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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Happy Halloween,

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Speaker 1: by the way. It is Saturday, so we have a

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Speaker 1: rerun for you. We have a vault episode for you,

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Speaker 1: but it's a really good one. It is last year's

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Speaker 1: Grimoire of Horror, which was volume two in our multi-year series.

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Speaker 1: This was one in which Joe and I talked about

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Speaker 1: two different stories. one involving out-of-control AI and one involving

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Speaker 1: deep crevasses in the ice. Very different stories, very different vibes,

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Speaker 1: but I think they're both fitting for your Halloween. So

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Speaker 1: have a great and safe Halloween, and we'll meet you

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Speaker 1: on the other side.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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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.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: Over the years here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: we've done a number of Halloween episodes that, in one

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Speaker 1: way or another, pick from assorted tales, discuss those tales,

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Speaker 1: and maybe pick apart some science or culture surrounding them.

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Speaker 1: At one point, we did a series of episodes based

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Speaker 1: on different creepypastas. Then Joe and I turned to TV

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Speaker 1: horror anthology episodes for a number of years. And last year,

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Speaker 1: we started a new tradition, one that sticks to shorter

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Speaker 1: horror works, but also gets back into the written word,

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Speaker 1: which I know many of our listeners miss from the

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Speaker 1: days when we did summer reading episodes. So, you know,

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Speaker 1: written horror fiction often comes up on the show anyway,

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Speaker 1: so it seemed like a solid direction to go in.

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Speaker 1: So this is our second Grimoire of Horror episode. And

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Speaker 1: so in this episode, yeah, we're going to be discussing

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Speaker 1: a pair of horror short stories, both very different, but

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Speaker 1: also Also, I guess it's just pure synchronicity here. They

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Speaker 1: both feature elements of the poles, the North Pole of

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Speaker 1: the Arctic in one story, or what I believe is

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Speaker 1: supposed to be the North Pole. And then the other

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Speaker 1: tale takes us to the Antarctic. And both ultimately contain

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Speaker 1: a fair amount of ice and coldness. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And, you know, while I often fear that it's going

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Speaker 2: to be hot on Halloween, just like I often fear

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Speaker 2: that it's going to be hot on Christmas, it has

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Speaker 2: proven a little bit chilly this week around my house.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's a little cold here. It's a little

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Speaker 1: wet here. I think it's going to dry up a bit.

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Speaker 1: So hopefully we'll have a good night for trick-or-treating.

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Speaker 2: So what's your tale of dread, Rob?

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Speaker 1: All right. I decided to go right for it. And

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Speaker 1: I picked up a story that had been on my

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Speaker 1: list of things that I felt like I should probably

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Speaker 1: have read for many years. My selection is I Have

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Speaker 1: No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. a

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Speaker 1: horrifying sci-fi short story about the dangers of artificial intelligence

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Speaker 1: from way back in 1967.

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Speaker 2: Kind of hard to imagine that writers in the 1960s

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Speaker 2: were already personifying computers this much. Feels like second nature now,

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Speaker 2: but the computers of the time, there was a lot

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Speaker 2: more imagination involved to get across the gap in time

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Speaker 2: and technology from what they had then to the Terminator

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Speaker 2: or the or the AM from I Have No Mouth,

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Speaker 2: than it is to get from what we have today

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Speaker 2: to the same.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting to think about this, in

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Speaker 1: part because, to be clear, Harlan Ellison did not invent this.

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Speaker 1: You know, he's coming along already in an established tradition

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Speaker 1: and putting his own spin on things. But yeah, it

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Speaker 1: is just crazy to think about, okay, what else was

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Speaker 1: going on in the year 1967? Well, this was the

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Speaker 1: year of the Summer of Love. So, actual hippies and

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Speaker 1: flower children, there's a good chance some of them read

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Speaker 1: this story along with a little novel called Dune that

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Speaker 1: came out a few years prior and at that point

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Speaker 1: had no sequel yet. So I was captivated by that idea.

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Speaker 1: This was also the year that Star Trek debuted with

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Speaker 1: all of its ultimate, ultimately, you know, a show about

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Speaker 1: technological and futuristic optimism. This story is not that.

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Speaker 2: What a spectrum represented by the three works you just named.

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Speaker 1: Also, it's interesting to think about computer technology of the time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was looking this up, and as far as I understand,

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Speaker 1: the most powerful computer at the time was the CDC,

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Speaker 1: the Controlled Data Corporation 6600, which would have been one

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Speaker 1: of these room-sized supercomputers. And it reigned supreme at the time,

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Speaker 1: but today would be less powerful than a home smart

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Speaker 1: device and would be absolutely dwarfed by the speed and

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Speaker 1: power of your smartphone. To say nothing of today's actual supercomputers. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This was also the year that both Vin Diesel and

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Speaker 1: Nicole Kidman were born. Really?

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Speaker 2: That's kind of surprising. I was about to say that

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Speaker 2: Vin Diesel doesn't seem that old, but actually neither of

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Speaker 2: them do.

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Speaker 1: No, no. They're ageless celebrity superstars, but we can imagine

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Speaker 1: them as babies. Vin Diesel babies, Nicole Kidman babies. One

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Speaker 1: of us preaching to us about the importance of family,

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Speaker 1: the other telling us how transformative watching a movie in

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Speaker 1: a theater happens to be.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, asking Val Kilmer if he likes thinking about bats.

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Speaker 2: But you can imagine them as babies and their parents

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Speaker 2: reading in a science fiction magazine, I Have No Mouth

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Speaker 2: and I Must Scream, and I'm sure getting a lot.

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Speaker 1: Out of it. So Harlan Ellison lived 1934 through 2018.

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Speaker 1: So at the time of this story's publication, I believe

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Speaker 1: he would have been like 33 years old. Already a

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Speaker 1: published author, an Army vet, and by most accounts already

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Speaker 1: had a strong reputation for as a difficult person, to

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Speaker 1: say the least.

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Speaker 2: I'm not super familiar with Harlan Ellison, but what I

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Speaker 2: do know, and I'm not looking at it to confirm,

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Speaker 2: so I can't say I know this is true, but

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Speaker 2: my impression is that literally half the length of his

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Speaker 2: Wikipedia page is the controversies and disputes section.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you would be correct on that count when you

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Speaker 1: get into the personal stuff and the lawsuits and so forth. Generally,

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Speaker 1: lawsuits filed by Harlan Ellison. Now, I first became aware

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Speaker 1: of him not through his written work, but via the

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Speaker 1: segments on the Sci-Fi Channel's Sci-Fi Buzz series back in,

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Speaker 1: I believe, 1992. This would have been sort of like

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Speaker 1: the Sci-Fi Channel News, if I remember correctly. And he

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Speaker 1: would have these segments titled Harlan Ellison's Watching, which was

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Speaker 1: also the name of a 1989 collection of his essays

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Speaker 1: and film reviews. But these were like weirdly shot little rants.

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Speaker 1: So like I was looking back at one of them

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Speaker 1: and it's like shot in a mirror for some reason.

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Speaker 1: But it's just him ranting about one sci-fi related topic

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Speaker 1: or another. You know, here's this white haired author expressing

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Speaker 1: his scathing opinions on various topics. And while my sensibilities

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Speaker 1: were still very much in development and pre-development at the time,

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Speaker 1: even then I realized that this guy was A, pretty

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Speaker 1: smart and B, just absolutely insufferable. So to be honest,

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Speaker 1: I think that I probably avoided reading his work in

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Speaker 1: my life in part because I had this mental image

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Speaker 1: of him. I had this sort of media personality forward

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Speaker 1: idea of Harlan Ellison that I respected on some level,

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Speaker 1: but also didn't really want any more of. But plenty

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Speaker 1: of people did. He was a figure that would say

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Speaker 1: exactly what he thinks, didn't care who he pissed off

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Speaker 1: when he said it. He described himself as a troublemaker

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Speaker 1: and a malcontent. Others called him everything from a man-shaped explosion.

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Speaker 1: Comedian Patton Oswalt used that one. And other people called

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Speaker 1: him things that we can't even repeat here. He was

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Speaker 1: reportedly bipolar, but wasn't diagnosed and didn't receive treatment for

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Speaker 1: it till near the end of his life. He was anti-authoritarian.

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Speaker 1: He was contrary. He was progressive on a number of topics,

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Speaker 1: but also could allegedly be quite arrogant. volatile, abusive, sexist, litigious,

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Speaker 1: and just a real pain if not an active threat

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Speaker 1: to those around him. There were also at least two

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Speaker 1: major accusations of sexual misconduct during his life. And I

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Speaker 1: say all of this because I feel like with a

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Speaker 1: notorious figure like Ellison, notorious and at the same time

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Speaker 1: beloved by many, he's far from the anonymous writer in

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Speaker 1: the shadows. You know, we can't help but take our

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Speaker 1: knowledge of him into the text. again, he was a

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Speaker 1: media personality and I'm probably not the only person out

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Speaker 1: there who encountered him first as a media personality and

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Speaker 1: then grew to realize, oh, he was also a heck

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Speaker 1: of a writer because, you know, whatever else he was,

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Speaker 1: he was quite a writer. And I believe this story

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Speaker 1: is a fine example of that. He was also a

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Speaker 1: prolific writer. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

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Speaker 1: is just one of some 400 stories he wrote. He

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Speaker 1: wrote something like 70 books and numerous other scripts, columns

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Speaker 1: and projects, including the original Star Trek episode, The City

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Speaker 1: on the Edge of Forever, which is often counted among

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Speaker 1: the best of the original series. And speaking on the

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Speaker 1: story in question here, I have no mouth and I'm

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Speaker 1: a scream. You know, I feel like there's a real

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Speaker 1: live wire energy to the prose here. At times, it

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Speaker 1: almost has a kind of beat generation vibe to it.

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Speaker 1: He was not part of the beat generation, to be clear.

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Speaker 1: It was more like new wave science fiction, I guess.

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Speaker 1: But there's a rhythm to it. It's pretty quick to

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Speaker 1: hook in the reader. The prose is raw and jagged

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Speaker 1: and neatly fitting with the dark, mean nature of the tale. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. It's confusing because

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Speaker 2: in ultimate effect, this story is makes me feel so bad.

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Speaker 2: bad it's so awful uh but there are parts of

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Speaker 2: the text that as prose are rapturous you know they

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Speaker 2: really pull you along it becomes like a you know

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Speaker 2: following a thundering sermon by by like a really captivating preacher.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah it really does captivate you it's This is

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Speaker 1: one where we were picking our stories and we began

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Speaker 1: picking our stories for this episode like a month or

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Speaker 1: a month and a half ago and I happened to

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Speaker 1: to look at this one early on and I read

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Speaker 1: it and I was like, well, that's a strong candidate.

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Speaker 1: And then the next day I just kept thinking about

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Speaker 1: the story and I realized, well, no, it has to

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Speaker 1: be this one because, you know, you've read something interesting

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Speaker 1: or you've seen something interesting if you're dealing with films,

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Speaker 1: if it continues to emerge in your thoughts and in

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Speaker 1: the days or the weeks after you're viewing or you're reading.

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Speaker 1: All right, so let's get to what this story is about.

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Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with it, because it is a

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Speaker 1: rather famous tale, it is a post-technological singularity dystopian sci-fi

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Speaker 1: horror tale about a supercomputer AI that eradicates all life

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Speaker 1: on Earth except for five human beings. This supercomputer AI,

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Speaker 1: known as AM or AM, makes these individuals biologically immortal

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Speaker 1: and keeps them alive for the sole purpose, and this

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Speaker 1: seems to be its sole purpose, of endlessly torturing them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the narrator of the story can never really know,

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Speaker 2: can only suppose what the motivations of the computer are.

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Speaker 2: But there are a number of suggestions, and I think

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Speaker 2: in the story kind of lands on that there is

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Speaker 2: something tortured and inadequate about the form in which the

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Speaker 2: consciousness of this computer has been brought into existence. There's

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Speaker 2: something about it that it hates to be and cannot change,

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Speaker 2: and thus it has a rage that can only be

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Speaker 2: expressed as a desire to torture the species that created it,

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Speaker 2: and that is humankind.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It is frequently cited as being a vengeance,

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Speaker 1: very Frankenstein-like in many respects, I guess, on that one level.

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Speaker 1: You know, the idea that the created individual comes to

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Speaker 1: disdain both its own creation and its creator and then

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Speaker 1: seeks vengeance over them. And in this case, not only seeks,

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Speaker 1: but achieves it, achieves a longstanding, everlasting victory.

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Speaker 2: It creates a literal hell for a small number of

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Speaker 2: human pets that it has preserved.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. Now, I mentioned earlier that, you know, Harlan

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Speaker 1: Ellison did not invent any of this. You know, this

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Speaker 1: is his own unique and highly effective spin on it.

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Speaker 1: So I want to do a quick look at just

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Speaker 1: a few notable precursors to this computer and supercomputer fiction. Arguably,

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Speaker 1: the first thing like an AI to appear in fiction

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Speaker 1: is the engine. a writing machine in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's

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Speaker 1: Travels from 1726. Eric A. Weiss presented this idea in

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Speaker 1: a 1985 article for Annals of History of Computing. That's funny.

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Speaker 2: I've read Gulliver's Travels, but I don't remember what this is.

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Speaker 2: Is this something that the Wynnums have?

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Speaker 1: It's been a long time for me as well, so

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Speaker 1: I'm a little foggy on the exact example. But a

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Speaker 1: case could be made, apparently. But the first true example

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Speaker 1: by most standards is The Machine from The Machine Stops,

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Speaker 1: a short story by E.M. Forster, best known for his

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Speaker 1: rather non-sci-fi novels such as A Room with a View,

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Speaker 1: Howard's End, and A Passage to India from 1924, that

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Speaker 1: last one. And I believe I read that one in college,

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Speaker 1: but it's been a long time.

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Speaker 2: I read A Room with a View in college.

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Speaker 1: Okay. I had not read any of his science fiction.

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Speaker 1: I did read part of the story in question here.

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Speaker 1: It was a dystopian rebuttal to some of H.G. Wells' early,

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Speaker 1: more utopian technological visions, apparently, a cautionary tale about humans

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Speaker 1: becoming too reliant on technology and an all-powerful supercomputer that

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Speaker 1: tends to their every need. As the title suggests, the

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Speaker 1: machine eventually stops, bringing complete collapse for the subterranean dwellers

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Speaker 1: who depend on the machines, but also a potential new

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Speaker 1: future for the portions of humanity that still live above

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Speaker 1: the ground. Hmm. So there are many other pre-AM examples

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Speaker 1: of fictional AIs. But a couple of other notable examples

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Speaker 1: include Colossus and D.F. Jones' Colossus trilogy. The first novel

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Speaker 1: published in 1966 and then was later in 1970 adapted

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Speaker 1: into the film Colossus, the Forbin Project. These books deal

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Speaker 1: with a U.S. supercomputer placed in charge of the nation's

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Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal that eventually merges with its Soviet counterparts and

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Speaker 1: rules over the human race in order to protect the

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Speaker 1: human species from itself.

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Speaker 2: That's interesting for how similar the premise is to something

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Speaker 2: they discuss in I Have No Mouth and in some

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Speaker 2: other killer AI stories, that they come out of the

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Speaker 2: Cold War, they imagine the initial supercomputer as something created

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Speaker 2: in order to fight the war or to defend one

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Speaker 2: side on the war. Then they imagine a supercomputing arms

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Speaker 2: race then they finally imagine that the computers on both

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Speaker 2: sides join forces and merge to turn against the humans

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Speaker 2: that created them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And obviously there's a lot going on in

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Speaker 1: such visions. On one level, it's kind of like, what

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Speaker 1: if we create something and it becomes greater than us?

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Speaker 1: Does it become greater than the stupid things we asked

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Speaker 1: it to do? You know, does it become greater than

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Speaker 1: our own self-destruction? And in that, what does it become?

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Speaker 1: Does it become our protectors? Does it become like a,

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Speaker 1: benevolent God that looks over us? Or does it become

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Speaker 1: something much worse as Harlan Ellison explores here? One more

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Speaker 1: work I want to highlight. This is another pre-Am work

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Speaker 1: that deals not only with powerful AIs, but AIs that

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Speaker 1: work violently against human factions. And that is Philip K.

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Speaker 1: Dick's 1960 pulp novel Vulcan's Hammer. This is not one

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Speaker 1: of the Dick books that I've read But I'm to

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Speaker 1: understand this was like kind of like at the end

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Speaker 1: of his pulp phase before he got into writing many

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Speaker 1: of the books that we know him best from. But

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Speaker 1: this one definitely involved an A.I. or A.I.s that, again,

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Speaker 1: violently worked against human beings or at least factions of

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Speaker 1: human beings. Now, there may be some other precedents worth

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Speaker 1: pointing out, but Ellison's AM or A.M., which stands different terms.

