Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to bloy to Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, I'm John McCormick, and I'm
Speaker 1: Christian Sager. Hey, so it is almost the new year. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is our listener mail episode right before the Christmas holiday,
Speaker 1: and we just want to remind you that we don't
Speaker 1: just do the podcast, right guys, like we do a
Speaker 1: lot throughout the week. We are on social media curating
Speaker 1: all kinds of weird science e stuff. We're making videos,
Speaker 1: we're writing articles for how stuff works. Sometimes the eating
Speaker 1: thing I've been taking a little bit of a step
Speaker 1: back from, but mainly so that I can post on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter and Tumbler and live blog Mascar events. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: is that part of our contract? Yes, that's what we
Speaker 1: do now, Okay, all right, I'll try to get on
Speaker 1: top of that over the break. So, uh, if you
Speaker 1: out there want to catch up on all this other
Speaker 1: stuff that isn't the podcast, maybe you're just getting the
Speaker 1: podcast feed right into your phone. That's what I do
Speaker 1: with most of the podcasts I listened to. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to hang out with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler
Speaker 1: will blow the mind on all those channels, and be
Speaker 1: sure to check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot
Speaker 1: com because that is the mothership for this podcast. That's
Speaker 1: where you'll find all the podcast episodes going all the
Speaker 1: way back to the beginning of time. You'll find videos
Speaker 1: who find a whole bunch of blog post cool listen
Speaker 1: galleries that we put together. Uh, and the landing page
Speaker 1: for each podcast episode is gonna have feature some links
Speaker 1: out to related content both on and off the site.
Speaker 1: And also if you're one of the wonderful little gang
Speaker 1: who's been joining us every Friday at noon, you already
Speaker 1: know this, but we also do Periscope. Periscope is a
Speaker 1: how would you describe periscope, Christian It's a social media
Speaker 1: platform that I believe Twitter owns that is live streaming video.
Speaker 1: So literally we hang out here at the office, sit
Speaker 1: in front of an iPad and we talked to I
Speaker 1: think it's like we're up to like maybe about a
Speaker 1: hundred people a session now, um, but it could always
Speaker 1: be bigger. So yeah, if you want to ask us
Speaker 1: questions live or or just come to chat heckle us
Speaker 1: and have some fun, we tend to do that. Every
Speaker 1: Friday at noon. We announced it on social media Eastern
Speaker 1: Standard time, right, but we we may be erratic or
Speaker 1: or absent the next couple of weeks over the holidays.
Speaker 1: We're still trying to figure that out. You will let
Speaker 1: you know through our social channels, because we're here in America.
Speaker 1: We have a pretty crazy next couple of weeks with
Speaker 1: Christmas coming up in the New Year holiday, and because
Speaker 1: it is time, is there a time of stress and
Speaker 1: it is a time of darkness and monsters. Yes, perfect segue, Robert. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about you guys, but holiday
Speaker 1: monsters there are something that I cling to more and more,
Speaker 1: especially given here in America Christmas is in holidays. It's
Speaker 1: just such a bombardment of of fake joy and enthusiasm
Speaker 1: and high expectations of what your celebrations in family time
Speaker 1: and in in situation and just emotional state are supposed
Speaker 1: to amount to. And all of it is in rather
Speaker 1: stark contrast to the reactable. First of all, just the
Speaker 1: reality of living life in the real world, but even
Speaker 1: traditional treatment of a season that is is typified by darkness,
Speaker 1: the loss of light, the death of crops and and
Speaker 1: frozen soil, I actually pitched a story here at work
Speaker 1: the other day that I don't think we'll ever get
Speaker 1: off the ground. That was, like, let's do a cost
Speaker 1: benefit analysis as of the emotional well being of people
Speaker 1: post Christmas, like like like, like, does all the stuff
Speaker 1: that you put into it, right? Does that actually end
Speaker 1: up as positive goodwill after all sudden done. I'm the
Speaker 1: wrong person to ask. I'm kind of a grinch, but
