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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. Uh, this one originally aired? Did this

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Speaker 1: one make it in after the October cut off last year?

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Speaker 1: Was this beginning of November? That's what That's what I'm reading. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: but we would have I guess recorded it maybe on

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Speaker 1: Halloween or maybe before Halloween, so it all works out.

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Speaker 1: The first week of November is still Halloween. In fact,

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Speaker 1: the second week of November is still Halloween, and I

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Speaker 1: would say maybe the third and fourth and and sometime

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Speaker 1: beyond that. Yes, this originally aired on November two. This

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Speaker 1: is our Anthology of Horror series, Volume seven. We hope

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Speaker 1: you enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production

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Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And it won't be the first time that Halloween themed

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Speaker 1: content is spilling over into November. That We've got a

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Speaker 1: really good excuse this time, which is uh, and I

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Speaker 1: didn't know this before before before we started recording Today,

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Speaker 1: our producer Seth was telling us that apparently quite a

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Speaker 1: few Simpson's Treehouse of Horror episodes have had to air

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Speaker 1: after Halloween because they've been preempted by baseball or something. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, and of course, you know, we can always

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Speaker 1: drive on the fact that not all scary movies come

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Speaker 1: out during the month of October. Many come out throughout

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Speaker 1: the rest of the year, and ultimately, on this show,

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Speaker 1: it's you know, it's kind of Halloween year round. Um. Though,

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Speaker 1: I guess the tragedy is that sometimes we put off content.

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Speaker 1: We're like, oh, this will be perfect for Halloween, let's

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Speaker 1: save this for October, and then we make it through

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Speaker 1: October and we're like, ah, didn't actually fit that one

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Speaker 1: in this year. Maybe this will happen next October. But hey,

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Speaker 1: we're keeping another tradition alive right now because this is

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Speaker 1: going to be the Is this the seventh anthology episode

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Speaker 1: we've done for October? I think it is. I think

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Speaker 1: this is number seven. Um, that doesn't mean we've been

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Speaker 1: doing it seven years, because some years we've put out

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Speaker 1: more than one volume. But basically, the idea here is

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Speaker 1: these kind of spinoff of some old creepy post episodes

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Speaker 1: that we did back in the day where we look

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Speaker 1: to the world of horror anthology films and especially TV shows,

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Speaker 1: we pick something out of the basket and we we

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Speaker 1: sort of use it as an excuse to talk about

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Speaker 1: something something you know, science, e or um, you know, cultural, basically,

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Speaker 1: some sort of sort of topic that that in many

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Speaker 1: cases might not make for a full episode of stuff

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Speaker 1: to blew your mind on its own, but the horror

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Speaker 1: anthology episode gives us an excuse to talk about it,

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Speaker 1: and vice versa, the topic gives us an excuse to

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Speaker 1: talk about that particular episode. This is especially valuable back

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Speaker 1: in the days before Weird House Cinema, when we did

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Speaker 1: not have a weekly outlet for for any obsessions with

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Speaker 1: macab viewings. So I guess with Weird House, we're always

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Speaker 1: talking about movies and uh and and I know specifically,

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Speaker 1: what you've got in your heart with these anthology episodes

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Speaker 1: is like the nineties Outer Limits Revival. Yes, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: look forward to talking about about one of those. I've

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Speaker 1: really been enjoying watching those throughout the pandemic. Um My

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Speaker 1: wife and I have been watching these pretty much every week,

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Speaker 1: remotely with a couple of friends of ours. Actually, uh,

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Speaker 1: they host a podcast by the name of Talking Tofu,

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Speaker 1: So if you want a like a vegan themed funny podcast,

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Speaker 1: I recommend that. I don't know if they're gonna talk

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Speaker 1: about Outer Limits at all in there. Maybe they're leaving

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Speaker 1: that all for me. But at any rate, I've really enjoyed,

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Speaker 1: um exploring and re exploring the nineties Outer Limits episodes

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Speaker 1: because there's there's some real garbage in there, um, but

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Speaker 1: there are some great episodes and and also just about

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Speaker 1: anybody who was doing TV during the nineties seems to

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Speaker 1: show up at one point or another, as well as

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Speaker 1: a wide variety of Canadian actors. So I to think

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Speaker 1: long and hard about which episode to pick here and

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Speaker 1: ended up going with one from the second season. This

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Speaker 1: is the sixteenth episode of season two, came out in

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Speaker 1: and it's titled The d Programmers Now Rob. I ended

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Speaker 1: up having to jump through a lot of digital hoops

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Speaker 1: to watch this one, but I'm so glad I did.

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Speaker 1: This is a phenomenal pick. Yeah, these these episodes were

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Speaker 1: I think there is of this recording. They're in kind

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Speaker 1: of a streaming limbo where you can fortunately still purchase

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Speaker 1: them digitally, which is not the case for some anthology

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Speaker 1: shows like I think Tales from the Crypt is still

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Speaker 1: exceedingly hard to get ahold of digitally right now because

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Speaker 1: of some rights issues. UM. Outer Limits, Yeah, if you're gonna,

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Speaker 1: if you're gonna just straight up stream them without purchasing them,

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Speaker 1: sometimes you have to. You have to find unique ways

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Speaker 1: of viewing them. But if you look around, you can

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Speaker 1: find them, and I believe you can digitally purchase these

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Speaker 1: episodes still. Uh So The Deep Programmers is out there

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Speaker 1: for anyone who who wishes to view it, all right,

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Speaker 1: give me the scoop on the Deep Programmers, all right.

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Speaker 1: So I'm just I'm not gonna give it the full

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Speaker 1: weird House treatment obviously, but just to go through the

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Speaker 1: people involved. Um. It was directed by Joseph L. Scanlon,

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Speaker 1: who lived through longtime TV genre director who worked on

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Speaker 1: such shows as as Outer Limits. He did seven episodes

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Speaker 1: of that, He did four episodes of Star Trek The

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Speaker 1: Next Generation, He did an episode of Quantum Leap, and

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Speaker 1: seven episodes of Land of the Lost, among many other things.

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Speaker 1: The writer on this was James Crocker, TV writer who

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Speaker 1: wrote multiple episodes of The Outer Limits as well as

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Speaker 1: the early two thousand's Twilight Zone revival, which, um, I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure I remember that one. He also did some

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Speaker 1: Star Trek Deep Space nine as well as the nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighties Twilight Zone Revival and more. But speaking of Trek,

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Speaker 1: the most notable casting in this episode is Brent Spiner. Um. Yes,

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Speaker 1: Data himself plays this uh, this reprogrammer that that's introduced

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Speaker 1: as being kind of like this this um part of

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Speaker 1: the like the human Resistance movement. He's there to deprogram

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Speaker 1: people who have been brainwashed by the the enemy alien overlords.

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Speaker 1: And he's a real pleasure in this because you know,

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Speaker 1: if everybody loves Data. He was great on on Star

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Speaker 1: Trek Next Generation and then the you know, the related movies. Um.

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Speaker 1: Some people may know him from Independence Day uh. Seven

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Speaker 1: episodes of Night Chord Uh. He pops up in Shocker

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Speaker 1: and The Aviator, few episodes of Blunt Talk, various other things.

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Speaker 1: A lot of work, but this is one of the

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Speaker 1: few play if not the only place I can remember

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Speaker 1: seeing mean Brent Spiner. Like, he's he's he's he's rough

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Speaker 1: and tumble. He's a bad cop in this, yeah he is. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I actually having never seen tons of Star Trek. The

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Speaker 1: next generation. I remember I a few years back. I

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Speaker 1: was like, Okay, everybody my age has watched a bunch

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Speaker 1: of TNNG, I should like watch, you know, go through it.

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Speaker 1: And I started in the first season, and oh it was.

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Speaker 1: It was rough going. I am to understand it gets

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Speaker 1: better as it goes on, but but I didn't make

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Speaker 1: it all that far though. Of course, you know, he

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Speaker 1: is there in the first season as data. So when

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Speaker 1: I think of Brent Spiner, I think of Dr oakein

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Speaker 1: an Independence Day. Who you know is a who is

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Speaker 1: really one of the biggest rays of sunshine in that movie.

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Speaker 1: He plays a uh, I don't even know how. He

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Speaker 1: plays a sort of h emotionally stunted, sort of childlike

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Speaker 1: scientist who has apparently been in a bunker for forty

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Speaker 1: years or something. Yeah, yeah, he's um a goofy man

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Speaker 1: scientists kind of a character. But wait, who is he

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Speaker 1: in Shocker? I've seen Shocker a number of times and

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Speaker 1: I don't remember him at all. It's listed on his filmography.

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Speaker 1: I've never seen Shocker. I've only heard heard you gush

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Speaker 1: about it. You heard me gush huh, yeah, I thought

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Speaker 1: you liked it, right, you have nice things to say

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Speaker 1: about it. I mean, Shocker is very bad, but it's

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Speaker 1: a it's an entertaining bad. It's it's ridiculous. All right. Well,

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Speaker 1: we'll speaking of actors in this. Uh, just a couple

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Speaker 1: of others of note here. Um. Eric Anderson plays Evan

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Speaker 1: Robert Cooper. Uh. This is a TV and film actor

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Speaker 1: who played Rob in Friday the Thirteenth. The final chapter

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Speaker 1: is that one of the good Ones is that one

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Speaker 1: of the are there good ones? That's the that's the

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Speaker 1: last one in which Jason is a human before he's

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Speaker 1: an undead revenant. So it goes one through four he's

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Speaker 1: a human, and then in the fifth one it's a

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Speaker 1: copycat killer, and then in the sixth one that's when

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Speaker 1: he's a revenant. This is the last one before he

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Speaker 1: gets his head cut in half by Corey Feldman. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but Rob, the character in this is a sort of

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Speaker 1: he's a sort of dashing hero who shows up. You know,

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Speaker 1: you think he's going to save the day, but I

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Speaker 1: think ultimately Jason just kills him in a basement. Alright. Well,

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Speaker 1: the basic pitch the plot for this episode of the

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Speaker 1: Outer Outer Limits. Uh. And in the one of the

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Speaker 1: should drive on one of the great things about these

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Speaker 1: nineties episodes of the Outer Limits is that generally they're

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Speaker 1: they're very earnest, they really want to say something important

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Speaker 1: about the human condition, and that serious tone is often

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Speaker 1: what makes them so delightful, because sometimes there are wonderful

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Speaker 1: sci fi ideas explored in them, sometimes not so much.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes the attempt is there, but maybe not the delivery.