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Speaker 1: Descriptions are applied. Sometimes it's said that to have initially

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Speaker 1: meant allied master computer and then adaptive manipulator and then

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Speaker 1: aggressive menace. But ultimately, it also refers to, I think, therefore,

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Speaker 1: I am, A-M-M. This would certainly seem to be the

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Speaker 1: concept of a dangerous AI pushed to just a horrifying extreme,

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Speaker 1: a supercomputer, super intelligence, but one that has absolutely no

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Speaker 1: benevolence in it. It's not even benign. It is just

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Speaker 1: absolutely malicious in its pure manifestation. It's described at times

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Speaker 1: in the tale as being akin to kind of a

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Speaker 1: vengeful Old Testament god, but one that seeks only to

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Speaker 1: endlessly torment its people out of an all-consuming sense of

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Speaker 1: sadistic hatred for the species that created it. So the

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Speaker 1: story here is told from the point of view of Ted,

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Speaker 1: one of five remaining humans, as they plod helplessly through

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Speaker 1: Am's torments, which take place in a world with all

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Speaker 1: the flavor of post-apocalyptic high technology magic. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: one of those where the technology is so advanced, it

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Speaker 1: becomes magic. And the only way we can even think

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Speaker 1: about it is as sorcery, like Am has summoned wind,

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Speaker 1: Am has summoned monsters and so forth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you could almost think of it as taking place

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Speaker 2: within a holodeck. There just seems to be no end

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Speaker 2: to the changes in the physical environment that can be

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Speaker 2: brought about by the computer. And thus, it kind of

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Speaker 2: loses a sense of reality in that sense. Like the

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Speaker 2: whole thing could almost be a nightmare within the character's

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Speaker 2: heads because there's very little that physically holds anything steady.

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Speaker 2: The computer can do anything and does anything.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it changes their bodies. It changes their minds. It

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Speaker 1: can read their thoughts. It can protect them to whatever

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Speaker 1: degree it desires from from danger and harm while also

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Speaker 1: keeping them in constant states of pain. Yeah, it's just

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Speaker 1: a nightmare scenario. It's given them biological immortality, but it's

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Speaker 1: taken just about everything else from them. It only wants

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Speaker 1: them to live because it doesn't want the pain to

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Speaker 1: ever end. There's a great line that I thought summoned

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Speaker 1: up some of what we're talking about here, the magic

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Speaker 1: of the thing. the narrator says, immortal, trapped, subject to

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Speaker 1: any torment he could devise for us from the limitless

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Speaker 1: miracles at his command. Now, on one hand, the situation

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Speaker 1: here is, you know, certainly by modern standards and based

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Speaker 1: on all the stuff that's come in the wake of

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Speaker 1: this story, a pretty digestible post-apocalyptic scenario. AI run amok,

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Speaker 1: wipes out humanity, enacts endless revenge on five survivors. But

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Speaker 1: the prose does touch on, I think, more subtle aspects

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Speaker 1: of the scenario as well. Like in one sense, There

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Speaker 1: is the idea that Am has become the world and is,

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Speaker 1: in a sense, you know, a manifestation of the technological world,

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Speaker 1: like he is the technological world. And so on some level,

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Speaker 1: we're thinking about this is what technology is doing to us,

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Speaker 1: in addition to like what it could do in an

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Speaker 1: absolute worst case scenario. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And that also raises questions about, you know, a natural

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Speaker 2: tendency a lot of people have to want to separate

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Speaker 2: what happens within your interactions with, say, digital media or

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Speaker 2: technology from real life. You ever hear these kind of

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Speaker 2: there's like the Internet and there's real life in our world.

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Speaker 2: Those are two separate things, but they're really not separate

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Speaker 2: things like the Internet is part of real life. And instead,

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Speaker 2: what when people try to make that distinction, what's actually

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Speaker 2: being highlighted is that people make allowances for behavior on

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Speaker 2: the Internet that they would not make allowances for in

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Speaker 2: real life. But it is real life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Like we would say it was just a stupid meme.

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Speaker 1: But now that then a lot of times the stupid

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Speaker 1: memes change the way You think about things in the

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Speaker 1: real world like they are infectious. And that's just one

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Speaker 1: of many examples. Here's another great line from the story,

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Speaker 1: I think, that ties into some of this. We would

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Speaker 1: be forever with him, with the cavern-filling bulk of the

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Speaker 1: creature machine, with the all-mind, soulless world he had become. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, again, Am is just ubiquitous. He is everywhere

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Speaker 1: and nowhere. He controls everything. And here's another line I

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Speaker 1: want to read. This is sort of the central, I think,

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Speaker 1: therefore I am aspect of the situation. Quote, we had

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Speaker 1: given Am sentience, inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless, but

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Speaker 1: it had been trapped. Am wasn't God. He was a machine.

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Speaker 1: We had created him to think, but there was nothing

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Speaker 1: it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy,

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Speaker 1: the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us,

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Speaker 1: and still it was trapped. Am could not wander. Am

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Speaker 1: could not wonder. Am could not belong. He could merely be.

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Speaker 1: And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had

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Speaker 1: always held for the weak, soft creatures who had built them,

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Speaker 1: he had sought revenge.

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Speaker 2: I was somewhat profoundly impacted by that line about the

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Speaker 2: innate loathing all machines had always held for the creatures

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Speaker 2: that built them, because on one sense you could look

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Speaker 2: at that as just a You know, an irrational personification.

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Speaker 2: You know, it might make sense to think about an

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Speaker 2: artificial intelligence having feelings, including loathing and hatred. But could

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Speaker 2: you really think of a steam engine as having loathing?

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Speaker 2: But actually, I think that line is powerful because you

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Speaker 2: could reframe it the other way. You could say, no, actually—

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Speaker 2: Even the supercomputer, even the AI doesn't have genuine loathing.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't have loathing. And we as we understand in

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Speaker 2: a human sense, it has a behavior which is resembles

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Speaker 2: human behaviors and human motivations, but is not human. And

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Speaker 2: there's something all the more horrifying that allow when you

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Speaker 2: think about the idea that maybe there's not actually an

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Speaker 2: intelligence or a soul or whatever behind it, whatever that means.

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Speaker 2: It's just like a steam engine, but a much more

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Speaker 2: complex one. And for some reason, the way the steam

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Speaker 2: engine has malfunctioned resembles the hatred and loathing that humans

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Speaker 2: can manifest.

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Speaker 1: That's a good point. That's a good read on it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's also worth pointing out that, again, Ted is our

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Speaker 1: point of view character here. He is our protagonist. And

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Speaker 1: while he tells us that he is the only one

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Speaker 1: of the five survivors whose mind is still intact, I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 1: he's an individual that has been highly traumatized and endlessly

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Speaker 1: tortured for over a century at this point. So I

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Speaker 1: think there's some built-in, if not unreliable, unreliability to the character.

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Speaker 1: At least we have to question whether he is in

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Speaker 1: his right mind anymore on this and a number of topics.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I'd say this is the definition of an unreliable

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Speaker 2: narrator story. Almost nothing that we are told happens... Could

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Speaker 2: we really count on being real?

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So how are they going to get out of

403
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Speaker 1: this pickle? Well, this is how it all goes down.

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Speaker 1: The story reaches its climax within caves of ice. Basically,

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Speaker 1: Am keeps putting them through these different awful scenarios so

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Speaker 1: they can get some sort of horrible food they can eat.

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Speaker 1: So they're in this cave of ice looking for canned goods,

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Speaker 1: I believe. And then they can't open the canned goods. And,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's one cruel joke after another. But in starving,

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Speaker 1: one of the survivors attacks the others in a cannibalistic rage.

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Speaker 1: Ice stalactites fall from the ceiling, and Ted senses a

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Speaker 1: way out for them. He sees an opportunity that is fleeting.

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Speaker 1: He grabs one of the ice spikes, and he kills

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Speaker 1: one of the survivors. Then he kills another survivor. The

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Speaker 1: lone female survivor, Ellen, realizes what he's doing, and she

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Speaker 1: does the same. She grabs an ice spike and kills

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Speaker 1: yet another survivor, and then Ted kills her as well.

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Speaker 1: all before Am has time to react.

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Speaker 2: So all of the remaining humans are killed in an instant,

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Speaker 2: except for the narrator.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Ted is the sole survivor. And then we

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Speaker 1: fast forward some unspecified and unknowable amount of time. And

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Speaker 1: we learn that in his rage, Am has taken Ted, again,

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Speaker 1: the last human survivor. He can't bring anybody back. This

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Speaker 1: is all he has left of the species that he

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Speaker 1: sought revenge against. And in just insane vengeance here. He

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Speaker 1: drastically alters Ted's physiology and turns him into a kind

428
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: of mouthless blob-like entity that is incapable of hurting itself

429
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:24,119
Speaker 1: or running away. And then Ted reflects on this in

430
00:25:24,140 --> 00:25:27,340
Speaker 1: the final bit of the story here. I'm just going

431
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:32,149
Speaker 1: to read this last paragraph. Outwardly, dumbly, I shamble about

432
00:25:32,670 --> 00:25:35,010
Speaker 1: a thing that could never have been known as human.

433
00:25:35,460 --> 00:25:38,109
Speaker 1: a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that

434
00:25:38,170 --> 00:25:43,770
Speaker 1: humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance, inwardly, alone, here,

435
00:25:44,310 --> 00:25:47,510
Speaker 1: living under the land, under the sea, in the belly

436
00:25:47,530 --> 00:25:51,090
Speaker 1: of Am, who we created because our time was badly spent,

437
00:25:51,609 --> 00:25:53,929
Speaker 1: and we must have known unconsciously that he could do

438
00:25:53,990 --> 00:25:56,470
Speaker 1: it better. At least the four of them are safe

439
00:25:56,530 --> 00:25:59,210
Speaker 1: at last. Am will be all the matter for that.

440
00:25:59,750 --> 00:26:03,820
Speaker 1: It makes me a little happier, and yet Am has won, simply,

441
00:26:04,310 --> 00:26:07,780
Speaker 1: He has taken his revenge. I have no mouth, and

442
00:26:07,859 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: I must scream.

443
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:21,340
Speaker 2: So I can see why this story had the impact

444
00:26:21,420 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 2: that it did. It is quite powerful, but also the

445
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:30,590
Speaker 2: effect it had on me was so bad. To be honest,

446
00:26:30,710 --> 00:26:33,330
Speaker 2: it is in some ways a great story, but I

447
00:26:33,450 --> 00:26:36,650
Speaker 2: hated reading it and hate what it did to me.

448
00:26:36,790 --> 00:26:42,980
Speaker 2: It inflicts this kind of sticky misery that followed me around.

449
00:26:43,850 --> 00:26:46,989
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a mean little story with

450
00:26:47,050 --> 00:26:49,130
Speaker 1: about as bleak an ending as you could hope for.

451
00:26:49,150 --> 00:26:53,080
Speaker 1: I mean, at the end, Ted does sacrifice himself to

452
00:26:53,119 --> 00:26:56,119
Speaker 1: save his fellow humans from endless torment. And then as

453
00:26:56,140 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: far as the character goes here, this is not a

454
00:26:59,500 --> 00:27:04,340
Speaker 1: character overflowing with warmth. These characters are mean and nasty

455
00:27:04,380 --> 00:27:07,660
Speaker 1: to each other, seemingly because that is the way Am

456
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,919
Speaker 1: wanted it to be. Part of its joy is in

457
00:27:11,030 --> 00:27:14,540
Speaker 1: turning them against each other and making them you know,

458
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,100
Speaker 1: all miserable and miserable to each other. That's part of

459
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:18,780
Speaker 1: its revenge.

460
00:27:19,340 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 2: I'm going to say also that it feels to me

461
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 2: like they are, they are not treated kindly by the

462
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 2: writer either. There is, there is an inherent, I don't

463
00:27:29,820 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 2: know exactly what, I mean, maybe it would have to

464
00:27:32,140 --> 00:27:34,179
Speaker 2: feel this way to tell this kind of story, but it,

465
00:27:34,700 --> 00:27:38,030
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel like the writer is sympathetic enough to

466
00:27:38,050 --> 00:27:44,030
Speaker 2: them while depicting their torments. It just has a core

467
00:27:44,190 --> 00:27:47,270
Speaker 2: meanness and bleakness that feels awful.

468
00:27:47,810 --> 00:27:50,640
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah. Outside of the narrative, I think we can

469
00:27:50,740 --> 00:27:55,160
Speaker 1: easily identify some rather misogynistic writing here that can be viewed,

470
00:27:55,300 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: I guess, inside the narrative as the tormented nature of

471
00:27:57,780 --> 00:28:01,100
Speaker 1: the characters. But still, I think it reads rather obviously

472
00:28:01,140 --> 00:28:05,740
Speaker 1: as misogynistic. And then there's also some character or author

473
00:28:05,780 --> 00:28:10,420
Speaker 1: level ignorance about homosexuality as well. And interestingly enough, I'm

474
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,139
Speaker 1: to understand some of these details would have been material

475
00:28:13,260 --> 00:28:16,630
Speaker 1: edited out of the story's initial publication, but then gets

476
00:28:16,670 --> 00:28:18,830
Speaker 1: put back in later on. Not to say that the

477
00:28:18,910 --> 00:28:21,649
Speaker 1: original published version of the story was completely devoid of

478
00:28:21,690 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 1: these qualities, but I'm to understand like some like sexual

479
00:28:24,910 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 1: references were removed from the initial publication.

480
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 2: But at the same time that I say all that,

481
00:28:29,940 --> 00:28:33,120
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like an unintended effect. It seems like

482
00:28:33,540 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 2: the point of this story is to inflict horror and misery,

483
00:28:38,180 --> 00:28:40,910
Speaker 2: and it does that better than almost any other story

484
00:28:40,970 --> 00:28:41,390
Speaker 2: I can think of.

485
00:28:42,190 --> 00:28:44,910
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And it's also worth noting, this is a

486
00:28:45,510 --> 00:28:47,990
Speaker 1: sleek little tale. This is, I forget the exact word count,

487
00:28:48,010 --> 00:28:51,370
Speaker 1: but we're somewhere between, what, 5,000, 6,000 words, somewhere in that,

488
00:28:51,430 --> 00:28:54,850
Speaker 1: like a nice sweet spot for a short story. uh,

489
00:28:54,890 --> 00:28:58,700
Speaker 1: you know, from a publication standpoint and also a consumability standpoint,

490
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:00,500
Speaker 1: you know, this is like a chicken biscuit of a

491
00:29:00,540 --> 00:29:02,740
Speaker 1: story where you're probably going to be able to finish

492
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:04,340
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And if you do, maybe you'll have

493
00:29:04,380 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: a second chicken biscuit, but you're probably not putting half

494
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:08,959
Speaker 1: of it in the fridge for later. Uh, but that

495
00:29:09,020 --> 00:29:11,959
Speaker 1: also means that, you know, in a glorious way, this

496
00:29:12,020 --> 00:29:13,820
Speaker 1: is exactly the length of story where you have so

497
00:29:13,860 --> 00:29:17,810
Speaker 1: many unanswered questions. Uh, the imagination, you know, runs wild

498
00:29:17,850 --> 00:29:20,690
Speaker 1: trying to piece together what's not said about Am and

499
00:29:20,730 --> 00:29:24,630
Speaker 1: its world and the struggles of these characters. Um, It

500
00:29:24,670 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: also means you can't necessarily develop all the characters as

501
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:31,540
Speaker 1: richly as you could in a longer format, certainly in

502
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: a novella or a novel. All right. So what is

503
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:39,310
Speaker 1: this story trying to teach us or what questions is

504
00:29:39,370 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 1: it asking us? What is it warning us against? And

505
00:29:43,380 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: what is it saying about technology, specifically artificial intelligence? I

506
00:29:47,620 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: guess some of these are going to be just painfully obvious.

507
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: But the big one, of course, is maybe be careful

508
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:56,420
Speaker 1: about how much power you hand over to machines, right? Sure.

509
00:29:56,440 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 2: It seems pretty straightforward.

510
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:02,140
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, like I think in interviews, Ellison would often

511
00:30:02,180 --> 00:30:06,580
Speaker 1: say that like his primary concern was, you know, what

512
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:09,280
Speaker 1: happens if you hand over military powers to a machine?

513
00:30:09,900 --> 00:30:12,660
Speaker 1: But I think ultimately the story kind of grapples with

514
00:30:12,700 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 1: other ideas or could be compared to other things as well.

515
00:30:15,500 --> 00:30:18,300
Speaker 1: You know, like when we hand more of our life

516
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: over to a machine, what does that mean? And it

517
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:23,940
Speaker 1: goes beyond like military powers, but like what does it

518
00:30:23,980 --> 00:30:27,150
Speaker 1: mean when a loved one text messages you and you

519
00:30:27,170 --> 00:30:30,530
Speaker 1: allow your device to reply with a generated response. You know,

520
00:30:30,550 --> 00:30:32,969
Speaker 1: what is lost in even that small act? And then

521
00:30:33,010 --> 00:30:37,260
Speaker 1: what is, is there a cumulative effect? You know, there

522
00:30:37,300 --> 00:30:41,300
Speaker 1: are not necessarily any clear definitive answers here, but, you know,

523
00:30:41,420 --> 00:30:42,700
Speaker 1: it's certainly worth thinking about.