Speaker 1: I like, I'm not a grinch in the sense that like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't want to give gifts to anybody,
Speaker 1: but I just I have this sort of cynical viewpoint
Speaker 1: of the holidays, but I love given gifts and I
Speaker 1: love even more Christmas monsters. Yeah, that's well. My wife
Speaker 1: and I watch Rare Exports every Christmas. That is a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful movie. It's got, it's got everything you could want. Yeah, Christmas,
Speaker 1: and I'm really happy to see this sort of resurgence
Speaker 1: of Christmas themed horror movies. It's not just Halloween time
Speaker 1: where we get some really good some really good horror movies. Well,
Speaker 1: it's an old tradition that you had Gremlins in the eighties,
Speaker 1: that's right. I always forget that was essentially a Christmas movie,
Speaker 1: Black Christmas, Silent Night, Deadly Night. Oh. I think those
Speaker 1: were pretty horrible, weren't they. Those always traumatized me seeing
Speaker 1: that the posters as a child, because I remember as
Speaker 1: a as a child, I loved Christmas and I had
Speaker 1: I would I would really have like a childhood like
Speaker 1: a fence that I would take at seeing those posters
Speaker 1: or are certainly seeing one particular episode of Tales from
Speaker 1: the Dark Side about the Grither. I think that the
Speaker 1: episode is called Seasons of Belief, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: not even a very good episode, but this has something
Speaker 1: monstrous ending where the Gritter, which is kind of this
Speaker 1: Grinch esque creature like, reaches its arms through the windows
Speaker 1: and crushes the skulls of the children's parents because they,
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't believing in Christmas enough. Now, do
Speaker 1: you remember the episode of Tales from the Crypt that
Speaker 1: has an axe murderer addressed as Santa. Yes, that was
Speaker 1: a big theme. In a season of American Horror Story,
Speaker 1: Shane shows up for like two episodes as a serial
Speaker 1: killer who dresses up like Santa Claus. Larry Drake, who
Speaker 1: played the villain in dark Man played the deranged Santa
Speaker 1: on the Tales from the Crypt TV show. But that
Speaker 1: same story, if I remember correctly, was also featured in
Speaker 1: the older Tales from the Crypt movie, and of course
Speaker 1: it has its roots in the comic itself. Yeah. So okay,
Speaker 1: all this is to say is that we before we
Speaker 1: get into listener mail this episode, want to talk about
Speaker 1: holiday monsters for a little bit. So we each picked
Speaker 1: our favorites. Yeah, so of course we've got to start
Speaker 1: off with the new patron saint of Christmas. He's everywhere
Speaker 1: this Yeah, Crampus has suddenly become popular. Well there at
Speaker 1: least an stream movie. Yeah, yeah, which looks fun. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to going to.
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy who directed Tricker Treat, Yeah, he's been.
Speaker 1: Crampus has been growing in global popularity, I feel each
Speaker 1: year so just exponentially. Uh. And it's it's really fascinating
Speaker 1: to look at that. I mean, on one hand, it's
Speaker 1: kind of you get kind of like that that angst
Speaker 1: about it, you know, like I was, I was a
Speaker 1: fan when Crampas was Indie. I had dinner with a
Speaker 1: with a mutual friend of the show. Uh. E c. Steiner,
Speaker 1: who's designed some of the artwork for Stuff to Play
Speaker 1: your mon for Monster Science, and we were talking about
Speaker 1: the Crampus phenomenon. He's he had that kind of like
Speaker 1: they're taking this thing away from us. Man. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: and then yeah, on one level, yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1: But then on the other level, it is nice to
Speaker 1: see the Christmas monster of the Crampus rising to such
Speaker 1: such a position of holiday power. So we're all fans
Speaker 1: of Crampus. But Robert, you've done deep dive research into
Speaker 1: Crampus in the last week or so, because you wrote
Speaker 1: how Crampus Works for How Stuff Works. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was the just the other week, first week of
Speaker 1: December actually, And Tracy Wilson, who in addition to being
Speaker 1: a side directors also of course on us stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history class. She said, Hey, we need a
Speaker 1: Crampus article this uh this uh this year. Do you
