1: mail for that episode. There are two episodes, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was a two parter back in September, and I

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Speaker 1: don't I feel like I've gotten more listener mail about

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Speaker 1: that one than any other one we've ever done. Would

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Speaker 1: would you agree, Robert Um? I mean, I'm hesitant to

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Speaker 1: compare it to everything, but we did receive a lot

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Speaker 1: of feedback on that way. It's as if they it's

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Speaker 1: as if you and I spoke to them through their minds,

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Speaker 1: you know, like gods. Well, we we do get at

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Speaker 1: least one message today of somebody telling us where they're gods.

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Speaker 1: So we're doing something right there. Well, on that note,

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Speaker 1: let's let's begin to roll through it. If if you

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Speaker 1: have not listened to a listener mail episode from us before. Basically,

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Speaker 1: what we're gonna do is we're just gonna go around

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Speaker 1: the table here and we're gonna take turns reading listener

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Speaker 1: mails from you, and then we're going to discuss them

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Speaker 1: a little bit. You know. Sometimes it invites discussion. Other

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Speaker 1: times it's just like, well, there you go. That's the

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Speaker 1: that's the listeners statement right there, and there's not much

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Speaker 1: additional diet. What I love about listener mail episodes though,

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Speaker 1: is that like it's a grab bag in that like

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Speaker 1: we get to revisit these topics that we've already covered

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Speaker 1: in the last few months, but then just bring them

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Speaker 1: all together and what we've learned from them and what

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Speaker 1: the audience has learned from them into this like goolash. Also,

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Speaker 1: it makes me feel great because y'all out there, you're

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Speaker 1: just so smart, You've got great things to say. I

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Speaker 1: mean it, Come on, I love reading our mail. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we have some some variants and very insightful listeners that

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Speaker 1: sometimes you guys make connections that did we don't when

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Speaker 1: we're researching this stuff. Totally alright, Well, Carney has h

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Speaker 1: has ventured forth. He is holding something out here to

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Speaker 1: Christian Christian. Uh, why don't you read us our first

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Speaker 1: listener mail? This one is glorious. It might be one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite letters that I've received on stuff to

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Speaker 1: blow your mind. It's from Rick and it is about

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Speaker 1: our two parter on Timothy Leary and lsd Uh. He

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Speaker 1: writes to us, and he says, this is a bit long,

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Speaker 1: but I think it's worth three whole thing. Uh. He says,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to respond to the Tim Leary podcast, so

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Speaker 1: I will here are my credentials. In nineteen sixty six

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Speaker 1: or so, I hung out with Leary dropped acid with him,

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Speaker 1: threw him out of our TP one night when he

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Speaker 1: got drunk and hit up my wife. We were living

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Speaker 1: in New York City. Then I worked as a mime

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Speaker 1: and a fire eater at the Electric Circus on St. Mark's.

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Speaker 1: We answered a casting call for a film being shot

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Speaker 1: at the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, home of the LSD

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Speaker 1: League for Spiritual Discovery, which we discussed in that episode.

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Speaker 1: We lived there for a couple of months. That's how

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Speaker 1: we met Leary. When later the film project fell through,

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Speaker 1: we took our pay in the form of one of

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Speaker 1: a number of tps and sets of polls which had

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Speaker 1: been made for the film. We pitched the TP on

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Speaker 1: a friends land near Poughkeepsie and spent lots of time

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Speaker 1: off there. That's where I threw Leary out. In the

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Speaker 1: years following our sojourn with LSD, I relocated to the

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Speaker 1: sunny Southwest, went to medical school, and worked for over

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Speaker 1: twenty five years as an e R doc. I recently

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Speaker 1: retired in many ways as this trajectory was the fulfillment

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Speaker 1: of ideas and ideals born in vision during acid trips.

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Speaker 1: To the extent your podcast was focused specifically on Leary.

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Speaker 1: You got it mostly right. Leary was a deeply flawed man,

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Speaker 1: But so have been many important explorers, writers, and spiritual teachers,

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Speaker 1: and cult leaders and philosophers. He's kind of a bit

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Speaker 1: of all those things, isn't he? Uh? Leary was not,

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Speaker 1: by any measure, the worst of these in terms of egocentrism, greed,

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Speaker 1: and especially womanizing. Leary did have many important insights regarding

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Speaker 1: human spirituality, and was better able than most to explain

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Speaker 1: these two would be psycho knots. I first heard him

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Speaker 1: speak with Richard Albert in San Francisco, I think in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Elsewhere I have referred to Albert and

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Speaker 1: Leary as the Abbott and Costello of the psychedelic scene.

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Speaker 1: That's that's how they sounded in our research too. But

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Speaker 1: in any case, I and many others were galvanized by

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Speaker 1: the possibilities they loaded before us. I bought the book

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Speaker 1: the two of them had written, along with Ralph Metzner,

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Speaker 1: based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, that's called

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Speaker 1: The Psychedelic Experience. It was a how to manual, and

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Speaker 1: it worked very well. I used it in many sessions,

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Speaker 1: whether I tripped or guided It provided a framework for

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Speaker 1: the cascade of images and sensations LSD brought on which

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Speaker 1: could otherwise be quite overwhelming. It contained verbal maps and

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Speaker 1: navigational aids. There was a cohort of hippies to which

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Speaker 1: we belonged, for whom spiritual seeking was a serious goal.

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Speaker 1: Some of us had left oppressive or unsatisfying traditional religions behind.

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Speaker 1: This seeking was not akin to the sex, drugs and

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Speaker 1: rock and roll ethos of many. The old saw if

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Speaker 1: you remember the sixties, you weren't there did not apply.

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Speaker 1: We thought of ourselves, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, as pathfinders.

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Speaker 1: Many modalities were employed in this seeking, including of course

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Speaker 1: psychedelic herbs and chemicals LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, ayahuasca, and others.

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Speaker 1: But as happened with Leary, other techniques often came to

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Speaker 1: supplant the chemical aids. The legacy of this is the

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Speaker 1: commonplace presence in our culture of yoga, Zen, Buddhism, tai Chi,

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Speaker 1: and other Asian martial arts, Sufism, kabbala studies, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: But I want to stress that the chemicals provided the

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Speaker 1: initial push to open the somewhat sticky doors of perception

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Speaker 1: I should note that some of these pharmaceutical aids were

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Speaker 1: tied to specific spiritual traditions of their own and were

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Speaker 1: regarded as sacred. These were best used in the respectful

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Speaker 1: manner taught by their respective masters. This is especially true

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Speaker 1: for peyote, psilocybin, and ayahuasca. We I think we mentioned

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Speaker 1: that in that episode as well, right we're talking about

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Speaker 1: um how I think in order to legally do ayahuasca

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Speaker 1: you have to do it with a member of a

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Speaker 1: certain tribe present. That's my understanding, at least I've heard

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Speaker 1: that before. The experience of ecstatic vision is extremely difficult

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Speaker 1: to describe in words or even in visual art or music.

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Speaker 1: Some of the efforts to do so have given us

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Speaker 1: parts of various holy books. Pretty Much every religion on

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Speaker 1: the planet has a mystical wing and teams of prophets

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Speaker 1: who attempt the articulation of their mystical experience, and many

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Speaker 1: have developed technologies to achieve the experience meditation systems, ecstatic

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Speaker 1: dance or postures, sacred psychedelic plants, and so on. Naturally,

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Speaker 1: these technologies are tuned to whatever the particular religion or

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Speaker 1: philosophy or sect imagines God to be. If you're a

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Speaker 1: mystical Christian, you are likely to see Jesus when in

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Speaker 1: an elevated state. As a Jew, I once had a

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Speaker 1: long visionary dream in which I was a Maccabean warrior.

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Speaker 1: It may sound pompous to say this, but if one

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Speaker 1: has not had such experience, it's pretty hard to understand

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Speaker 1: descriptions of it. Of course, getting glimpses of the gears

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Speaker 1: of the universe does not automatically make one a sage.

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Speaker 1: The visions come with the obligation to fulfill them in

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Speaker 1: good work, as the Buddhists say. Finally, we can agree

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Speaker 1: that Leary was not really a scientist. He dabbled in science,

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Speaker 1: learned some of its lingo, but science was not his

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Speaker 1: native language. What he was instead was a ring master

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Speaker 1: in the magic theater for mad men only. He was

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Speaker 1: a showman, and yes, a charlatan like any good Cartney,

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Speaker 1: but he had a powerful gift of gab. I can't

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Speaker 1: tell you how often I saw his book The Psychedelic

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Speaker 1: Experience rescue struggling folks from impending bad trips. In Leary's model,

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Speaker 1: a full on acid trip always began with a symbolic

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Speaker 1: death experience metaphoric or realistic, and this required courage and preparation.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned Leary's tongue in cheek motto turn on, tune in,

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Speaker 1: and drop out, as I'm sure you know, drop out

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Speaker 1: referred to out of the machine, out of the exploit

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Speaker 1: of culture. Well, we had a sign in the back

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Speaker 1: of our VW bus named the Collective Unconscious, which said,

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Speaker 1: turn on, tune in, and drop by. Thanks for listening

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Speaker 1: to this reverie. Well, that's awesome, I I it's wonderful

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Speaker 1: to have feedback a from someone who who who was

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Speaker 1: active at the time, B who knew Leary and uh

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Speaker 1: and then and then see had had these experiences and

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Speaker 1: can speak to them in this bit of listener mail. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I loved that Rick was able to provide and

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Speaker 1: and he wasn't the only one. We received a couple

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Speaker 1: more emails that were similar to this, But this was

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Speaker 1: this was amazing. Like I just felt like Rick just

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Speaker 1: encapsulated everything we were trying to hit with those two episodes. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there was this general attitude I think that you and

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Speaker 1: I had at the end of it. We were like, oh,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of disappointing. Man. Leary just really wasn't the

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Speaker 1: figure that we hoped you would be. Well, I think

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Speaker 1: one of the advantages that Rick had here is and

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Speaker 1: he knew he was. He was their first hand to

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Speaker 1: see learies flaws and uh, you know, the human qualities

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Speaker 1: that were that sometimes put him apart from this iconic

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Speaker 1: vision of him, where whereas we were coming at it

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Speaker 1: mostly with the the icon in the forefront and then

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Speaker 1: reading about the real man and the real struggles behind it,

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Speaker 1: so it was very textual. We didn't we didn't have

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Speaker 1: the experience of the human character of his ethos. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh, And clearly Rick has had more time to

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Speaker 1: reflect on who Leary was and what what he contributed. Also,

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Speaker 1: Rick sounds totally amazing a guy who worked in the

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Speaker 1: e Er for twenty five years and has all of

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Speaker 1: these cool experiences behind that. I want him to start

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Speaker 1: a podcast. Yeah, I listen. Alright, let's let's move on

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Speaker 1: to another bit. Joe, what does Carney have for you? Well,

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Speaker 1: I thought before we got into Monsters in the bi

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Speaker 1: Cameral Mind, I would do a roundup of lots of

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Speaker 1: different emails we got on our episode about the Game

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Speaker 1: of Werewolf. Robert, I'm sure you're excited to hear some

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Speaker 1: of this stuff. So we got lots of great emails.

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Speaker 1: I decided to try to summarize them into a small space.

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Speaker 1: So our listener, Carissa writes about playing in an online

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Speaker 1: werewolf group, which sounds pretty awesome, but they've got a

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Speaker 1: lot of amaze sing extra rolls in the game. Now,

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Speaker 1: we talked about the standard roles in the game of Werewolf.

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Speaker 1: You've got the townsfolk, You've got the werewolves who kill

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Speaker 1: in the night, and you create the mob. You try

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Speaker 1: to find a werewolf and you execute them and see

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Speaker 1: how you did. There's also the seer, which we used

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Speaker 1: in our game, who gets to ask every night if

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Speaker 1: there's a werewolf. In Carissa's game, there is the Frankenstein monster,

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Speaker 1: who absorbs the abilities of every town's person who dies.

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Speaker 1: There is also the teen Wolf, who is who is

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Speaker 1: apparently so excited about being a werewolf that this person

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Speaker 1: has to use the word wolf at least once every

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Speaker 1: day cycle or that character dies. Oh wow, that's that's ingenious.

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Speaker 1: So you gotta find a way to slip it in

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Speaker 1: there without people always noticing. Wow, that's that's brutal in

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Speaker 1: terms of game mechanics. Yeah, there is also the cult

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Speaker 1: leader who adds one person to the cult every night,

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Speaker 1: and if the only townspeople left alive are all in

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Speaker 1: the cult, the cult leader wins. Nice. It's a nice

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Speaker 1: game within a game. There So multiple people, including Daniel,

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Speaker 1: contacted us about a very similar online game called Town

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Speaker 1: of Salem, which sounds pretty cool. Our listener Leon on

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Speaker 1: Town of Salem says, quote, what's really different than your

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Speaker 1: live game of Werewolf is the lack of emotion and

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Speaker 1: human interaction. The ability to watch someone's face twitch as

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Speaker 1: they're accused of being evil, or hear the strain in

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Speaker 1: the voice as they defend themselves is lost, which really

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Speaker 1: changes the dynamic of the game. It makes learning the

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Speaker 1: minutia of each role that much more important. And I

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Speaker 1: think that's kind of interesting. I know some of the

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Speaker 1: studies we looked at said that they found similar dynamics

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Speaker 1: about what liars tended to do verbally whether the game

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Speaker 1: was being played online or in real life, and verbally

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Speaker 1: you know, spoken out loud. But I yeah, I do

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Speaker 1: have to think it would change some things. I mean,

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Speaker 1: in our games we played in here in the office,

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Speaker 1: I could I could sniff you out, man, because I

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Speaker 1: was just looking at your face. You were trying to say, no,

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Speaker 1: it's not me, I'm not aware, but you just you

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Speaker 1: couldn't help but grin. And with the grin, I knew it.