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Speaker 1: But it also makes the things that don't work that

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Speaker 1: make you know, some of the maybe some of the

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Speaker 1: performances they're not that crisp uh, it makes them all

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Speaker 1: the more hilarious because they're definitely not aiming for comedy.

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Speaker 1: There maybe one or two I think that that do

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Speaker 1: kind of aim for something more whimsical and fun, and

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Speaker 1: I think some of those are the ones that really

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Speaker 1: don't hold up. But for the most part, it's Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's the seriousness that makes it work. Like if it

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Speaker 1: was more self conscious, that would actually kind of cheapen

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Speaker 1: it and make it not as fun. Yeah. So in

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Speaker 1: this one, it takes place on a future Earth. Earth

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Speaker 1: we find out is ruled by alien overlords called the Torqure. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They're kind of these repellent, reptilian humanoid titans who seem

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Speaker 1: to live solitary lives, like they is if they evolve

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Speaker 1: from some sort of a solitary predatory species instead of

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Speaker 1: something that had some sort of communal system. Yeah, they're

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Speaker 1: like eight foot tall alligator men. So they've got these

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Speaker 1: reptilian outsides, and they they're very haughty, and they just

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Speaker 1: like to sort of lord around their their bathtub and

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Speaker 1: yell at their their human servants and say, oh, why

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Speaker 1: aren't you bringing me my oil faster. Yeah, they're kind

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Speaker 1: of like giant reptile Mr. Burns's, you know, they're they're

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Speaker 1: that level of of awful um. And I guess there's

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Speaker 1: probably more than a dash of um Battlefield Earth to

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Speaker 1: this as well. Yes, because of course that involved uh,

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Speaker 1: super tall alien overlords who you know, have a like

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Speaker 1: a brutal rule imposed over Earth. I made that exact note.

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Speaker 1: I mean this to be clear. This episode is much

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Speaker 1: better than Battlefield Earth. But I got some of those

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Speaker 1: notes when I was just reminded of John Travolta in

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Speaker 1: the movie yelling I told you to get some man

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Speaker 1: animals in here to fix this. Yeah, they look great

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Speaker 1: in this. By the way, that the Torquor when we

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Speaker 1: first encounter them we don't see their faces, we just

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Speaker 1: see their arms. So there's kind of a sense of

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Speaker 1: the one sler in the lorax uh to it. And

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Speaker 1: then later we get to see them more or less

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Speaker 1: in full and uh. Like like most of these episodes

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Speaker 1: of The Outer Limits, whenever there is a creature effect,

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Speaker 1: it's practical and very well executed. So anyway, yes, we

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Speaker 1: have torquor overlords ruling over everything. Helping them are these

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Speaker 1: mentally reconditioned human slaves that are called Joe them. So

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Speaker 1: the idea, at least at the beginning of the episode

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Speaker 1: is that all of the humans left on Earth after

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Speaker 1: it's been conquered by these aliens are brainwashed into being

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Speaker 1: subservient to their their new alien masters. Right, And so

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Speaker 1: we meet up with our our Joe Lem characters, our

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Speaker 1: main jo Lem character Evan here, and he's working for

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Speaker 1: a tor Core overlord named col Tak. And there's this

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Speaker 1: scene where they're preparing him his slime bath. They're preparing

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Speaker 1: him his saragon oil. Uh. The other Joe Lom drops

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Speaker 1: the saragon oil and breaks it and so uh this

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Speaker 1: so coal Tag is brutally murders him. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of coal Tak complaining that the oil is not arriving

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Speaker 1: fast enough, so he's in his slime bath. Bring it

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Speaker 1: to me the oil. I need the oil. You Jolum

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Speaker 1: are always so slow. Yeah, there's a there's a very

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Speaker 1: strong Kangan kodos vibe to their their voices in this. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the Kangan Kodos thing was also very strong, and I

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Speaker 1: wonder what is the timing on that Kangan kotos. So

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Speaker 1: they came out before ninety right, yeah they did? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so they must predate this though then again, I mean

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Speaker 1: this is I think the same year as Citizen Kang,

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Speaker 1: which is may be the closest analogue. Yeah, my my

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Speaker 1: bed is they're both essentially inspired by some of the

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Speaker 1: same sci fi precursors, except, of course, the Simpsons took

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Speaker 1: it in a intentionally comedic direction and The Outer Limits

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Speaker 1: took it in a serious direction, not realizing how comedic

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Speaker 1: it comes off. But it's really amusing in this episode. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is uncanny how much kol Tax sounds like Kang. Now. Um.

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Speaker 1: The next big phase in this is that we find

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Speaker 1: out well Evan Uh first of all, is spared. He's

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Speaker 1: not going to die uh and his luck would have it.

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Speaker 1: He's about to go off to rejuvenation training because a

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Speaker 1: good Joe Loman is worth keeping around for a very

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Speaker 1: long time via life extending a lien technology. So he

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Speaker 1: boards a bus to the Bliss Renewal Center. UM. Which

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Speaker 1: reminded when I saw this one for this time, it

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Speaker 1: just instantly made me think of Simpsons and ren education. Um.

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Speaker 1: Sit back and let the hooks do the work exactly. UM.

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Speaker 1: But on the way he is kidnapped by the Human

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Speaker 1: Resistance Movement and they attempt to deprogram him to remove

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Speaker 1: all of this uh, this this alien brainwashing that has

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Speaker 1: turned him into a servant and make him part of

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Speaker 1: the resistance movement to take back Earth. And this is

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Speaker 1: where we meet Brent Spiner's character, Resistance D programmer Professor

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Speaker 1: Trent Davis, who is all about stopping a mud hole

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Speaker 1: in a Joe Lom if it busts up that that

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Speaker 1: old Joe Loam conditioning. Yeah, and I guess this is

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Speaker 1: playing up on the idea of an aggressive practice of

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Speaker 1: D programming. UM. Trying to to say, okay, this guy

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Speaker 1: Evan here, the main character has been has been conditioned,

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Speaker 1: or you might say brainwashed by by this alien programming

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Speaker 1: that to to sort of like make him fear having

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Speaker 1: a will of his own, and you and Brent Spiner's ideas,

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Speaker 1: you've got to really like make him snap out of

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Speaker 1: it with a bunch of kind of brutal and even

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Speaker 1: violent tactics, yelling in his face, burning him, cutting him,

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Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Now, the twist here, and so

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Speaker 1: you know, standard warning if you don't want this spoiled,

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Speaker 1: if you want to go out and see this for yourself,

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Speaker 1: pause right now and then come back later. But the

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Speaker 1: twist is that they put him through this deep programming system.

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Speaker 1: It seems to work. He's part of the resistance. Now

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Speaker 1: he helps them in an attempt to assassinate um, his

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Speaker 1: former overlord. And then what do we find out at

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Speaker 1: the end. We find out, Oh, Brince Spiner was a

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Speaker 1: Joe Loom all along himself. He was. He was not

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Speaker 1: part of the human resistance. He was just part of

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Speaker 1: a rival torque course plot to take out one of

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Speaker 1: his his his his rival alien overlords. Right, So what

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Speaker 1: you thought was a was a human rebellion against these

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Speaker 1: alien invaders was in fact an intra alien political struggle. Yes,

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Speaker 1: which is a nice twist and one of the interesting

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Speaker 1: things about these Outer Limits episod is they usually have

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Speaker 1: a twist, so if you watch enough of them, you

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Speaker 1: end up spending half the time just trying to guess

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Speaker 1: what the twist is going to be. Uh did you

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Speaker 1: guess this one, Joe? Well, I did sort of see

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Speaker 1: the twist coming, but only because I knew there was

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Speaker 1: gonna be a twist. If I had not known there

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Speaker 1: was going to be a twist, I might not have.

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Speaker 1: There may be episodes where the twist is there's no twist,

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Speaker 1: but I can't think of what it would be off.

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Speaker 1: And there are some episodes where the twist occurs super

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Speaker 1: early and then it's all about sort of the the

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Speaker 1: ramifications of that twist. But there's a twist in there somewhere.

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Speaker 1: They're they're kind of a happy like San Junipero of

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Speaker 1: the of the Outer Limits. Um, there might be Ah,

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to think and nothing's coming to mind. Um.

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Speaker 1: The real twist is this is so sweet most of

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Speaker 1: the time, you know, because you have the cool narration

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Speaker 1: that comes on at the end where the narrator kind

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Speaker 1: of drives it home for you. And usually it's something

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Speaker 1: like when the humans expand into the stars, they'll deal

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Speaker 1: with their greatest enemy themselves. You know, it's always something

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Speaker 1: like that, you know, Yeah, this one has some kind

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Speaker 1: of pretentious phrases about free will. It was like, at

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Speaker 1: what point does a humans free will cease to exist?

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Speaker 1: And at that point would we still be human? Questions

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Speaker 1: that are are not really exploring in this episode. It's

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Speaker 1: questions than the episode we're discussing here. Naturally, this all

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Speaker 1: takes place within the context of an extreme sci fi scenario.

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Speaker 1: Humans are conditioned to be joe Lems, presumably from a

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Speaker 1: very young age, and then this conditioning is continually enforced

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Speaker 1: across a lifespan that they might prove quite long due

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Speaker 1: to these rejuvenation treatments. And there certainly is a human

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Speaker 1: component to the culture that forces this worldview on them.

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Speaker 1: But at the helm of all of this are these

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Speaker 1: alien masters. Well one thing, though, you mentioned being conditioned

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Speaker 1: since childhood. In this case, they say that the alien

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Speaker 1: invasion was only about two years ago. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so uh so, really these guys haven't been I guess

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Speaker 1: that's the long view is that is that they're going

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Speaker 1: to keep him around for a while. But Evan has

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Speaker 1: couldn't have been a Jolem for that long. Uh. But

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Speaker 1: still the idea is that he's he's largely forgotten his

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Speaker 1: previous life. He's forgotten what it was to be a

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Speaker 1: free human, and now all he thinks is the joelem way.

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Speaker 1: So um. Again, this episode is called the d Programmers.