Speaker 1: want to write it? And I said, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: we were gonna have to get it out by December five,
Speaker 1: because that's a Crampus knock. That's the the eve of
Speaker 1: the Feast of St. Nicholas, when Crampus and his kin
Speaker 1: come down from the mountains. To terrorize children and threatened
Speaker 1: to take them back in a sack and or and
Speaker 1: or beat them in the streets for their misdeeds. And
Speaker 1: so it was. It was a very quick deep dive
Speaker 1: where I had. Luckily, it's the topic I've I've looked
Speaker 1: into a number of times in the past. But it
Speaker 1: gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with what we
Speaker 1: know about crampus history, his uh, his mythic folkloric origins
Speaker 1: and uh and indeed this uh, this continuing timeline of
Speaker 1: his his rise to power and uh and and the
Speaker 1: the efforts of others to crush him back down and
Speaker 1: keep Christmas happy. There's a really great uh novel that
Speaker 1: actually ec Steiner gave me for Christmas a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, by that artist brom Yeah, Gerald Brown. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's called Crampus, And it's a really cool Christmas
Speaker 1: time horror story about Crampus and about how like sort
Speaker 1: of like he waxes and waynes over the years based
Speaker 1: on his popularity and how many followers he has. Oh
Speaker 1: that's see, that's perfect because one of the things that
Speaker 1: that I discovered when I was researching his history was
Speaker 1: that uh, if you go back. Of course, Crampus always
Speaker 1: has his roots in um in German speaking Alpine uh cultures.
Speaker 1: That's that's where he comes from. That's where Austria, Switzerland, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit of Italy and any any place where
Speaker 1: you can find German speaking mountain people, then they will
Speaker 1: likely have some version of Crampus. And of course there
Speaker 1: are various versions of it his chan and it's in
Speaker 1: the nature of folklore. Right. So before Nazi Germany's invasion
Speaker 1: of Austria, Catholic Austro fascist briefly held power, and as
Speaker 1: reported in a nineteen forty five New York Times article,
Speaker 1: they saw Crampus as a demonic, unruly and also potentially
Speaker 1: communist usurper of Christian tradition. Uh. And this was it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I think this was a time to where Crampus was
Speaker 1: really popular. So he's on all over the postcards and
Speaker 1: we've I think we've all seen examples of of these
Speaker 1: old cool creepy pick I guess, like if you're out
Speaker 1: there and you have no idea what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: like Google image search Crampus, but he basically looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a giant sader feature with horns and kind
Speaker 1: of like a fond coves and and chains sometimes chains
Speaker 1: a basket for kid children to throw in the back,
Speaker 1: a big alolling tongue that sometimes has serpentine qualities to it.
Speaker 1: I'll be sure to link to the part of these
Speaker 1: gallery Anti Santa Claus. Yeah, well, he's sort of he's
Speaker 1: kind of the anti St. Nick and buy St. Nick.
Speaker 1: I mean, the the traditional dour Catholic St. Nicholas. But
Speaker 1: he's also kind of like they're kind of like good
Speaker 1: cop bad cop. They both have the same mission and
Speaker 1: they they're seen side by side. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to dressing up as one of these characters at Christmas,
Speaker 1: Crampus is always more fun. But at this point during
Speaker 1: the Austro Fascist rule, um, he was mad popular that
Speaker 1: you buy and not only would you buy all these
Speaker 1: postcards and cramp As candies, but he was actually stealing
Speaker 1: the role of prime gift giver from Santa. This is
Speaker 1: not only coming to your house to scare you, he
Speaker 1: was also bringing the gifts. He was completely pushing old St.
Speaker 1: Nick out the door. So you'd go to the mall
Speaker 1: and line up to sit on this like baffamet laugh
Speaker 1: and say, oh please, Crampas I wanna, you know, Super
Speaker 1: Nintendo any less creepy than the actual Santa's a mall
Speaker 1: are I'm going down another path. My nephews just turned
Speaker 1: two years is old, and I don't know. Maybe Bastion's
Speaker 1: the same way Robert's son. Every time my sister brings
Speaker 1: him to the mall to do the Christmas photos with Santa,
Speaker 1: He's just screaming, trying and trying to get Don't blame it.