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Speaker 1: I knew you were the killer. Who in the office

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Speaker 1: was like the best at disguising being Awarewolf, It's a

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Speaker 1: good question. It all happened so fast. I would imagine

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Speaker 1: was bowling there. Boland would be good at it. He

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Speaker 1: would been bowling of car stuff of ridiculous history of

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Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah. Well, our

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Speaker 1: producer Alex was there. Yeah, I felt like he did

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Speaker 1: a pretty good job. He was a great narrator too,

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Speaker 1: was a great narrator. However, as one of the bearded

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Speaker 1: gentlemen playing the game instant suspicion, he was aware of

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Speaker 1: uh and Alex commented that that our colleague Tar he

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Speaker 1: thinks was the best. Yeah, she was pretty good. She

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Speaker 1: was pretty good. Now, those of you who don't know

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Speaker 1: where that probably means nothing, but but let it be

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Speaker 1: known she is Awarewolf. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Hey, have you guys,

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Speaker 1: I got another tie into one of the house stuff

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Speaker 1: work shows here, Have you guys heard that Strickland over

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Speaker 1: on tech Stuff has been covering this Mondo game board

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Speaker 1: game that just came out about it's related to the thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I saw something about that. Yeah, and it's apparently very

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Speaker 1: similar to the mechanics of Werewolf. Yeah, well check that out. Well,

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Speaker 1: there are a number of games that that certainly incorporate

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Speaker 1: a similar mechanic. I think one of our our listeners

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Speaker 1: actually wrote in about the Battlestarkalactica board game that came

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Speaker 1: out several years ago, Are you a Toaster? Yeah? Are

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Speaker 1: are you a Cylon? And actually encountered that game before

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Speaker 1: I ever played Werewolf and had tremendous fun accusing, just

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Speaker 1: often blindly accusing friends of being a sideline, to the

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Speaker 1: point that it's still kind of an inside joke with

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Speaker 1: certain friends, whether whether their cylines. It seems pretty easy.

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Speaker 1: It's whoever is wearing the slinky red dress, right right? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that that's sometimes sometimes that'll that'll key and but not always.

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Speaker 1: The best cue for for seeing guilt in somebody else

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Speaker 1: is just seeing a slight grind, not a big smile,

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Speaker 1: with the person who looks a little bit satisfied with themselves.

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Speaker 1: You know they've done wrong. Believe it's what Lady Gaga

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Speaker 1: calls poker face. Well, I think one of the things

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Speaker 1: we talked about too, is that there's often a different

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Speaker 1: energy in the person when they have to go from

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Speaker 1: being on the offense to being on the defense, you know,

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Speaker 1: and and you can see that energy change, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: you can feel it. I could definitely feel uh, my, my,

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Speaker 1: my energy shift when I was secretly had a different

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Speaker 1: role in the game when you had to pretend not

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Speaker 1: to be the werewolf. Yeah, okay. A couple more are

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Speaker 1: our listener. Heather mentions that she used to play the

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Speaker 1: French language version of the game, which of course is

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Speaker 1: called Lugaru and uh that's French for werewolf, and included

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Speaker 1: the chaste or the hunter. And that makes me wonder

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Speaker 1: if the language affects the dynamics of the game. Is

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Speaker 1: it easier to lie or to spot liars in French

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Speaker 1: versus English, versus Russian or any other language. I can

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Speaker 1: speak to this actually because I used to play Mafia

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Speaker 1: not Werewolf with a lot of Eastern European friends, and

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Speaker 1: we also played this game that they talk me called

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Speaker 1: my Hot Check, which is very similar in the sense

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Speaker 1: that like it's a game about lying and trying to

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Speaker 1: tell if somebody else is lying or not. And they

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Speaker 1: definitely were able to read me way easier than I

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Speaker 1: was able to read them. Which language were you playing in? English? Okay? Yeah, huh,

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Speaker 1: so like you were at a disadvantage being a native speaker,

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Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: a lot of fun because maybe playing the game in

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Speaker 1: in a secondary language, there's kind of this this firewall

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Speaker 1: built up there, like a linguistic firewall. Yeah. Well, they

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Speaker 1: all spoke English fluently though, and I didn't speak a

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Speaker 1: lick of the They spoke variations of Polish, check uh, Slovakian,

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Speaker 1: and yeah, I just whenever they would communicate with one

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Speaker 1: of them in those languages, maybe that should have been

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Speaker 1: outside of the realm of of the rules. And well,

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Speaker 1: this is probably a deeper linguistic question, but do you

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Speaker 1: think they were thinking about the game in English? Oh?

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Speaker 1: That's interesting. I think they were thinking about Mafia in

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Speaker 1: English for sure, because the concepts were very English to them.

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Speaker 1: But not when we played my Hot Check though the

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Speaker 1: game was invented in Russia. Oh is that right? I

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Speaker 1: didn't want that fascinating as Mafia, like we we celebrate

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Speaker 1: the werewolf fluff. Really if you want to get technical

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Speaker 1: on Mafia. It was the first one. Last quick note

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Speaker 1: from a listener about Werewolf. Our listener Valerie said, well,

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Speaker 1: she shared a lot of weird and interesting stuff about

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Speaker 1: growing up in what she describes as a dysfunctional family.

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Speaker 1: She says, quote, what I generally tell people is that

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Speaker 1: I was raised by wolves, except that's really unfair to

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Speaker 1: the wolves. So I am now in search of some

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Speaker 1: wolves who might adopt me. And it sounds like, given

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Speaker 1: her life experience and her dim views on the nature

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Speaker 1: of humankind, she is excited to play. She wants to

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Speaker 1: get into the life space. So she says, quote, at

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Speaker 1: the advanced stage of fifty eight, I believe you may

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Speaker 1: have finally introduced me to the perfect tool for explaining

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Speaker 1: human social interaction. It's quite good. It really does like

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Speaker 1: make you think about your friends differently after you play it.

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Speaker 1: All right, that's it for Werewolf. All right, Well, here's

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Speaker 1: one Carney is handing me. This one comes to us

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Speaker 1: from Melanie and she's responding to one of our Monster episodes.

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Speaker 1: She says, Hey, I'm currently listening to your podcast on

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Speaker 1: cute Versus Monstrous imagery, and I hadn't really thought about

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Speaker 1: it before, but there are so many similarities there. Both

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Speaker 1: types of stimuli are meant to grab your attention, and

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of factors can push people to

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Speaker 1: feel one way or the other. Lots of people find

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Speaker 1: mice adorable, including myself, but others are scared of them.

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Speaker 1: I'm terrified of spiders, but I have a friend who

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Speaker 1: thinks they're cute. I personally even find snakes cute, even

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Speaker 1: though no one seems to agree with me. I actually

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Speaker 1: think almost every type of animal is cute, and yet

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Speaker 1: actual human babies just seem mostly annoying and gross to me.

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Speaker 1: So I don't really Melanie, something's probably wrong in my

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Speaker 1: brain on that note, l o l uh. The fact

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Speaker 1: that a lot of creatures seem to be able to

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Speaker 1: go either way, like the II. The I, for anyone

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Speaker 1: not familiar, is as this wonderful species of lemur that

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Speaker 1: has these big, huge, huge eyes, and it has this

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Speaker 1: elongated finger that he uses to like pull grubs, in

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Speaker 1: sect feel grapes and stuff too. I remember hearing that,

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Speaker 1: maybe so yeah, but I mean it does seem to

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Speaker 1: be a horrible hybrid of baby is. Features like the

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Speaker 1: big eyes are part of the baby schema, but having

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Speaker 1: long tapering, you know, long limbs, is not having short,

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Speaker 1: stubby limbs as part of the baby schema. So it

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Speaker 1: almost seems like, can you imagine a baby with long,

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Speaker 1: slender limbs that's not cute slender man baby. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it also comes out at night. It's a nocturnal creature.

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Speaker 1: But it's one of these where when I look at it,

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Speaker 1: especially a baby obviously, but an adult I I still

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Speaker 1: looks kind of adorable to me. But it is a

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Speaker 1: species that has traditionally faced, um, some hardships because of

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Speaker 1: superstitions regarding it, and so they'll be like superstitious violence

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Speaker 1: against the II. Anyway, she continues, Um, Yeah, a lot

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Speaker 1: of these creatures. Quote made me think of your previous

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Speaker 1: episode where you mentioned the woman who doesn't feel fear

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Speaker 1: and how in the absence of it, she's actually attracted

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Speaker 1: to supposedly fearful stimuli. That's the patient s M who's

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Speaker 1: got the lesion on her amygdala. Right, She says, there

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Speaker 1: seemed to be these two mechanisms working in tandem, and

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Speaker 1: different people may have different levels for those mechanisms. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I'm really bringing up any any

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Speaker 1: new ideas here, but I thought i'd write in since

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Speaker 1: I found the topic interesting. I love all of your

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Speaker 1: Monster episodes. By the way, I'm sad that October is

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Speaker 1: over because I would definitely listen to Monster Podcast year round.

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Speaker 1: All your other stuff is great too, of course, but

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Speaker 1: I have a bias for the Monsters. Thanks for all

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Speaker 1: the great stuff you put out. I listened to you

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Speaker 1: guys all the time while I work. Well, here's one

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Speaker 1: of the things that I'm hoping to see in eighteen

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00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:54,159
Speaker 1: is that Dr Anton Jessoph gets his own podcast. Well,

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Speaker 1: we'll see. We'll have to have to contact the university

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Speaker 1: about that. See what, see if he can get funding

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Speaker 1: for that study. But yeah, I think Melan he had

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Speaker 1: some wonderful thoughts here about that that cute to monstrous

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Speaker 1: spectrum that seems to exist. Well. I like how she

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Speaker 1: draws the connection to that the case of sm that

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Speaker 1: we discussed from the other Monster episode, that from the

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Speaker 1: first Monster, where apparently in these cases where there is

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Speaker 1: a person who has a lesion on their brain that

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Speaker 1: makes them enable or unable to feel fear when they

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Speaker 1: see fearful stimuli, instead of just being unaffected by it,

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Speaker 1: they're very attracted to it, like they want to touch it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it just gets their attention. Yeah. So it's it's more

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Speaker 1: that instead of it being like a monster cute spectrum,

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Speaker 1: it is like attention grabbing stimuli spectrum. Wait minute, guys,

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Speaker 1: I think you just came up with an explanation for

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Speaker 1: the scene in Prometheus where that scientist approaches the weird

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Speaker 1: albino snake xenomorph and he's like, hey, little buddy, and

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Speaker 1: he wants to reach out and touch it. Everybody in

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Speaker 1: the theater is going, what are you doing? Why would

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Speaker 1: you do that? Yeah, well, you know he was if

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Speaker 1: he was a biologist, right, So it's it's very likely

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Speaker 1: that he and Melanie would have had this same idea that, like,

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Speaker 1: any creature is cute and attention grabbing, and of course

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Speaker 1: you want to get right up there and you know,

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Speaker 1: let him crawl inside your helmet and down your throat.