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Speaker 1: And when the term d programming has been used before

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Speaker 1: in the context of real world ideologies, were generally talking

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Speaker 1: about a scenario of an alleged cult or some other

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Speaker 1: group with an ideology that's deemed harmful. And I was

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Speaker 1: looking into this a bit. Uh. The the idea emerged

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Speaker 1: pretty much during the nineties seventies as a part of

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Speaker 1: the counter cult movement. Now, before we did that, force

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Speaker 1: us to back up another step, because, of course, the

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Speaker 1: first big question would be constitutes the cult um. You'll

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Speaker 1: typically encounter a list of criteria that includes stuff like

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Speaker 1: separation from one's pre existing support group, devotion to a

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Speaker 1: single domineering figure. I read one list that focused on

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Speaker 1: charismatic leaders, transcendent belief systems, systems of control, and systems

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Speaker 1: of influence. But obviously there's a great deal of ambiguity

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Speaker 1: in in some of these um definitions. And while we

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Speaker 1: can all point to specific, especially historic examples of destructive

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Speaker 1: cults and say, yes, well that's a cult. You can

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Speaker 1: also throw this word at various religious and political ideologies. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: certainly harmful and abusive cults. It do exist centered around

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Speaker 1: harmful ideologies, harmful systems, and or harmful individuals. Uh. So

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Speaker 1: that the question isn't whether so groups exists, but to

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Speaker 1: what degree other groups are lumped in with them? Uh, etcetera. Now,

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Speaker 1: another key to understanding this idea of DP programming is

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Speaker 1: the notion of brainwashing. H. This is a term coined

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Speaker 1: by journal list and propagandist Edward Hunter, who lived nineteen

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Speaker 1: or two through ninety eight, who wrote Brainwashing in Red

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Speaker 1: China The Calculated Destruction of Men's Minds, a nineteen fifty

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Speaker 1: two anti communism book based on a nineteen fifty article

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Speaker 1: that he wrote. And Uh, this was apparently an outlandish

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Speaker 1: idea even at the time. Contemporary psychologist and had it

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Speaker 1: took issue with it. Later commentators would criticize it. Um,

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Speaker 1: but it struck a nerve. It made its way into

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Speaker 1: mainstream fiction even uh and uh when we see that

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Speaker 1: in films like The Manchurian Candidate and various works of

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Speaker 1: visual or written media, and it also made its way

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Speaker 1: into political discourse. I think you can possibly see this,

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Speaker 1: this type of ideas being associated with behaviorist trends in

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Speaker 1: psychology that maybe later psychologists would look back on and

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Speaker 1: say that they may have sort of over emphasized the

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Speaker 1: role of like mechanistic conditioning and how much it could

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Speaker 1: do in shaping a person's cognitive and behavior role tendencies. Yeah. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: I mean you take you take some understanding of behavioralism,

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Speaker 1: throw in a few more pop psychologists, a hefty dose

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Speaker 1: of red scare, and you have you have a firm

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Speaker 1: bedrock upon which to build this idea of of of brainwashing.

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Speaker 1: Uh and and even you have like, for instance, the

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Speaker 1: CIA's mk Ultra program gets in on it and tries

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Speaker 1: to uh to weaponize the idea of mind control, thinking

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Speaker 1: that the enemy may have developed techniques that do this.

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Speaker 1: And ultimately, of course, the mk Ultra revolve around seeking

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Speaker 1: answers and methods. Um from from print, for instance, the

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Speaker 1: World of Psychedelics, thinking, well, psychedelics seem to have this

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Speaker 1: effect on the way people view the world. Maybe we

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Speaker 1: could use that to break down the human mind and

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Speaker 1: then build something up in its place. Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: think the question is, like, what level of mechanistic control

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Speaker 1: can you ultimately have over somebody else's behavior? Can you?

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Speaker 1: Can you essentially just sort of like format the hard

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Speaker 1: drive of somebody's brain and completely rewrite their their personality,

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Speaker 1: their behaviors, and program them like a robot or much

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Speaker 1: more likely, you know, is sort of the reality that

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Speaker 1: in the kind of mundane way that we would all

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Speaker 1: observe throughout our lives. Yeah, humans can have strong influences

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Speaker 1: on each other, especially if there's if there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of them, and they form a kind of, uh a

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Speaker 1: reinforced social network. But humans don't have lines of code

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Speaker 1: in their brain, and you can't like just format the

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Speaker 1: hard drive and rewrite their operating system exactly. Uh. An

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Speaker 1: excellent source on this that I recommend um as a

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Speaker 1: Slate article written by Lorraine Bosonal titled The True Story

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Speaker 1: of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America. Um It's great

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Speaker 1: reading gets into all this in detail, but essentially they

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Speaker 1: write that the brainwashing and mind control, both of these

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Speaker 1: were essentially a boogeyman based on fear of communism, fear

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Speaker 1: of Eastern culture, and the fear that Russia, China and Ultimately,

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Speaker 1: Korea had something that we didn't have. They had some

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Speaker 1: tool for breaking down people's will and uh and changing

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Speaker 1: their mindset. But as it turned out, the author describes,

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Speaker 1: brainwashing was not real. Torture and trauma very much were.

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Speaker 1: And for instance, the POWs that were observed, Uh, there

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Speaker 1: was this fear that that, oh, well, those the p

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Speaker 1: owes during the Korean War, that they had undergone some

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Speaker 1: sort of brainwashing, that there, you know, their their minds

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Speaker 1: had been changed, when in reality they were they were

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Speaker 1: just really traumatized individuals subjected to torturous conditions. Uh. So

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Speaker 1: there were no brainwashed sleeper agents. There were just traumatized humans.

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Speaker 1: But she she quotes Timothy uh Melly, professor of English

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Speaker 1: at Miami University at the time of the writing. At

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Speaker 1: any rate, uh and uh, this individual says, quote, the

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Speaker 1: basic problem that brainwashing is designed to address is the

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Speaker 1: question why would anyone become a communist? And I feel

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Speaker 1: like that kind of summarizes a lot of this, uh

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Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, And I guess you could apply that

425
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 1: actually to any kind of ideological or life change that

426
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,320
Speaker 1: you don't understand. I mean, you can ask the same question,

427
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,159
Speaker 1: like why would somebody join what you might think of

428
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:12,359
Speaker 1: as a cult or why would somebody do X? Or

429
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:14,919
Speaker 1: why something that doesn't at all seem appealing to you

430
00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:18,080
Speaker 1: and you can't understand why somebody would do it, you

431
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: may at that point have to assume that it's like

432
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 1: it's like the computer of somebody's brain has been hacked

433
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 1: and there there's malware in it, when in fact, a

434
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:30,400
Speaker 1: more useful model might be to uh uh think more

435
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:33,440
Speaker 1: outside the box in terms of what human incentives are.

436
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:35,919
Speaker 1: I mean, I I personally think that a lot of

437
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: times we can just have a failure of imagination in

438
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 1: fathoming people's say, desire for certain kinds of social interactions

439
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:47,639
Speaker 1: and how much like a is something that even is

440
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:51,400
Speaker 1: a like truly harmful cult or ideology could fulfill these

441
00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:55,040
Speaker 1: needs for people if they're not getting them elsewhere exactly. Yeah,

442
00:24:55,800 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 1: And so looking back to the early nineteen seventies, here, uh,

443
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: at heart, you just had controversial, ideologically driven groups uh

444
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 1: that were often attractive to young people. And this was

445
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: not an exclusive reality of the nineteen seventies, obviously, but

446
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: this was a pronounced period of concern over it. The

447
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,919
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century United States provides more than enough, not

448
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: only cult Panic, but also Red Panic, Satanic Panic, and

449
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 1: much more. We got Panics of plenty. Oh yeah, yeah,

450
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: we have an endless, endless supply of them. And again

451
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:30,679
Speaker 1: not to say that some of these groups were not,

452
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:33,640
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately harmful, but many of them were not.

453
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:37,880
Speaker 1: Many of them were just different ideologies that seemed scary

454
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 1: to certain parts of of the public. I was reading

455
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:45,439
Speaker 1: a source on this titled Exit Counseling and the Decline

456
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 1: of d Programming UM. This was by sociologist Stephen A.

457
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 1: Kent and um in A counselor by the name of

458
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:56,520
Speaker 1: Joseph p uh Simhart was published in two thousand two

459
00:25:56,560 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: in Cultic Studies Review, And they were talking about just

460
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: how this deep programming approach work. The the idea that, Okay,

461
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:05,280
Speaker 1: someone has been exposed to uh to ac cult, they've

462
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:06,919
Speaker 1: joined a cult, and now we want to get them

463
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 1: out of it. What can we do? How do we

464
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 1: how do we reverse mindwashing? Well, we have to deprogram them. Um. So,

465
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:16,360
Speaker 1: So the first of all, just the the the obvious

466
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,520
Speaker 1: thing here is that that we know that that that

467
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: brainwashing uh and and and mind control. These are uh,

468
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:28,440
Speaker 1: these are at at least oversimplifications of far more complex problems,

469
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:32,440
Speaker 1: and therefore the idea of deep programming is based in

470
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: in that fallacy and that oversimplification. At least from the outside,

471
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: it has always kind of seemed to me that the

472
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 1: the logic behind deprogramming is essentially counter brainwashing. That someone

473
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,840
Speaker 1: has brainwashed you to be in a cult, and now

474
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 1: we have to like brainwash you back out of it.

475
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 1: Like you know, it's I took you into this thing,

476
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna take you out the same way. Uh,

477
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: So you you have to like use sort of like aggressive,

478
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 1: uh forceful tactics to try to essentially brainwash somebody back

479
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:08,399
Speaker 1: into whatever is deemed the legitimate culture. Is yeah, And

480
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 1: of course the first step and all of that is

481
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:14,159
Speaker 1: just by establishing or labeling, uh, the offending ideology or

482
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: group as a cult, as something that is in some

483
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: way deviant, that is engaging in mind control, and therefore

484
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: there's something to reverse. But then the d programming itself

485
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:26,720
Speaker 1: that often took the form of involuntary extractions from the

486
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:31,879
Speaker 1: allegedly deviant ideology or group and then attempts to forcibly

487
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 1: reverse the alleged mind control or brainwashing. And of course

488
00:27:35,760 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: all of this should raise just a number of red

489
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: flags for anyone, because, among other things, it assumes that

490
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: the individual, often a young adult, just has no agency

491
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: or choice, like they cannot be trusted to make make

492
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: choices about what they believe in and what they do. Um.