Speaker 1: It was like that for a Bastion at two. At three,
Speaker 1: he was more. He had a very you know, very
Speaker 1: serious holy respect this entity. But but now I'll refer
Speaker 1: everyone to the to the article and some other materials
Speaker 1: for a more in depth look at Crampus. But I
Speaker 1: will just leave you with that idea that there was
Speaker 1: a time, uh prior to a crackdown. They ended up
Speaker 1: outlining Crampus and then requiring that Santa Clauses even be
Speaker 1: registered with the with the state. But there was this
Speaker 1: time where Crampus was about to take over. He was
Speaker 1: about to take over the holidays in Austria, but then
Speaker 1: the man had to shut it down. The World War two,
Speaker 1: we like we could live in a world right now
Speaker 1: where everybody celebrates Christmas with Crampus. But are we heading
Speaker 1: that way? That we might be heading that way? His
Speaker 1: tide is rising again. Hey, Santa didn't have movie this year,
Speaker 1: did he? I think that Santa has ever year that
Speaker 1: you don't find out about because their direct to video
Speaker 1: kids movies. Are they still making the Santa Claus movies?
Speaker 1: Are they on the Santa Claus and nine, the one
Speaker 1: with the guy from Home Improvement? Yes, I don't know. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I've got my own Christmas monsters to talk about. When
Speaker 1: you have personal experience with these monsters. Oh, it was
Speaker 1: so wonderful when I found out about them. So last year,
Speaker 1: my wife Rachel and I traveled to, uh, the what
Speaker 1: I sort of think of as the moonland of Iceland. Like,
Speaker 1: I know, it's actually a country on Earth, but for
Speaker 1: some reason I started thinking about it. I guess because
Speaker 1: of like the Arctic isolation and the geographical character of it.
Speaker 1: I think of it as a moon of Europe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I've been Iceland as well, and the volcanic
Speaker 1: uh structure of the land makes it feel very lunar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that moon of Europe. It's wonderful. And as the
Speaker 1: guy at the Icelandic rental car place told us Iceland
Speaker 1: is full of surprise. One of them is their Christmas
Speaker 1: creature folklore. So Icelandic Christmas time has big highlights in
Speaker 1: the monster category, and the first one is Gorilla, the
Speaker 1: child eater. Gorilla is a wonderful o griss who lives
Speaker 1: in caves among the mountains, and her line is pretty
Speaker 1: much that the most delicious and wonderful thing on earth
Speaker 1: is the steaming flesh of naughty children. So there's a
Speaker 1: description of Gorilla written by the Icelandic writer Yawn Arnisson,
Speaker 1: and I got this from the Icelandic Museum website. But
Speaker 1: it goes like this. Gorilla has three heads and three
Speaker 1: eyes in each head, horribly long curved fingernails, icy blue
Speaker 1: eyes at the back of the head, and horns like
Speaker 1: a goat. Her ears dangled down to her shoulders and
Speaker 1: are attached to the nose in front. Trying to picture
Speaker 1: that's an interesting piercing. I'd like to see that she
Speaker 1: has a beard on her chin is like knotted yarn
Speaker 1: in a weave with tangles hanging from it, while her
Speaker 1: teeth are like burnt rocks in a great Wow, that's
Speaker 1: an awesome image. Brutal. So beginning sometime in the sevente
Speaker 1: eighteenth century literature, the legend emerged that Gorilla shows up
Speaker 1: in town just before Christmas is about to happen or
Speaker 1: something well, and I think probably in smaller towns often,
Speaker 1: so there there'd be towns all over, you know, the
Speaker 1: farm communities where Grilla shows up before Christmas and it's
Speaker 1: time to collect. She is there for the naughty children
Speaker 1: and they need to watch out or they will get
Speaker 1: dragged back to Gorilla's cave in a sack and boiled
Speaker 1: in a big cauldron and then she can devour them.