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Speaker 1: If I remember that movie correctly. Anecdotally, Melanie's comments about

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Speaker 1: finding things that are usually perceived as scary cute and

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Speaker 1: finding things that are usually cute kind of repellent. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that does seem to be one anecdotal case against the

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Speaker 1: idea that our categories for what's cute and what's scary

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Speaker 1: are biologically inherited. That does seem to be one more

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Speaker 1: tick in the column of well yeah, maybe these are

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Speaker 1: somehow conditioned in early childhood rather than received through our

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Speaker 1: through our inborn instincts. Alright, well, on that note, let's

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Speaker 1: take a commercial break, and when we come back, we

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Speaker 1: will have another trio of either listener mails or partially

425
00:22:50,640 --> 00:22:56,439
Speaker 1: digest uh, conglomerates of listener males, depending on what Carney

426
00:22:56,520 --> 00:23:02,200
Speaker 1: gives us. Thank alright, we're back. Hey, So, springboarding off

427
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:05,159
Speaker 1: of that last listener mail about fear and lack of

428
00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:07,280
Speaker 1: fear and the fear of response, I've got a great

429
00:23:07,320 --> 00:23:11,479
Speaker 1: one here from Jev. That's about our episode on the

430
00:23:11,520 --> 00:23:15,080
Speaker 1: science of It meaning Penny Wise in the movie It

431
00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:19,679
Speaker 1: and uh and she specifically references the fear response system

432
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:22,919
Speaker 1: that you brought up in the episode. This again just

433
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:27,080
Speaker 1: really touched me, she says, the three phases you mentioned

434
00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:31,840
Speaker 1: lady Da, freeze, and take charge was something I experienced

435
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:36,920
Speaker 1: and witnessed during nine eleven. Now let's refresh our audiences memory, right,

436
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 1: So the Lady Da people who the way that they

437
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:46,360
Speaker 1: respond to fear stimuli that's supposedly seventy of the population

438
00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: just kind of like don't know what to do with themselves. Yeah,

439
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 1: this is the goodness I wish I had had my

440
00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 1: my name's here in front of me. But referring back

441
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 1: to the movie Aliens, Yeah, you use that as the

442
00:23:57,480 --> 00:23:59,199
Speaker 1: metaphor what was the name of the guy who just

443
00:23:59,240 --> 00:24:03,720
Speaker 1: freezes and Gorman he didn't know how to respond and

444
00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:06,719
Speaker 1: doesn't respond, and it weren't for other people getting involved,

445
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:08,920
Speaker 1: he would just be eaten by Zena Morse immediately. That's

446
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:11,439
Speaker 1: the freeze and the Latti does like some of the

447
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 1: other soldiers. And then to take charge is ripley. But

448
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:20,320
Speaker 1: so lady da is s of the population, freezes fifteen

449
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:23,119
Speaker 1: percent of the population and take charges fifteen percent of

450
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:25,639
Speaker 1: the population. But we all like to think we're to

451
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:29,000
Speaker 1: take charge, right, but the numbers are against us. That's

452
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:32,480
Speaker 1: what this is not Planet Ripley. Yeah. So, as Jeb

453
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: says from her experience with nine eleven, my husband and

454
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:38,560
Speaker 1: I lived south of the World Trade Towers in Battery

455
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: Park City during eleven we had a view of the

456
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,960
Speaker 1: Hudson River where the planes flew over towards the towers.

457
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:48,639
Speaker 1: After I alerted my sleeping husband in a nonchalant manner

458
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 1: that a plane hit the towers. He jumped out of

459
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: bedfast and looked out the window and announced, we are

460
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:57,800
Speaker 1: under attack. This was long before anyone realized that. He

461
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,239
Speaker 1: dressed and grabbed my hand and started to run. I

462
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 1: complacently went along. When our neighbor friend came out to

463
00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 1: the hall, she asked, what's going on. My husband said,

464
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: we're under attack. Come and she froze and said no.

465
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 1: We left her behind, and I found out later that

466
00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 1: she curled up into a ball and cried and prayed.

467
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 1: My husband knew exactly what to do, and I accepted

468
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:24,680
Speaker 1: his directions without obstruction to his commands. I always thought

469
00:25:24,720 --> 00:25:27,560
Speaker 1: I was conditioned to listen to him without question, which

470
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 1: kind of depressed me. But after hearing your explanation of

471
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: how we react in an emergency, my experience came flooding back,

472
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:37,720
Speaker 1: and everything that happened I see now that my husband

473
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:41,479
Speaker 1: was in the fifteen percent that take charge. I was

474
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: the seventy percent to follow, and my friend, who did

475
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:47,400
Speaker 1: get out safely and was not injured, was the fifteen

476
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:50,920
Speaker 1: percent to freeze. We're all fine, and nine months later

477
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:53,760
Speaker 1: I had a baby girl. Thanks for your podcast. I

478
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:56,120
Speaker 1: love listening to you in the entire stuff family, Keep

479
00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 1: up the good work. So I responded to her with

480
00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:01,320
Speaker 1: this because I was really touched that she shared this

481
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:04,640
Speaker 1: experience with us, and it really put that study into

482
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: perspective for me because I had heard those numbers before,

483
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:10,639
Speaker 1: but I hadn't thought about them as being applicable to

484
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: real world relationship scenarios. Right, and explains a lot of

485
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 1: everyday behavior that I often find confusing. Right, Like, as

486
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:19,119
Speaker 1: I said, like, I'd like to think I'm in the

487
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:22,160
Speaker 1: pcent that would take charge, but who knows, maybe I'd

488
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 1: be the one who freezes instead. This is probably, I

489
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:30,360
Speaker 1: think why people describe when they survive life death situations

490
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 1: as it being something that teaches them something about themselves

491
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,320
Speaker 1: that they didn't know previously. Right, because this is the

492
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:38,040
Speaker 1: only way you can discover which of these three categories

493
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: you fall into. That's awesome. I love getting messages like this. Yeah,

494
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:43,880
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, but it is true. You can

495
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:49,440
Speaker 1: you can put yourself in simulated environments and simulated experiences,

496
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: but you ultimately don't really know how you're going to

497
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:55,879
Speaker 1: react to an event like this unless you're presented with it. Yeah,

498
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:59,639
Speaker 1: like a fun exercises, like, think about our office and

499
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: like all the people we work with, and then imagine

500
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 1: like a swarm of Zeno morphs take takes over the

501
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:07,360
Speaker 1: other end of the building and is coming towards us.

502
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 1: How do you think our various co workers would react?

503
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,119
Speaker 1: Would they fall into those categories? Who would freeze, who

504
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: would who would uh you know, take charge? And who

505
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:17,479
Speaker 1: would just be like, I don't know what to do? Well,

506
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: everyone's survival would come down to, uh to whether our

507
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: office manager has has had the office flamethrower properly serve

508
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:29,879
Speaker 1: that is absolutely true. Our office manager Tamika would absolutely

509
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: be in the fifty percent of take charge, all right,

510
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 1: so some of us would survive. Well, no, actually I

511
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:36,400
Speaker 1: can see what would happen, which is that we would

512
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:39,400
Speaker 1: call a three hour meeting to discuss what to do,

513
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,919
Speaker 1: and we well, actually we'd spend several hours trying to

514
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: schedule the three hour meeting at a time when everyone

515
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:47,679
Speaker 1: could be there, and then we wouldn't really succeed, And

516
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,120
Speaker 1: so fift would make it to the meeting and then

517
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: they discuss what to do, and then they'd get eaten

518
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: by zenomorph's man. This is this is the next day

519
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:57,879
Speaker 1: wean film, and really Scott's wondering how to this? Is

520
00:27:58,119 --> 00:28:00,359
Speaker 1: it fresh? This is the shin god Zilla of the

521
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: alien franchise, Alien bureaucracy It alright? Well, Joe, what is

522
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,359
Speaker 1: What does Carney have to do next? Is it a

523
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: single email or is it another partially digested mass. Well,

524
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how to do the bicameral stuff because We've

525
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 1: got a whole bunch on that, and I've got one

526
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 1: other email about cuteness and monsters. Maybe we'll do cuteness

527
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,000
Speaker 1: and monsters and then we can split up the bicameral

528
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:27,199
Speaker 1: stuff over a couple more rounds. What do you think

529
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 1: about that sounds good? Okay, So our listener Ming gets

530
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,679
Speaker 1: in touch with us to talk about the cuteness and

531
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: monstrosity spectrum. So she says, hey, guys, my name is

532
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: Ming from Toronto. I love your show and have been

533
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: obsessively listening to it every week since I discovered it.

534
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: You guys do such a wonderful job in researching making

535
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 1: your podcasts that I've been recommending it to anyone who's

536
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: got an interest in things out of the ordinary. We

537
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: really appreciate that than spread the word. That's the best

538
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: thing you can do is support the show. Very nice

539
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: of you to say, sort of mouth, really is I

540
00:28:56,840 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: think the best way to let people know about the show. Yeah, totally, yeah, yeah,

541
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: So tell your friends people out there anyway, ming says,

542
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: just wanted to write in and mention something I thought

543
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: of while listening to your podcast regarding monstrosity and cuteness,

544
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: especially in the context of Japanese folklore. One of the

545
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: things that wasn't meant and so the context series that

546
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: in the episode we discussed various folk monsters from from

547
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: Japanese traditions like the One and the Kappa and the Tingu,

548
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: and with the One and Kappa specifically some academic studies

549
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: charting the path by which they've gone from being disgusting

550
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 1: and terrifying to being turned kind of cute in popular imagery.

551
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't think I mentioned on the

552
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:41,720
Speaker 1: episode that on everyone's iPhones we have emoticons of the

553
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: Tingu and the One. I'm not sure about the Kapa

554
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:46,160
Speaker 1: off hand, but I was. I was in there the

555
00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: other day and I noticed the tinger. Yeah, tingos like

556
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: the crow one, right, it's the like the bird human

557
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 1: hybrid that's often presented as this long nose, red faced human. Yeah,

558
00:29:56,120 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: but the Tingo we were saying hasn't been quite as

559
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: cute ified as the other two, or at least there

560
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 1: wasn't academic work on it, right, because it was more

561
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: it seems to be a monster that is more spiritualized

562
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: and more regal, and more the property of the the

563
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: either the ruling or the upper intellectual class. So part

564
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: of what we talked about in that episode was trying

565
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: to explain what's going on here psychologically, what's causing people

566
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: to turn terrifying and disgusting monsters into cute versions of

567
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: themselves rendered harmless and cuddly. Anyway, ming continues. One of

568
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: the things that wasn't mentioned that immediately came to mind

569
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: for me was the socio economic climate in postwar Japan.

570
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 1: The aggressive cutification feels like, at least in part, rooted

571
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 1: in a rehabilitation of the country's image. Aside from boosting

572
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: the economy through cute consumerism, it may also be a

573
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: reaction to the sudden lack of militarism and nationalism that

574
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: was ubiquitous in Japan during World War Two. I think

575
00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting thought, Like, if you're a country

576
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: where your neighbors, you know, the Americans, Chinese and all

577
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: these have come to see you as the embodiment of

578
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 1: imperialist violence. I can see how that might lead in

579
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:13,920
Speaker 1: the culture to a widespread embracing of cuteness imagery. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

580
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: I think she's onto something here. This is a very

581
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:19,960
Speaker 1: smart observation that makes the status of the tingu all

582
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 1: the more interesting, doesn't it. Because the Tingu is a

583
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: warrior being. It is a it is a it is

584
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 1: a creature that that you know, warriors would seek out

585
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 1: in the wild so that they could learn it's martial arts. Uh.

586
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: The idea that this this remains largely untouched is it's

587
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 1: kind of like the the untouched heart perhaps of of

588
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 1: the Japanese warrior ethos. Maybe along the lines of what

589
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 1: Mings saying there was like a rejection of warrior ethos

590
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: after the war. Yeah, but maybe you know, it's like

591
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 1: a lot of things with either cultural or personal identity.

592
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: You know, you can some things you can only push

593
00:31:57,840 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 1: off so far, you know, I mean there's a certain

594
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 1: war there is a warrior ethos in in every human culture. Uh,

595
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: it's just you know, to what extent is it is

596
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:11,239
Speaker 1: it celebrated to what extent? Is it confronted? Okay, for

597
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:13,360
Speaker 1: this next part, you should find this in your notes

598
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: and look at this painting. I paste it in so

599
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: ming continues along the same lines, if y'all are particularly

600
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: interested in the arts. One Japanese artist that likes to

601
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 1: play with monstrosity versus cuteness is Takashi Murakami. His giant

602
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:30,800
Speaker 1: paintings definitely ride the line of cuteness slash monstrosity, often

603
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 1: featuring the baby schema, but with sharp teeth and bright

604
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 1: cute colors that are occasionally pushed to the venomous extreme.

605
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 1: Via Neon, I am only slightly familiar with Mirakami's work,

606
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: but yeah, this is cool. Uh. Friend of the show

607
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 1: ec Steiner is big on Mirakami. Yeah, I'm going to

608
00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: get into him now, so she continues. I believe one

609
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 1: of the key points in his art has to do

610
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:56,240
Speaker 1: with the above idea of post war transformation of Japan,

611
00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 1: and he also touches on consumerism by categorizing himself elf

612
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 1: in the pop art genre, one primary idea of which

613
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:06,480
Speaker 1: is making art avant garde by making it low class

614
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:09,520
Speaker 1: and making art for the cold, hard cash instead of

615
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: purely for art's sake. If this episode had an art mascot,

616
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: it would be him for sure. Thanks for taking the

617
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 1: time to read this. Keep doing what you do. Cheers, Ming,

618
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: So Ming, I really appreciated this email. I thought it

619
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 1: was fantastic and this painting is awesome. Did you guys

620
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,800
Speaker 1: happen to see there was a Murrakami traveling exhibit at

621
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: the High Museum here in Atlanta a couple of years ago.

622
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 1: I wish I'd known about that. No, it was super cool.

623
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 1: But so this painting she sent, I've got to try

624
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:39,400
Speaker 1: to explain it. It's um, it's like a Mickey mouse head,

625
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,959
Speaker 1: but through the lens of a psychedelic warfare terror drug.

626
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 1: So it's got a white it's got all the baby schema.

627
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: It's got the wide face that's baby schema, large eyes,

628
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 1: that's baby schema. It's got low set features and a

629
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: large forehead, large ears. It's all the stuff we think

630
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 1: of for babies and puppies. But it just it looks awful.