493
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:55,400
Speaker 1: You know, they are pulled in one direction by charismatic force,

494
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: and now we have to pull them back in another

495
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,679
Speaker 1: direction through intensive uh you know, strong arm tactics like

496
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:03,240
Speaker 1: it's a boot camp or something. And then on top

497
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 1: of that, you run the risk of engaging in actual

498
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 1: kidnapping and abuse in an attempt to deprogram somebody. So

499
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:12,680
Speaker 1: you quickly get into very legally and ethically murky waters,

500
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 1: assuming you don't land on as bad or as you know,

501
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: worse UM situation uh compared to what you were attempting

502
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 1: to save them from. UM. So charges of religious oppression

503
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: and civil rights violation were also made. There were various

504
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:32,119
Speaker 1: lawsuits related to D programming efforts, and so one of

505
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: the things that that Kent and is co out there

506
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: point out is that is that you saw this um,

507
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 1: this movement away from D programming um uh, this idea

508
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 1: that that first of all, D programming didn't prove all

509
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:49,040
Speaker 1: that effective, but then it gave way to techniques that

510
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: were more progressive, non coercive, that we're more about the

511
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 1: autonomy of the individual and an attempt to value everyone

512
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: present um and find a structure uh that would like

513
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: work with everyone's value systems, including the value system um

514
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: of the group that the individual is is that they're

515
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 1: attempting to extract them from all. Right, so maybe there

516
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: is a recognition of flaws within some of these so

517
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 1: called d programming tactics, But of course you would still

518
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:18,240
Speaker 1: have the problem that people are ending up in in

519
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: in cults that at least you know their loved ones

520
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: are uh could probably make a strong case or a

521
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 1: really negative influence on their lives and are certainly hurting

522
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: hurting family relationships and stuff like that. Uh So, so

523
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:32,800
Speaker 1: is there something else people go to? Is another option

524
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: for trying to trying to help guide their loved ones

525
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: out of these groups? Right, And it seems like, yeah,

526
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:40,680
Speaker 1: this this idea of exit counseling, or at least this

527
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: basic approach seemed to largely replace it, which which which

528
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 1: sounds like a no brainer, right, Should we maybe do

529
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: something more like counseling? And what we think of now

530
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 1: is intervention with a family member we're worried about, or

531
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: should we kidnap them with the aid of some sort

532
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: of third party. Um, you know it. It seems certainly

533
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: from from illegal and more world standpoint, Uh, there's only

534
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 1: one direction you should go in. And of course it

535
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: also seems that that d programming had had had a

536
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: checkered success rate as well. Reminds me of some other

537
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 1: stuff I was reading about the Scared Straight programs that

538
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: of course we're quite big what I guess back in

539
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: the nineties, especially the idea that if you had like

540
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: problem kids or kids that that were at risk, you

541
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: would have somebody come in and scare them straight with

542
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: a really scary talk about prison life and how you know. Ultimately,

543
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 1: some of the numbers didn't subsequently did not support the

544
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: idea that this was effective. Yeah, I can imagine. I

545
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 1: think it comes down to the just the reality that

546
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: that human beings are far more complicated than that. You know,

547
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 1: you can't just scare someone straight, you in order to

548
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: move them away from from one way of life or

549
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: worldview towards another. You can't. You can't rescue them from

550
00:30:56,840 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: from a particular you know, social group or ideology by

551
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: essentially kidnapping them and um and just pointing in the

552
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 1: other direction like they're an automaton. It just needs to

553
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: be Oh, all you have to do is just get them,

554
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 1: wind them up and point them in the right direction

555
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 1: and they'll be fine. Like that's just that's that's not

556
00:31:12,320 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 1: really how people work. Well, yeah, it just seems like

557
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: a very top down way of viewing your ability to

558
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: influence other people. So if you want to steer somebody

559
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: toward a path in life that you might very well

560
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 1: correctly think would be much better for them in the

561
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 1: long run and might make them much happier in the

562
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 1: long run and make their loved ones happier in the

563
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: long run, obviously there are ways of doing that other

564
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: than just trying to sort of like dominate and command

565
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:38,320
Speaker 1: them to move in that direction. I mean, I mean,

566
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 1: obviously sometimes you can influence people by by sort of

567
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 1: dominating and commanding them, But you can also influence people

568
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:49,480
Speaker 1: with say positive incentives, reminding them of reminding them of

569
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: all the good things and opportunities that are open to

570
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 1: them in in in a freer life outside of the

571
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: strictures of whatever kind of you know, culture or other

572
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: thing this is yeah. Uh so it's this is ultimately

573
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: I think in oversimplification, but it seems like the mind

574
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: control D programming model was more based in the idea

575
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: that something was done to an individual and that thing

576
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: can be undone, you know, and um, you know, it's

577
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:17,840
Speaker 1: ultimately based in the in the the simplistic fallacy of

578
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: mind control and brainwashing. Now, as for how that relates

579
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: to this Outer Limits episode, Um, you know, I think

580
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 1: this episode ultimately has a dark view on life and uh,

581
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: you know, one one in which you're going to be

582
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 1: manipulated by one alien overlord or another, you know, sort

583
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:38,120
Speaker 1: of you've got to serve somebody vibe. Uh. It feels

584
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 1: like they're striking a very anti D programming chord here,

585
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: which I think is the chord to strike in your

586
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: in your fiction, as our main character is is just

587
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: D program quote unquote into serving just another cruel master. Well,

588
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,719
Speaker 1: one bit of complexity that this Outer Limits episode does

589
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: get into is we didn't mention that they're actually multiple

590
00:32:57,280 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: human parties involved in UM in the programming process. So

591
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: in this episode you have Brent Spiner and yet he's

592
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 1: playing this like brutal D programmer, who's you know, yelling

593
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: at yelling at Evans, saying, wake up, snap out of it.

594
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: You know you're a human, and like cutting him with

595
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: a knife and kicking him around and all this again

596
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 1: trying to top down just like dominate and coerce him

597
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: into into snapping out of it. But then the other

598
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: side is alongside them is evans wife from before the

599
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:29,000
Speaker 1: alien invasion. They had become separated, they didn't know what

600
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 1: had happened to each other and uh, and by getting reacquainted,

601
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: she actually I think that the episode shows that she

602
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 1: is more effective than Brent Spiner is in breaking through

603
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: with him, and she's actually not not knowingly part of

604
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 1: the alien plot to get him to assassinate. She is

605
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 1: also confused about what's going on. So in a way,

606
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 1: even though it has a cruel twist at the end,

607
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: the episode might sort of be making the point that

608
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 1: you might have more success breaking through to somebody who

609
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 1: has been uh, who has been conditioned into a state

610
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: of un freedom by offering them sort of like positive

611
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,319
Speaker 1: incentives of love and connection and reminding them of what's

612
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: good about the other way of life, rather, you know,

613
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:14,280
Speaker 1: maybe more so than just like beating them and yelling

614
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:18,280
Speaker 1: at them and trying to command them to be free. Yeah,

615
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:21,719
Speaker 1: in a way, it's a shame they didn't re explore

616
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:24,359
Speaker 1: this world in other episodes of the Outer Limits, because

617
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 1: the nineties Outer Limits Show they did this from time

618
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 1: to time there there. Sometimes they would do a series

619
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: of even like three or four episodes that took place

620
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 1: within the same universe and uh and continued. Uh. Sometimes

621
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 1: same characters or or same faction, same world like this

622
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 1: would have been. It would have been an interesting one

623
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: for them to come back to and explore that compassion

624
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 1: angle more and maybe give us some more uplifting ending,

625
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,759
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, maybe that's how the humans actually do

626
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:57,839
Speaker 1: rebel successfully against the uhever whatever they're called, the alligator men. Yeah,

627
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: give them a gift basket of saragonal and then that

628
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: they would they'll realize, Oh, the drolem really do care

629
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 1: about me. No, no, no, I didn't mean that for them.

630
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, mount to resistance than All right, well,

631
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:23,080
Speaker 1: let's switch gears. Let's get into the next next anthology

632
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:25,439
Speaker 1: selection here. What do you have for us show? All right, well,

633
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:29,360
Speaker 1: I've got an episode of the Hammer House of Horror.

634
00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:32,759
Speaker 1: Rob Do you know the Hammer House of Horror? Yes,

635
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:35,319
Speaker 1: now I have to say I've I've only watched the

636
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:38,759
Speaker 1: one episode, the one we're discussing here today. But um,

637
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:42,240
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a it's a pretty fun little series. Uh.

638
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: This came out what eight, so you know we're we're

639
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: we're balanced right there on the edge, you know of

640
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:51,520
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies and the nineteen eighties. Essentially it's nineteen

641
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:55,320
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies production. Uh comes to us from from Hammer,

642
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:58,240
Speaker 1: so it has that hammer you know, British horror drive

643
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: vibe to it. But each episode is a different story. Um,

644
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: and some of them have some pretty great casts. I

645
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 1: mean they all, I think they all have a pretty

646
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: great cast. If one episode we have Peter Cushing and

647
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:12,759
Speaker 1: of young Brian Cox if you're not sure what a

648
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:15,840
Speaker 1: young Brian Cox looks like, Uh, this is an episode

649
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: worth checking out. And there's another episode, by the way,

650
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: titled Guardian of the Abyss uh in the plot of

651
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:25,120
Speaker 1: this one involves John D's mirror, or a mirror that's

652
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:27,839
Speaker 1: supposed to be one of John D's mirrors. I didn't

653
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: get a chance to watch it in full, but I

654
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: had to see if what mirror they showed, and I

655
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:34,360
Speaker 1: included a picture of it here for you, Joe. It

656
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:38,759
Speaker 1: it is, obviously is not the fabled magic mirror, the

657
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,360
Speaker 1: Aztec mirror that that John d actually had. This is

658
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: a real They really goth this one up. They had

659
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:48,239
Speaker 1: to make it look like a like a European haunted mirror. Yeah,

660
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 1: it's got like a silver rim and a bunch of

661
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: elaborate handles. Get out of here with that, give me

662
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:56,719
Speaker 1: that or gone face on a yeah. Yeah. But this

663
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: episode that we're gonna talk about here is titled The

664
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: Mark of State. Yes, and boy does it have that

665
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:05,439
Speaker 1: hammer horror field. Like you say, it's got that late

666
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,839
Speaker 1: seventies British thing. It just this whole thing just like

667
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:13,360
Speaker 1: it smells like back bacon, you know, Heinz baked beans.

668
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:15,640
Speaker 1: It's all there. You can smell it through the film.