Speaker 1: So there's some some similarities with Crampus here, like the
Speaker 1: you know, insertion into the basket or sack for transport
Speaker 1: back to the cave or lair. But Grilla also, unlike
Speaker 1: Crampus as far as I know, though maybe we can
Speaker 1: find out different, Grilla has kids. So together with a
Speaker 1: dude named Lepo Lute, she gives birth to a bunch
Speaker 1: of children, thirteen of which become more Christmas creatures for Iceland,
Speaker 1: the Yule Lads. Crampus that has occasionally he sometimes has siblings,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he has any offspring. Now, now
Speaker 1: are his siblings also evil or does he have good siblings? Well,
Speaker 1: it depends how deep you go into sort of Germanic
Speaker 1: pagan origins, because you get into this idea that they're
Speaker 1: like the beautiful children and then the ugly children of
Speaker 1: the dramatic goddess, and Cramps is definitely on the ugly
Speaker 1: side of that equation. I think he's beautiful. Well, so,
Speaker 1: the Yule Lads are a group of thirteen trolls who
Speaker 1: are all grill as children, and they're they're sort of
Speaker 1: a little bit closer to the Father Christmas Santa Claus
Speaker 1: type figure, especially that I've seen them. They look like
Speaker 1: little like Christmas elf in type things, but they're also
Speaker 1: still pretty different. So for the thirteen days leading up
Speaker 1: to and including Christmas Eve, one front Yule Lad visits
Speaker 1: your house each night. Now, Joe, I have a request here.
Speaker 1: Can you please name them as if you are as
Speaker 1: if you're Santa Claus uh in the night before Christmas
Speaker 1: calling on your reindeer. Oh, let's see if I can
Speaker 1: do that. So here they are. They each have names
Speaker 1: according to their proclivities on sheep coat, Claude on gully Gawk,
Speaker 1: on Stubby, on spoon, liquor on pot scraper, bull liquor,
Speaker 1: door slammer and skier, gobbler, on sausage swiper, window peeper,
Speaker 1: door sniffer, and meat hook and on candle begger. Uh so,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you may have heard some things in there,
Speaker 1: like meat hook. Yeah, that's one of the ones that
Speaker 1: comes to your house. So they cause they cause eponymous
Speaker 1: mischief in a way. Each one has a name that
Speaker 1: lets you know the kind of trouble it gets into.
Speaker 1: What kind of trouble is meat hooks? Well, funny you
Speaker 1: should ask, because meat hook has a hook and it
Speaker 1: reaches into your house with the hook to steal morsels
Speaker 1: of meat. Disappointing, I thought he had a hook made
Speaker 1: of meat. Yeah, he shows up on St. Thorlax Day,
Speaker 1: by the way, a combination of Thor and snorrelax from Pokemon. No,
Speaker 1: it's December Thorlak. Come on, you don't. You don't ask
Speaker 1: for the patron inche of St. Thorlak. Only when I
Speaker 1: need to, well, only when sausage swiper is at my door,
Speaker 1: right or door sniffer. Big help then, But anyway, so
Speaker 1: meat yeah, meat hook, he steals the meat. But then
Speaker 1: there's also one like Skier Gobbler. So in Iceland they've
Speaker 1: got this sheep's milky yogurt type stuff. This is a
Speaker 1: dense dairy product called skier and uh, and people love it.
Speaker 1: They really sing its praises. I didn't really eat much
Speaker 1: skier in Icelands. I'm not a big yogurt guy. But
Speaker 1: Skier Gobbler comes to empty out your skier tub and
Speaker 1: he eats so much that he's about to pop and
Speaker 1: he starts howling in pain. So basically he does the
Speaker 1: Chinese buffet thing. All right, Hollywood producers listening right now,
Speaker 1: we need a gorilla in the Yule Lads movie for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Yet on it stat there there's a great source for this.
Speaker 1: That was a poem called the Yola s ven Are
Speaker 1: Near I hope I said that right by Johannas or
Speaker 1: Colum and I read a translation of it into English
Speaker 1: that was just delightful. It lets you know about all
Speaker 1: the kinds of trouble that they get into. For example,
Speaker 1: you remember sheep coat Claude. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: what sheep coat Claude tries to do is he harasses sheep.