631
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 1: It's eyes look very very intense, which I think is interesting,

632
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:07,920
Speaker 1: like it seems to be peering into you with its

633
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 1: with crazy intensity. One of the hallmarks, of course, of

634
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: a baby or a puppy or a kitten. Is that

635
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:15,880
Speaker 1: it's like it doesn't really you can't really see anything

636
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:17,800
Speaker 1: all that well, you know, it's just kind of taking

637
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: it all in, or in the case of very young children,

638
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: not only making out blurs and shapes. This reminds me

639
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 1: of another artist that comes up on the show a lot,

640
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: another Japanese artist, Jungi Edo. We've talked about him before

641
00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: his work on Gio and Zamaki, and it's it's similar

642
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: and that, like he has that manga style that's kind

643
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,879
Speaker 1: of cute, but then he like evolves it into something

644
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: that's totally horrific. But I'm wondering if there is going

645
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 1: to be a point where, like, for instance, Cathulhu h

646
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 1: that Jungi Edo's monstrous creations will like get turned into

647
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:53,759
Speaker 1: plush stuff, toys or something like that. So it's like

648
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: a it's like a double reversal, right, it goes cute

649
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: to monstrous and then back to cute. Yeah, the um

650
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:03,000
Speaker 1: one of his like really big comic storylines is told me,

651
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: I believe that's how you pronounce it. It's all about

652
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: this girl who's like this, you know, cute on Ingenue

653
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:13,440
Speaker 1: High School Japanese schoolgirl, and but she's got this like

654
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: weird power where she makes everyone around her want to

655
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 1: kill her, and every part of her body that is

656
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: cut off grows into another tony. Uh so there's just

657
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: like he's got like like twenty five or thirty stories

658
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 1: about this one character and all the iterations right. Uh,

659
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:36,760
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's kind of cute to horrific. Dra Yeah,

660
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. I highly recommend it. Alright, Well, it looks

661
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,120
Speaker 1: like carn He is handing me a couple of emails.

662
00:35:43,160 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: They look kind of short, so I'm gonna read them together. Uh.

663
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: This first one comes to us from Brett. He writes

664
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: in and says, hey, team, I was just listening to

665
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:53,680
Speaker 1: the Cambrian Monster Mash episode and at the moment you

666
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: couldn't think of an app comparison between arms race and evolution.

667
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 1: Surely the British utilizing ADAR would be an apt comparison,

668
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:05,680
Speaker 1: as it literally added a layer of sight to the military.

669
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm oversimplifying. I've stopped a midbike ride to type

670
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: out this email. Anyway, cheers Brett, Brett. I hope you're

671
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 1: on a sidewalk. Yeah, stay safe, Brett. I think what

672
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: Brett's saying, and because we did talk about arms races

673
00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:20,759
Speaker 1: and evolution, but I think what he's talking about is

674
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:23,240
Speaker 1: the evolution of sight that we talked about in that episode,

675
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:27,880
Speaker 1: because we couldn't quite find a technological arms race analogy

676
00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: for the first the first introduction of acute vision in

677
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: the history of animals on Earth. Yea, because the idea

678
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 1: here is that as animals developed the ability to see,

679
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 1: suddenly things that were not an issue become an issue,

680
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:43,360
Speaker 1: such as pigmentation. Yeah, and so that was one proposed

681
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: explanation for what might have caused the Cambrian explosion. If

682
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: the Cambrian explosion is to be interpreted as this massive

683
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: explosion of of animal body plan diversity, what what made

684
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: all this evolution suddenly come about? One hypothesis is that, well,

685
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,120
Speaker 1: maybe this is the first time we got I that

686
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 1: could see very well. Before that, we might have just

687
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 1: had like you know, light sensitive spots or something. And

688
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 1: once you've got focusing eyes, these compound eyes that can

689
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:12,080
Speaker 1: really make out movement and stuff like that, you completely

690
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 1: change the playing field of what your competition for survival is.

691
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:17,799
Speaker 1: This follows along the line of stuff that we have

692
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:20,720
Speaker 1: covered in other episodes, but also on how stuff works,

693
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:24,160
Speaker 1: about recent discoveries into like really basic life forms like

694
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: slimes and how their cells can sense light. They have

695
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:35,400
Speaker 1: photo I guess sensitive cells. They can see with their cells.

696
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 1: So maybe that's what we're talking about. Uh, we're evolving

697
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: into pre eyes yeah yeah, or from sorry yeah, yeah, totally. Uh.

698
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:46,600
Speaker 1: And so the introduction of eyes he compares, of course

699
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: to radar. I think that's a pretty good comparison. I

700
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: think so, yeah, yeah, radar, and I mean to a

701
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 1: certain extent, you could throw sonar in there too and

702
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:57,200
Speaker 1: just say that, yeah, here's a way of sensing other

703
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: things that change the way everything has to hey, at

704
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: least in a war scenario for the radar. All right,

705
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:05,920
Speaker 1: here's this other bit though, that Kearney has handed me.

706
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Jonathan. Great episode, guys,

707
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 1: I didn't expect you could make an episode on monsters

708
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 1: so intellectually stimulating. That's what we do. Man. Is this

709
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 1: about the first sponsors, about the first monster? Inspired by

710
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 1: Joe's speculation on our first ancestors ability to imagine a monster,

711
00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 1: I'd like to suggest that it might not have been

712
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: a single epiphanist moment, but that it evolved gradually as

713
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 1: our ancestors were able to remember and reflect on their dreams.

714
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:38,879
Speaker 1: They certainly had dreams, and certainly they experienced all kinds

715
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 1: of irrationality in them. A creature with the body of

716
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: a man in the head of a great cat wouldn't

717
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 1: be a surprising dream image, And if there's any substance

718
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:51,239
Speaker 1: at all to the bicameral mind theory, the source of

719
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 1: images like this might have seemed profound. Thanks again for

720
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,920
Speaker 1: the podcast, Jonathan. Yeah, I can see that that's not

721
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 1: a bad idea. Hey, did you guys in that episode

722
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: did you talk about the example from Buffy the First Evil? No?

723
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 1: I don't think we did. I don't know if I

724
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: made it that far. I'm talking about it's pretty close.

725
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:13,279
Speaker 1: She's like the final Big Bat. We made it to

726
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,399
Speaker 1: the end of the fourth season? Is that there? They?

727
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: So the first Evil shows up in a Christmas episode

728
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: and then, uh, it's the very last season it's the

729
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: Big Bad. Yeah, Robert's right, And essentially the idea is

730
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:30,080
Speaker 1: that it's the very first monster that humanity ever encountered,

731
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:32,799
Speaker 1: and that we're all aware of it from our collective unconscious.

732
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: So I forgot about the loftier aspects of that season. Oh, man,

733
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 1: that would have been perfect for this episode. I wish

734
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:40,759
Speaker 1: I had known about that. I should have in prep

735
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:42,800
Speaker 1: for the episode, should have gone and watched the entire

736
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:45,319
Speaker 1: series of Buffy. I don't know. I don't know, man,

737
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 1: maybe just that last season. But certainly I love Jonathan's

738
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,279
Speaker 1: point here because this kind of gets to This gets

739
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:54,720
Speaker 1: to an area that we've discussed before when when trying

740
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 1: to figure out what ancient people were thinking off like,

741
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:01,880
Speaker 1: it's easy to to fall into the trap of just

742
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:05,400
Speaker 1: focusing on one area of human experience and human thought

743
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 1: and to dismiss, say dreams or as we've specifically discussed

744
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:14,160
Speaker 1: creativity and saying, well, no, if they encountered if they

745
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:16,440
Speaker 1: thought up a dragon, they must have encountered bones of

746
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: something like a dragon. Yeah. This is so not to

747
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 1: impugne the work of people like Adrian Mayor, who I

748
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 1: think is doing very fascinating stuff. But you know, we've

749
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: talked about her saying that ancient monsters may have been

750
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,880
Speaker 1: inspired by people seeing fossils in the ancient world. So

751
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 1: you see a dinosaur fossil, and that's where dragon legends

752
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: come from. It's not that I think that that's impossible.

753
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 1: I think that's a really interesting hypothesis to explore. But

754
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: I'm always a little hesitant to undersell the role of

755
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 1: creative imagination in the origins of ideas and stories. I mean,

756
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:48,360
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of things that probably

757
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: just come from people dreaming up weird stuff. Yeah, literally

758
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 1: or or or figuratively. Um yeah, I mean, and I

759
00:40:56,719 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 1: guess with a lot of this too, you can just

760
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: sort of imagine that you can have multiple mechanisms at

761
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 1: work at the same time. The people are dreaming, people

762
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: are encountering the stimuli in their in their lives, and uh,

763
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: and there it's also a certain amount of creativity going

764
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:13,239
Speaker 1: on as well. Yeah, I just don't think we have

765
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: to assume that somebody needed to see something like something

766
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: in order to make that thing up. You don't think

767
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: that HP Lovecraft uncovered like the skeleton of a half

768
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: octopus half man giant now, But you know, a lot

769
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 1: of the things he dreamt up would have would have

770
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: found a fitting home in in the Cambrian era seas.

771
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:38,280
Speaker 1: Oh totally. But I mean you can totally see somebody

772
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 1: writing that article, right, Because we like to make connections

773
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:44,359
Speaker 1: about inspiration so you could say, oh, well, it turns out,

774
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: you know, what we see from his diaries that HP

775
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:50,280
Speaker 1: Lovecraft visited a museum exhibit in this year in which

776
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: he saw these earlier preserved remains of a Cambrian era

777
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:57,719
Speaker 1: organism that had these strange tentacles. And that must be

778
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:00,319
Speaker 1: what I mean. You can imagine somebody writing something like that.

779
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 1: Now I'm almost I'm almost positive that what you're positing

780
00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: is true because I remember reading that HP Lovecraft biography.

781
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 1: What is it called. I've mentioned it on the show before.

782
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: I think it's like against the World, against Life, I

783
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 1: let you borrow. At one time it was something like

784
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: not not I am providence for the other one. Yeah,

785
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: the profound miss and throw. Yeah, but it mentions exactly

786
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:24,319
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Yeah. But but I'm just saying,

787
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: you can. People love to come up with theories of

788
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:28,399
Speaker 1: explanation like that, and a lot of times they might

789
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:30,759
Speaker 1: have something to them, but a lot of times people

790
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: are just being creative. All Right, We're gonna take one

791
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:36,960
Speaker 1: more break and we come back a final round of

792
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 1: listener mail here before we close out the episode. Than

793
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: al right, we have returned. Okay, guys, this is the

794
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: last one that I have from our October series of

795
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 1: Halloween episodes. This is from Lily and she writes to

796
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: us about our six ghost Stories episode. And you may

797
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:59,320
Speaker 1: remember that one of those ghost stories came from Malawi.

798
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 1: She says, Hi, guys, greetings from Southern Africa, Zambia in particular.

799
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:07,759
Speaker 1: I love your podcast, and I particularly love the episode

800
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: on ghosts and different cultures. I was very excited that

801
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: you covered a story from Malawi, a country that doesn't

802
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: get enough global attention and one that I used to

803
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: live in. While living in Malawi, I also noticed that

804
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:25,320
Speaker 1: Christian religions were frequently intermingled with traditional beliefs in spirits, prophets, possession,

805
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 1: and faith healing. Like you supposed, these two belief systems

806
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:33,880
Speaker 1: are not seen as incongruous to most Malawians. British colonialists

807
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:37,239
Speaker 1: tried to quash this coexistence by rooting out Malawi's many

808
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:42,240
Speaker 1: religious secret societies, but were relatively unsuccessful. Although the societies

809
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:45,840
Speaker 1: are much fewer now, many of their beliefs and traditions remain.

810
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 1: I did have a minor correction regarding your pronunce pronunciation

811
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: of I pronounced it muthu rika in that episode, In Chichewa,

812
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 1: which is the main language of Malawi pronounced chi che

813
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 1: Wa and many of the other Bantu languages in the

814
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 1: Southern African region, h is are often used to denote

815
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: emphasis and are silent in most cases. Muta Rica is

816
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:14,400
Speaker 1: not pronounced Mutha Rieka as y'all were pronouncing it, but

817
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:18,760
Speaker 1: has actually pronounced Muta Rica. Also, it's important to note

818
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:22,919
Speaker 1: that former President Bingu mutar Rika's brother, Dr Professor Peter

819
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 1: Peter mutar Rika, is now President of Malawi, so most

820
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 1: people now refer to the former as simply President Bingu

821
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: and the current president as President Muta Rica. As far

822
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 1: as I've been able to tell, Bingo is one of

823
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: the most widely revered presidents in Malawian history due to

824
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: his efforts to make Malawi independent from Western AID. Many

825
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: Malawians refer to him by his first name with both

826
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 1: love and respect. So that I think we might have

827
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: mentioned in the episode that the they were related, and

828
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:57,360
Speaker 1: that the brother that we were talking about as the

829
00:44:57,360 --> 00:44:59,920
Speaker 1: one from earlier who passed away, and he was one

830
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 1: of the many presidents who supposedly was afraid of ghosts

831
00:45:03,880 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: in the presidential mansion. She adds one more thing. This

832
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: is interesting. She says, one more thing. Attacks on people

833
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 1: with Albanism in Malawi are relatively new and infrequent compared

834
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:21,080
Speaker 1: to other countries in the region. Example is Tanzania, and

835
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:24,440
Speaker 1: many Malawians will tell you that it's not a Malawian superstition,

836
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: but one carried down from Tanzania and East Africa. So

837
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:32,880
Speaker 1: that's interesting because we brought that up as well in

838
00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:35,399
Speaker 1: that episode as being like one of those sort of

839
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: supernatural beliefs that seems to be working its way into

840
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: the westernization of these African states. Yeah. I mean, it's

841
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:48,239
Speaker 1: always important to remember that superstitions, urban legends and in

842
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 1: the various related uh uh energies. I guess you could say, uh,

843
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,040
Speaker 1: these continue to move, they continue to migrate, and they

844
00:45:56,040 --> 00:46:00,319
Speaker 1: can and to to evolve with our cultures. Yeah. So

845
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:03,319
Speaker 1: that was the enlightening because honestly, like that was one

846
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:05,840
Speaker 1: of those stories when we were looking for in that episode.