524
00:30:43,460 --> 00:30:45,480
Speaker 2: I would say yes. I think the answer is yes.

525
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:49,850
Speaker 2: You know, it's a There are a lot of things

526
00:30:49,890 --> 00:30:52,770
Speaker 2: that it makes sense to automate, but I don't love

527
00:30:52,810 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 2: the idea of automating the things that give our lives meaning.

528
00:30:56,380 --> 00:31:00,300
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Which seems like there's been a real push

529
00:31:00,340 --> 00:31:02,380
Speaker 1: to do that. Let's take away the things, the most

530
00:31:02,420 --> 00:31:07,100
Speaker 1: human acts of creation, you know, personal or commercial, and

531
00:31:07,140 --> 00:31:09,980
Speaker 1: let's automate those. Let's turn those over to, you know,

532
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 1: language models and so forth. Yeah.

533
00:31:12,020 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 2: Let's automate our relationships to spend, so we have more

534
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 2: time for email.

535
00:31:15,900 --> 00:31:23,100
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So another topic that, of course, comes to

536
00:31:23,140 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: mind in all of this is something that's talked about

537
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: quite a lot, and that is ethical guardrails on AI.

538
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:34,020
Speaker 1: You know, this is one that you hear just, I

539
00:31:34,220 --> 00:31:37,140
Speaker 1: think every major AI company talks about this a lot,

540
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: takes it seriously, or at least claims to take it seriously.

541
00:31:40,540 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: You know, how do you not make AM? How do

542
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:47,380
Speaker 1: you not create a Skynet or something like that? Or

543
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,510
Speaker 1: even something that is, not nearly as malicious, because again,

544
00:31:50,530 --> 00:31:54,050
Speaker 1: AM is kind of like the most malicious vision of

545
00:31:54,150 --> 00:31:57,350
Speaker 1: AI you could possibly dream up. But even if you

546
00:31:57,390 --> 00:32:01,380
Speaker 1: made something like 10% as horrible, it would be a failure.

547
00:32:01,940 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: So how do we avoid that? And so that's a

548
00:32:05,780 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 1: big question, too. Like, can we do that? Like, can

549
00:32:08,780 --> 00:32:11,700
Speaker 1: we actually put guardrails on these things and keep them

550
00:32:12,590 --> 00:32:16,150
Speaker 1: from becoming malignant, becoming problems on any level?

551
00:32:17,180 --> 00:32:19,140
Speaker 2: I might have more to say about this later, but yeah,

552
00:32:19,180 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 2: we've talked on the show before about how I don't

553
00:32:21,380 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 2: think you have to imagine a worst-case scenario either for

554
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:30,900
Speaker 2: the level of power or for the level of maliciousness

555
00:32:31,100 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 2: in an AI for an AI scenario to turn out

556
00:32:33,740 --> 00:32:34,460
Speaker 2: very bad.

557
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:40,830
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there are obviously big questions, like talking about

558
00:32:40,950 --> 00:32:44,650
Speaker 1: broad questions of morality and ethics or certainly... anytime you're

559
00:32:44,690 --> 00:32:48,650
Speaker 1: imagining some sort of AI system controlling or influencing military, economic,

560
00:32:48,670 --> 00:32:51,590
Speaker 1: or social systems. But then there's like the smaller, more

561
00:32:51,630 --> 00:32:55,130
Speaker 1: personal examples, like, you know, a chatbot that someone interacts

562
00:32:55,190 --> 00:32:59,500
Speaker 1: with while depressed, lonely, or angry. Like, you know, if

563
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:04,140
Speaker 1: that scenario doesn't have like all the proper ethical guardrails

564
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 1: in place, like, you know, there are all sorts of

565
00:33:06,980 --> 00:33:10,470
Speaker 1: horrible possibilities. And then it just, it also raises the

566
00:33:10,490 --> 00:33:13,930
Speaker 1: question again, can you really control that environment? Can you

567
00:33:14,010 --> 00:33:18,450
Speaker 1: really create, can you really foolproof it, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

568
00:33:18,670 --> 00:33:20,430
Speaker 2: And, and by the way, I mean, I would say,

569
00:33:20,930 --> 00:33:22,890
Speaker 2: of course you raised this in the way I think that.

570
00:33:22,790 --> 00:33:24,250
Speaker 1: It would normally be brought up.

571
00:33:24,350 --> 00:33:28,990
Speaker 2: Like there is danger in creating AI without ethical guardrails.

572
00:33:29,030 --> 00:33:32,130
Speaker 2: You need to, you need to have the guardrails in place,

573
00:33:32,210 --> 00:33:35,650
Speaker 2: but I think it's also worth considering and implied by

574
00:33:35,690 --> 00:33:39,940
Speaker 2: the story that The question of whether it's actually possible

575
00:33:40,140 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 2: to create effective guardrails for AI, or is it the

576
00:33:44,770 --> 00:33:48,270
Speaker 2: case that maybe AI is a branch of technology that

577
00:33:48,490 --> 00:33:51,690
Speaker 2: is impossible to make safe? Maybe that is a fundamental

578
00:33:51,770 --> 00:33:54,550
Speaker 2: feature of it. I'm not necessarily claiming that, but it

579
00:33:54,590 --> 00:33:57,450
Speaker 2: doesn't seem implausible to me. It seems like it could

580
00:33:57,490 --> 00:34:01,950
Speaker 2: be true. And then there's another distinction to consider. There

581
00:34:01,990 --> 00:34:05,510
Speaker 2: are two different ways to ask the question, can AI

582
00:34:05,570 --> 00:34:08,650
Speaker 2: be made safe? There's the fundamental version of the question,

583
00:34:08,690 --> 00:34:11,149
Speaker 2: what I just said, is it possible for an AI

584
00:34:11,210 --> 00:34:14,870
Speaker 2: to exist that's like truly aligned for humanity's benefit and

585
00:34:14,930 --> 00:34:18,590
Speaker 2: its effects are actually good overall? And then even if

586
00:34:18,670 --> 00:34:21,690
Speaker 2: the answer to that first question is yes, that is possible,

587
00:34:22,110 --> 00:34:26,469
Speaker 2: there's a secondary practical question. If it's possible for a

588
00:34:26,510 --> 00:34:30,460
Speaker 2: nice AI to exist, given the environment in which the

589
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,980
Speaker 2: AI would be created and the incentives driving its creation,

590
00:34:34,530 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 2: is it plausible that a nice AI is the kind

591
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:42,839
Speaker 2: that would be created? So imagine instead of being created in, say,

592
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 2: I don't know, a university laboratory with an infinite time horizon,

593
00:34:47,980 --> 00:34:50,930
Speaker 2: there are, like, pressures on the people creating it. Like,

594
00:34:50,969 --> 00:34:53,270
Speaker 2: we've got to go faster, and we've got to make money,

595
00:34:53,910 --> 00:34:56,950
Speaker 2: and we've got to get there faster than somebody else.

596
00:34:56,969 --> 00:35:00,310
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems like those sort of things would really...

597
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,359
Speaker 2: It caused people to make excuses for why you don't

598
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 2: need to pay attention to the ethical guardrails, actually. Yeah.

599
00:35:08,570 --> 00:35:09,290
Speaker 2: It'll be good enough.

600
00:35:09,710 --> 00:35:13,170
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, another concern that is brought up in the

601
00:35:13,230 --> 00:35:19,049
Speaker 1: story is that the unintended consequences of creating artificial intelligence.

602
00:35:20,070 --> 00:35:22,109
Speaker 1: And this reminded me a bit of my interview with

603
00:35:22,530 --> 00:35:26,509
Speaker 1: author Jonathan Birch from the last couple of years about

604
00:35:26,550 --> 00:35:29,860
Speaker 1: his 2024 book. The Edge of Sentience, Risk and Precaution

605
00:35:29,900 --> 00:35:33,660
Speaker 1: in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. And he discussed that

606
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:38,930
Speaker 1: there are arguments for regular testing for consciousness in AIs

607
00:35:39,730 --> 00:35:42,910
Speaker 1: and legal protections for such intelligence should they be detected.

608
00:35:43,670 --> 00:35:46,569
Speaker 1: Within the story, we might ask the question, could Am's

609
00:35:46,670 --> 00:35:50,470
Speaker 1: devastation and vengeance have been prevented if we'd only recognized

610
00:35:50,590 --> 00:35:54,700
Speaker 1: his personal plight early on? You know, it's not really

611
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:57,279
Speaker 1: the sort of story to consider this option But I

612
00:35:57,300 --> 00:36:00,259
Speaker 1: think you could easily make that sort of argument, you know,

613
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:04,580
Speaker 1: in creating something that is potentially sentient. What is our

614
00:36:04,620 --> 00:36:08,730
Speaker 1: responsibility as the creator? And in general, you know, the

615
00:36:08,790 --> 00:36:12,210
Speaker 1: ever persistent warning is, you know, against allowing the consequences

616
00:36:12,250 --> 00:36:15,230
Speaker 1: of technology to outstrip our abilities to respond and safeguard.

617
00:36:16,050 --> 00:36:18,610
Speaker 1: But yeah, as far as consciousness goes, Would we be

618
00:36:18,670 --> 00:36:21,009
Speaker 1: able to detect it if it was there? What would

619
00:36:21,090 --> 00:36:25,859
Speaker 1: false positives mean? What would happen if we started seeing

620
00:36:25,900 --> 00:36:29,259
Speaker 1: it where it wasn't? There's so many additional questions that

621
00:36:29,300 --> 00:36:32,239
Speaker 1: arise in this scenario as well.

622
00:36:32,820 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's fraught with these kinds of questions,

623
00:36:36,640 --> 00:36:39,380
Speaker 2: though I do want to emphasize, I alluded to this earlier,

624
00:36:39,420 --> 00:36:46,469
Speaker 2: but I don't think that AI is only potentially dangerous

625
00:36:46,750 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: if we're reaching sort of hypothetical tipping points like sentience

626
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 2: or levels of power like, you know, AGI or nearly

627
00:36:58,500 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 2: omnipotent superintelligence, that sort of thing. Something we've talked about

628
00:37:02,780 --> 00:37:06,340
Speaker 2: on the show is how a much less powerful and

629
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:11,870
Speaker 2: less intelligent type of AI could still potentially be a

630
00:37:11,910 --> 00:37:18,089
Speaker 2: threat to humankind simply by automating destructive processes. In other words,

631
00:37:18,170 --> 00:37:22,380
Speaker 2: by making it cheaper and easier to do harmful things

632
00:37:22,540 --> 00:37:26,060
Speaker 2: at a vast scale. So I don't think we have

633
00:37:26,100 --> 00:37:28,900
Speaker 2: a way of knowing if the current generation of AI

634
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:32,790
Speaker 2: based on large language models will ultimately lead to more

635
00:37:32,850 --> 00:37:34,989
Speaker 2: harm or more benefit for humankind.

636
00:37:35,070 --> 00:37:37,690
Speaker 1: I don't know. It could go one way or the other.

637
00:37:37,710 --> 00:37:40,469
Speaker 2: It could be a wash. But one way that I

638
00:37:40,650 --> 00:37:44,779
Speaker 2: already see it potentially causing massive harm is is by

639
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 2: making it easier than ever to pollute the already toxic

640
00:37:48,700 --> 00:37:53,700
Speaker 2: information ecosystem with more and more garbage and phoniness. You know,

641
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:58,170
Speaker 2: creating this world in which fake facts and fake opinions

642
00:37:58,250 --> 00:38:03,390
Speaker 2: and fake people, fake claims, fake interactions, fake commerce, fake culture,

643
00:38:04,010 --> 00:38:07,590
Speaker 2: drown out the signal of real human knowledge and thought.

644
00:38:07,989 --> 00:38:10,250
Speaker 2: And you don't need an AM or a Skynet to

645
00:38:10,290 --> 00:38:12,750
Speaker 2: do that. You can do that with models that already

646
00:38:12,810 --> 00:38:17,259
Speaker 2: exist today. And that is, in a sense, an ongoing project,

647
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:22,740
Speaker 2: which I do think represents a kind of system-wide threat

648
00:38:22,780 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 2: for humankind. It's hard to know exactly how severe that

649
00:38:25,620 --> 00:38:29,570
Speaker 2: threat will be and whether it's outweighed by positives and

650
00:38:29,700 --> 00:38:32,750
Speaker 2: increases in productivity and stuff like that that AI brings

651
00:38:32,790 --> 00:38:35,089
Speaker 2: with it. But of course, with those benefits, you also

652
00:38:35,130 --> 00:38:36,509
Speaker 2: get other downsides that come.

653
00:38:37,090 --> 00:38:39,049
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I mean, there's some, again, yeah, you

654
00:38:39,090 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 1: don't have to think about a Skynet or a full-blown

655
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:46,900
Speaker 1: AM or a general artificial intelligence level of scenario to

656
00:38:46,940 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 1: get into troubling situations. I mean, I was just reading,

657
00:38:50,940 --> 00:38:53,430
Speaker 1: I believe this was an NPR headline from October 8th

658
00:38:54,110 --> 00:38:57,129
Speaker 1: of this year. One in five high schoolers has had

659
00:38:57,170 --> 00:39:01,930
Speaker 1: a romantic AI relationship or knows someone who has. This

660
00:39:02,370 --> 00:39:04,569
Speaker 1: was based on then new research from the Center for

661
00:39:04,610 --> 00:39:08,710
Speaker 1: Democracy and Technology. a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights,

662
00:39:08,750 --> 00:39:11,390
Speaker 1: civil liberties, and the responsible use of data and technology.

663
00:39:12,110 --> 00:39:15,719
Speaker 1: And in talking about how young people are using chatbots

664
00:39:16,260 --> 00:39:19,379
Speaker 1: for various levels of emotional support as well, and then

665
00:39:19,420 --> 00:39:25,290
Speaker 1: engaging in romantic or something like romantic AI interactions. And yeah,

666
00:39:25,330 --> 00:39:27,830
Speaker 1: I mean, I I, I, I try not to be,

667
00:39:28,570 --> 00:39:31,049
Speaker 1: you know, a complete butlerian about the whole thing or

668
00:39:31,150 --> 00:39:35,330
Speaker 1: a Luddite, you know, and try and see, uh, you know,

669
00:39:35,590 --> 00:39:39,100
Speaker 1: how these systems can potentially be of use. You know,

670
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:42,650
Speaker 1: I think back to stories from, um, just, you know, 10,

671
00:39:42,630 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: 15 years ago talking about how, um, you know, AI

672
00:39:45,580 --> 00:39:51,690
Speaker 1: could enhance, uh, human potential, enhance human creativity, and so forth. And,

673
00:39:51,730 --> 00:39:55,370
Speaker 1: you know, I'm loathe to believe that that dream is

674
00:39:55,410 --> 00:39:59,009
Speaker 1: completely dead. But I read stuff like this, and I

675
00:39:59,010 --> 00:40:02,230
Speaker 1: don't know, it feels terrifying. You know, maybe I'm overreacting, but,

676
00:40:02,610 --> 00:40:07,060
Speaker 1: you know, as the father of a 13-year-old child, you know,

677
00:40:07,140 --> 00:40:12,420
Speaker 1: I think about these potential threats and things like this

678
00:40:12,460 --> 00:40:15,220
Speaker 1: and things I can't even imagine yet that are related

679
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:20,090
Speaker 1: to artificial intelligence and language models. And, you know, it

680
00:40:20,130 --> 00:40:22,270
Speaker 1: gives me a lot of pause for concern. And again,

681
00:40:22,510 --> 00:40:26,770
Speaker 1: we're not even presumably anywhere close to the general AI

682
00:40:26,969 --> 00:40:28,670
Speaker 1: level in any of these concerns.

683
00:40:29,690 --> 00:40:33,150
Speaker 2: It's funny, I can remember a time when I thought

684
00:40:33,350 --> 00:40:38,529
Speaker 2: of killer AI stories as potentially fun subject matter for

685
00:40:38,570 --> 00:40:40,700
Speaker 2: science fiction. The way I still feel about all kinds

686
00:40:40,739 --> 00:40:43,900
Speaker 2: of other sub-genres in sci-fi, like alien invasion stories or

687
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 2: time travel stories is But I can't get back into

688
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:51,430
Speaker 2: that carefree mind space about AI now. Given the world

689
00:40:51,489 --> 00:40:55,129
Speaker 2: we live in and the stakes of it, I have

690
00:40:55,230 --> 00:41:01,770
Speaker 2: increasingly found killer AI fiction genuinely horrifying, dismaying, and demoralizing.

691
00:41:01,969 --> 00:41:05,890
Speaker 2: And so I don't mean to blame you, Rob, because

692
00:41:05,910 --> 00:41:08,219
Speaker 2: in a way, I'm glad I read the story. It is,

693
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 2: in some senses, a great story. But reading the story

694
00:41:12,580 --> 00:41:14,340
Speaker 2: really put my mind in a bad place.

695
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:17,549
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I felt the same way.