Speaker 1: So he gets into your sheep and he causes trouble,
Speaker 1: and he tries to suck their milk. He tries to
Speaker 1: suck the milk from the sheep, but the kids are hungry,
Speaker 1: Gorilla doesn't feed them. He has he has stiff knees,
Speaker 1: and that sort of prevents him from sucking the milk
Speaker 1: from the sheep. Correctly, that's a tragic tale. You know.
Speaker 1: There was a story book I had as a kid,
Speaker 1: and um and I picked up a copy for passion
Speaker 1: as well. It's a book of trolls and ogres, and
Speaker 1: it has of course the billy goats gruff in it,
Speaker 1: and these wonderful illustrations that are reminiscent of of you know,
Speaker 1: of Bosh and similar works. But one of the stories
Speaker 1: that it involves his house and every Christmas a bunch
Speaker 1: of little troll creatures come and just steal all their
Speaker 1: food and wreck their feet. But then a traveler with
Speaker 1: a with a polar bear. He stays there that night,
Speaker 1: and the polar bear hides under the table and then
Speaker 1: scares all the trolls away. It sounds like that might
Speaker 1: be a derivative of the Ule Lads. I think I
Speaker 1: know the name of this traveler. He's probably named Yukon Cornelius.
Speaker 1: Oh we'll get to that in a second, but I
Speaker 1: have to finish off one more thing about the icelandic tails.
Speaker 1: So one last thing about the Eule lads is that
Speaker 1: they're softer than they used to be. So I think
Speaker 1: they used to also be trolls who would eat children.
Speaker 1: But over time I don't know that. I guess the
Speaker 1: Icelanders were like, that's a little rough for the kids
Speaker 1: constantly be threatened with murder and death at Christmas. Uh,
Speaker 1: So they changed it to where the Yule adds. Now
Speaker 1: they bring the little gifts. So you put your shoe
Speaker 1: up on the window sill and the ul lads will
Speaker 1: leave small presents or candies in the shoe if you've
Speaker 1: been good. If you've been bad, they used to eat you,
Speaker 1: but they no longer eat you. Now they just bring
Speaker 1: you rotting potatoes. Oh god, that's still unpleasant. And then
Speaker 1: there's one more creature in Iceland. It's the Yule cat.
Speaker 1: The old cat is the pet of Gorilla, the child
Speaker 1: eater and Luti. So they have this Christmas cat and
Speaker 1: it apparently there was, or maybe still is an expression
Speaker 1: Iceland that if you don't get any new clothes for Christmas.
Speaker 1: You are quote dressing the Yule Cat or quote ending
Speaker 1: up in the Yule Cat. So it's possible that the
Speaker 1: Yule Cat will pretty much eat you if you don't
Speaker 1: have a nice new sweater for the Christmas season. So
Speaker 1: this kind of ups the anti giving bad clothing that
Speaker 1: you end up getting. Yeah, where was the Yule Cat
Speaker 1: when we were growing up, Like that would have been
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to use that all those Cosby sweaters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's literally a matter of life or death underwear variant
Speaker 1: that only comes after you if you don't get underwear
Speaker 1: for Christmas. Well, mine is pretty pop culture reference. It's
Speaker 1: not from like another nation or culture. Uh is from
Speaker 1: those Rootolph the Red Nose Reindeer stop motion movies that
Speaker 1: I grew up with and loved so much as a kid.
Speaker 1: Although I went back and rewatched them. My wife and
Speaker 1: I actually bought it for a friend of ours kid
Speaker 1: for Christmas a couple of years ago. And there's some
Speaker 1: there's some dicey uh treatment of women in those movies
Speaker 1: and raised as a little Yeah, but as many of
Speaker 1: you probably remember from seeing those, uh, the Abominable snow
Speaker 1: Monster of the North is my favorite Christmas Monster, also
Speaker 1: known as the Bumble as he's so named by Yukon Cornelius,
Speaker 1: who was an experts in all things. I want to
Speaker 1: throw in that. Uh, my son Bastion has informed me
Speaker 1: that the Abominable Snowman in this film is a real monster.