847
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard it, we tried to cover a

848
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,720
Speaker 1: ghost story from almost every continent and it was really

849
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,840
Speaker 1: hard to find a good African ghost story that was

850
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: translated at least, but this one was widely covered in

851
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,320
Speaker 1: Western media. Well, and then also more to the point,

852
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:25,759
Speaker 1: too difficult to find authentically African ghost stories that were

853
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:30,960
Speaker 1: not stories told by a colonial power. Yeah, there's tons

854
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 1: of South African ghost stories, but they're all based on

855
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:37,399
Speaker 1: like Eurocentric ideas that were brought there. Yeah. That being said,

856
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:40,720
Speaker 1: if you know a great African ghost story from anywhere

857
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: in Africa, share it with us. We would love to

858
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 1: have it in our heads as well. Definitely. Alright, Joe Carney,

859
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: the mail bot is presenting a large lump of of

860
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: emails to you. Hear what's going on? Okay, Well, so

861
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:58,240
Speaker 1: I'm going to address the bicameral mind emails. And since

862
00:46:58,280 --> 00:46:59,919
Speaker 1: there were so many of these, I picked a few.

863
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:01,359
Speaker 1: We might not be able to get to all of them,

864
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:03,160
Speaker 1: but we might, if it's okay with you, guys, split

865
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: this up over a couple of rounds. Uh, Let you

866
00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: read a little more if you can, if you can,

867
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: if you have a couple of more here, I believe

868
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 1: that have been flagged by Karnie. Okay, so we got

869
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 1: tons of great correspondence about Julian Janes and the origin

870
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:17,800
Speaker 1: of consciousness in the breakdown of the bi cameral mind.

871
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 1: If you are not familiar and you want to get

872
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:21,680
Speaker 1: the full story, you should go back and listen to

873
00:47:21,719 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 1: our episodes from late September, but we will do a

874
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:28,319
Speaker 1: very brief refresher. Here is the super stripped down version

875
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 1: of the hypothesis. Until about three thousand years ago, human

876
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:36,280
Speaker 1: beings were not conscious. The evolution of human consciousness, Julian

877
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 1: Jane says, happened in three stages. First, human ancestors were

878
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:45,280
Speaker 1: stimulus response machines with no inner mind space. Then, sometime

879
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:48,760
Speaker 1: around the birth of a language in humans, humans developed

880
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 1: a quote bicameral mind, which means any situation where you

881
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 1: couldn't deal with the new stimuli through instinct and conditioned responses,

882
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: you would learn what to do by here ring a voice,

883
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,879
Speaker 1: an auditory hallucination that would tell you what to do.

884
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 1: And what was actually yeah exactly, uh no, no, I

885
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:10,879
Speaker 1: mean not usually at the time, so it was a joke.

886
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:13,799
Speaker 1: What was actually happening here was that the non dominant

887
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: hemisphere of the brain was coming up with a response

888
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: and then delivering it to the dominant hemisphere of the

889
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 1: brain as a spoken command that people perceived as an

890
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:28,319
Speaker 1: auditory hallucination, and they called these hallucinated voices gods and

891
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:32,880
Speaker 1: then finally, about three thousand years ago, a cultural revolution

892
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:35,640
Speaker 1: caused humans to become conscious in the way that we

893
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: are today. They lost the divided brain, they lost the

894
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:43,840
Speaker 1: hallucinated voices, and instead experienced this internal theater or mind

895
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 1: space based on metaphors, where mental imagery is viewed and

896
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:53,279
Speaker 1: hypothetical scenarios are worked out in the imagination like memory palaces. No,

897
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:56,800
Speaker 1: it's like it's basically like your internal mind space. Whatever

898
00:48:56,880 --> 00:49:00,879
Speaker 1: you're picturing, whatever you're consciously thinking out, what over hypothetical

899
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: scenario you're working out in your mind. That is the

900
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: mind space for Julian James. So James has vestiges of

901
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:10,719
Speaker 1: bi cameralism still exists today and you can see the

902
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:15,040
Speaker 1: most acutely in conditions like schizophrenia, is that it's hard

903
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:16,880
Speaker 1: to try to get it all into a very tight space.

904
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 1: But that's the short run. Yeah, and it's also it's

905
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:22,400
Speaker 1: it's also kind of a story for why the gods

906
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:28,880
Speaker 1: stopped speaking, first, stop appearing, and then stop speaking to humanity. Uh,

907
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 1: not not a complete like suddenly they stopped returning our calls,

908
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: but they started calling us less and less. But we're

909
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 1: still living in a world and living with the with

910
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: this legacy, these religions, these tales as me, these mythologies

911
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: of God's appearing and speaking to humans and telling them

912
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:47,239
Speaker 1: what they should do. Well, they started calling us less

913
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:50,799
Speaker 1: and less and we're still sitting by the phone. So uh,

914
00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:54,799
Speaker 1: bicameral mind not an accepted theory. I'm hearing the soul

915
00:49:54,840 --> 00:50:00,600
Speaker 1: Asylum song. I'm waiting by the phone, wait seeing for you.

916
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: But whenever we pick it up these days, it's a

917
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 1: prank caller. That's the problem. Not an accepted theory, but

918
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 1: in my view of really interesting hypothesis, very clever, very

919
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 1: well argued, hasn't quite met the burden of proof, but

920
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 1: it's it's worth attention. You know. Somebody on Twitter reached

921
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:20,600
Speaker 1: out to us and was They were kind of like, hey,

922
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:23,600
Speaker 1: what's the deal? Why? Why why are you ashamed to

923
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 1: stand by by cameralism. I'm not ashamed. I'm just saying

924
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:29,480
Speaker 1: what I think. Yeah, well, I mean my my response

925
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:31,840
Speaker 1: to them was like, I'm I am. I don't admit

926
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,760
Speaker 1: to anybody that I think this is a fabulous theory

927
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 1: and just instantly just endlessly fascinating. UM. I love to

928
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: bring out this model when contemplating various things in our

929
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:47,840
Speaker 1: present world or in the ancient world. But at the

930
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 1: same time, I don't want it to be the only

931
00:50:50,239 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 1: model that I pull off the shelf to analyze things.

932
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:56,720
Speaker 1: So if I am, if I have, if I'm hesitant

933
00:50:56,719 --> 00:51:00,440
Speaker 1: about anything, I am, I'm hesitant about taking it on

934
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: is my sole worldview winds. I think what I detected

935
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:06,880
Speaker 1: in this uh in this tweet was that somebody was

936
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:09,839
Speaker 1: basically working on the assumption that it sounds like you

937
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 1: are convinced by the theory, but you're hedging or something

938
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 1: UH to to say like, no, I shouldn't publicly commit

939
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:19,240
Speaker 1: to this. I mean, that's not my position. My position

940
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: is I find it fascinating, but I'm not convinced by

941
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:24,920
Speaker 1: the theory. So it's not like I'm like pretending to

942
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:27,399
Speaker 1: find it less convincing than I do. I think I'm

943
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 1: not fully there for some reasons that we'll get to

944
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: in some of the emails I'm about to read UM,

945
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:35,399
Speaker 1: but a couple of people wrote in wondering if they

946
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:39,240
Speaker 1: have a bicameral mind, I think if you're asking that question,

947
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:41,399
Speaker 1: I think you probably don't have one in the sense

948
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:44,319
Speaker 1: that Julian Jayne's envisioned. Though it's possibly you have one

949
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 1: in some other related way. Uh. Some people pointed out

950
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:52,799
Speaker 1: interesting parallels between bicameralism and occultism and like Crowleyite theology

951
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:55,360
Speaker 1: and Thelema. I don't know what you think about that.

952
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 1: I think you guys probably know more about that than

953
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 1: I do a little. Yeah, well, we talk about Crowley

954
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:03,480
Speaker 1: and Thalma and our Jack Parsons episode quite a bit

955
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 1: because that was Jack Parsons, uh theology. I guess that's

956
00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 1: how you would put it. Um, And you know, it's

957
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:12,640
Speaker 1: interesting based on like a lot of the stuff that

958
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: we've talked around about occult in various episodes. It's primarily

959
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:19,720
Speaker 1: based on a system of symbology more so than actually

960
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:23,040
Speaker 1: like people thinking that they're casting spells and like sumoning

961
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 1: lightning bolts and stuff like that. So it seems like

962
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:31,239
Speaker 1: symbology would work its way pretty well into this. Yeah,

963
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: it could, I mean, um. A couple of listeners that

964
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:38,520
Speaker 1: mentioned this connection said something about inherent issues with the duality,

965
00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:43,080
Speaker 1: like duality being important to occult theology and that that

966
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:46,040
Speaker 1: you know, is manifest in the division of the mind

967
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:50,360
Speaker 1: under bicameralism. Anyway, I don't know enough to comment about it,

968
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:52,880
Speaker 1: but I thought that was interesting. A listener named Shaun's

969
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,520
Speaker 1: in a great email with a bunch of really interesting thoughts.

970
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:57,600
Speaker 1: In one I want to mention was about a possible

971
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:01,760
Speaker 1: cause for the transition from bicameral him to consciousness. Quote

972
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 1: the subjunctive voice. And that's the subjunctive voices when you say, like,

973
00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: if Christian were to give me all the money in

974
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: his wallet, I could go by lunch. You know, it's

975
00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:15,880
Speaker 1: it's the mode of grammar where you're entertaining a counter

976
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:21,680
Speaker 1: factual um. The subjunctive voice is used to imagine unreal

977
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:24,640
Speaker 1: scenarios and worlds. Could this have been a way in

978
00:53:24,640 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 1: which consciousness took over the bicameral mind instead of hearing

979
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 1: our ancestors voices in our heads? We can now imagine

980
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:35,719
Speaker 1: if my father were here, what would he tell me

981
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 1: to do? Or what would Jesus do? I like this

982
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:43,600
Speaker 1: because it touches on chronesthesia or mental time travel. Basically,

983
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:47,440
Speaker 1: basically just the hallmark of human consciousness that allows us

984
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:51,919
Speaker 1: to try and envision multiple outcomes to a given scenario. Yeah,

985
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 1: And a key part of what Jane says about the

986
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:59,280
Speaker 1: nature of human consciousness modern human consciousness is the idea

987
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: of in vision in time as a spatial dimension. Like

988
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 1: that's an important part of what the mind space is

989
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:08,960
Speaker 1: is it concertizes time and allows you to to sort

990
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:12,920
Speaker 1: of view it as a space. So, guys, I have

991
00:54:13,120 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 1: a crossover that I want to bring to your attention.

992
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:18,359
Speaker 1: I did a recent brain Stuff episode that is based

993
00:54:18,360 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: on an article on the house Stuff Work site that

994
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,399
Speaker 1: is about some recent research where they looked at how

995
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 1: well kids are able to focus on various tasks, and

996
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:31,759
Speaker 1: they found that children are able to focus better on

997
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:35,120
Speaker 1: their tasks when they think of themselves in the third person,

998
00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:40,000
Speaker 1: and specifically, like way better when they think of themselves

999
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 1: in the third person as an imaginary identity like Batman

1000
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:47,560
Speaker 1: or Dora the Explorers. I'm gonna have to look at

1001
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 1: this study because my my son has been doing this

1002
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 1: a lot, where he'll suddenly talk about himself in the

1003
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:56,239
Speaker 1: third person as if he were a cat. Okay, yeah, yeah,

1004
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:59,080
Speaker 1: It's pretty fascinating and it seems like it's somewhat connected

1005
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:02,239
Speaker 1: to this. That's interesting. I mean, part of the part,

1006
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:04,799
Speaker 1: part of the whole thing in Jane's case about bicameralism

1007
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:07,279
Speaker 1: is like the idea of identity in the self and

1008
00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 1: so like One of the things he identifies as regression

1009
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:14,560
Speaker 1: towards the bicameral mind and people with modern cases of

1010
00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:17,799
Speaker 1: schizophrenia is not just hearing voices in the head, but

1011
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:22,760
Speaker 1: also the dissociation or the dissolution of the sense of self. Yeah,

1012
00:55:22,800 --> 00:55:26,520
Speaker 1: like that they sometimes lose a sense of first person. Well,

1013
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:30,319
Speaker 1: in this case, I believe that the researchers theorized that

1014
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 1: the reason why Batman and Dora the Explorer were examples

1015
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: that worked so well for this was because the characters

1016
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:40,279
Speaker 1: themselves embodied hard work, whereas like if they were if

1017
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: the kids were just you know, in their own first

1018
00:55:43,520 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 1: person subjective point of view, they were more likely to

1019
00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:48,200
Speaker 1: blow it off. Well, I mean, I wonder if this

1020
00:55:48,239 --> 00:55:50,880
Speaker 1: could be compared to Jane's idea of what the ancient

1021
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:53,919
Speaker 1: poets were like. So were the ancient poet might say,

1022
00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:56,759
Speaker 1: might not say I need to work hard to compose

1023
00:55:56,840 --> 00:55:59,920
Speaker 1: a poem, but say, I am about to be possessed

1024
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:04,120
Speaker 1: by this third entity, the muse, and the muse is

1025
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:07,600
Speaker 1: going to speak a poem through me. And actually what's

1026
00:56:07,640 --> 00:56:10,440
Speaker 1: happening is it's coming out of their non dominant hemisphere.