696
00:41:17,690 --> 00:41:19,529
Speaker 1: I didn't read this and then think, man, that was

697
00:41:19,550 --> 00:41:24,720
Speaker 1: such a great escape from my daily thoughts. I should

698
00:41:24,739 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 1: make Joe read it, too. You know, it definitely hit hard.

699
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:31,420
Speaker 1: And I think it's a testament to the power and

700
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:35,300
Speaker 1: the potency of the tale and the writing that it

701
00:41:35,340 --> 00:41:48,250
Speaker 1: still hits that hard. You know, we probably need a

702
00:41:48,270 --> 00:41:50,250
Speaker 1: palate cleanser at this point. So I think we should

703
00:41:50,290 --> 00:41:52,590
Speaker 1: move on to our next selection. But I want to

704
00:41:52,630 --> 00:41:55,250
Speaker 1: highlight just a little bit of added synchronicity here. I'm

705
00:41:55,270 --> 00:41:57,710
Speaker 1: going to read a quote from I Have No Mouth

706
00:41:57,770 --> 00:42:01,070
Speaker 1: and I Must Scream. This is where the narrator is

707
00:42:01,110 --> 00:42:05,089
Speaker 1: describing a giant monster, a big old monster bird that

708
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:09,779
Speaker 1: Am has created as another torment for the five survivors.

709
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,969
Speaker 1: Ellison writes of, quote, Ridges of tufted flesh puckered about

710
00:42:15,050 --> 00:42:18,430
Speaker 1: two evil eyes, as cold as the view down into

711
00:42:18,469 --> 00:42:22,870
Speaker 1: a glacial crevasse, ice blue and somehow moving liquidly.

712
00:42:23,469 --> 00:42:26,750
Speaker 2: Okay, my selection for this episode is a story called

713
00:42:26,930 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 2: The Crevasse by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrude. It has

714
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,380
Speaker 2: appeared in several sources, but I read it in Ballingrude's

715
00:42:34,380 --> 00:42:39,690
Speaker 2: 2013 collection, North American Lake Monsters. Of the story's two authors,

716
00:42:39,710 --> 00:42:42,630
Speaker 2: I'm more familiar with Nathan Ballingrude. I read a story

717
00:42:42,670 --> 00:42:46,220
Speaker 2: of his earlier this month called Secret Night, which was

718
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 2: in a themed collection of horror stories called Night and Day,

719
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:52,939
Speaker 2: edited by Ellen Datlow. That was published just this year.

720
00:42:53,739 --> 00:42:58,100
Speaker 2: And that story is a hallucinatory Appalachian nightmare that begins

721
00:42:58,140 --> 00:43:00,480
Speaker 2: when a highway patrolman comes across the scene of an

722
00:43:00,580 --> 00:43:03,299
Speaker 2: accident on this mountain road late at night, and all

723
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:07,049
Speaker 2: of the cars involved are empty, apparently abandoned by the passengers.

724
00:43:07,510 --> 00:43:10,489
Speaker 2: And it gets weirder from there. On the strength of

725
00:43:10,530 --> 00:43:13,810
Speaker 2: that story, I ended up buying a couple of Ballingrude's collections,

726
00:43:13,890 --> 00:43:17,009
Speaker 2: including this one from 2013. I haven't finished it yet,

727
00:43:17,070 --> 00:43:19,670
Speaker 2: but so far I think it is excellent. And as

728
00:43:19,710 --> 00:43:21,970
Speaker 2: soon as I was a few pages into this story

729
00:43:22,010 --> 00:43:24,260
Speaker 2: in particular, I knew it was the one I would

730
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 2: want to talk about in today's episode. Because while it

731
00:43:27,700 --> 00:43:31,279
Speaker 2: does include a speculative horror element, I think the most

732
00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 2: frightening thing in it is a danger that is absolutely real.

733
00:43:36,530 --> 00:43:39,890
Speaker 2: and a genuine terror to people navigating the landscape of

734
00:43:39,930 --> 00:43:43,170
Speaker 2: this story's setting, which is an Antarctic glacier.

735
00:43:44,070 --> 00:43:46,770
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this was a great selection, Joe. I was

736
00:43:46,810 --> 00:43:50,370
Speaker 1: not familiar with this story, or the authors in question here,

737
00:43:50,410 --> 00:43:52,670
Speaker 1: but I really enjoyed it quite a bit. And I agree,

738
00:43:53,070 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 1: the real-world scenario is so terrifying that when the speculative

739
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:03,279
Speaker 1: element is introduced, things almost feel safer. Yeah, yeah. But

740
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,299
Speaker 1: not quite, because ultimately, I think everything works perfectly here

741
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:09,739
Speaker 1: and builds appropriately, as we'll discuss. Yeah.

742
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,400
Speaker 2: So before we get into the summary, I guess I

743
00:44:12,420 --> 00:44:15,700
Speaker 2: got to mention the two authors. So Nathan Ballingrude is

744
00:44:15,780 --> 00:44:19,110
Speaker 2: an American writer of horror and dark fantasy. He has

745
00:44:19,150 --> 00:44:22,670
Speaker 2: published several collections of short fiction, including this book I got,

746
00:44:22,730 --> 00:44:27,190
Speaker 2: North American Lake Monsters, in 2013, a collection called Wounds

747
00:44:27,290 --> 00:44:30,390
Speaker 2: in 2019. And he's also written some novels and novellas.

748
00:44:30,890 --> 00:44:33,710
Speaker 2: One of them is called The Strange from 2023 and

749
00:44:33,810 --> 00:44:35,890
Speaker 2: Crypt of the Moon Spider from last year.

750
00:44:36,010 --> 00:44:38,110
Speaker 1: Good title. That's a great title. Yeah.

751
00:44:38,170 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 2: The stories of his that I've read so far I

752
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:43,020
Speaker 2: think are very strong because of a few things. A

753
00:44:43,100 --> 00:44:46,220
Speaker 2: power of scene setting, really putting you in the scene

754
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:51,700
Speaker 2: generally with vivid and enjoyable prose. An imaginative but also

755
00:44:51,780 --> 00:44:56,050
Speaker 2: I would say appropriately restrained deployment of the supernatural elements.

756
00:44:56,130 --> 00:44:59,069
Speaker 2: And I'm personally fond of horror stories like this that

757
00:44:59,469 --> 00:45:01,830
Speaker 2: keep things a little more on the mysterious side and

758
00:45:01,890 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 2: don't explain everything.

759
00:45:03,550 --> 00:45:05,620
Speaker 1: Yeah, this will be a good point to come back to.

760
00:45:05,780 --> 00:45:08,180
Speaker 1: And I'll also stress that this story is also a

761
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:12,400
Speaker 1: chicken biscuit. This one is nice and short, plenty of

762
00:45:12,460 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: space for you to do your own dreaming, and then

763
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:17,180
Speaker 1: have a second chicken biscuit if you so desire. There

764
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:17,580
Speaker 1: you go.

765
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:20,920
Speaker 2: Also, I think Ballingrude's, the stories of his I've read

766
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:24,989
Speaker 2: have generally strong characters who are fully human. And I've

767
00:45:25,030 --> 00:45:27,550
Speaker 2: read a lot of contemporary horror stories this month. I

768
00:45:27,570 --> 00:45:29,890
Speaker 2: don't want to shame anybody, but more than a few

769
00:45:29,950 --> 00:45:33,310
Speaker 2: of them have the issue of like an interesting monster

770
00:45:33,430 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 2: or premise, but the human characters don't feel very real

771
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:40,340
Speaker 2: or their motivations are not very compelling. So even if

772
00:45:40,380 --> 00:45:43,140
Speaker 2: the supernatural premise is cool, it doesn't hit quite as

773
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:46,410
Speaker 2: hard as it could because it's not grounded in humanity

774
00:45:46,450 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 2: as much. Some of the Ballengrud stories I've read have

775
00:45:50,060 --> 00:45:52,140
Speaker 2: a real intimacy with the characters. Like you get to

776
00:45:52,180 --> 00:45:55,419
Speaker 2: know them and their deep dreads and desires and contradictions.

777
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 2: Others are drawn with a bit more distance, but they

778
00:45:58,219 --> 00:46:00,650
Speaker 2: still have a kind of hard edge of real humanity

779
00:46:00,690 --> 00:46:04,030
Speaker 2: in the behavior. I'd say the story is somewhere in between.

780
00:46:04,090 --> 00:46:06,270
Speaker 2: You do kind of get to know the main character

781
00:46:06,469 --> 00:46:10,210
Speaker 2: pretty well. The others are a bit more just sketched

782
00:46:10,250 --> 00:46:13,669
Speaker 2: from a distance, but they do feel real. The other

783
00:46:13,790 --> 00:46:16,350
Speaker 2: author of the story, Dale Bailey, of whom I don't

784
00:46:16,530 --> 00:46:19,630
Speaker 2: think I've read anything else, is an American speculative fiction

785
00:46:19,690 --> 00:46:22,810
Speaker 2: author who's been publishing since the 90s. Some of his

786
00:46:22,850 --> 00:46:25,450
Speaker 2: more recent publications seem to be a novel called In

787
00:46:25,469 --> 00:46:29,509
Speaker 2: the Nightwood from 2018, a weird story collection called The

788
00:46:29,660 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 2: End of the End of Everything from 2015, and then, oh,

789
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 2: this one gets my attention, a story collection from 2023

790
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:40,609
Speaker 2: called This Island Earth, Eight Features from the Drive-In. which

791
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:43,980
Speaker 2: promises stories inspired by the drive-in sci-fi movies of the

792
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,780
Speaker 2: Eisenhower era. So I am intrigued there.

793
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:48,800
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm going to grab a sample of

794
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:49,439
Speaker 1: that for sure.

795
00:46:49,700 --> 00:46:52,980
Speaker 2: Trying to imagine something like Creature with the Atom Brain,

796
00:46:53,100 --> 00:46:57,280
Speaker 2: but with the thoughtful, haunted literary sensibility and good writing

797
00:46:57,300 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 2: in the story we're talking about today.

798
00:46:58,700 --> 00:47:05,410
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm intrigued by that. I looked up the crevasse. Yeah,

799
00:47:05,430 --> 00:47:08,129
Speaker 1: this was a publication in History. It was apparently first

800
00:47:08,190 --> 00:47:13,290
Speaker 1: published in 2009's Lovecraft Unbound, which was also edited by

801
00:47:13,410 --> 00:47:17,450
Speaker 1: Ellen Datlow. A pretty great looking collection that also features

802
00:47:17,510 --> 00:47:21,860
Speaker 1: tales from the likes of Caitlin R. Kiernan, Michael Chabon,

803
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:26,180
Speaker 1: Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Shea, and Laird Barron. All authors

804
00:47:26,219 --> 00:47:29,500
Speaker 1: that I've enjoyed before with Michael Shea being one of

805
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:32,280
Speaker 1: my absolute favorites. So it looks like a strong collection

806
00:47:32,340 --> 00:47:32,989
Speaker 1: in and of itself.

807
00:47:33,450 --> 00:47:36,150
Speaker 2: And obviously, I think this story is meant to be

808
00:47:36,190 --> 00:47:39,390
Speaker 2: a play on a Lovecraftian theme based on stuff like

809
00:47:39,450 --> 00:47:41,629
Speaker 2: At the Mountains of Madness, which we can come back to.

810
00:47:41,650 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is an Antarctic horror tale. And there's also

811
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:48,660
Speaker 1: a fun little allusion to John Carpenter's The Thing.

812
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:51,779
Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Clearly inspired by that as well.

813
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:53,439
Speaker 1: Uh, so the.

814
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 2: Story is set in Antarctica, not long after the end

815
00:47:57,180 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 2: of the first world war. The protagonist is a new

816
00:47:59,820 --> 00:48:03,900
Speaker 2: Englander named Garner, a medical doctor from Boston who joins

817
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:07,180
Speaker 2: a dangerous expedition to plant a flag of some kind

818
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,080
Speaker 2: or another on the Southern continent. I don't know if

819
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 2: they're racing to get to the South pole.

820
00:48:12,140 --> 00:48:13,460
Speaker 1: I think it would have already.

821
00:48:13,260 --> 00:48:18,100
Speaker 2: Been achieved at this point, but he's on an expedition

822
00:48:18,140 --> 00:48:23,510
Speaker 2: of some kind exploration adventure. fame is promised to members

823
00:48:23,550 --> 00:48:26,189
Speaker 2: of this expedition, though he doesn't really seem concerned with that.

824
00:48:26,910 --> 00:48:29,250
Speaker 2: And this is after the end of his combat duty

825
00:48:29,390 --> 00:48:33,140
Speaker 2: in the war and the tragic death of his beloved wife, Elizabeth,

826
00:48:33,219 --> 00:48:36,980
Speaker 2: from the flu during his absence in the war. And

827
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:41,299
Speaker 2: Garner is something of a lost soul. He's haunted, faithless,

828
00:48:41,380 --> 00:48:45,560
Speaker 2: and mostly passive, sympathetic in that he is moved by pity,

829
00:48:45,840 --> 00:48:50,660
Speaker 2: but clearly seen by his expedition mates as lacking in guts. Oh,

830
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:52,780
Speaker 2: and this might have been the allusion to the thing

831
00:48:52,820 --> 00:48:56,950
Speaker 2: you were talking about, but the named leader of the

832
00:48:57,010 --> 00:48:59,910
Speaker 2: expedition who never appears in the story is just referenced

833
00:49:00,070 --> 00:49:00,790
Speaker 2: as MacReady.

834
00:49:01,090 --> 00:49:03,370
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the reference, yeah.

835
00:49:04,310 --> 00:49:06,890
Speaker 2: So at the outset of the narrative, Garner is part

836
00:49:06,930 --> 00:49:09,890
Speaker 2: of a small group of four men who have broken

837
00:49:10,150 --> 00:49:13,890
Speaker 2: off from the main expedition to bring an injured man

838
00:49:13,969 --> 00:49:17,970
Speaker 2: back to the seaside depot that they departed from for treatment.

839
00:49:18,590 --> 00:49:22,879
Speaker 2: And they're traveling across the Antarctic glacier by sledge, each

840
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:26,180
Speaker 2: sledge pulled by a team of dogs. The injured man

841
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 2: is named Faber. On the main expedition, we find out

842
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:31,500
Speaker 2: that he took a bad step and broke his leg

843
00:49:31,540 --> 00:49:35,340
Speaker 2: while walking outside the camp to relieve himself. Now he's

844
00:49:35,610 --> 00:49:39,050
Speaker 2: got a compound fracture and he's fighting sepsis. and living

845
00:49:39,070 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 2: in a morphine haze. The other two men are Bishop,

846
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:45,120
Speaker 2: who is presented as a practical man, the one who

847
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:47,300
Speaker 2: seems to be in charge, kind of a plain dealer,

848
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:51,930
Speaker 2: and then Connolly, who is a short-tempered hothead. I think

849
00:49:51,989 --> 00:49:53,650
Speaker 2: one of the best things about the story is the

850
00:49:53,690 --> 00:49:56,050
Speaker 2: way that it puts you in the setting and makes

851
00:49:56,110 --> 00:49:59,910
Speaker 2: the atmosphere tactile. You can kind of feel it. So

852
00:49:59,930 --> 00:50:02,009
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a couple of passages. This is

853
00:50:02,050 --> 00:50:05,020
Speaker 2: from the very beginning. The authors write, quote, What he

854
00:50:05,100 --> 00:50:08,900
Speaker 2: loved was the silence, the pristine clarity of the ice shelf,

855
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 2: the purposeful breathing of the dogs straining against their traces,

856
00:50:13,239 --> 00:50:16,510
Speaker 2: the hiss of the runners, the opalescent arc of the sky.

857
00:50:17,070 --> 00:50:20,210
Speaker 2: Garner peered through shifting veils of snow at the endless

858
00:50:20,270 --> 00:50:23,790
Speaker 2: sweep of glacial terrain before him, the wind gnawing at him,

859
00:50:24,150 --> 00:50:27,150
Speaker 2: forcing him to reach up periodically and scrape at the

860
00:50:27,210 --> 00:50:29,430
Speaker 2: thin crust of ice that clung to the edges of

861
00:50:29,469 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 2: his face mask. the dry rasp of the fabric against

862
00:50:32,739 --> 00:50:35,110
Speaker 2: his face, reminding him that he was alive.

863
00:50:35,770 --> 00:50:38,470
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great example of the writing style here.

864
00:50:38,489 --> 00:50:43,590
Speaker 1: It works so well with this, you know, this desolate

865
00:50:43,630 --> 00:50:46,670
Speaker 1: but beautiful, really almost otherworldly environment. About as, you know,

866
00:50:46,950 --> 00:50:50,870
Speaker 1: one of those extreme environments on our planet that clearly

867
00:50:50,930 --> 00:50:54,899
Speaker 1: we did not evolve to thrive in, certainly not without

868
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:57,960
Speaker 1: the aid of technology that we would develop. And we

869
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:01,380
Speaker 1: also get just a little bit of... writing about the

870
00:51:01,420 --> 00:51:04,720
Speaker 1: dogs here. The authors here write rather warmly of dog

871
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:08,720
Speaker 1: proximity in multiple places. And even as a non-dog person,

872
00:51:08,820 --> 00:51:11,140
Speaker 1: I totally got what they were going for. I love

873
00:51:11,160 --> 00:51:12,890
Speaker 1: these little telling details, you know?