669
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:18,840
Speaker 1: So this episode, I guess I'll describe it first and

670
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: then we can talk about what what this connected to

671
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 1: for me. So this episode begins with a scene of

672
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 1: brain surgery. You've got a team of doctors who are

673
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 1: opening up a patient's skull and suddenly the patient he

674
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:37,319
Speaker 1: seems to show signs of awareness. His eyes start to move,

675
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 1: scanning the room. He twitches. You see these sort of

676
00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 1: flickers of waxing consciousness, and then the patient starts to

677
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:48,800
Speaker 1: talk in the middle of the brain surgery. He's moaning

678
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: and he says, leave my soul alone. Solid opening. They

679
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 1: had me right there at the beginning. Yeah, yeah, we

680
00:37:57,200 --> 00:38:00,759
Speaker 1: got a supernatural or potentially supernatural hospital drama of some

681
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 1: sort of intense surgery with all sorts of tools and

682
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: like clamps holding the character's head in place. Ye leave

683
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 1: my soul alone. So next we meet our protagonist who

684
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: is named Edwin Roared, and Edwin works in the morgue

685
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 1: at the same hospital. He is assigned to process the

686
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:25,080
Speaker 1: cadaver of the patient from the surgery in the opening scene,

687
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:28,400
Speaker 1: and we learn in this in this next scene that

688
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: the patient was someone named Samuel Holt. Now. Roared is

689
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 1: played by the actor Peter mcinry who was born in

690
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 1: nineteen forty and he's quite good in this. He plays

691
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 1: a nice focal point of insanity, you know, that kind

692
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:45,479
Speaker 1: of that necessary character to so many weird tales where

693
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:49,239
Speaker 1: like the madness is overtaking them. Um. I was not

694
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 1: really familiar with this guy, but he had a strong

695
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 1: career on the British stage and on television. Among other things.

696
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: He was in the nineteen seventy three horror anthology film

697
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 1: Tales that Witness Madness. And another interesting genre piece that

698
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 1: he's credited to is a film I haven't seen, but

699
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:08,920
Speaker 1: now I'm super interested in Footprints on the Moon from

700
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:13,919
Speaker 1: ninety five um, which also featured klas Kinski in a role.

701
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:18,160
Speaker 1: It was a well received, seemingly surreal jallow film by

702
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 1: Luigi Bezzoni in which the actor Florinda Bulkan plays a

703
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 1: woman who is psychologically disturbed by these dreams she keeps

704
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 1: having about an astronaut dying on the moon. Wow. Yeah,

705
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:35,359
Speaker 1: so I love that pitch. I'm intrigued. I've never heard

706
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 1: of it. Uh yeah, I gotta look that up. A

707
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:40,360
Speaker 1: couple of other actors have noted in this one. Conrad Phillips,

708
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:45,839
Speaker 1: who lived twenty sixteen, plays um Dr Manders, a delightfully

709
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: impish character. Yeah he's uh what, there's a partner at

710
00:39:49,680 --> 00:39:52,239
Speaker 1: the beginning where he's like, well, gentlemen, we are looking

711
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:57,319
Speaker 1: at the mortal remains of an individualist. And then we

712
00:39:57,360 --> 00:39:59,800
Speaker 1: also have Georgina Hale. And this was born in nineteen

713
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:02,759
Speaker 1: four three place Stella. She was in a number of

714
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 1: Kin Russell movies, including The Devil's Which is, which is

715
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:11,399
Speaker 1: of course an excellent and uh famed film, infamous I'm

716
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:14,080
Speaker 1: to understand, and infamous in some circles as well. But

717
00:40:14,719 --> 00:40:17,120
Speaker 1: and and for a long time hard hard to get

718
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: your hands on. But at any rate, um, it's an

719
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 1: un notable film no matter where you stand on it,

720
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:26,439
Speaker 1: whether you want to to view it or or burn it. Also,

721
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 1: getting back to the plot of the episode, we go

722
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: through the autopsy of the patient from the opening scene,

723
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: Samuel Holt, who was in brain surgery and said leave

724
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: my soul alone. We uh. It is revealed that prior

725
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:43,240
Speaker 1: to his brain surgery, this patient, Samuel Holt, had tried

726
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 1: to perform a self trepidation. He attempted to create a

727
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 1: hole in his own skull with a power drill, allegedly

728
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 1: to relieve pressure in his brain. I think Dr Manders

729
00:40:57,080 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: has some kind of comment about this. He's like, you know,

730
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:01,719
Speaker 1: pres here in the brain. Leads to a trip to

731
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 1: the Old Iron Manga and while sewing up holds body

732
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:11,360
Speaker 1: after the autopsy, Edwin accidentally pricks his finger with the

733
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: suture needle, and at first he doesn't think anything of this.

734
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,200
Speaker 1: He just puts some iodine on it. But when his

735
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: boss finds out, his boss gets very upset. He's like, uhh.

736
00:41:21,080 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: He tells Edwin that he needs to go to casualty,

737
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:26,759
Speaker 1: and I think it tells him he needs to get

738
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 1: his tetanus shots and a bunch of stuff because well,

739
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 1: it turns out that when Holt was dying of a

740
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:37,759
Speaker 1: blood clot in the brain, Holt himself had believed that

741
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: this this was caused by an infection, an infection that

742
00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:45,839
Speaker 1: he called an evil virus. So the guy who said

743
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:48,719
Speaker 1: leave my soul alone, he believed he was infected with

744
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:53,279
Speaker 1: a virus of evil. Now, a couple of threads begin

745
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 1: to develop in this episode that reflects something about Edwin's

746
00:41:56,320 --> 00:42:02,279
Speaker 1: deteriorating psychological state. So one thing is that Edwin perceives

747
00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: a strange pattern emerging everywhere he goes. He notices the

748
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 1: number nine. There's an office sweepstakes that pays out a

749
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:14,720
Speaker 1: prize of nine pounds. He has to store Holtz body

750
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 1: and freezer number nine. He has to sew up a

751
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 1: body using nine stitches to every three inches, and things

752
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:26,319
Speaker 1: like that. Even more alarmingly, he sometimes believes he can

753
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 1: hear radio signals in his head, and these are seemingly

754
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 1: broadcasted from a weather vane on the roof of the hospital.

755
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: Beyond that, he starts to believe that crowds of ominous

756
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:41,240
Speaker 1: strangers wearing sunglasses or sort of following him around town,

757
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 1: watching him and menacing him. Now eventually we see his

758
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: home situation, which is that Edwin is single and he

759
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: lives in a house with his extremely grumpy and judgmental

760
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,800
Speaker 1: mother along with a tenant who lives in the house

761
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 1: named Stella, and this is this character is played by

762
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: Georgina Hale. Edwin at some point tells Stella about you know,

763
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:07,360
Speaker 1: he's explaining the delusions he's experiencing, and she, very unhelpfully

764
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 1: is pretty much like, oh yeah, yep um. And so

765
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 1: it seems like everywhere he goes things nobody's really intervening

766
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:20,000
Speaker 1: to make things better. So his psychological state worsens. He

767
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: comes to believe that his mother has somehow infected him

768
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 1: with an evil virus that is attacking his brain, and

769
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 1: he believes that she may have killed his father years

770
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 1: ago with the same virus, though it seems his father

771
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:36,799
Speaker 1: actually died of meningitis. At one point, Edwin visits a

772
00:43:36,880 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: priest to seek counsel, and then the priest very helpfully

773
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 1: decides to tell him about the passage in the Book

774
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: of Revelation concerning the number of the Beast. So it's like, oh, yes, uh,

775
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: this man is suffering from some form of psychosis. What

776
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: he needs is the Book of Revelation. Yes, but the

777
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: faith offers many directions for your your your your confusion

778
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:03,399
Speaker 1: and obsession that may tell you about it. So from

779
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 1: here things get worse and worse. Edwin ends up doing murders. Uh.

780
00:44:07,239 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 1: He's having these full blown delusions that a a coven

781
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:14,839
Speaker 1: of Satan worshiping doctors and acquaintances of his have put

782
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,040
Speaker 1: a virus in his brain in order to control him,

783
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: and that they want him to eat a baby for Satan.

784
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:24,439
Speaker 1: But then there's a strange so you know, this could

785
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:27,120
Speaker 1: just be a story about a man losing his mind,

786
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 1: But the the episode develops that the same exact delusion

787
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: we discover was held by the man from the surgery

788
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:37,960
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the episode, Samuel Holt, and in

789
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: the end, Edwin, like Holt, tries to relieve himself of

790
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:45,880
Speaker 1: the pressure by performing a self trepidation with an electric drill,

791
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: and he also, like Holt, ends up in neurosurgery and

792
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: echo of the opening scene, and the doctors are operating

793
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 1: on Edwin's brain and we hear a moaning plea leave

794
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: my soul alone, And the ending is very ambiguous. I

795
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:04,440
Speaker 1: think the viewer is meant to understand that there actually

796
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 1: is no Satanic coven and that this is in Edwin's head.

797
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 1: But I think the unanswered question in the narrative is

798
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 1: whether Edwin was somehow actually infected with this demonic obsession

799
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:19,840
Speaker 1: and and this this imagery when he pricked his finger

800
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: while he was working on Holt's body. It sort of

801
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 1: raises this question of would it be possible for this,

802
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: this series of demonic images and ideas to somehow infect

803
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: a person like an evil virus. Now. I don't know

804
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: of any realistic mechanism by which something like this would happen.

805
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 1: I kind of doubt there is, But I would like

806
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:42,799
Speaker 1: to explore a sort of related idea that that is

807
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: quite real, which has to do with the idea of

808
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:50,680
Speaker 1: a relationship between virus like mechanisms and the deep contents

809
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: of the human brain, even things that somebody might think

810
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 1: of as the soul. Now, UM. The fact that this

811
00:45:56,840 --> 00:46:01,320
Speaker 1: episode centers around round Trepid Nation I found kind of interesting,

812
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 1: especially since it came out in Britain in nineteen eighty.