1027
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:13,800
Speaker 1: They are composing a poem, but they find it much easier,

1028
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 1: and they're they're very fluid, and it just comes right

1029
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:19,400
Speaker 1: out in meter and rhyme and all that as composed

1030
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:23,000
Speaker 1: by this god the muse. I think we're onto something here, Uh,

1031
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 1: somebody out there, you might get a dissertation out of this.

1032
00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:29,200
Speaker 1: All right, I'll try to do one more for this round.

1033
00:56:29,200 --> 00:56:31,239
Speaker 1: And this is going to be from our listener, Amanda,

1034
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:34,600
Speaker 1: who says, hey, guys, my name is Amanda. I'm from

1035
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 1: Canada and religiously listen to your podcast. In regards to

1036
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:40,960
Speaker 1: the latest two part podcast by camera by Cameralism, I

1037
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:44,279
Speaker 1: have a thought and question. When James describes consciousness, it

1038
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:47,360
Speaker 1: almost seemed like the ability to conjure a mental image,

1039
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:50,520
Speaker 1: among other things. I was wondering if he had any

1040
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:54,440
Speaker 1: ideas about people with a fantasia this is the inability

1041
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:57,000
Speaker 1: to form mental images. Yeah, going back to a recent

1042
00:56:57,040 --> 00:56:59,440
Speaker 1: podcast of not that recent, sometimes in the past year

1043
00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:02,960
Speaker 1: or a couple of years. Um, if they are unable

1044
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 1: to have a mental image, does that mean they still

1045
00:57:05,640 --> 00:57:08,560
Speaker 1: have a bicameral mind or where does that leave them

1046
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 1: in the spectrum. I thought this was a really interesting

1047
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:13,560
Speaker 1: question because at first I would say, no, I do

1048
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:15,720
Speaker 1: not think that means they have a bi cameral mind.

1049
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 1: In fact, it would almost seem to me that they

1050
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 1: would be something like the very opposite of having a

1051
00:57:22,120 --> 00:57:25,960
Speaker 1: bicameral mind, like because one of the things that uh,

1052
00:57:26,200 --> 00:57:29,360
Speaker 1: some people report when they're they're describing their experiences with

1053
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: a fantasia is they don't necessarily understand the difference between

1054
00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:36,960
Speaker 1: mental imagery and hallucination. You know. Sometimes they'll say, like,

1055
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you're seeing something that's not there, and

1056
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to explain, right, You're like, well,

1057
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:45,600
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing it among all the things I'm seeing

1058
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 1: with my eyes. I'm seeing it in another place in

1059
00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:51,520
Speaker 1: my mind or something which would be according to Jane's

1060
00:57:51,560 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 1: your mind space. But yeah, I thought this was a

1061
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:57,520
Speaker 1: really interesting question, and I think this this kind of question,

1062
00:57:57,600 --> 00:58:00,960
Speaker 1: I think does highlight some of the big holes in

1063
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:06,000
Speaker 1: the picture of bicameralism. Like as as interesting as the

1064
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:08,680
Speaker 1: theory is, there are just a lot of questions you

1065
00:58:08,720 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 1: can ask about it. They're like, huh, I wonder how

1066
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:13,040
Speaker 1: that fits in it. It doesn't really seem to give

1067
00:58:13,120 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: with the whole the whole theory. Huh. Okay, So well,

1068
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:20,280
Speaker 1: this this makes me wonder about about Gozer's roll and

1069
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:24,040
Speaker 1: all of this because I've previously commented, at least on

1070
00:58:24,080 --> 00:58:26,560
Speaker 1: the blog and maybe on the show that if Goes

1071
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:30,280
Speaker 1: are the Gazarian UH came and appeared to a bunch

1072
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:34,200
Speaker 1: of individuals with a fantasia and said, um, choose the

1073
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:37,880
Speaker 1: form of the destructor. UH, they would maybe not be

1074
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:39,680
Speaker 1: able to choose the form of the destructor because they

1075
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: would move able to form a mental image of the

1076
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:46,640
Speaker 1: state puff marshmallow Man. So that aside what happened, because

1077
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 1: part of the whole thing and Ghostbusters just goes rough.

1078
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:52,840
Speaker 1: The Gozarian has appeared to ancient people, right, I mean,

1079
00:58:52,880 --> 00:58:57,160
Speaker 1: it's it's essentially like a Babylonian, ancient Babylonian entity. So

1080
00:58:58,200 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 1: what was Gozer's interaction with an ancient bicameral people. I

1081
00:59:03,040 --> 00:59:05,920
Speaker 1: always thought that the form that goes Or took when

1082
00:59:05,920 --> 00:59:10,200
Speaker 1: they first encounter her was that was that. I don't

1083
00:59:10,200 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: know if there was that much thought put into the script,

1084
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:14,920
Speaker 1: but I think I think there was. I think there

1085
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 1: was a lot of it. When they encounter and she's

1086
00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:19,080
Speaker 1: kind of got like the like makeup in the weird

1087
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 1: like tattered mummy outfit. That's what I thought was that

1088
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,640
Speaker 1: was the Babylonian manifestation, and then she was like, oh,

1089
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:29,240
Speaker 1: for this present day, you need something else. Yeah, maybe

1090
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:33,160
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It's like, goes are realized humans today

1091
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:36,439
Speaker 1: are a rather different organism in the way that they're

1092
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:39,680
Speaker 1: they're thinking, and like, clearly she can read their thoughts

1093
00:59:39,680 --> 00:59:42,600
Speaker 1: and she's interacting with something that seems entirely different. I

1094
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:45,840
Speaker 1: must update my form to match this new form of

1095
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:49,240
Speaker 1: human cognition. Unfortunately, it didn't work out very well for No,

1096
00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: No did not work. She's clearly she's just not an

1097
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:57,040
Speaker 1: entity for a post bicameral world. The one interesting comparison

1098
00:59:57,080 --> 01:00:00,680
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of now between a fantasia and by moralism

1099
01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:03,360
Speaker 1: is the presence of the internal monologue. You know, we're

1100
01:00:03,360 --> 01:00:07,200
Speaker 1: reading about a lot of people talking about their experience

1101
01:00:07,240 --> 01:00:09,280
Speaker 1: of living with a fantasia. You know, they say, well,

1102
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:12,360
Speaker 1: I never picture things in my head or I almost

1103
01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 1: never do with any kind of lucidity. But instead, what

1104
01:00:15,400 --> 01:00:18,040
Speaker 1: I sort of hear when I'm thinking are words like

1105
01:00:18,080 --> 01:00:21,440
Speaker 1: I hear an internal monologue talking through the things I'm

1106
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:24,080
Speaker 1: thinking about, like a thought balloon in a comic. Right. Well,

1107
01:00:24,120 --> 01:00:27,920
Speaker 1: one of our listeners asked this question after the episode

1108
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: they said, what is what is the voice that you

1109
01:00:31,840 --> 01:00:34,640
Speaker 1: hear in your head when you're reading something? You know?

1110
01:00:34,920 --> 01:00:37,120
Speaker 1: And that that kind of throws you for a loop

1111
01:00:37,160 --> 01:00:39,880
Speaker 1: because obviously, if you're reading, if you're reading, say, Hunter

1112
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:42,680
Speaker 1: s Thompson book, you might be inclined to hear it

1113
01:00:43,120 --> 01:00:45,760
Speaker 1: and Hunter S Thompson's voice, or at least in Johnny

1114
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:49,360
Speaker 1: depths Hunter Hunter s Thompson voice. But if you're reading

1115
01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 1: something else that you have no frame of reference for,

1116
01:00:52,280 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: and it's not the voice of a specific character, if

1117
01:00:54,920 --> 01:00:59,480
Speaker 1: it's just the narrator, what is that quote unquote voice? Well,

1118
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Jane's might have said that a

1119
01:01:01,800 --> 01:01:05,760
Speaker 1: possibility is when ancient people's read before the transition away

1120
01:01:05,760 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: from the bicameral mind, instead of being conscious of reading,

1121
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 1: what was happening was they were hearing a god speak

1122
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 1: the words to them as their eyes read them off

1123
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:20,080
Speaker 1: the page. And that would certainly match up two with

1124
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:23,520
Speaker 1: just the we we touched on this, and we discussed

1125
01:01:23,560 --> 01:01:27,080
Speaker 1: this in the episode, the reverence for written languages and

1126
01:01:27,240 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 1: uh and and hard coded symbols. Yeah, all right, well,

1127
01:01:30,600 --> 01:01:34,440
Speaker 1: it looks like Carni's handing me another male here. I'm

1128
01:01:34,440 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 1: gonna read it here. This is from you have Guinea,

1129
01:01:37,000 --> 01:01:39,400
Speaker 1: you have Guinea rights, and it says, writing you from

1130
01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: the cold coasts of the Baltic Sea, my name, name

1131
01:01:42,920 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 1: is you have Guinea. You have Guinea, or as I

1132
01:01:45,480 --> 01:01:50,040
Speaker 1: usually present myself for non Slavic speakers, Jeff, I've been

1133
01:01:50,080 --> 01:01:53,200
Speaker 1: occasionally binging on stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast since

1134
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:56,760
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, but the recent episode on bicameral Mind,

1135
01:01:56,800 --> 01:02:00,880
Speaker 1: a concept to which I introduced myself via uh echo

1136
01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: praxia from Peter Watts, made me finally write you. In

1137
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,280
Speaker 1: the podcast, you mentioned that reading literature written by the

1138
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:11,960
Speaker 1: authors of the Times covered by meters of dust give

1139
01:02:12,040 --> 01:02:14,840
Speaker 1: you an uncanny feeling that you were reading something alien,

1140
01:02:15,240 --> 01:02:18,120
Speaker 1: as if a person's thought process is quite different from

1141
01:02:18,120 --> 01:02:20,680
Speaker 1: your own. So I was wondering if you could share

1142
01:02:20,760 --> 01:02:23,920
Speaker 1: what piece of literature you were referring to specifically. I

1143
01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 1: know I was thinking of like ancient Babylonian and ancient

1144
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:30,440
Speaker 1: Assyrian literature, so like calling back to some of the

1145
01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:33,920
Speaker 1: text that we we discussed in the Tower of Babel episodes.

1146
01:02:34,000 --> 01:02:36,120
Speaker 1: The Tower of Babel episode, I think I also mentioned

1147
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:39,160
Speaker 1: a couple in the first Monster episode when I when

1148
01:02:39,200 --> 01:02:42,960
Speaker 1: I read those texts. I often have this feeling of

1149
01:02:43,320 --> 01:02:45,680
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's just something that's getting lost

1150
01:02:45,720 --> 01:02:50,360
Speaker 1: in translation, or if it really is I'm genuinely detecting

1151
01:02:50,400 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 1: that a different kind of human mind produced these things

1152
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:57,040
Speaker 1: than the minds of people living today. And I don't

1153
01:02:57,040 --> 01:03:00,480
Speaker 1: mean just like a different culture. I mean like like

1154
01:03:00,560 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 1: there there is no culture on earth today that feels

1155
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 1: like the mind that produced these Yeah, yeah, I know,

1156
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:10,840
Speaker 1: I know. In the episode, we specifically mentioned the Iliad

1157
01:03:10,920 --> 01:03:14,080
Speaker 1: because the Illiot is an example that the Janes refers to.