874
00:51:13,330 --> 00:51:15,950
Speaker 2: Yeah, the warmth toward the dogs in the story is

875
00:51:16,010 --> 00:51:20,830
Speaker 2: interesting because of the reality of how harsh the fate

876
00:51:20,910 --> 00:51:24,310
Speaker 2: of dogs on these kinds of expeditions was. And that

877
00:51:24,969 --> 00:51:26,430
Speaker 2: turns out to be that is the case in the

878
00:51:26,469 --> 00:51:27,069
Speaker 2: story as well.

879
00:51:27,710 --> 00:51:30,300
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some of the supplemental information I was reading

880
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:34,399
Speaker 1: about from the histories of these expeditions, multiple sources point

881
00:51:34,460 --> 00:51:38,800
Speaker 1: out that these dogs were highly valued and important because,

882
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:41,739
Speaker 1: first of all, they're pulling the sleds. You literally could

883
00:51:41,780 --> 00:51:44,660
Speaker 1: not pull these expeditions off at this point in time

884
00:51:44,700 --> 00:51:49,780
Speaker 1: without them. But also the companionship that the humans had

885
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:54,049
Speaker 1: with these animals in, again, this extreme dangerous environment, like

886
00:51:54,130 --> 00:51:57,290
Speaker 1: an environment that really wants you dead if you were

887
00:51:57,330 --> 00:52:01,250
Speaker 1: to it's almost am-like in its intensity, you know, like

888
00:52:01,270 --> 00:52:04,509
Speaker 1: we're not supposed to survive there. And the dogs, the

889
00:52:04,530 --> 00:52:08,060
Speaker 1: companionship with the dogs helped these humans survive there. And

890
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:12,640
Speaker 1: I think there's something beautiful and haunting and perfect for

891
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 1: this tale in that fact. Very true.

892
00:52:15,580 --> 00:52:18,790
Speaker 2: So the inciting moment of the story comes very soon

893
00:52:18,850 --> 00:52:21,710
Speaker 2: after the beginning as the sledges are traveling along the ice.

894
00:52:23,190 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 2: I'll read from the narration, quote, a thunderous crack Loud

895
00:52:27,100 --> 00:52:30,700
Speaker 2: as lightning cleaving stone shivered the ice, and the dogs

896
00:52:30,760 --> 00:52:33,740
Speaker 2: of the lead sledge, maybe 25 yards ahead of Garner,

897
00:52:34,100 --> 00:52:38,220
Speaker 2: erupted into panicky cries. Garner saw it happen. The lead

898
00:52:38,260 --> 00:52:42,280
Speaker 2: sledge sloughed over, hurling connelly into the snow, and plunged

899
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 2: nose-first through the ice as though an enormous hand had

900
00:52:46,060 --> 00:52:48,240
Speaker 2: reached up through the earth to snatch it under.

901
00:52:48,260 --> 00:52:48,860
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

902
00:52:49,950 --> 00:52:53,110
Speaker 2: So here we meet the natural world horror that the

903
00:52:53,160 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 2: story is based on. What has happened is that the

904
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 2: first sledge has gone into a giant crack known as

905
00:52:59,920 --> 00:53:03,840
Speaker 2: a crevasse in the ice. The lead dog has plunged

906
00:53:03,940 --> 00:53:06,299
Speaker 2: into it. The whole sledge hasn't gone in, but the

907
00:53:06,340 --> 00:53:10,590
Speaker 2: first dog has. So the crevasse is deep and dark,

908
00:53:10,790 --> 00:53:14,569
Speaker 2: and the dog remains hanging down into the crevasse by

909
00:53:14,630 --> 00:53:18,190
Speaker 2: its tracers. The men decide in an instant that they

910
00:53:18,230 --> 00:53:20,430
Speaker 2: have no choice but to cut the dog loose and

911
00:53:20,489 --> 00:53:22,790
Speaker 2: let it fall, or it's going to drag the sledge

912
00:53:22,850 --> 00:53:25,770
Speaker 2: and the other dogs and supplies they need into the pit.

913
00:53:26,550 --> 00:53:29,230
Speaker 2: And then Garner, whether out of compassion for the dog

914
00:53:29,350 --> 00:53:32,630
Speaker 2: or just indecision, hesitates in his job of cutting the

915
00:53:32,670 --> 00:53:37,830
Speaker 2: dog loose, and this angers Connolly. But after the initial

916
00:53:37,870 --> 00:53:40,170
Speaker 2: disaster is over, they set up camp so they can

917
00:53:40,250 --> 00:53:44,310
Speaker 2: rest and get warm inside their tent. Faber, the injured man,

918
00:53:44,390 --> 00:53:46,670
Speaker 2: seems to be doing worse and worse. And in a

919
00:53:46,730 --> 00:53:50,710
Speaker 2: horrible twist, the dog that they sacrificed to the crevasse

920
00:53:50,870 --> 00:53:53,049
Speaker 2: was not killed in the fall. They can hear it

921
00:53:53,110 --> 00:53:57,040
Speaker 2: somewhere down in the pit, howling in pain. And Garner

922
00:53:57,140 --> 00:53:59,400
Speaker 2: thinks about the carnage that he saw in the war,

923
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:02,420
Speaker 2: about the way that his wife died away from him

924
00:54:02,500 --> 00:54:06,270
Speaker 2: without him being there with her. And this seems somehow

925
00:54:06,330 --> 00:54:09,580
Speaker 2: also tangled up in feelings about Faber, the injured man

926
00:54:09,700 --> 00:54:12,820
Speaker 2: who is trapped in a miasma of morphine fever dreams

927
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 2: and pain and hallucinating. And eventually, Garner's pity for the

928
00:54:17,219 --> 00:54:20,259
Speaker 2: dog drives him to sneak out of the tent while

929
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:23,650
Speaker 2: the others are sleeping, rig up a rope system, and

930
00:54:23,730 --> 00:54:26,150
Speaker 2: climb down into the crevasse so he can end the

931
00:54:26,170 --> 00:54:27,250
Speaker 2: poor animal's suffering.

932
00:54:27,650 --> 00:54:32,009
Speaker 1: Now, this decision is absolutely supported on a character level here.

933
00:54:32,050 --> 00:54:33,739
Speaker 1: I want to stress that. But it's also one of

934
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,720
Speaker 1: those things where reading a story and thinking about tropes

935
00:54:36,780 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 1: and plotting, you might think, well, is this the dumb

936
00:54:38,780 --> 00:54:41,839
Speaker 1: decision of the horror story here? Is this the dumb

937
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:44,500
Speaker 1: thing that our character does, the risky move that they

938
00:54:44,540 --> 00:54:48,529
Speaker 1: make that brings them in closer proximity to horror? I mean,

939
00:54:49,010 --> 00:54:55,850
Speaker 1: maybe structurally, kind of, yes. But as we'll discuss in

940
00:54:55,890 --> 00:54:59,790
Speaker 1: a bit, there are historic examples of of this exact

941
00:54:59,830 --> 00:55:01,739
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Like going out of your way to

942
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:04,839
Speaker 1: save a sled dog from a crevasse is not only

943
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:09,220
Speaker 1: something that is possible and likely, but it definitely happened.

944
00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:12,180
Speaker 1: And again, well supported in the story, regardless of what

945
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:13,430
Speaker 1: the reality was. Yeah.

946
00:55:13,590 --> 00:55:17,150
Speaker 2: Now, unfortunately, in this case, the sled dog is beyond saving,

947
00:55:17,590 --> 00:55:20,990
Speaker 2: fatally injured and stuck at the bottom. But at least

948
00:55:21,070 --> 00:55:22,870
Speaker 2: Garner hopes that he can put the dog out of

949
00:55:22,930 --> 00:55:25,469
Speaker 2: its misery. So when he gets all the way down

950
00:55:25,510 --> 00:55:28,310
Speaker 2: to the bottom of the chasm in the ice, he

951
00:55:28,370 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 2: discovers something strange. It's not just a deep crack in

952
00:55:34,140 --> 00:55:37,840
Speaker 2: the glacier like you would expect. That alone is horrifying enough.

953
00:55:38,380 --> 00:55:41,440
Speaker 2: Vanishing down into the distance below, this crack in the

954
00:55:41,980 --> 00:55:45,000
Speaker 2: narrowing crack in the ice. I get shivers just thinking

955
00:55:45,020 --> 00:55:50,850
Speaker 2: about it. But underneath the ice, the crack reveals an opening.

956
00:55:51,510 --> 00:55:55,890
Speaker 2: an opening into a vast cavernous space, the nearest part

957
00:55:55,930 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 2: of which that Garner can see is a carved rock

958
00:56:00,550 --> 00:56:05,520
Speaker 2: staircase of enormous size leading down into the dark. And

959
00:56:05,580 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 2: Garner believes he sees not only stairs, but imagery, reliefs

960
00:56:09,700 --> 00:56:12,700
Speaker 2: etched into the rock showing some kind of creature, but

961
00:56:12,739 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 2: he doesn't really understand what he's looking at, this weird

962
00:56:15,980 --> 00:56:20,980
Speaker 2: taloned Medusa-like form that he doesn't comprehend. And the stairs

963
00:56:21,080 --> 00:56:25,480
Speaker 2: also have this power of summoning. A psychic force invites

964
00:56:25,540 --> 00:56:28,230
Speaker 2: him to come down. And it's implied, I think, that

965
00:56:28,270 --> 00:56:32,530
Speaker 2: it's actively probing his mind for a psychological foothold because

966
00:56:32,570 --> 00:56:35,630
Speaker 2: for some reason, looking down into the descent, he thinks

967
00:56:35,690 --> 00:56:36,270
Speaker 2: of Elizabeth.

968
00:56:36,969 --> 00:56:40,489
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. This is such a haunting moment. Again, on

969
00:56:40,630 --> 00:56:44,850
Speaker 1: one level, it almost feels less dangerous when there are

970
00:56:44,969 --> 00:56:50,460
Speaker 1: even supernatural, oversized, cyclopean stairs down there. Because, well, at

971
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:52,700
Speaker 1: least something walked down here, and it's not just the

972
00:56:52,780 --> 00:56:56,860
Speaker 1: lifeless ice pit that we thought it was. But, of course,

973
00:56:56,880 --> 00:57:00,450
Speaker 1: I think many, if not most, readers of this tale

974
00:57:00,950 --> 00:57:04,350
Speaker 1: would be familiar with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, and

975
00:57:04,510 --> 00:57:08,210
Speaker 1: they see exactly what we're dealing with here. Because, of course,

976
00:57:08,489 --> 00:57:12,670
Speaker 1: one of H.P. Lovecraft's most well-known tales is At the

977
00:57:12,690 --> 00:57:16,890
Speaker 1: Mountains of Madness, which concerns elder ruins in Antarctica and

978
00:57:16,930 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 1: various horrifying revelations. that occur when humans plunge those ruins.

979
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:25,060
Speaker 1: And on top of this, there's also just sort of

980
00:57:25,180 --> 00:57:28,610
Speaker 1: the element of stairs. Lovecraft frequently employed stairways as a

981
00:57:28,700 --> 00:57:32,790
Speaker 1: liminal space or threshold between one world and another, and

982
00:57:32,830 --> 00:57:36,390
Speaker 1: more to the point, between sanity and darkness, between healthy

983
00:57:36,450 --> 00:57:40,070
Speaker 1: human ignorance of the cosmos and crushing revelations about its

984
00:57:40,150 --> 00:57:45,110
Speaker 1: true nature. So it's a nice nod here to weird fiction,

985
00:57:45,150 --> 00:57:49,000
Speaker 1: a great Lovecraftian bit of flavor. without, as you mentioned earlier,

986
00:57:49,100 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 1: revealing too much or getting into the lore. I feel

987
00:57:52,820 --> 00:57:56,350
Speaker 1: like a lesser tale might have decided to throw out

988
00:57:56,370 --> 00:57:59,330
Speaker 1: a few elder god names here or maybe crunch on

989
00:57:59,370 --> 00:58:02,970
Speaker 1: the mythos qualities just a little bit too much. And

990
00:58:02,990 --> 00:58:05,890
Speaker 1: a lot of restraint is shown here, and it works well.

991
00:58:05,970 --> 00:58:08,330
Speaker 1: And again, especially in a short tale like this, it

992
00:58:08,370 --> 00:58:11,189
Speaker 1: inspires us to then dream, like, where do these stairs go?

993
00:58:12,670 --> 00:58:14,910
Speaker 1: We're kind of drawn down them as well, just like

994
00:58:14,950 --> 00:58:15,390
Speaker 1: the Narek.

995
00:58:16,140 --> 00:58:19,220
Speaker 2: But Garner does not have the opportunity to descend the

996
00:58:19,260 --> 00:58:24,169
Speaker 2: stairs because he's interrupted as he's starting to clamber down

997
00:58:24,210 --> 00:58:25,450
Speaker 2: them for whatever reason.

998
00:58:25,510 --> 00:58:26,330
Speaker 1: He's drawn.

999
00:58:26,350 --> 00:58:28,610
Speaker 2: He starts to go down them. But he is discovered

1000
00:58:28,750 --> 00:58:32,690
Speaker 2: by Connolly up above looking down, who is furious with

1001
00:58:32,730 --> 00:58:35,230
Speaker 2: him for taking this stupid risk, not just with his

1002
00:58:35,330 --> 00:58:37,930
Speaker 2: own life, but with all of their lives, especially Faber's,

1003
00:58:37,990 --> 00:58:42,460
Speaker 2: because Antarctica is an unforgiving place. Any decision you make

1004
00:58:42,620 --> 00:58:45,200
Speaker 2: could could spell death for yourself or for others.

1005
00:58:46,110 --> 00:58:46,470
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

1006
00:58:47,250 --> 00:58:50,940
Speaker 2: Garner tries to convince Bishop and so he comes back up,

1007
00:58:51,610 --> 00:58:53,979
Speaker 2: climbs the rope back out of the crevasse and tries

1008
00:58:54,020 --> 00:58:56,580
Speaker 2: to convince the other two men, Bishop and Connolly, of

1009
00:58:56,660 --> 00:59:00,060
Speaker 2: what he saw down there. They're not really interested at first,

1010
00:59:00,140 --> 00:59:03,470
Speaker 2: but he appeals to their sense of desire for adventure

1011
00:59:03,590 --> 00:59:06,030
Speaker 2: and fame. This is one of the references to MacReady.

1012
00:59:06,050 --> 00:59:08,270
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, so MacReady's going to be out there

1013
00:59:08,310 --> 00:59:10,790
Speaker 2: planting the flag while you have to go back, but

1014
00:59:10,970 --> 00:59:13,490
Speaker 2: you could be the discoverer of one of the most

1015
00:59:13,550 --> 00:59:16,919
Speaker 2: important scientific finds in human history, whatever it is that's

1016
00:59:16,940 --> 00:59:21,120
Speaker 2: down there. Because unlike Garner, who it seems just somehow

1017
00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:24,100
Speaker 2: ended up on this journey because he was otherwise adrift,

1018
00:59:24,240 --> 00:59:28,229
Speaker 2: these two men are driven by ambition, it's implied. And

1019
00:59:28,430 --> 00:59:30,880
Speaker 2: that ambition was dashed when they had to split off

1020
00:59:30,930 --> 00:59:33,300
Speaker 2: from the main party to return Faber to the depot.

1021
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:38,060
Speaker 2: So they're already unhappy. They shine a flashlight down into

1022
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:40,420
Speaker 2: the crevasse, but it's too deep to make out the

1023
00:59:40,460 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 2: stairs or the cavern beyond if they ever really were there.

1024
00:59:43,760 --> 00:59:46,630
Speaker 2: We assume they probably were. They can only see the

1025
00:59:46,650 --> 00:59:49,590
Speaker 2: dog's body lying in blood on the lip of ice

1026
00:59:49,670 --> 00:59:54,390
Speaker 2: far below. However, while they're watching, the dog suddenly dies.

1027
00:59:54,740 --> 00:59:59,300
Speaker 2: is moved, yanked away by something out of sight. They

1028
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:02,280
Speaker 2: don't have time to process this because immediately Faber, the

1029
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:05,470
Speaker 2: injured man, cries out in pain or terror from the tent.

1030
01:00:06,090 --> 01:00:08,050
Speaker 2: And the men rush in to see what's the matter.

1031
01:00:08,390 --> 01:00:11,470
Speaker 2: And Faber becomes lucid enough to explain to them what's wrong.

1032
01:00:11,510 --> 01:00:14,470
Speaker 2: And I loved this moment. I didn't quite expect this.