813
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:07,840
Speaker 1: This would have been right after the Countess of weims

814
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 1: And UH and Mark Amanda Fielding first ran for British

815
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:15,240
Speaker 1: Parliament on the platform Trap Nation for the National health,

816
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 1: advocating research into its benefits. UM. She famously trepanned herself

817
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy, following Dutch Trap Nation proponent Bart Huges's example,

818
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: and UM, you know this UH may sound a bit crazy,

819
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:34,720
Speaker 1: but as as Michael Paulin pointed out in his excellent

820
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 1: book How to Change Your Mind, Fielding has proven herself

821
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,840
Speaker 1: to be an effective drug policy reformer UH. In subsequent years,

822
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: lobbyist and research coordinator. In she founded the Foundation to

823
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:52,240
Speaker 1: Further Consciousness, later renamed the Beckley Foundation, which supports neuroscientific research.

824
00:46:52,719 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: Her recent and current work, paul And writes, shifted away

825
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 1: from Trepin Nation and towards the possibilities posed by psychedelics.

826
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: So you think it's possible this episode was influenced by

827
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 1: by her famous advocacy for for drilling a hole in

828
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:09,799
Speaker 1: your skull. Yes, yeah, I I I would, I would

829
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: almost bet on it. You know, it seems like the time,

830
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: you know, like a lot of horror uh fiction, you know,

831
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,920
Speaker 1: it speaks to what's going on in the public mindset,

832
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:20,880
Speaker 1: and so I feel like there's just there's just too

833
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 1: much trepinnation in the in the in the in the

834
00:47:24,280 --> 00:47:26,279
Speaker 1: air for this not to be kind of at least

835
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 1: a partial response to it. Not that it has anything

836
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:31,680
Speaker 1: particularly you know, deep to say about trepin Nation itself,

837
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: but it's it's it leans, it's a it's just a

838
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: concept that leans, uh, that allows one to lean into

839
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: the horror a bit. You know. It's it's just it's like, uh,

840
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 1: you know, it's like fly paper for for horror writing. Now,

841
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: if you'd like to hear more about about trepin Nation, though,

842
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: we we did an episode several years back titled The

843
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,879
Speaker 1: Stone of Madness UM that gets into all of that.

844
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: And you know, it's sort of the the older historical

845
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 1: idea of trepin nation as well as um the more

846
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 1: modern twentieth century advocates of it. But you know, the

847
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 1: basic idea came down in the modern sense that you

848
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 1: have you known increase of blood in the brain that

849
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 1: could bring about altered states of consciousness, um, etcetera. It's

850
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,360
Speaker 1: a it's a really fascinating, um fascinating topic. To be

851
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: clear that this is what was claimed by its advocates,

852
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: not that we're advocating trepidis right, there's no. I don't

853
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: don't believe there's any scientific evidence that it actually works,

854
00:48:27,680 --> 00:48:30,919
Speaker 1: but it had its vocal proponents. But if you're even

855
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 1: halfway tempted, I think you should you should take you

856
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 1: should just follow the model of a Manda Fielding, who

857
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:41,240
Speaker 1: who again has turned away from um from advocating trepid

858
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:45,560
Speaker 1: nation and looking more into uh, actual you know, legitimate

859
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: research into psychedelics. Uh. So you know ultimately that that's

860
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: that's a whole area of research that does not require

861
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:55,200
Speaker 1: drilling a hole in your skull. And it goes without

862
00:48:55,200 --> 00:48:57,480
Speaker 1: saying don't drill a hole in your skull, especially based

863
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:00,000
Speaker 1: on anything that you hear on this podcast or see

864
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,400
Speaker 1: on the hammer House of Horror. Yeah, don't make major

865
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 1: life decisions based on the hammer House of Horror series.

866
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:17,200
Speaker 1: But on the subject of viruses in mind. Uh, this,

867
00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:19,359
Speaker 1: this does bring up a really interesting question of like,

868
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:21,799
Speaker 1: did you ever wonder, you know, down at the cell level,

869
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: at the molecular level, what is the mechanism of say,

870
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 1: memory formation. You know, our memories, to to a great extent,

871
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:32,520
Speaker 1: are a lot of what makes us who we are.

872
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:35,000
Speaker 1: And so you might say that in a metaphorical since

873
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:37,240
Speaker 1: you know, memories are a big part of what would

874
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: make your soul. And so I was reading about some

875
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:44,480
Speaker 1: interesting research and a couple of articles from January. One

876
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:48,520
Speaker 1: of them was a news feature in Nature by Sarah

877
00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 1: Reardon called cells hack virus like protein to communicate, and

878
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:55,439
Speaker 1: another one was in The Atlantic by Ed Young called

879
00:49:55,480 --> 00:50:00,640
Speaker 1: brain cells share information with virus like capsules. And these

880
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:04,359
Speaker 1: two articles were in turn summarizing and reacting to the

881
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:08,720
Speaker 1: pretty much simultaneous publication of a couple of scientific papers

882
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 1: in the journal Cell, both concerning a very interesting gene

883
00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:16,560
Speaker 1: and its associated protein, which is known as ARC arc

884
00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 1: A r C. One of these papers was by Ashley

885
00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 1: at All in in Cell and the other one was

886
00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:25,359
Speaker 1: by Petution at All. Now, the gene known as arc

887
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 1: is present in all kinds of different organisms. You you

888
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 1: can find different versions of it, saying human cells, in

889
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: the cells of mice, in the cells of flies like

890
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:41,239
Speaker 1: Drosophila flies in the cells of reptiles and birds, and

891
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:45,520
Speaker 1: it apparently encodes a product known as the ARC protein,

892
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: where ARC stands for activity regulated cytoskeleton associated protein, and

893
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:54,360
Speaker 1: ARC has been known about since the nineteen nineties, but

894
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: some recent discoveries have made it seem even more interesting.

895
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:01,520
Speaker 1: Uh And and there's an interesting scene that Ed Young

896
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:04,080
Speaker 1: describes in his article about this where he's summarizing the

897
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:07,120
Speaker 1: research on one of the authors on one of these papers,

898
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist named Jason Shepherd who works at the University

899
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:14,400
Speaker 1: of Utah in Salt Lake City, who was studying the

900
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:17,920
Speaker 1: ARC gene and it's associated proteins in mice in the

901
00:51:18,080 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 1: I believe the in the motor neurons of mice. And

902
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: what the article describes is that Jason Shepherd was observing

903
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:30,440
Speaker 1: the proteins that were made by this gene under a

904
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 1: under a highly powerful microscope, and when he first saw

905
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 1: the structures, what he thought was that they looked like viruses. Now,

906
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:41,680
Speaker 1: of course, these are not viruses, These are not external

907
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: infectious agents. These are structures that are produced by the

908
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: natural cells in a mouse's body. So what both of

909
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:52,600
Speaker 1: these papers were looking at were that they were studying

910
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: what are known as extra cellular vesicles, and these are

911
00:51:56,200 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 1: sort of little chunks of cell membranes that's separate from

912
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:03,920
Speaker 1: their original host cells and then they go off somewhere

913
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:05,640
Speaker 1: and do their own things, so that you know, they

914
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 1: actually are a part of a cell that leaves the

915
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:11,720
Speaker 1: cell and floats free of it to maybe go connect

916
00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 1: with another cell or do something else in the body.

917
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:18,320
Speaker 1: And extracellular vesicles can be found all throughout the body,

918
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:20,279
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of questions about what they do.

919
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 1: We don't really know a lot, uh, And apparently these

920
00:52:23,040 --> 00:52:27,239
Speaker 1: two teams were looking at these these extracellular vessels that

921
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 1: were released by various neurons cells in the nervous system

922
00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:33,839
Speaker 1: to find out what they were doing, and they independently

923
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 1: found that the vesicles that are released by neurons in

924
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:42,200
Speaker 1: both flies and mice contain this ARC gene. Now it's

925
00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:46,680
Speaker 1: interesting because there is already existing research to show some

926
00:52:46,719 --> 00:52:49,200
Speaker 1: things about this ARC gene, for example, that the ARC

927
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: gene helps neurons form connections between one another, and of

928
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 1: course connections between neurons underlie a lot of what the

929
00:52:56,480 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 1: brain does. And there is also research to show very

930
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: interesting macro behavioral effects of the arc gene. For example,

931
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: mice that are genetically altered to lack the ARC gene

932
00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:14,279
Speaker 1: have difficulty with memory formation tasks. It seems like they

933
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 1: can't learn, they can't make long term memories. So, say,

934
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:20,879
Speaker 1: if you train a mouse to run a maze, if

935
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 1: they don't have the ARC gene, they can't make the

936
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:27,160
Speaker 1: ARC protein. They apparently can't learn anything about the maze

937
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:29,000
Speaker 1: that sticks with them. They might have to, you know,

938
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 1: do the maze as if for the first time every time.

939
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 1: So it seems that ARC is very important in whatever

940
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 1: process it is in the brain that turns experiences into

941
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:44,160
Speaker 1: structural changes in the brain that would you know, allow

942
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:46,600
Speaker 1: you to say, cement a memory that could be referenced

943
00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: later on. But I mentioned that at Young's article describes

944
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 1: the scene where this researcher is looking at the at

945
00:53:55,160 --> 00:53:58,680
Speaker 1: the ARC proteins under the microscope and that when he

946
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:02,120
Speaker 1: examined them, he saw what looked like these these hollow

947
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:06,880
Speaker 1: shells that very much resembled viruses. Specifically, they looked like

948
00:54:07,040 --> 00:54:11,160
Speaker 1: textbook illustrations of HIV, which of course is a type

949
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:15,000
Speaker 1: of virus known as a retrovirus. And apparently a shepherd

950
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:19,000
Speaker 1: ran these images by some viral experts, and they did

951
00:54:19,040 --> 00:54:21,839
Speaker 1: confirm that yes, these shells that were being made by

952
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 1: these cells within the mice's bodies looked a lot like

953
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:28,640
Speaker 1: the protein shells the capsids that you would find around

954
00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:32,239
Speaker 1: viruses like HIV. So apparently the arc genes that you

955
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:35,799
Speaker 1: would find in animals like mice today, it descends from

956
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:41,239
Speaker 1: an ancient class of ancestral genes, types of retro transposons,

957
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 1: and they can be found in the genomes of all

958
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:46,480
Speaker 1: kinds of animals. As I said, but these genes are

959
00:54:46,560 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: very interesting in that they can behave almost like independent

960
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:55,359
Speaker 1: infectious agents. They can copy themselves and then insert those

961
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:59,759
Speaker 1: copies of themselves somewhere else within the host's genome. But

962
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:04,560
Speaker 1: apparently at some point these ancestral retro transposons gain the

963
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 1: ability not only to copy and paste themselves elsewhere within

964
00:55:08,600 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 1: the genome, but to build a protein shell, essentially to

965
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 1: build themselves a spaceship that would surround this gene, surround

966
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:21,160
Speaker 1: this length of genetic material, and then allow this cage

967
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: protected strand of genetic information to leave its original host cell,

968
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 1: to fly off into space and and to go boldly

969
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:32,440
Speaker 1: and ed young Wrights that this actually is believed to

970
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:35,200
Speaker 1: be the origin of retroviruses. So in a way, we

971
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:39,719
Speaker 1: have these genes within our bodies that are actually cousins

972
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:44,319
Speaker 1: of wild infectious retroviruses that infect people and harm them,

973
00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:47,440
Speaker 1: uh and it. And this apparently is why the shells

974
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:51,160
Speaker 1: or the capsids made by these stretches of DNA are

975
00:55:51,200 --> 00:55:53,960
Speaker 1: so similar. The ARC gene that you find in animals

976
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:56,440
Speaker 1: is apparently very similar to a viral gene called a

977
00:55:56,520 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: GAG gene. And and again this is the gene that

978
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:02,759
Speaker 1: codes for the construction of this this protein shell, the

979
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:07,120
Speaker 1: capsid that protects the genetic material of a virus and

980
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 1: allows it to get into a cell and infect it.