1158
01:03:14,760 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting about that as I actually, in

1159
01:03:17,720 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 1: my past life worked on a book that was analyzing

1160
01:03:22,880 --> 01:03:27,560
Speaker 1: a translation of the oldest copy of the Iliot in existence. Yeah,

1161
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:30,040
Speaker 1: and it was I don't speak a lick of Greek,

1162
01:03:30,160 --> 01:03:32,640
Speaker 1: but this was The people who were writing the book

1163
01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:35,840
Speaker 1: were all classical Greek scholars. They're translating it. My job

1164
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:37,840
Speaker 1: was to like put the pages down and make it

1165
01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:40,560
Speaker 1: look nice and everything. And for me, I remember looking

1166
01:03:40,640 --> 01:03:44,560
Speaker 1: at these pages and thinking like this is no pun intended,

1167
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:46,120
Speaker 1: not the whole, like it's all Greek to me, but

1168
01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 1: literally like it looks alien. Yeah, you know, I should

1169
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: throw in real quick. In the original bi camera mind episode,

1170
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:54,840
Speaker 1: I mentioned that there's a book titled The Rage of

1171
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:59,080
Speaker 1: Achilles by Terence Hawkins that updates the Elliot for modern

1172
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:02,360
Speaker 1: readers and incorporate the bicameral mind. Uh. I have since

1173
01:04:02,400 --> 01:04:05,800
Speaker 1: read that book and I highly recommend it. I have

1174
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:07,560
Speaker 1: kind of a mini review of it. Unstuff to blow

1175
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:09,720
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. One thing I do want to say,

1176
01:04:09,760 --> 01:04:11,440
Speaker 1: in addition to what I just said is that it

1177
01:04:11,520 --> 01:04:14,280
Speaker 1: does seem time dependent this alien things. So when you

1178
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:18,160
Speaker 1: read this really really ancient Assyrian Babylonian literature and stuff,

1179
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:21,800
Speaker 1: I don't detect the same stuff from like Iron Age

1180
01:04:21,880 --> 01:04:24,440
Speaker 1: literature of the same region. That seems more like that

1181
01:04:24,480 --> 01:04:27,120
Speaker 1: seems familiar. So if Jenny says thanks and then he

1182
01:04:27,160 --> 01:04:29,880
Speaker 1: has by the way that he adds, would you consider

1183
01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:33,360
Speaker 1: making an episode on Peter Watt's writing, especially the Blind

1184
01:04:33,400 --> 01:04:37,720
Speaker 1: Site and Echo Proxy of vampire space travel aliens, all

1185
01:04:37,760 --> 01:04:40,840
Speaker 1: packed in the hardest sci fi that our marine biologists

1186
01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:45,320
Speaker 1: could produce. Sounds like just the stuff to blow anyone's mind. Uh.

1187
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:48,840
Speaker 1: And an additional by the way, great, thanks for the

1188
01:04:48,920 --> 01:04:51,960
Speaker 1: things you do. You are a true inspiration. We covered

1189
01:04:52,080 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 1: Blind Site in one of our summer reading episodes, but

1190
01:04:56,400 --> 01:05:00,680
Speaker 1: my piction fit, my piction pick, my fiction pick this year. Yeah,

1191
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:03,560
Speaker 1: and I read it as well. Yeah, it's a fabulous book.

1192
01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:06,320
Speaker 1: I have not read any of the subsequent entries in

1193
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:08,760
Speaker 1: that series. You guys haven't done a science of it yet. No,

1194
01:05:08,920 --> 01:05:11,120
Speaker 1: we haven't, so I've gotten I've got a copy of

1195
01:05:11,160 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 1: Echo Praxia. It's sitting on my table and I was

1196
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:17,320
Speaker 1: planning to start reading it next week independent of this email.

1197
01:05:17,400 --> 01:05:22,320
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, obviously, Jet, Jeff, you have guinea. You

1198
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 1: should go back and listen to our episode, our summer

1199
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:27,400
Speaker 1: reading episode this year. And yeah, yeah, we get into

1200
01:05:27,400 --> 01:05:29,560
Speaker 1: it a little bit. We try to avoid spoilers. I

1201
01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:31,800
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what to do about novels like that.

1202
01:05:31,840 --> 01:05:36,160
Speaker 1: We're discussing the science of it is inherently to spoil

1203
01:05:36,240 --> 01:05:39,320
Speaker 1: the plot of the book. But uh yeah, maybe we'll

1204
01:05:39,320 --> 01:05:42,480
Speaker 1: have to do some kind of bonus spoiler laden discussion

1205
01:05:42,480 --> 01:05:44,120
Speaker 1: of it for people who have read it or don't

1206
01:05:44,120 --> 01:05:46,680
Speaker 1: plan to read it. And uh and talk about all

1207
01:05:46,680 --> 01:05:50,120
Speaker 1: of the weird stuff about consciousness and biology. All right, Jody,

1208
01:05:50,200 --> 01:05:53,080
Speaker 1: have us some more bicameral feedback here to share before

1209
01:05:53,400 --> 01:05:55,760
Speaker 1: Carney tells us our time is up. Yeah, a couple

1210
01:05:55,760 --> 01:05:58,200
Speaker 1: of quick things if you guys don't mind. One of

1211
01:05:58,240 --> 01:06:00,600
Speaker 1: them is from our listener Milanie, who says some very

1212
01:06:00,680 --> 01:06:03,360
Speaker 1: nice things. Wanted to talk about bi cameralism, and she says,

1213
01:06:03,480 --> 01:06:05,880
Speaker 1: I think people seem to strive for a lack of

1214
01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:09,800
Speaker 1: conscious thoughts sometimes, such as meditation or the much sought

1215
01:06:09,840 --> 01:06:13,720
Speaker 1: after flow state. I'm an illustrator, and a lot of

1216
01:06:13,760 --> 01:06:17,560
Speaker 1: my work inking, coloring, rendering, etcetera. Can be done somewhat

1217
01:06:17,560 --> 01:06:21,080
Speaker 1: on autopilot without a lot of conscious thought. In fact,

1218
01:06:21,160 --> 01:06:24,360
Speaker 1: it's often harder to create when I'm overthinking it, and

1219
01:06:24,440 --> 01:06:28,120
Speaker 1: without a lot of stimulation, my conscious mind gets bored

1220
01:06:28,200 --> 01:06:31,960
Speaker 1: rather quickly. That's actually where you come in. For the

1221
01:06:32,000 --> 01:06:34,560
Speaker 1: past few months, I've been listening to podcasts as I work,

1222
01:06:34,640 --> 01:06:37,400
Speaker 1: mostly stuff to blow your mind, which keeps the active

1223
01:06:37,440 --> 01:06:39,800
Speaker 1: part of my brain occupied and interested so that my

1224
01:06:39,920 --> 01:06:42,880
Speaker 1: hands can do the work, and in turn, working on

1225
01:06:42,880 --> 01:06:45,240
Speaker 1: a project keeps me focused so that I pay better

1226
01:06:45,280 --> 01:06:48,160
Speaker 1: attention to what you're saying. Splitting my brain this way

1227
01:06:48,200 --> 01:06:51,240
Speaker 1: seems to make both parts work better and help me

1228
01:06:51,320 --> 01:06:54,760
Speaker 1: be more relaxed and productive. Within the bicameral theory, I

1229
01:06:54,800 --> 01:06:57,400
Speaker 1: suppose that you are the gods whose voices I choose

1230
01:06:57,440 --> 01:07:01,080
Speaker 1: to occupy my mind any I keep up the great

1231
01:07:01,080 --> 01:07:02,800
Speaker 1: work with the show. I always look forward to new

1232
01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:06,360
Speaker 1: episodes since I go through them pretty quickly. Thanks Melanie.

1233
01:07:06,400 --> 01:07:08,560
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting, and I think the flow

1234
01:07:08,640 --> 01:07:13,320
Speaker 1: state is one of the most fascinating examples of the

1235
01:07:13,440 --> 01:07:17,040
Speaker 1: of reduction or limited consciousness that we usually experience, because

1236
01:07:17,360 --> 01:07:19,280
Speaker 1: the flow state is like when you're at the height

1237
01:07:19,320 --> 01:07:22,160
Speaker 1: of having fun and feeling good about what you're doing.

1238
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:25,160
Speaker 1: But I agree that in that flow state there does

1239
01:07:25,200 --> 01:07:28,360
Speaker 1: appear to often be a sense of reduced consciousness. It's

1240
01:07:28,400 --> 01:07:32,800
Speaker 1: almost like being hypnotized. You're not really aware of yourself

1241
01:07:32,880 --> 01:07:35,920
Speaker 1: and what you're doing, right. Yeah. We've actually heard that

1242
01:07:36,120 --> 01:07:38,480
Speaker 1: from a lot of artists who are listeners of the

1243
01:07:38,480 --> 01:07:40,640
Speaker 1: show who have a similar experience to Melanie. And I'm

1244
01:07:40,680 --> 01:07:42,560
Speaker 1: thinking of the ones that I've met in real life,

1245
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:45,480
Speaker 1: like Meg Hutchinson and Jaime Dragoons who we we met

1246
01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:48,840
Speaker 1: at C two E two last year. Um, But yeah,

1247
01:07:48,880 --> 01:07:51,560
Speaker 1: it seems like that is a common thing that they're

1248
01:07:51,680 --> 01:07:54,360
Speaker 1: using podcasts to sort of shut down the part of

1249
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:57,800
Speaker 1: their mind that's actively thinking about the work in front

1250
01:07:57,800 --> 01:08:00,440
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah. So I know when I because I

1251
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:02,840
Speaker 1: do illustration. I'm nowhere near as good as those people.

1252
01:08:02,880 --> 01:08:07,240
Speaker 1: But whenever I'm working on illustration or coloring specifically, like

1253
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:10,000
Speaker 1: she was mentioning, I usually have a movie on in

1254
01:08:10,040 --> 01:08:12,280
Speaker 1: the background, and that helps me do the same thing.

1255
01:08:13,200 --> 01:08:15,400
Speaker 1: I mean, I do wonder if it sort of helps

1256
01:08:15,440 --> 01:08:17,760
Speaker 1: you harness the muse, the old sense of that if

1257
01:08:17,800 --> 01:08:22,000
Speaker 1: the muses the non dominant hemisphere taking over the creative process,

1258
01:08:22,479 --> 01:08:25,519
Speaker 1: if you can sort of like sort of like tie

1259
01:08:25,640 --> 01:08:29,439
Speaker 1: up the executive function of the dominant hemisphere doing something else,

1260
01:08:30,280 --> 01:08:33,120
Speaker 1: you can sort of let that that that non dominant

1261
01:08:33,160 --> 01:08:37,160
Speaker 1: hemisphere takeover more effectively. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah,

1262
01:08:37,360 --> 01:08:40,280
Speaker 1: I think further research is required here. Well. It also

1263
01:08:40,320 --> 01:08:43,800
Speaker 1: makes me think too of some of the various rituals

1264
01:08:43,840 --> 01:08:47,439
Speaker 1: that are used to or have been in you used

1265
01:08:47,439 --> 01:08:50,080
Speaker 1: to invoke not only a meditative state, but some sort

1266
01:08:50,120 --> 01:08:53,559
Speaker 1: of a prayer state, some sort of communion trans We've

1267
01:08:53,560 --> 01:08:57,240
Speaker 1: talked about saying the Rosary before along those lines. Finally,

1268
01:08:57,560 --> 01:09:00,559
Speaker 1: our listener Andrew sent us a email that is too

1269
01:09:00,560 --> 01:09:02,400
Speaker 1: long to read, but he does say a lot of

1270
01:09:02,400 --> 01:09:04,920
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff in it about the bicameral mind, and

1271
01:09:04,920 --> 01:09:07,080
Speaker 1: one of the things he points out is I think

1272
01:09:07,160 --> 01:09:11,600
Speaker 1: perhaps my biggest objection to the theory. It's one of

1273
01:09:11,640 --> 01:09:16,240
Speaker 1: my biggest questions, which is about Jane's definition of consciousness.

1274
01:09:16,360 --> 01:09:18,960
Speaker 1: So James has this definition he establishes in the book.

1275
01:09:18,960 --> 01:09:21,960
Speaker 1: I think he does a really interesting job of characterizing

1276
01:09:22,000 --> 01:09:25,519
Speaker 1: what he thinks consciousness is. It's this metaphor based mind

1277
01:09:25,600 --> 01:09:29,280
Speaker 1: space where you can entertain thoughts and ideas. Jeff says,

1278
01:09:29,320 --> 01:09:31,559
Speaker 1: I consider it given that to be conscious of something

1279
01:09:31,680 --> 01:09:35,200
Speaker 1: is to experience it. I think awareness is essentially the

1280
01:09:35,240 --> 01:09:38,080
Speaker 1: same as consciousness, and I don't believe that there is

1281
01:09:38,120 --> 01:09:41,760
Speaker 1: an unconscious experience. But I do think it's obvious that

1282
01:09:41,800 --> 01:09:46,240
Speaker 1: our minds can unconsciously gather information and present it to consciousness.