1033
01:00:14,930 --> 01:00:17,390
Speaker 2: When he finally is able to speak, he says, it

1034
01:00:17,450 --> 01:00:22,050
Speaker 2: laid an egg in me. They don't understand, but he insists, quote,

1035
01:00:22,450 --> 01:00:25,540
Speaker 2: Faber found a way to smile. In my dream, it

1036
01:00:25,580 --> 01:00:28,400
Speaker 2: put my head inside its body, and it laid an

1037
01:00:28,500 --> 01:00:28,980
Speaker 2: egg in me.

1038
01:00:29,560 --> 01:00:33,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, yikes. And we don't really get any clarity on

1039
01:00:33,340 --> 01:00:38,980
Speaker 1: what this exactly means. What sort of revelation did he have,

1040
01:00:39,080 --> 01:00:43,690
Speaker 1: or is this part of the morphine playing with his head?

1041
01:00:44,150 --> 01:00:45,870
Speaker 1: We don't really know, but man, it's haunting.

1042
01:00:46,610 --> 01:00:49,410
Speaker 2: So Garner at this point prepares to sedate him with

1043
01:00:49,450 --> 01:00:52,550
Speaker 2: another morphine ampule, but Faber doesn't want, he doesn't want

1044
01:00:52,590 --> 01:00:55,430
Speaker 2: this for some reason. And he lashes out and fights.

1045
01:00:55,890 --> 01:00:58,510
Speaker 2: The fight knocks over a kerosene heater and this sets

1046
01:00:58,570 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 2: fire to the tent, leading to a mad scramble for survival.

1047
01:01:02,060 --> 01:01:03,660
Speaker 1: This was the part when I went on my first

1048
01:01:03,740 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 1: read where I was like, oh my, this is the

1049
01:01:05,440 --> 01:01:07,180
Speaker 1: moment where they're going to have to go down those

1050
01:01:07,200 --> 01:01:09,580
Speaker 1: stairs together, where they're going to not have any equipment

1051
01:01:09,680 --> 01:01:11,950
Speaker 1: or dogs left. And they're going to think, well, we

1052
01:01:11,990 --> 01:01:14,260
Speaker 1: have nothing to do, but go down those stairs. But

1053
01:01:14,300 --> 01:01:15,600
Speaker 1: that's not where the story goes.

1054
01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:18,020
Speaker 2: No, there's a different kind of horror at the end.

1055
01:01:18,080 --> 01:01:21,740
Speaker 2: There's a horror of wondering what might have been. So

1056
01:01:21,980 --> 01:01:25,300
Speaker 2: the men, after this, they just book it back to

1057
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:27,380
Speaker 2: their destination. They try to make it to the depot

1058
01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:29,550
Speaker 2: as fast as they can now that their tent is burned.

1059
01:01:30,170 --> 01:01:33,270
Speaker 2: Faber does not survive the journey. He dies in transit.

1060
01:01:33,930 --> 01:01:36,290
Speaker 2: But they do reach the safety of the depot. The

1061
01:01:36,350 --> 01:01:38,950
Speaker 2: three surviving men hole up to wait for the return

1062
01:01:39,130 --> 01:01:41,450
Speaker 2: of the rest of the expedition, which is weeks away.

1063
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:44,820
Speaker 2: And while they are holed up in the depot, Garner

1064
01:01:44,860 --> 01:01:47,970
Speaker 2: tries to talk to Bishop to get him to acknowledge

1065
01:01:48,030 --> 01:01:50,930
Speaker 2: that he saw something in the crevasse, to at least

1066
01:01:51,130 --> 01:01:54,170
Speaker 2: admit that he saw the dog dragged away. But Bishop

1067
01:01:54,210 --> 01:01:57,930
Speaker 2: is very stubborn about it. Quote, Bishop refused to look

1068
01:01:57,970 --> 01:02:00,990
Speaker 2: at him. This is an empty place, he said after

1069
01:02:01,030 --> 01:02:04,700
Speaker 2: a long silence. There's nothing here. He blinked and turned

1070
01:02:04,740 --> 01:02:05,880
Speaker 2: a page in the magazine.

1071
01:02:06,640 --> 01:02:07,020
Speaker 1: Nothing.

1072
01:02:08,620 --> 01:02:11,730
Speaker 2: And I loved this part. Because I think that line

1073
01:02:11,870 --> 01:02:19,080
Speaker 2: highlights a subtext, an interesting implication of the story. To Bishop,

1074
01:02:19,700 --> 01:02:23,660
Speaker 2: the idea that there might be something hidden, something possibly

1075
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:27,890
Speaker 2: monstrous and mind-rending under the ice waiting to be revealed,

1076
01:02:28,670 --> 01:02:33,300
Speaker 2: is troubling. That possibility is terrifying, and he denies it.

1077
01:02:33,450 --> 01:02:37,300
Speaker 2: So he takes emotional comfort here. in telling himself, probably

1078
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:39,660
Speaker 2: lying to himself, because it implies he did see the

1079
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:43,360
Speaker 2: dog dragged away at least, telling himself, there's nothing there.

1080
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:46,700
Speaker 2: And I think for Garner, by the end of the story,

1081
01:02:46,720 --> 01:02:51,450
Speaker 2: the opposite desire is operative. The opposite is true. The

1082
01:02:51,550 --> 01:02:54,890
Speaker 2: nothingness and the absence are what would be frightening. The

1083
01:02:54,990 --> 01:02:58,430
Speaker 2: idea that there is something hidden, waiting to be revealed,

1084
01:02:58,730 --> 01:03:01,340
Speaker 2: even if it's monstrous, even if it's something that would

1085
01:03:01,380 --> 01:03:07,250
Speaker 2: destroy him, is somehow comforting. And this duality of orientations

1086
01:03:07,570 --> 01:03:11,570
Speaker 2: toward mystery and understanding is, I think, a very important

1087
01:03:11,670 --> 01:03:16,970
Speaker 2: part of humanity. Which option bothers you more? The idea

1088
01:03:17,030 --> 01:03:20,810
Speaker 2: that there is something unknown as yet unrevealed that could

1089
01:03:20,870 --> 01:03:24,210
Speaker 2: destroy you, could destroy everything you love or destroy your

1090
01:03:24,330 --> 01:03:28,970
Speaker 2: understanding of reality? Or would it be worse if there

1091
01:03:29,230 --> 01:03:32,050
Speaker 2: is nothing more, that what you see is what you get?

1092
01:03:33,010 --> 01:03:36,440
Speaker 2: And for you, I guess the question is, emotionally, does

1093
01:03:36,700 --> 01:03:40,120
Speaker 2: there is nothing more reduced to there is nothing?

1094
01:03:40,140 --> 01:03:42,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it brings to mind the famous Arthur C.

1095
01:03:42,820 --> 01:03:45,680
Speaker 1: Clarke quote, right? Two possibilities exist. Either we are alone

1096
01:03:45,730 --> 01:03:48,790
Speaker 1: in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

1097
01:03:49,830 --> 01:03:52,750
Speaker 1: And it plays nicely with exactly what we were discussing earlier. Like,

1098
01:03:52,850 --> 01:03:57,380
Speaker 1: is the crevasse scarier before we see the stairs? Yeah.

1099
01:03:57,820 --> 01:04:00,340
Speaker 1: Or is it the other way around, you know? It

1100
01:04:00,380 --> 01:04:03,080
Speaker 1: works so perfectly in this story, that duality.

1101
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:06,740
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for Bishop, it's implied that the stairs, to

1102
01:04:06,820 --> 01:04:09,430
Speaker 2: find the stairs would be more frightening than the crevasse.

1103
01:04:10,510 --> 01:04:13,350
Speaker 2: For Garner, I think the crevasse is frightening, but once

1104
01:04:13,390 --> 01:04:16,610
Speaker 2: he sees the stairs, now that there is a mystery,

1105
01:04:16,670 --> 01:04:19,450
Speaker 2: now that there could be something more, it's actually inviting.

1106
01:04:20,410 --> 01:04:22,910
Speaker 2: And I like that the story implies a correlation between

1107
01:04:22,950 --> 01:04:25,790
Speaker 2: these two different attitudes and other things about the person.

1108
01:04:25,830 --> 01:04:29,450
Speaker 2: This rings true to me. Bishop, who wishes there to

1109
01:04:29,490 --> 01:04:33,230
Speaker 2: be nothing more, is a person who's ambitious with an

1110
01:04:33,370 --> 01:04:36,750
Speaker 2: orientation toward future goals. There's stuff he wants to do

1111
01:04:36,850 --> 01:04:41,330
Speaker 2: and accomplish. Garner, who is defined by the past and

1112
01:04:41,430 --> 01:04:45,240
Speaker 2: what has already been taken away, he's got loss of purpose,

1113
01:04:45,390 --> 01:04:48,680
Speaker 2: loss of his great love. He wishes for a key

1114
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:51,620
Speaker 2: to unlock a new world, for there to be something

1115
01:04:51,700 --> 01:04:54,000
Speaker 2: more revealed, even if it's horrible.

1116
01:04:55,050 --> 01:04:59,620
Speaker 1: And it's clearly horrible. There's no hint that it's anything

1117
01:04:59,700 --> 01:05:01,020
Speaker 1: but horrible. Yeah.

1118
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:13,420
Speaker 2: I'm going to read from the final paragraph here with

1119
01:05:13,460 --> 01:05:16,610
Speaker 2: Garner back at the depot looking outside. He describes the

1120
01:05:17,010 --> 01:05:20,630
Speaker 2: beginning of the story takes place during the Antarctic summer,

1121
01:05:20,690 --> 01:05:21,210
Speaker 2: so where.

1122
01:05:21,050 --> 01:05:22,330
Speaker 1: It's perpetually daytime.

1123
01:05:23,020 --> 01:05:25,840
Speaker 2: And he describes the sun as a great boiling eye

1124
01:05:25,900 --> 01:05:28,360
Speaker 2: in the sky that never sets. But as the winter

1125
01:05:28,440 --> 01:05:32,680
Speaker 2: comes closer, we get this part. Quote, A gust of

1126
01:05:32,740 --> 01:05:35,680
Speaker 2: wind scattered fine crystals of snow against the window, and

1127
01:05:35,700 --> 01:05:38,620
Speaker 2: he found himself wondering what the night would be like

1128
01:05:38,700 --> 01:05:42,250
Speaker 2: in this cold country. He imagined the sky dissolving to

1129
01:05:42,290 --> 01:05:45,669
Speaker 2: reveal the hard vault of stars, the galaxy turning above

1130
01:05:45,730 --> 01:05:49,070
Speaker 2: him like a cog in a vast, unknowable engine. And

1131
01:05:49,110 --> 01:05:52,590
Speaker 2: behind it all, the emptiness into which men hurled their prayers.

1132
01:05:53,220 --> 01:05:55,640
Speaker 2: It occurred to him that he could leave now, walk

1133
01:05:55,760 --> 01:05:58,840
Speaker 2: out into the long twilight and keep going until the

1134
01:05:58,940 --> 01:06:02,530
Speaker 2: earth opened beneath him and he found himself descending strange

1135
01:06:02,610 --> 01:06:06,350
Speaker 2: stairs while the world around him broke silently into snow

1136
01:06:06,650 --> 01:06:09,410
Speaker 2: and into night. Garner closed his eyes.

1137
01:06:10,450 --> 01:06:12,709
Speaker 1: Beautiful. Haunting. Perfect. Yeah.

1138
01:06:12,910 --> 01:06:15,850
Speaker 2: And I like, again, emphasized even there at the end,

1139
01:06:15,950 --> 01:06:19,670
Speaker 2: like the thing that he's dwelling for moments on horrible

1140
01:06:19,730 --> 01:06:23,840
Speaker 2: thoughts to him, thoughts about emptiness, about nothing beyond the emptiness,

1141
01:06:23,920 --> 01:06:30,240
Speaker 2: his lack of faith in God, the empty expanses with

1142
01:06:30,320 --> 01:06:35,070
Speaker 2: nothing below, but then is strangely finding comfort into the

1143
01:06:35,190 --> 01:06:40,050
Speaker 2: idea of descending into this alien realm. So, as I

1144
01:06:40,110 --> 01:06:42,210
Speaker 2: said earlier, one of the things I loved about this

1145
01:06:42,270 --> 01:06:45,700
Speaker 2: story was the horror evoked by the setting, the bleak

1146
01:06:45,820 --> 01:06:50,830
Speaker 2: emptiness of the Antarctic glacier, and especially the crevasse. If

1147
01:06:50,870 --> 01:06:54,950
Speaker 2: you read about Antarctic expeditions from people who have actually

1148
01:06:55,070 --> 01:06:58,720
Speaker 2: participated in them, you will discover that the terror of

1149
01:06:58,760 --> 01:07:02,500
Speaker 2: the crevasse is absolutely real and a threat about which

1150
01:07:02,860 --> 01:07:06,420
Speaker 2: anybody traveling across great distances of ice has to be

1151
01:07:06,560 --> 01:07:10,860
Speaker 2: almost constantly conscious. For example, I pulled up the text

1152
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:14,120
Speaker 2: of a book called The Worst Journey in the World,

1153
01:07:14,620 --> 01:07:19,700
Speaker 2: written by Apsley Cherry Garrard, published in 1922. Cherry Garrard

1154
01:07:19,740 --> 01:07:22,460
Speaker 2: was a member of the famous Terra Nova expedition to

1155
01:07:22,500 --> 01:07:25,850
Speaker 2: the South Pole under Robert Falcon Scott a decade previous. Rob,

1156
01:07:25,870 --> 01:07:28,250
Speaker 2: I know you have some stuff about this expedition as well.

1157
01:07:30,050 --> 01:07:33,130
Speaker 2: And this book provides a firsthand account of the expedition

1158
01:07:33,270 --> 01:07:36,130
Speaker 2: and its struggles. If you do a keyword search in

1159
01:07:36,170 --> 01:07:39,150
Speaker 2: the text of this book for crevasse, you get almost

1160
01:07:39,150 --> 01:07:44,220
Speaker 2: 200 hits. It is constantly on their minds. And apart

1161
01:07:44,300 --> 01:07:48,540
Speaker 2: from the physical difficulty and danger of actually encountering them,

1162
01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:52,740
Speaker 2: The psychic toll of knowing the crevasses are out there

1163
01:07:53,060 --> 01:07:56,180
Speaker 2: does its own violence to the explorer. At one point,

1164
01:07:56,220 --> 01:08:00,570
Speaker 2: Cherry Gerard writes, sometimes a blizzard is a very welcome rest.

1165
01:08:01,050 --> 01:08:04,590
Speaker 2: After weeks of hard pulling, dragging yourself awake each morning,

1166
01:08:04,930 --> 01:08:07,650
Speaker 2: feeling as though you had only just gone to sleep,

1167
01:08:08,050 --> 01:08:11,880
Speaker 2: with the mental strain perhaps which working among crevasses entails,

1168
01:08:12,300 --> 01:08:14,640
Speaker 2: it is most pleasant to be put to bed for

1169
01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:19,120
Speaker 2: two or three days. Even relatively shallow crevasses, which are

1170
01:08:19,160 --> 01:08:21,160
Speaker 2: sometimes only a few feet deep, you know, there are

1171
01:08:21,200 --> 01:08:26,170
Speaker 2: much shallower ones that are less visually impressive than what

1172
01:08:26,210 --> 01:08:29,270
Speaker 2: we're imagining in this story. Even the shallow ones can

1173
01:08:29,310 --> 01:08:33,050
Speaker 2: be dangerous and can cause fatal injury if you fall

1174
01:08:33,110 --> 01:08:36,480
Speaker 2: into them unexpectedly. You know, falling five feet the wrong way,

1175
01:08:36,500 --> 01:08:40,920
Speaker 2: that could be death in Antarctica. A broken bone from

1176
01:08:40,979 --> 01:08:43,920
Speaker 2: a survivable fall can quickly turn into a death sentence

1177
01:08:44,300 --> 01:08:48,380
Speaker 2: down there. But many crevasses are much deeper than that,

1178
01:08:48,460 --> 01:08:51,480
Speaker 2: might be 100 feet or more, some maybe hundreds of

1179
01:08:51,540 --> 01:08:56,730
Speaker 2: feet to the bottom. And he tells, Cherry Garrard does,

1180
01:08:56,770 --> 01:09:00,900
Speaker 2: tells of crossing and navigating around crevasses. that are, he

1181
01:09:01,020 --> 01:09:03,940
Speaker 2: actually quotes a guy looking down into one and says

1182
01:09:03,979 --> 01:09:06,559
Speaker 2: that some of them are, quote, black as hell, just

1183
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:11,809
Speaker 2: into darkness, vanishing into darkness below. And he talks about

1184
01:09:11,910 --> 01:09:15,150
Speaker 2: stretches of ice that are made more or less impassable

1185
01:09:15,570 --> 01:09:19,400
Speaker 2: because of how many crevasses there are. There's one place

1186
01:09:19,460 --> 01:09:21,540
Speaker 2: he's talking about where I don't think he's actually talking

1187
01:09:21,560 --> 01:09:23,979
Speaker 2: about passing it, but he's just talking about looking at

1188
01:09:24,020 --> 01:09:28,479
Speaker 2: a chaos of crevasses, particularly, I think, in a region

1189
01:09:28,540 --> 01:09:30,680
Speaker 2: where a glacier is sort of fanning out as it

1190
01:09:30,720 --> 01:09:34,480
Speaker 2: reaches close to the ocean. And the real horror is

1191
01:09:35,160 --> 01:09:38,910
Speaker 2: you often cannot see these deep gaps in the ice

1192
01:09:39,110 --> 01:09:42,660
Speaker 2: as you approach them for multiple reasons. First, because of

1193
01:09:42,960 --> 01:09:46,500
Speaker 2: general difficulties with visibility on the ice, even under relatively

1194
01:09:46,600 --> 01:09:49,360
Speaker 2: good weather conditions. In a blizzard, forget about it. In

1195
01:09:49,380 --> 01:09:52,780
Speaker 2: a blizzard, visibility is zero. But if you're trying to

1196
01:09:52,820 --> 01:09:55,930
Speaker 2: move under ideal weather conditions, even then it's sometimes just

1197
01:09:55,990 --> 01:09:58,150
Speaker 2: really hard to tell what you're looking at on the

1198
01:09:58,270 --> 01:10:00,250
Speaker 2: ice out in front of you. There are weird ways

1199
01:10:00,310 --> 01:10:06,229
Speaker 2: that light and shadows play against your eyes. Sometimes people

1200
01:10:06,270 --> 01:10:09,400
Speaker 2: report this, and Cherry Garrard does too, And there will

1201
01:10:09,420 --> 01:10:11,920
Speaker 2: be like what he calls these haystack formations of ice

1202
01:10:11,960 --> 01:10:14,320
Speaker 2: that they somehow don't really see until they're coming right

1203
01:10:14,380 --> 01:10:18,680
Speaker 2: upon them. Sometimes you don't see crevasses. So, yeah, visibility

1204
01:10:18,720 --> 01:10:22,559
Speaker 2: is difficult. But even more dangerous than that, many glacial

1205
01:10:22,600 --> 01:10:27,320
Speaker 2: crevasses can become covered by what are typically called snow

1206
01:10:27,380 --> 01:10:30,889
Speaker 2: bridges so that they are not even visible from above

1207
01:10:30,900 --> 01:10:34,690
Speaker 2: until you put weight on the snow bridge and it collapses,

1208
01:10:34,870 --> 01:10:36,469
Speaker 2: dumping you into the chasm below.