981
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:12,680
Speaker 1: So what we have here is that there are cells

982
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:15,879
Speaker 1: within the brains or the nervous systems of animals as

983
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:20,160
Speaker 1: diverse as you know, from mice to to Drosophila two flies,

984
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:24,320
Speaker 1: that use this gene similar to a gene found in viruses,

985
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:28,560
Speaker 1: to build this protein shell or capsid, this structure to

986
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:33,279
Speaker 1: surround a strand of RNA based information like viruses do,

987
00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:37,440
Speaker 1: and then send that RNA information to another cell again

988
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:41,600
Speaker 1: like viruses do. So so in a way, you could

989
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:45,320
Speaker 1: look at the the brain cells as using a very

990
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: similar structure to what is used in viruses to sort

991
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 1: of infect one another with something with some kind of

992
00:56:53,080 --> 00:56:56,680
Speaker 1: RNA information. So why would cells in the brain be

993
00:56:56,800 --> 00:57:00,200
Speaker 1: doing this? And one possibility is that it's a way

994
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: for neurons to sort of control each other, to exert

995
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:06,319
Speaker 1: some kind of pressure influence on each other. Of course,

996
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:08,319
Speaker 1: in the case of a virus, a virus wants to

997
00:57:08,400 --> 00:57:10,760
Speaker 1: infect a new cell so that it makes more copies

998
00:57:10,800 --> 00:57:13,839
Speaker 1: of the virus. But in this case, a neuron could

999
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: maybe use ARC to send RNA to a nearby cell,

1000
00:57:17,520 --> 00:57:21,600
Speaker 1: which upon arrival would influence which genes are activated within

1001
00:57:21,680 --> 00:57:25,320
Speaker 1: that cell. Now, there's still tons of questions that we

1002
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,600
Speaker 1: don't have answered about what what is going on here,

1003
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:32,760
Speaker 1: like what is exactly this RNA cargo for, what does

1004
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:36,160
Speaker 1: it do? What does it do exactly? Though again it's

1005
00:57:36,320 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 1: very interesting to view this virus like behavior at the

1006
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 1: at the cell level, uh, in light of what we

1007
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: know about the macro behavioral effects of the ARC gene.

1008
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:49,800
Speaker 1: Once again, if you disable ARC, a mouse without it

1009
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: apparently can't learn or make memories. Fascinating, So we have

1010
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:58,480
Speaker 1: this this this kind of ancestral potential ancestral viral component

1011
00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:01,080
Speaker 1: to uh to to to some of the like the

1012
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 1: basic attributes of what do we think to think think

1013
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 1: of having a mind or having a certainly having consciousness,

1014
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: but even having just like a functional animal brain. Right though.

1015
00:58:10,360 --> 00:58:14,400
Speaker 1: A very interesting thing is though lots of animals have ARC,

1016
00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:18,760
Speaker 1: they're not all descended from a common ARC ancestor, or

1017
00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 1: at least not within the animal line. So fruit flies

1018
00:58:22,160 --> 00:58:25,200
Speaker 1: have ARC genes, mike mice have ARC genes, Humans have

1019
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: ARC genes. But it appears that say flies and vertebrates

1020
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:34,640
Speaker 1: acquired these genes, these similar genes from different sources uh

1021
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:37,920
Speaker 1: in uh to quote ed young in separate events that

1022
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: took place millions of years apart, and yet they've both

1023
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 1: got this stuff. So it seems like it is something

1024
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:49,120
Speaker 1: that is probably liable to be co opted by by

1025
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:52,880
Speaker 1: animal genomes in a way that is very useful, such

1026
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 1: that it happened multiple times in the history of life.

1027
00:58:56,760 --> 00:58:59,480
Speaker 1: And so there are all these really interesting possibilities about

1028
00:58:59,520 --> 00:59:02,760
Speaker 1: what this could mean in terms of learning more about

1029
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:05,920
Speaker 1: how our brains work and how our bodies evolved, but

1030
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: also in even potentially in in therapeutics, because as we

1031
00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:12,720
Speaker 1: were talking about, ARC has been highlighted as possibly playing

1032
00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:16,120
Speaker 1: a role in a number of neurological disorders, including some

1033
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 1: age related loss of mental capacity. So Jason Shepard is

1034
00:59:20,960 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: quoted in in ned Young's article as as observing that

1035
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:27,560
Speaker 1: the brains of young mice produce way more ARC protein

1036
00:59:28,120 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 1: than the brains of old mice. And it looks like

1037
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:34,840
Speaker 1: that possibly by inducing an increased supply of ARC protein

1038
00:59:34,920 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 1: in an older mouse's brain, the older mouse's brain will

1039
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:42,160
Speaker 1: show improved abilities to learn and adapt, maybe acting a

1040
00:59:42,160 --> 00:59:44,760
Speaker 1: little bit more like a younger mouse's brain, having that

1041
00:59:45,240 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 1: uh that more plastic potential. So I found this fascinating

1042
00:59:50,200 --> 00:59:53,240
Speaker 1: that it could quite literally be the case that there's

1043
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:57,440
Speaker 1: something pretty much like a virus in the brain that

1044
00:59:57,640 --> 01:00:01,240
Speaker 1: makes our minds what they are. That's fascinating, and it

1045
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 1: of course to how to bring it back to hammer

1046
01:00:03,720 --> 01:00:08,479
Speaker 1: House of horrors. Um not. Obviously, nobody's making the point

1047
01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:11,440
Speaker 1: that this research means that this episode is entirely possible

1048
01:00:11,520 --> 01:00:19,000
Speaker 1: or practical or anything that proof of the episode um revealed.

1049
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 1: But uh no, it um. It does make you uh uh,

1050
01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:27,439
Speaker 1: you know, sort of reflect on the seemingly outrageous notion here,

1051
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:32,280
Speaker 1: maybe being a little more reasonable than one might assume.

1052
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:35,440
Speaker 1: Just one watching it. I mean, obviously I can't imagine

1053
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:38,960
Speaker 1: how arc proteins or something similar would make you, uh,

1054
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:43,640
Speaker 1: you know, start obsessing over numerology and uh feeling like

1055
01:00:43,800 --> 01:00:47,080
Speaker 1: you have there's a there's an outside pressure from people

1056
01:00:47,080 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 1: in sunglasses for you to eat a baby. But but

1057
01:00:50,960 --> 01:00:54,200
Speaker 1: but still, uh you know, the the basic premise, uh

1058
01:00:54,240 --> 01:00:56,760
Speaker 1: you know, matches up with this idea A little bit

1059
01:00:56,920 --> 01:00:59,920
Speaker 1: segue to something totally different. I remember when I was

1060
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:02,560
Speaker 1: a kid one time, this is one of my hotel

1061
01:01:02,640 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: cable memories. Do you have hotel cable memories from being Yeah?

1062
01:01:07,160 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 1: One of mine was we went somewhere we had the

1063
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:12,800
Speaker 1: hotel channels and I saw an episode of Hammer House

1064
01:01:12,800 --> 01:01:15,680
Speaker 1: of Horror when I was way too young, and I

1065
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:18,240
Speaker 1: don't remember much about it except that it was an

1066
01:01:18,240 --> 01:01:20,920
Speaker 1: episode that had a werewolf in it. And then the

1067
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 1: real twist was, uh, so you think, okay, werewolf, somebody's

1068
01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:27,680
Speaker 1: gonna get you know, bit by the werewolf, gonna get mauled,

1069
01:01:27,720 --> 01:01:30,440
Speaker 1: and that's the real that's the shocker at the end.

1070
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 1: But instead somebody got killed with an axe in the

1071
01:01:33,120 --> 01:01:36,200
Speaker 1: werewolf episode, just about like a guy with an axe.

1072
01:01:36,760 --> 01:01:39,360
Speaker 1: I wonder if that was the Peter Cushing episode. I

1073
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:42,240
Speaker 1: think that one involves the animal human hybrids. I don't

1074
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 1: think it had Peter Cushing because I think I would

1075
01:01:44,160 --> 01:01:48,320
Speaker 1: have recognized him at least from Star Wars. I. You know,

1076
01:01:48,400 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 1: this whole mention to this episode. It does make me wonder,

1077
01:01:50,800 --> 01:01:56,200
Speaker 1: like what was in the waters too to inspire these

1078
01:01:56,200 --> 01:01:58,360
Speaker 1: other elements. You know, we can point to the trap

1079
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:01,760
Speaker 1: nation influence, uh that would have been present in the

1080
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:06,520
Speaker 1: news and so forth. But this idea of of a virus,

1081
01:02:06,800 --> 01:02:10,360
Speaker 1: an evil virus um, it reminds me a little bit

1082
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:14,240
Speaker 1: of the plot of The Creeping Flesh from nineteen seventy three,

1083
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 1: which had Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in it, And

1084
01:02:17,080 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 1: it involves the development of a serum against evil, the

1085
01:02:21,400 --> 01:02:24,120
Speaker 1: idea that that you could you could that I think

1086
01:02:24,160 --> 01:02:27,480
Speaker 1: Peter Cushing's characters working on developing one and about to

1087
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:30,240
Speaker 1: have a big breakthrough, like where where did this strange?