1283
01:09:46,320 --> 01:09:48,519
Speaker 1: Later we give examples of that in the book, like

1284
01:09:48,600 --> 01:09:51,680
Speaker 1: you can unconsciously use your brain to do things. But

1285
01:09:51,760 --> 01:09:56,040
Speaker 1: he's saying consciousness and experience are the same thing, So

1286
01:09:56,080 --> 01:09:59,280
Speaker 1: he continues, I don't see how a bicameral person can

1287
01:09:59,360 --> 01:10:05,080
Speaker 1: hallucinate without conscious experience. Of those hallucinations, what is an

1288
01:10:05,200 --> 01:10:09,240
Speaker 1: unconscious hallucination? And then he goes on to say, I

1289
01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:12,320
Speaker 1: think Jane's definition of consciousness is ad hoc. I think

1290
01:10:12,320 --> 01:10:16,200
Speaker 1: he wrongly defines consciousness as being what we experience as

1291
01:10:16,280 --> 01:10:20,439
Speaker 1: modern humans, with the defining feature being internal dialogue. So

1292
01:10:20,560 --> 01:10:23,080
Speaker 1: I may be completely off base here because I wasn't

1293
01:10:23,120 --> 01:10:26,679
Speaker 1: on this bi cameral mind episode. But when he says

1294
01:10:27,000 --> 01:10:31,200
Speaker 1: hallucinating unconsciously, the first thing I think of from previous

1295
01:10:31,200 --> 01:10:35,320
Speaker 1: episodes that we've done is experiencing the supernatural. So like,

1296
01:10:35,680 --> 01:10:38,840
Speaker 1: if you feel like you've seen a ghost, that could

1297
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:41,519
Speaker 1: be that, but you'd be conscious of it. So I

1298
01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:44,840
Speaker 1: think what what he's saying is, what does it mean

1299
01:10:45,240 --> 01:10:49,880
Speaker 1: for a non conscious person to hallucinate? So he's saying

1300
01:10:50,000 --> 01:10:55,080
Speaker 1: to to hallucinate is to experience the detection of something

1301
01:10:55,120 --> 01:10:58,760
Speaker 1: that is not physically there in reality. But if you're

1302
01:10:58,800 --> 01:11:03,000
Speaker 1: not conscious, how would you experience it? Now, I'm not

1303
01:11:03,160 --> 01:11:04,880
Speaker 1: quite sure. I'm want to. I think that's a really

1304
01:11:04,880 --> 01:11:07,080
Speaker 1: interesting point, but I'm not quite sure I'm won over

1305
01:11:07,320 --> 01:11:09,080
Speaker 1: by it because I think of the analogy of like

1306
01:11:09,120 --> 01:11:12,040
Speaker 1: a computer. So imagine you've got a computer that is

1307
01:11:12,080 --> 01:11:15,599
Speaker 1: set up to detect things in a room, and it

1308
01:11:15,680 --> 01:11:18,120
Speaker 1: detects maybe it's got like a motion sensor, when a

1309
01:11:18,160 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: thing could walk in front of it. Now you could

1310
01:11:20,200 --> 01:11:24,479
Speaker 1: implant a computer virus on that computer that could make

1311
01:11:24,520 --> 01:11:27,479
Speaker 1: it sense people walking by the motion sensor, even when

1312
01:11:27,479 --> 01:11:30,320
Speaker 1: nobody's walking by the motion sensor and sense. In that way,

1313
01:11:30,360 --> 01:11:34,160
Speaker 1: the computer would be hallucinating motion. But that doesn't mean

1314
01:11:34,200 --> 01:11:38,000
Speaker 1: the computer is conscious of that motion, right, It's all

1315
01:11:38,080 --> 01:11:42,000
Speaker 1: just a machine. So I'm not sure I'm convinced by this,

1316
01:11:42,040 --> 01:11:44,320
Speaker 1: but I think it is a really interesting objection, and

1317
01:11:44,360 --> 01:11:48,479
Speaker 1: it's worth considering. What is the difference between Jane's idea

1318
01:11:48,600 --> 01:11:52,840
Speaker 1: of consciousness and the idea of experience itself? Is there

1319
01:11:52,880 --> 01:11:55,840
Speaker 1: nothing that it would be like to be a bicameral

1320
01:11:55,960 --> 01:11:59,240
Speaker 1: person or would there be something that it was like

1321
01:11:59,360 --> 01:12:02,040
Speaker 1: to be a bi cameral person just very different than

1322
01:12:02,080 --> 01:12:05,320
Speaker 1: what it's like to be us. Yeah, I mean it's

1323
01:12:05,360 --> 01:12:08,000
Speaker 1: quite it's quite a conundrum. Um, you know, I thought

1324
01:12:08,040 --> 01:12:11,599
Speaker 1: about a lot of this too, uh. In reading Terence

1325
01:12:11,600 --> 01:12:14,559
Speaker 1: hawkins The Rage of Achilles, where he has the he

1326
01:12:14,600 --> 01:12:17,960
Speaker 1: sets himself up with the challenge of of writing about

1327
01:12:18,080 --> 01:12:21,519
Speaker 1: characters who have a bicameral mind, but also writing about

1328
01:12:21,560 --> 01:12:25,519
Speaker 1: them in a way that you're gonna we're gonna also feel, um,

1329
01:12:25,640 --> 01:12:27,400
Speaker 1: we were also going to be able to sympathize with

1330
01:12:27,439 --> 01:12:29,920
Speaker 1: an empathize with them to some extent as if they

1331
01:12:29,920 --> 01:12:35,320
Speaker 1: are you know, normal humans. Uh, how do you, truly

1332
01:12:35,360 --> 01:12:38,280
Speaker 1: how do you imagine the mindset of a of an

1333
01:12:38,360 --> 01:12:42,240
Speaker 1: unconscious human? I wonder if somebody could develop a derivative

1334
01:12:42,360 --> 01:12:45,280
Speaker 1: theory of the bicameral mind that gets rid of the

1335
01:12:45,320 --> 01:12:49,280
Speaker 1: idea that ancient humans were not conscious, or at least

1336
01:12:49,320 --> 01:12:53,240
Speaker 1: reformulates that to say their consciousness was different than ours,

1337
01:12:54,120 --> 01:12:57,839
Speaker 1: because I think it's entirely possible that there was something

1338
01:12:57,880 --> 01:13:00,960
Speaker 1: going on in the brains of ancient humans that caused

1339
01:13:01,000 --> 01:13:03,680
Speaker 1: them to hear voices and hallucinate far more often than

1340
01:13:03,760 --> 01:13:06,519
Speaker 1: we do today, and those hallucinations may have been of

1341
01:13:06,560 --> 01:13:09,360
Speaker 1: a different sort of relevance to their lives, more useful,

1342
01:13:09,479 --> 01:13:13,479
Speaker 1: more practical, more accurate than hallucinations are today. But at

1343
01:13:13,479 --> 01:13:16,200
Speaker 1: the same time, they were conscious in some sense, they

1344
01:13:16,200 --> 01:13:20,559
Speaker 1: had an experience. They weren't hallucinating robots. They were people

1345
01:13:20,680 --> 01:13:24,639
Speaker 1: kind of like us, just different. So it all comes

1346
01:13:24,640 --> 01:13:28,200
Speaker 1: back to the same conundrum, right what is consciousness? What

1347
01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:31,880
Speaker 1: am I experiencing right now? Ultimately, that's Andrew's big question.

1348
01:13:31,960 --> 01:13:34,200
Speaker 1: He says he he liked like He's got a lot

1349
01:13:34,240 --> 01:13:35,920
Speaker 1: of thoughts about the theory, but he doesn't think it

1350
01:13:36,040 --> 01:13:39,519
Speaker 1: ultimately sheds light on the hard problem of consciousness. The

1351
01:13:39,840 --> 01:13:42,439
Speaker 1: question you just asked. We all have this thing, but

1352
01:13:42,520 --> 01:13:45,960
Speaker 1: what is it? Alright? I have one final listener mail

1353
01:13:45,960 --> 01:13:48,479
Speaker 1: and this comes to us from Meg and she's responding

1354
01:13:48,520 --> 01:13:51,599
Speaker 1: to one of our ignoble episodes. I believe it was

1355
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:56,160
Speaker 1: the second one. Let's see. She says, Hi, there. Uh,

1356
01:13:56,200 --> 01:13:58,360
Speaker 1: there is a lot to be said about this, but

1357
01:13:58,640 --> 01:14:01,360
Speaker 1: most concisely, as a twin, I can tell you that

1358
01:14:01,479 --> 01:14:04,960
Speaker 1: my experience and the experience of my identical twin in

1359
01:14:05,040 --> 01:14:08,880
Speaker 1: recognizing ourselves and photos was that we each always saw

1360
01:14:08,960 --> 01:14:11,200
Speaker 1: the other. As in, if there was a photo of me,

1361
01:14:11,520 --> 01:14:14,120
Speaker 1: by and large, my conclusion was that it was a

1362
01:14:14,120 --> 01:14:16,800
Speaker 1: photo of my sister. The reverse was true for her.

1363
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:18,920
Speaker 1: Of course, it seems to be that we spent far

1364
01:14:18,960 --> 01:14:21,400
Speaker 1: more time looking at the other person than we did

1365
01:14:21,400 --> 01:14:24,200
Speaker 1: it ourselves or at a mirror. Plus a mirror is

1366
01:14:24,240 --> 01:14:27,759
Speaker 1: a reverse image. Additionally, we did have issues of self

1367
01:14:28,000 --> 01:14:30,639
Speaker 1: and referred to ourselves in the plural, despite our parents

1368
01:14:30,760 --> 01:14:34,160
Speaker 1: best efforts to have us be individuals and not a unit. Uh.

1369
01:14:34,200 --> 01:14:37,040
Speaker 1: They were aware of that problem with twins, but we

1370
01:14:37,160 --> 01:14:42,400
Speaker 1: persisted unintentionally. Love your show, Mac, That's fascinating. Yeah. The

1371
01:14:42,600 --> 01:14:44,439
Speaker 1: the study that we focused on just had to do

1372
01:14:44,520 --> 01:14:50,680
Speaker 1: with with self facial recognition in identical twins? Uh, you

1373
01:14:50,720 --> 01:14:52,880
Speaker 1: know what is different with identical twins and what that

1374
01:14:52,920 --> 01:14:55,680
Speaker 1: reveals about self facial recognition for the for the rest

1375
01:14:55,720 --> 01:14:59,800
Speaker 1: of us. I saw something recently that is very tangentially

1376
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:03,200
Speaker 1: nect it to this. But you remember in that episode,

1377
01:15:03,240 --> 01:15:05,879
Speaker 1: I brought up the idea that the facial recognition software

1378
01:15:05,920 --> 01:15:09,640
Speaker 1: on our phones maybe would have difficulty just telling you

1379
01:15:09,640 --> 01:15:14,000
Speaker 1: and your twin apart, right, Apparently a drag queen tried

1380
01:15:14,200 --> 01:15:17,880
Speaker 1: to trick the facial recognition software by like being out

1381
01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:20,640
Speaker 1: of drag and then in drag to see if it

1382
01:15:20,680 --> 01:15:23,000
Speaker 1: could work or not, and and it it depended on

1383
01:15:23,000 --> 01:15:26,479
Speaker 1: the phone, I believe. Yeah, yeah, but that that makes

1384
01:15:26,520 --> 01:15:28,920
Speaker 1: me wonder as well, like depending on what kind of

1385
01:15:29,560 --> 01:15:32,120
Speaker 1: costumed identities I guess that you create. Well, let me

1386
01:15:32,160 --> 01:15:35,080
Speaker 1: tell you this, anyone out there who's looking to conduct

1387
01:15:35,520 --> 01:15:38,440
Speaker 1: a study, I bet if you do a facial recognition

1388
01:15:38,760 --> 01:15:42,719
Speaker 1: drag queen study, you will definitely win an ignoble prize.

1389
01:15:43,080 --> 01:15:45,920
Speaker 1: And I think we've been doing as long enough and

1390
01:15:46,000 --> 01:15:47,960
Speaker 1: that they would like that they would Yeah, that's a

1391
01:15:48,000 --> 01:15:52,320
Speaker 1: great idea. All right, all right, Well, thanks everybody, and

1392
01:15:52,360 --> 01:15:55,960
Speaker 1: thanks to Carney for bringing out all this wonderful email.

1393
01:15:56,040 --> 01:15:58,960
Speaker 1: Thanks to all of you for writing to us and

1394
01:15:59,080 --> 01:16:02,200
Speaker 1: sharing your thoughts, your questions, your and your insights and

1395
01:16:02,200 --> 01:16:05,599
Speaker 1: your personal experiences related to these topics. And hey, if

1396
01:16:05,680 --> 01:16:07,760
Speaker 1: you just listen to this and you're like, I want

1397
01:16:07,800 --> 01:16:10,120
Speaker 1: to add too, I want you to read my thing

1398
01:16:10,280 --> 01:16:13,439
Speaker 1: on the next Listener Mail episode. There's so many ways

1399
01:16:13,479 --> 01:16:15,679
Speaker 1: that you can get in touch with us. There's Facebook,

1400
01:16:15,720 --> 01:16:18,280
Speaker 1: for instance, We've got our regular Facebook page. We've also

1401
01:16:18,280 --> 01:16:22,320
Speaker 1: got our discussion module. We're also on Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram.

1402
01:16:22,360 --> 01:16:24,559
Speaker 1: There's also stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. And

1403
01:16:24,640 --> 01:16:26,600
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us directly,

1404
01:16:26,760 --> 01:16:29,799
Speaker 1: as always, you can email us at blow the Mind

1405
01:16:29,880 --> 01:16:42,280
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this

1406
01:16:42,479 --> 01:16:45,000
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works

1407
01:16:45,000 --> 01:17:04,960
Speaker 1: dot com. Twitty Proper first char