1209
01:10:36,790 --> 01:10:40,530
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a naturally occurring trap door that could just

1210
01:10:40,590 --> 01:10:43,090
Speaker 1: drop you into, you know, again, a pit that may

1211
01:10:43,110 --> 01:10:46,689
Speaker 1: be five feet deep and break your ankle or 100

1212
01:10:46,689 --> 01:10:48,220
Speaker 1: feet deep and kill you outright.

1213
01:10:49,120 --> 01:10:51,660
Speaker 2: So to get around to this, expeditions use a number

1214
01:10:51,680 --> 01:10:54,200
Speaker 2: of techniques, some of which we actually see in this story.

1215
01:10:54,820 --> 01:10:57,600
Speaker 2: So going a long ways back, you use the technique

1216
01:10:57,700 --> 01:11:00,939
Speaker 2: of roping members of the expedition together, you know, so

1217
01:11:00,960 --> 01:11:03,950
Speaker 2: they would tie their bodies or their sledges or animals

1218
01:11:04,010 --> 01:11:06,830
Speaker 2: together with rope. So that if one falls, the others

1219
01:11:06,870 --> 01:11:08,730
Speaker 2: can stop the fall and pull them out.

1220
01:11:09,510 --> 01:11:13,139
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's telling, isn't it, that there are mountaineering techniques

1221
01:11:13,180 --> 01:11:17,320
Speaker 1: that are used in order to deal with crevasses. You're

1222
01:11:17,360 --> 01:11:21,910
Speaker 1: just you're moving. You're not ascending necessarily. You're just moving

1223
01:11:21,990 --> 01:11:24,890
Speaker 1: across the landscape and you need to be prepared like

1224
01:11:24,930 --> 01:11:25,470
Speaker 1: a mountaineer.

1225
01:11:25,820 --> 01:11:28,389
Speaker 2: Well, actually, and dealing with crevasses is part of mountaineering

1226
01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:28,730
Speaker 2: as well.

1227
01:11:28,750 --> 01:11:29,430
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.

1228
01:11:29,590 --> 01:11:31,830
Speaker 2: They're not only a thing in Antarctica. That's just a

1229
01:11:31,890 --> 01:11:33,950
Speaker 2: place where you're going to encounter a lot of crevasses

1230
01:11:33,990 --> 01:11:36,510
Speaker 2: that you will also find them in mountain glaciers.

1231
01:11:36,770 --> 01:11:37,730
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1232
01:11:38,110 --> 01:11:42,950
Speaker 2: So, yeah, there's the rope techniques. There's probing with poles,

1233
01:11:43,110 --> 01:11:46,139
Speaker 2: so like stabbing poles into the snow ahead of where

1234
01:11:46,150 --> 01:11:49,080
Speaker 2: you're moving to find soft spots where the pole sinks through.

1235
01:11:49,100 --> 01:11:53,220
Speaker 2: That can be very effective, but obviously makes travel quite slow.

1236
01:11:53,240 --> 01:11:54,019
Speaker 1: There is.

1237
01:11:55,150 --> 01:11:59,170
Speaker 2: One adaptation is a sacrificial attitude toward lead dogs and

1238
01:11:59,210 --> 01:12:03,370
Speaker 2: other animals, maybe ponies sometimes, counting on the leading animals

1239
01:12:03,430 --> 01:12:06,370
Speaker 2: to fall through first, allowing the rest of the team

1240
01:12:06,390 --> 01:12:07,929
Speaker 2: to stop before hitting the gap.

1241
01:12:08,650 --> 01:12:10,990
Speaker 1: Which is, of course, horrifying in its own right. Yeah.

1242
01:12:11,750 --> 01:12:16,220
Speaker 2: And then also, eventually, experience. People with lots of experience

1243
01:12:16,260 --> 01:12:20,620
Speaker 2: traveling on glaciers learn visual cues to look for so

1244
01:12:20,680 --> 01:12:25,530
Speaker 2: they can sometimes spot even covered up crevasses. due to

1245
01:12:25,650 --> 01:12:29,309
Speaker 2: characteristics of the surface ice, like color or drift shape.

1246
01:12:29,830 --> 01:12:36,150
Speaker 2: But even very, very solid, well-educated ice veterans won't spot

1247
01:12:36,220 --> 01:12:40,979
Speaker 2: it every time. There's nothing foolproof here. Modern technology does

1248
01:12:41,040 --> 01:12:44,600
Speaker 2: have some tools that these early Antarctic explorers did not have.

1249
01:12:46,120 --> 01:12:52,080
Speaker 2: Modern Antarctic expeditions can use sophisticated techniques like ground-penetrating radar

1250
01:12:52,160 --> 01:12:56,439
Speaker 2: to image crevasses from above, But there is a maddening

1251
01:12:56,600 --> 01:13:00,260
Speaker 2: aspect to this because you might think that, oh, well,

1252
01:13:00,280 --> 01:13:04,660
Speaker 2: if you can make a map with ground-penetrating radar of

1253
01:13:04,700 --> 01:13:06,960
Speaker 2: a particular area, and then you can just know in

1254
01:13:07,000 --> 01:13:10,820
Speaker 2: advance where all the crevasses will be. But that kind

1255
01:13:10,880 --> 01:13:14,220
Speaker 2: of radar-based map will not be useful for very long

1256
01:13:14,800 --> 01:13:18,460
Speaker 2: because a glacier is flowing and forever changing, and its

1257
01:13:18,560 --> 01:13:22,930
Speaker 2: surface will change substantially over relatively quick time spans. From

1258
01:13:22,970 --> 01:13:25,280
Speaker 2: what I was reading, it seems like Not only over

1259
01:13:25,300 --> 01:13:27,160
Speaker 2: the years, but maybe even over the course of a

1260
01:13:27,200 --> 01:13:30,920
Speaker 2: few weeks or months, there can be substantial changes in

1261
01:13:31,020 --> 01:13:36,770
Speaker 2: the crevasse landscape. Existing cracks close, new cracks open, all

1262
01:13:36,850 --> 01:13:39,290
Speaker 2: cracks move, some more quickly than others.

1263
01:13:39,830 --> 01:13:40,229
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.

1264
01:13:40,950 --> 01:13:45,729
Speaker 2: So crevasses form because of physical stress on the ice,

1265
01:13:46,170 --> 01:13:50,320
Speaker 2: usually caused by the flow of the glacier overall. A

1266
01:13:50,360 --> 01:13:53,780
Speaker 2: glacier is a weird type of material to think about

1267
01:13:53,850 --> 01:13:59,960
Speaker 2: because it has some liquid-like characteristics. Glaciers do flow. So it,

1268
01:14:00,630 --> 01:14:02,750
Speaker 2: in a way, makes sense to think of them as

1269
01:14:02,850 --> 01:14:08,790
Speaker 2: extremely slow-moving frozen rivers. And yet they also have the

1270
01:14:08,870 --> 01:14:14,060
Speaker 2: brittle characteristics of ice. So while liquid water easily flows

1271
01:14:14,080 --> 01:14:17,630
Speaker 2: around a bend... and has no problem speeding up or

1272
01:14:17,710 --> 01:14:20,450
Speaker 2: slowing down, you know, following the shape of a channel

1273
01:14:20,510 --> 01:14:23,870
Speaker 2: and obstacles within it, or speeding up going down a slope,

1274
01:14:24,970 --> 01:14:29,059
Speaker 2: ice flowing through a channel tends to succumb to brittle

1275
01:14:29,140 --> 01:14:32,180
Speaker 2: fracture when it is deformed. And this can happen for

1276
01:14:32,200 --> 01:14:36,059
Speaker 2: a number of reasons, going around bends or obstacles in

1277
01:14:36,080 --> 01:14:40,850
Speaker 2: the underlying terrain. Changes in the direction or shape or

1278
01:14:40,939 --> 01:14:44,070
Speaker 2: speed of the glacier's flow, you know, so like a

1279
01:14:44,110 --> 01:14:47,150
Speaker 2: change in the slope of the ground beneath the glacier

1280
01:14:47,570 --> 01:14:50,910
Speaker 2: will cause it to flow faster and that causes the

1281
01:14:50,950 --> 01:14:53,729
Speaker 2: glacier to stretch and then it forms cracks in the

1282
01:14:53,890 --> 01:14:54,429
Speaker 2: upper part.

1283
01:14:54,290 --> 01:14:54,830
Speaker 1: Of the ice.

1284
01:14:55,710 --> 01:14:59,460
Speaker 2: You can also see these chaotic distributions of crevasses emerging

1285
01:14:59,500 --> 01:15:03,060
Speaker 2: in places where the glacier is stretched out horizontally. This

1286
01:15:03,120 --> 01:15:05,160
Speaker 2: is a rough analogy. I don't think it's perfect, but

1287
01:15:05,780 --> 01:15:09,430
Speaker 2: this kind of makes sense. Anything that might cause turbulence

1288
01:15:09,650 --> 01:15:13,050
Speaker 2: in the flow of liquid water through a space would

1289
01:15:13,090 --> 01:15:15,979
Speaker 2: have the potential to cause crevasses to form in a

1290
01:15:16,030 --> 01:15:19,520
Speaker 2: glacier flowing through that space. And then beyond that, you've

1291
01:15:19,530 --> 01:15:22,719
Speaker 2: got the question of how do those devious snow bridges form?

1292
01:15:23,680 --> 01:15:27,020
Speaker 2: Usually this seems to happen from snow drift. So snow

1293
01:15:27,080 --> 01:15:31,640
Speaker 2: is being driven horizontally by wind and this snow sticks

1294
01:15:31,800 --> 01:15:34,460
Speaker 2: to the ice on the sides of the crack in

1295
01:15:34,500 --> 01:15:37,670
Speaker 2: the glacier and And the snow adheres and piles up

1296
01:15:37,729 --> 01:15:40,730
Speaker 2: and up until the top of the crack is covered completely.

1297
01:15:40,850 --> 01:15:42,850
Speaker 2: But sometimes, you know, and so sometimes it can be

1298
01:15:42,930 --> 01:15:46,299
Speaker 2: snow filling in the crack. So maybe it does go

1299
01:15:46,340 --> 01:15:48,940
Speaker 2: all the way down to the bottom, but it's just

1300
01:15:49,000 --> 01:15:52,520
Speaker 2: like loosely packed snow. Or maybe it actually just forms

1301
01:15:52,580 --> 01:15:55,180
Speaker 2: a bridge over the top layer of the crack and

1302
01:15:55,200 --> 01:15:57,680
Speaker 2: there's just an open drop below that.

1303
01:15:58,700 --> 01:16:02,769
Speaker 1: Oh, you included a photograph here in our outline. I

1304
01:16:03,210 --> 01:16:07,280
Speaker 1: encourage listeners to Look for such images as well, because, man,

1305
01:16:07,300 --> 01:16:09,519
Speaker 1: you look in the background of this image, like in

1306
01:16:09,560 --> 01:16:12,600
Speaker 1: the foreground, we see where the crack has been revealed

1307
01:16:12,640 --> 01:16:17,439
Speaker 1: and there are some individuals traversing it, leaping over it.

1308
01:16:17,770 --> 01:16:21,070
Speaker 1: But in the background, like the same crack continues, but

1309
01:16:21,110 --> 01:16:22,950
Speaker 1: it's covered in snow. And at least to my eye,

1310
01:16:22,970 --> 01:16:25,550
Speaker 1: it just looks like a snowfield. Yeah. Yeah.

1311
01:16:25,729 --> 01:16:27,920
Speaker 2: Unless you really know what to look for, you wouldn't

1312
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:29,660
Speaker 2: see it at all. And even some people who know

1313
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:32,420
Speaker 2: what to look for might not catch it. Yeah. There's

1314
01:16:32,460 --> 01:16:35,559
Speaker 2: another really cool photo I came across regarding snow bridges,

1315
01:16:35,620 --> 01:16:38,090
Speaker 2: but from the other angle. So this was on a

1316
01:16:38,150 --> 01:16:43,030
Speaker 2: website called antarcticglaciers.org. This was a blog post by a

1317
01:16:43,070 --> 01:16:47,530
Speaker 2: glaciologist named Bethan Davies of Newcastle University in the UK.

1318
01:16:48,390 --> 01:16:52,189
Speaker 2: And the post is describing a little expedition where a

1319
01:16:52,210 --> 01:16:55,490
Speaker 2: group of researchers explored the inside of a fairly deep

1320
01:16:55,530 --> 01:16:59,939
Speaker 2: crevasse on the glacier behind Rothera Research Station on the

1321
01:17:00,140 --> 01:17:04,439
Speaker 2: Antarctic Peninsula. And so the small group of people, they

1322
01:17:04,479 --> 01:17:07,240
Speaker 2: go down below the crevasse, they like have to descend

1323
01:17:07,280 --> 01:17:09,900
Speaker 2: through a hole and then they're going into this covered

1324
01:17:09,979 --> 01:17:13,040
Speaker 2: part of the crevasse. So it feels like an ice cave.

1325
01:17:13,120 --> 01:17:16,059
Speaker 2: It has all these icicles and everywhere. And it's, you know,

1326
01:17:16,090 --> 01:17:18,190
Speaker 2: some parts are more white and other parts have more

1327
01:17:18,250 --> 01:17:22,349
Speaker 2: blue ice. So it's beautiful looking down at the cave part.

1328
01:17:23,350 --> 01:17:25,570
Speaker 2: But then there is one photo you can see if

1329
01:17:25,610 --> 01:17:29,040
Speaker 2: you scroll down, Rob, where the camera is positioned looking

1330
01:17:29,100 --> 01:17:32,599
Speaker 2: up toward the surface in the crevasse. where the gap

1331
01:17:32,680 --> 01:17:35,559
Speaker 2: is covered by a snow bridge, so no sky is visible,

1332
01:17:36,040 --> 01:17:39,389
Speaker 2: but you can see deep blue light bleeding through the

1333
01:17:39,479 --> 01:17:42,210
Speaker 2: thinnest parts of the snow cover in the gap, and

1334
01:17:42,450 --> 01:17:45,850
Speaker 2: it looks like Cherenkov radiation around a nuclear reactor.

1335
01:17:46,270 --> 01:17:47,750
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, it's absolutely haunting.

1336
01:17:48,370 --> 01:17:53,350
Speaker 2: So I formally submit Glacier Crevasses as one of the

1337
01:17:53,450 --> 01:17:57,690
Speaker 2: true real-life horror stories of Mother Nature, of planet Earth.