1088
01:02:30,360 --> 01:02:32,880
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's kind of a you know,

1089
01:02:33,480 --> 01:02:37,920
Speaker 1: a dumb idea in some respect is very uh. It

1090
01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:42,200
Speaker 1: produces the the idea of of evil to something that

1091
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:44,720
Speaker 1: you know, kind kind of like getting back through the brainwashing, uh,

1092
01:02:44,840 --> 01:02:47,680
Speaker 1: the programming idea that something has been done and it

1093
01:02:47,720 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 1: can be undone like that that evil is a broad

1094
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 1: tent concept and in human civilization, uh, that we could

1095
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:59,240
Speaker 1: find some sort of underlying cause of it, cause behind it,

1096
01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:03,160
Speaker 1: and and and effectively remove it and everything would be fine.

1097
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:05,680
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes the dumb idea is a brilliant idea.

1098
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 1: There's almost something exactly like that in John Carpenter's Prince

1099
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:12,040
Speaker 1: of Darkness. You know that we have to discover like

1100
01:03:12,280 --> 01:03:16,080
Speaker 1: they discover essentially a jar of Satan. It's like this

1101
01:03:16,400 --> 01:03:19,200
Speaker 1: physical substance or it's not quite it's something I think

1102
01:03:19,200 --> 01:03:22,440
Speaker 1: they call it, like the anti god and there's anti God. Yeah,

1103
01:03:22,480 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 1: there's some very loose uh pseudo scientific connections actually well

1104
01:03:27,320 --> 01:03:29,840
Speaker 1: I mean talking about real physics, but the connections I

1105
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: guess would be the pseudo part where they're saying, oh, yeah,

1106
01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:35,040
Speaker 1: so there's a particle in an anti particle in in

1107
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:37,800
Speaker 1: modern physics, and so you have the same thing as

1108
01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:39,960
Speaker 1: true like God is like the particle and then you've

1109
01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:43,600
Speaker 1: got an anti particle anti God that they come together

1110
01:03:43,640 --> 01:03:46,960
Speaker 1: and they annihilate. Yeah. I agree that a dumb idea

1111
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: take into uh to the limit. You know, you can

1112
01:03:51,120 --> 01:03:54,000
Speaker 1: make it very entertaining or sometimes a kind of dumb

1113
01:03:54,080 --> 01:03:57,400
Speaker 1: or traditional idea given a new code of paint using

1114
01:03:58,000 --> 01:04:01,040
Speaker 1: you know, some current scientific buzz word, uh, you know,

1115
01:04:01,120 --> 01:04:03,160
Speaker 1: or something from the headlines like that can make all

1116
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:06,200
Speaker 1: the difference as well, because the basic idea here is like,

1117
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 1: is a curse idea a contagious curse. Man catches curse

1118
01:04:10,080 --> 01:04:12,680
Speaker 1: from cursed individual and then has to deal with the curse.

1119
01:04:12,880 --> 01:04:16,160
Speaker 1: It's not unlike many werewolf stories, except instead of the

1120
01:04:16,200 --> 01:04:19,200
Speaker 1: curse of turning into a wolf uh and killing people,

1121
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:23,440
Speaker 1: it's this, uh, this curse of of these these various

1122
01:04:23,800 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: more you know, I guess, the more obscure, more mysterious,

1123
01:04:27,640 --> 01:04:32,160
Speaker 1: um psychological issues popping up. Yeah, and that ultimately makes

1124
01:04:32,160 --> 01:04:34,840
Speaker 1: it more terrifying because it's these are these are things

1125
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:37,000
Speaker 1: that that we can point to in the real world

1126
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:40,080
Speaker 1: that he's suffering, you know, like a sudden obsession over things, uh,

1127
01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:43,320
Speaker 1: you know, a change and behavior consciousness. Well, and in

1128
01:04:43,360 --> 01:04:45,840
Speaker 1: the light of the scientific stuff we were talking about today,

1129
01:04:45,880 --> 01:04:48,440
Speaker 1: I think, I don't know, it sort of invites you

1130
01:04:48,520 --> 01:04:50,960
Speaker 1: to rethink the idea of what a what a virus

1131
01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:54,200
Speaker 1: or infectious agent is. I mean, we naturally think of

1132
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:58,400
Speaker 1: infectious agents as things that are bad and harmful because

1133
01:04:58,440 --> 01:05:01,160
Speaker 1: I mean usually when it's like it is, uh, you know,

1134
01:05:01,240 --> 01:05:03,640
Speaker 1: a pathogen in the body that is infecting you in

1135
01:05:03,720 --> 01:05:06,000
Speaker 1: order to make copies of itself and it doesn't really

1136
01:05:06,000 --> 01:05:08,000
Speaker 1: care how much. You know, if it makes you miserable

1137
01:05:08,160 --> 01:05:12,000
Speaker 1: or debilitates you some way in the process, that's obviously bad.

1138
01:05:12,400 --> 01:05:16,320
Speaker 1: But there are also these essentially things that function like

1139
01:05:16,560 --> 01:05:20,360
Speaker 1: infectious agents that have very similar behaviors that are within

1140
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:22,880
Speaker 1: the body, and they might even be things that make

1141
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:26,680
Speaker 1: you who you are in a very inextricable way. Yeah,

1142
01:05:26,880 --> 01:05:29,240
Speaker 1: and kind of driving home, would you know, to come

1143
01:05:29,240 --> 01:05:31,960
Speaker 1: back around to head Young and his work. The idea

1144
01:05:32,040 --> 01:05:34,480
Speaker 1: that you know, we are multitudes. You know that that

1145
01:05:34,560 --> 01:05:37,320
Speaker 1: this idea of there being this single thing and this

1146
01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:41,840
Speaker 1: is what we are, uh, you know is obviously fall asleep.

1147
01:05:41,840 --> 01:05:43,800
Speaker 1: But then you know, when you start looking at like

1148
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:47,240
Speaker 1: the the organism itself, well, there is the organism, but

1149
01:05:47,280 --> 01:05:49,920
Speaker 1: then there are all the additional organisms within it that

1150
01:05:50,040 --> 01:05:54,320
Speaker 1: make make it up and and influence the ultimate presentation

1151
01:05:54,360 --> 01:05:57,360
Speaker 1: and experience, right, I mean, so you you could make

1152
01:05:57,400 --> 01:05:59,760
Speaker 1: distinctions that are valid distinctions. You can look at a

1153
01:05:59,800 --> 01:06:02,040
Speaker 1: sell in the body and say this is an animal cell,

1154
01:06:02,080 --> 01:06:04,520
Speaker 1: this is a you know, mammalian cell and then this

1155
01:06:04,600 --> 01:06:07,760
Speaker 1: is a bacterial cell. But in fact, I think he

1156
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:09,640
Speaker 1: makes a good case that when we think about what

1157
01:06:09,720 --> 01:06:12,560
Speaker 1: we are, it should probably actually include both, Like the

1158
01:06:12,600 --> 01:06:16,960
Speaker 1: bacteria are also us. Yeah. Now, if you're interested in

1159
01:06:17,000 --> 01:06:21,040
Speaker 1: watching Hammer House of Horror, our producers Seth informs us that,

1160
01:06:21,240 --> 01:06:24,760
Speaker 1: as of this recording, it is currently available on peacock. Uh.

1161
01:06:24,800 --> 01:06:28,200
Speaker 1: I was looking around and I found it available to

1162
01:06:28,200 --> 01:06:30,320
Speaker 1: to view as a part of a few different streaming

1163
01:06:30,360 --> 01:06:34,040
Speaker 1: packages online, you know, various channels. Uh, so it's it's

1164
01:06:34,080 --> 01:06:37,680
Speaker 1: definitely out there. Um, you know, multiple episodes. This is

1165
01:06:37,680 --> 01:06:40,200
Speaker 1: the only one I've seen, and and I don't have

1166
01:06:40,240 --> 01:06:44,880
Speaker 1: the benefit of your your your hotel cable experience of

1167
01:06:44,880 --> 01:06:48,400
Speaker 1: of watching uh watching it earlier in life. But but

1168
01:06:48,720 --> 01:06:50,200
Speaker 1: it looks like a really it's a really good shows.

1169
01:06:50,400 --> 01:06:52,840
Speaker 1: Like I said, check out the titles, check out the

1170
01:06:53,080 --> 01:06:56,400
Speaker 1: cast members. Uh, there are several of these that look

1171
01:06:56,440 --> 01:07:00,720
Speaker 1: really interesting. Got that classic British crime Yeah, all right, Well,

1172
01:07:00,760 --> 01:07:02,760
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone, of course. Do you

1173
01:07:02,760 --> 01:07:05,840
Speaker 1: have favorite episodes of the Hammer House of Horror, favorite

1174
01:07:05,880 --> 01:07:08,320
Speaker 1: episodes of the nineties Outer Limits series you'd like to

1175
01:07:08,360 --> 01:07:10,640
Speaker 1: chat about with us? We'll let us know. We'd we'd

1176
01:07:10,720 --> 01:07:12,400
Speaker 1: love to hear from you, And of course, if you

1177
01:07:12,440 --> 01:07:15,880
Speaker 1: have thoughts about the scientific or cultural topics that we

1178
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:19,680
Speaker 1: touched on in these episodes, um, everything's fair game right

1179
01:07:19,680 --> 01:07:22,640
Speaker 1: in We've we'd we'd love to discuss it with you.

1180
01:07:23,200 --> 01:07:25,400
Speaker 1: Our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published

1181
01:07:25,400 --> 01:07:28,680
Speaker 1: on Tuesday's and Thursdays. Check them out in the Stuff

1182
01:07:28,680 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed, and that is where

1183
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:33,200
Speaker 1: you will find them wherever you get your podcast. We

1184
01:07:33,280 --> 01:07:36,720
Speaker 1: also have listener Mail on Monday's, Artifact on Wednesdays, and

1185
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:40,360
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema on Friday's Huge Thanks, as always to

1186
01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:43,959
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would

1187
01:07:43,960 --> 01:07:45,840
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on

1188
01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:48,120
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for

1189
01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:50,440
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us

1190
01:07:50,480 --> 01:08:01,120
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1191
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:03,640
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

1192
01:08:04,000 --> 01:08:06,080
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, that's the I

1193
01:08:06,160 --> 01:08:09,000
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to

1194
01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:22,400
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.