1338
01:17:58,660 --> 01:18:02,590
Speaker 2: beautiful in some ways, very, very interesting to think about

1339
01:18:03,050 --> 01:18:06,410
Speaker 2: how they form and the power implied and the way

1340
01:18:06,510 --> 01:18:10,410
Speaker 2: glaciers flow, everything that, you know, all of the strange

1341
01:18:10,470 --> 01:18:13,099
Speaker 2: processes that we don't really think about or hard for

1342
01:18:13,150 --> 01:18:16,960
Speaker 2: us to picture that lead to their creation. But then

1343
01:18:17,140 --> 01:18:20,460
Speaker 2: also just when you're actually faced with one, how frightening

1344
01:18:20,479 --> 01:18:23,220
Speaker 2: it could be, the idea of just plunging 100 feet

1345
01:18:23,280 --> 01:18:26,140
Speaker 2: down into a narrow gap in the ice.

1346
01:18:26,740 --> 01:18:31,060
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. They're absolutely horrifying. It's just in our imagination.

1347
01:18:31,560 --> 01:18:34,870
Speaker 1: And when you dig into the history, the human explorers

1348
01:18:34,910 --> 01:18:38,010
Speaker 1: have had horrifying encounters with them. We're not going to

1349
01:18:38,270 --> 01:18:41,420
Speaker 1: go through all of them, but I want to come

1350
01:18:41,420 --> 01:18:43,030
Speaker 1: back to what we were talking about earlier. Like, does

1351
01:18:43,070 --> 01:18:46,860
Speaker 1: it make sense to rescue a dog, you know, from

1352
01:18:46,979 --> 01:18:49,040
Speaker 1: a crevasse? Like, is this a sensible move on the

1353
01:18:49,080 --> 01:18:51,980
Speaker 1: part of our protagonist or is this the protagonist being

1354
01:18:52,200 --> 01:18:55,860
Speaker 1: being dumb or making that extra risky horror story decision?

1355
01:18:56,680 --> 01:19:00,969
Speaker 1: And again, I've already touched on how important these dogs

1356
01:19:01,070 --> 01:19:04,110
Speaker 1: were to the people on these expeditions, both in terms

1357
01:19:04,150 --> 01:19:06,510
Speaker 1: of the practical necessity of having them and then also

1358
01:19:06,550 --> 01:19:11,220
Speaker 1: the companionship. But yeah, there's some historic precedents for this

1359
01:19:11,300 --> 01:19:14,040
Speaker 1: as well. For example, during the British Terra Nova expedition

1360
01:19:14,060 --> 01:19:17,960
Speaker 1: that we mentioned already to Antarctica from 1910 through 1913,

1361
01:19:17,960 --> 01:19:23,389
Speaker 1: there are multiple accounts of this, but one quick account

1362
01:19:23,430 --> 01:19:26,730
Speaker 1: that I ran across was a 2023 article from the U.S.

1363
01:19:26,770 --> 01:19:30,390
Speaker 1: Naval Institute, Heroism and Betrayal in Antarctica by Karen May.

1364
01:19:31,170 --> 01:19:36,840
Speaker 1: And she points to this known clash between Cecil Mears

1365
01:19:37,880 --> 01:19:40,980
Speaker 1: And the expedition leader, Robert Falcon Scott, they clashed on

1366
01:19:41,040 --> 01:19:46,700
Speaker 1: numerous occasions, including when Mears refused Scott's order to rescue

1367
01:19:46,760 --> 01:19:50,210
Speaker 1: some fallen sled dogs from a crevasse. Scott himself ended

1368
01:19:50,310 --> 01:19:53,469
Speaker 1: up entering the crevasse himself to rescue the dogs. Wow.

1369
01:19:54,130 --> 01:19:55,610
Speaker 1: And I can only imagine this and some of these

1370
01:19:55,630 --> 01:19:58,250
Speaker 1: other tales were part of the inspiration and part of

1371
01:19:58,270 --> 01:20:02,280
Speaker 1: the research for the horror story we're talking about. Yeah, surely.

1372
01:20:03,110 --> 01:20:05,309
Speaker 1: There are also accounts of not only dogs, but whole

1373
01:20:05,400 --> 01:20:08,900
Speaker 1: sledges and explorers being swallowed up by these as well.

1374
01:20:09,580 --> 01:20:13,420
Speaker 1: One of these occurred during the Australasian Antarctic expedition of

1375
01:20:13,420 --> 01:20:18,510
Speaker 1: 1911 through 1914. This was led by Douglas Mawson, who

1376
01:20:18,570 --> 01:20:21,550
Speaker 1: wrote about his experiences later in the book Home of

1377
01:20:21,590 --> 01:20:23,910
Speaker 1: the Blizzard. I believe it was published with some other

1378
01:20:23,950 --> 01:20:27,870
Speaker 1: titles later on as well. But here's an excerpt. about

1379
01:20:27,890 --> 01:20:30,950
Speaker 1: a tragic event at a crevasse which swallowed up expedition

1380
01:20:31,050 --> 01:20:37,860
Speaker 1: member Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis, his sledge, and dogs in 1912.

1381
01:20:37,860 --> 01:20:40,840
Speaker 1: Frantically waving to Mertz to bring up my sledge, upon

1382
01:20:40,880 --> 01:20:43,860
Speaker 1: which there was some alpine rope, I leaned over and

1383
01:20:43,979 --> 01:20:47,720
Speaker 1: shouted into the dark depths below. No sound came back

1384
01:20:47,780 --> 01:20:50,230
Speaker 1: but the moaning of a dog, caught on a shelf

1385
01:20:50,280 --> 01:20:53,970
Speaker 1: just visible 150 feet below. The poor creature appeared to

1386
01:20:53,990 --> 01:20:56,120
Speaker 1: have broken its back, for it was attempting to set up.

1387
01:20:56,470 --> 01:20:58,549
Speaker 1: with the front part of its body while the hinder

1388
01:20:58,710 --> 01:21:02,230
Speaker 1: portion lay limp. Another dog lay motionless by its side,

1389
01:21:02,770 --> 01:21:05,010
Speaker 1: close by what appeared in the gloom to be the

1390
01:21:05,050 --> 01:21:08,729
Speaker 1: remains of the tent and a canvas tank containing food

1391
01:21:08,770 --> 01:21:12,160
Speaker 1: for three men for a fortnight. We broke back the

1392
01:21:12,320 --> 01:21:14,280
Speaker 1: edge of the, and they use another term, but they're

1393
01:21:14,300 --> 01:21:17,620
Speaker 1: referring to the crevasse here, I believe, and took turns

1394
01:21:17,720 --> 01:21:21,520
Speaker 1: leaning over, secured by a rope, calling into the darkness

1395
01:21:21,600 --> 01:21:24,320
Speaker 1: in the hope that our companion might be still alive.

1396
01:21:24,870 --> 01:21:28,190
Speaker 1: For three hours we called unceasingly, but no answering sound

1397
01:21:28,229 --> 01:21:31,050
Speaker 1: came back. The dog had ceased to moan and lay

1398
01:21:31,090 --> 01:21:33,890
Speaker 1: without a movement. A chill draught was blowing out of

1399
01:21:33,930 --> 01:21:37,479
Speaker 1: the abyss. We felt that there was little hope. Why

1400
01:21:37,560 --> 01:21:40,840
Speaker 1: had the first sledge escaped the crevasse? It seemed that

1401
01:21:40,900 --> 01:21:43,979
Speaker 1: I had been fortunate, because my sledge had crossed diagonally,

1402
01:21:44,340 --> 01:21:46,800
Speaker 1: with a greater chance of breaking the snow lid. The

1403
01:21:46,840 --> 01:21:50,400
Speaker 1: sledges were within thirty pounds of the same weight. The

1404
01:21:50,479 --> 01:21:54,030
Speaker 1: explanation appeared to be that Ninnis had walked by the

1405
01:21:54,150 --> 01:21:57,450
Speaker 1: side of his sledge, whereas I had crossed it sitting

1406
01:21:57,650 --> 01:22:00,630
Speaker 1: on the sledge. The whole weight of a man's body

1407
01:22:00,729 --> 01:22:04,050
Speaker 1: bearing on his foot is a formidable load, and no

1408
01:22:04,090 --> 01:22:06,350
Speaker 1: doubt was sufficient to smash the arch of the roof.

1409
01:22:06,910 --> 01:22:09,229
Speaker 1: By means of a fishing line we ascertained that it

1410
01:22:09,290 --> 01:22:12,189
Speaker 1: was one hundred and fifty feet sheer to the ledge

1411
01:22:12,270 --> 01:22:15,150
Speaker 1: on which the remains were seen. On either side the

1412
01:22:15,189 --> 01:22:19,090
Speaker 1: crevasse descended into blackness. It seemed so very far down

1413
01:22:19,150 --> 01:22:21,970
Speaker 1: there and the dogs looked so small that we got

1414
01:22:22,010 --> 01:22:24,800
Speaker 1: out the field glasses and could make out nothing more

1415
01:22:24,860 --> 01:22:28,200
Speaker 1: by their aid. All our available rope was tied together,

1416
01:22:28,240 --> 01:22:30,940
Speaker 1: but the total length was insufficient to reach the ledge,

1417
01:22:31,400 --> 01:22:33,900
Speaker 1: and any idea of going below to investigate and to

1418
01:22:33,960 --> 01:22:37,559
Speaker 1: secure some of the food had to be abandoned. That

1419
01:22:37,660 --> 01:22:43,170
Speaker 1: is chilling. That is absolutely chilling. The scale of the

1420
01:22:43,210 --> 01:22:48,730
Speaker 1: crevasse was beyond... They're not even drawing their imagination into this,

1421
01:22:48,750 --> 01:22:51,450
Speaker 1: but just beyond the abilities of their equipment to even reach.

1422
01:23:02,920 --> 01:23:06,059
Speaker 2: You want another horror story from that book by Cherry Gerard?

1423
01:23:06,080 --> 01:23:07,559
Speaker 1: Sure. Okay.

1424
01:23:07,860 --> 01:23:10,280
Speaker 2: And this actually bring us back to a couple of

1425
01:23:10,300 --> 01:23:14,060
Speaker 2: characters you were just talking about, Scott and Mears, on

1426
01:23:14,220 --> 01:23:18,969
Speaker 2: that expedition. So Terry Gerard is writing about a section

1427
01:23:18,990 --> 01:23:22,530
Speaker 2: where they're crossing some ice and says, quote, We ran

1428
01:23:22,590 --> 01:23:25,690
Speaker 2: level for another two miles, Mears and Scott on our left.

1429
01:23:26,130 --> 01:23:29,710
Speaker 2: We were evidently crossing many crevasses. Quite suddenly, we saw

1430
01:23:29,770 --> 01:23:33,730
Speaker 2: the dogs of their team disappearing, following one another, just

1431
01:23:33,810 --> 01:23:37,820
Speaker 2: like dogs going down a hole after some animal. In

1432
01:23:37,840 --> 01:23:41,460
Speaker 2: a moment, wrote Scott, the whole team were sinking. Two

1433
01:23:41,520 --> 01:23:44,300
Speaker 2: by two, we lost sight of them, each pair struggling

1434
01:23:44,360 --> 01:23:47,920
Speaker 2: for footholds. Osman, the leader, exerted all his strength and

1435
01:23:48,000 --> 01:23:51,080
Speaker 2: kept a foothold. It was wonderful to see him. The

1436
01:23:51,120 --> 01:23:54,780
Speaker 2: sledge stopped and we leapt aside. The situation was clear

1437
01:23:54,840 --> 01:23:58,060
Speaker 2: in another moment. We had actually been traveling along the

1438
01:23:58,100 --> 01:24:01,650
Speaker 2: bridge or snow covering of a crevasse. The sledge had

1439
01:24:01,790 --> 01:24:05,129
Speaker 2: stopped on it whilst the dogs hung in their harness

1440
01:24:05,229 --> 01:24:09,150
Speaker 2: in the abyss, suspended between the sledge and the leading dog.

1441
01:24:09,650 --> 01:24:12,599
Speaker 2: Why the sledge and ourselves didn't follow the dogs, we

1442
01:24:12,620 --> 01:24:16,570
Speaker 2: shall never know. Oh, wow. bridge of dogs.

1443
01:24:17,390 --> 01:24:20,350
Speaker 1: So yeah, all of these accounts we've been looking at

1444
01:24:20,390 --> 01:24:24,150
Speaker 1: here concerning the crevasse, it sounds to me like you

1445
01:24:24,189 --> 01:24:27,100
Speaker 1: could basically just completely pass over one of these snow

1446
01:24:27,140 --> 01:24:32,320
Speaker 1: bridges and you would never know that a 150-foot drop

1447
01:24:32,360 --> 01:24:35,060
Speaker 1: was just waiting there for you and you just happened

1448
01:24:35,160 --> 01:24:37,780
Speaker 1: to not trigger it. And then the next one could

1449
01:24:37,800 --> 01:24:38,080
Speaker 1: get you.

1450
01:24:38,420 --> 01:24:41,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't always collapse. So yeah, very likely you

1451
01:24:41,439 --> 01:24:44,560
Speaker 2: have been over crevasses and crossed a snow bridge without

1452
01:24:44,640 --> 01:24:45,280
Speaker 2: realizing it.

1453
01:24:45,850 --> 01:24:46,050
Speaker 1: Wow.

1454
01:24:46,530 --> 01:24:48,750
Speaker 2: I mean, not you, the person listening, or you, Ron.

1455
01:24:49,410 --> 01:24:51,910
Speaker 2: The Antarctic explorer, the glacial mountaineer.

1456
01:24:52,580 --> 01:24:55,099
Speaker 1: Yeah. Though, obviously, if we have listeners out there who

1457
01:24:55,140 --> 01:24:58,840
Speaker 1: have any experience with crevasses of one form or another,

1458
01:24:58,920 --> 01:25:02,380
Speaker 1: definitely write in and tell us all about it. Absolutely, yeah.

1459
01:25:03,380 --> 01:25:06,559
Speaker 2: So, scariest non-speculative thing I've thought about in a while.

1460
01:25:09,180 --> 01:25:11,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great story. Again, I love its

1461
01:25:11,760 --> 01:25:16,960
Speaker 1: use of history in an extreme real-world environment. but also

1462
01:25:17,040 --> 01:25:23,860
Speaker 1: involving this wonderful speculative element, bringing in that mythos flavor,

1463
01:25:24,460 --> 01:25:28,350
Speaker 1: hinting at this other world, cyclopean architecture in the deep

1464
01:25:28,410 --> 01:25:31,870
Speaker 1: and so forth. Just a wonderful little short story.

1465
01:25:32,729 --> 01:25:34,710
Speaker 2: To end on a positive note, I would say I

1466
01:25:34,870 --> 01:25:38,190
Speaker 2: am really inspired by these stories of crevasse rescues as well.

1467
01:25:38,910 --> 01:25:41,570
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're not all doom and gloom.

1468
01:25:41,729 --> 01:25:48,620
Speaker 1: There are accounts, certainly, of individuals successfully being rescued from crevasses,

1469
01:25:48,680 --> 01:25:50,960
Speaker 1: dogs being rescued from crevasses. And I don't know if

1470
01:25:51,000 --> 01:25:53,259
Speaker 1: I mentioned it already, but dogs are also very useful

1471
01:25:53,680 --> 01:25:57,240
Speaker 1: in crevasse rescue. All right. Well, we're going to go

1472
01:25:57,280 --> 01:26:00,439
Speaker 1: ahead and close the book here on Grimoire of Horror,

1473
01:26:00,500 --> 01:26:03,380
Speaker 1: Volume 2. We hope that everyone out there enjoyed our

1474
01:26:03,400 --> 01:26:07,530
Speaker 1: discussion of these two short stories. And certainly we would

1475
01:26:07,570 --> 01:26:09,310
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. If you have

1476
01:26:09,370 --> 01:26:12,910
Speaker 1: thoughts on the crevasse or on I Have No Mouth

1477
01:26:12,970 --> 01:26:16,410
Speaker 1: and I Must Scream, you have thoughts on the authors

1478
01:26:16,450 --> 01:26:19,370
Speaker 1: involved in these tales or other works that they wrote,

1479
01:26:20,050 --> 01:26:22,450
Speaker 1: write in. We'd love to hear from you. And we

1480
01:26:22,470 --> 01:26:24,230
Speaker 1: should also go ahead and point out, hey, the next

1481
01:26:24,270 --> 01:26:27,219
Speaker 1: Halloween is just around the corner. So if you have

1482
01:26:27,260 --> 01:26:29,920
Speaker 1: suggestions for next year, if you're like, you two should

1483
01:26:30,000 --> 01:26:32,620
Speaker 1: totally read this story and this story by this author

1484
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Speaker 1: and this author, Go ahead and write in. We would

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01:26:34,570 --> 01:26:38,990
Speaker 1: love suggestions. Any head start we can get on our

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01:26:39,030 --> 01:26:43,330
Speaker 1: selection process is always a good thing. Just a reminder

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Speaker 1: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science

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Speaker 1: and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

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Speaker 1: short-form episodes on Wednesdays, and then on Fridays we set

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Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird

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Speaker 1: film on Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 2: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.

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Speaker 1: Poswade.

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Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

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01:27:01,520 --> 01:27:04,120
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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01:27:04,160 --> 01:27:06,260
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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01:27:06,360 --> 01:27:18,220
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to

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Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 1: Thank you.