Speaker 1: Monster is a real monster. Okay, Well, I trust Bastion.
Speaker 1: He's got some insight that he's raised being raised by
Speaker 1: Dr Anton Jessop. Now, now where does does the Abominable
Speaker 1: Snowman hold a candle to bad Cow? Like which one
Speaker 1: would win in a fight? Um? I don't know, because
Speaker 1: there's not just bad cow anymore. Now there's India monster
Speaker 1: that lives It's a blue monster that lives in India,
Speaker 1: but a different India where there are no cows, people
Speaker 1: or animals. And then likewise, there's an Africa monster that
Speaker 1: lives in Africa and his purple and it's a different
Speaker 1: Africa where there are no elephants, giraffes, animals or people.
Speaker 1: I can't wait until Bastion is writing the stories of
Speaker 1: tomorrow that they're going to be great. Uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: Abominable snow Monster, the Bumble he hates Christmas? Uh can't
Speaker 1: float in water. These are all things we learn from
Speaker 1: mukon Cornelius because the Mumble doesn't really talk. He can't flow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like one of the things that one of the
Speaker 1: ways they get away from him is like by breaking
Speaker 1: off a chip of ice and and floating away on
Speaker 1: it because he can't swim, so he can't float. He
Speaker 1: prefers pork to deer meat. So there's like a scene
Speaker 1: where he's like theoretically about to eat the reindeer, but
Speaker 1: they u can. Cornelius makes noises like a pig to
Speaker 1: attract the Bumble because the Bumble wants to have some pork. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then of course bumbles bounce. Oh I know though,
Speaker 1: Uh the spoilers for Rudolph restring Deer. Yeah, ukn Cornelius
Speaker 1: in the Bumble to take a tumble off a cliff,
Speaker 1: but they miraculously show up alive, and the Bumble is
Speaker 1: now a nice guy. He's he's on the good side
Speaker 1: of Christmas. But but go into detail on that, because
Speaker 1: this is this disturbed me in recent years. How do
Speaker 1: they tame the Bumble? Okay, I believe the way that
Speaker 1: they tame him is that the elf who wants to
Speaker 1: grow up to be a dentist, takes all the bumble's
Speaker 1: teeth out right, so he can't like chop on them anymore.
Speaker 1: So he basically just gives up on hating Christmas and
Speaker 1: being a carnivore. It turns into a hostile movie. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the seriously go back and watch those. They're weird and scary.
Speaker 1: I have to say it's particularly disturbing to me because
Speaker 1: I've been watching the nick Fabulous Cinemax show, probably my
Speaker 1: favorite television show right now, dealing with you know, medicine
Speaker 1: at the turn of the century, and you know, all
Speaker 1: these fantastic, flawed characters. But there's a character that shows
Speaker 1: up based based on a very real individual named Dr
Speaker 1: Henry Cotton, an early twentieth century psychiatrist who treated psychiatric
Speaker 1: patients by removing all of their teeth, saved them from
Speaker 1: their madnest and he even did this to his own
Speaker 1: children to save them from from madness. And on the show,
Speaker 1: he's played by John Hodgman in his Friends, yeah, in
Speaker 1: his and it's John Hodgman in his least like likable performance,
Speaker 1: and therefore I would say his best performance because he
Speaker 1: really want to drown him in a mud puddle. The
Speaker 1: whole time, so so crazy and reckless with his pseudoscience.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I can't help but think of that he
Speaker 1: influenced that story. Yeah, I don't know. All maybe we
Speaker 1: should do an Abominable Snowman episode at one point, But
Speaker 1: all I could find real brief research was that the
Speaker 1: origin for that term. I mean, of course it's referencing
Speaker 1: the yeti um, but the origin for that specific term
Speaker 1: came from some men at the turn of the century
Speaker 1: twentieth century writing about Mount Everest. But I don't quite
Speaker 1: know the specifics. But maybe this dentist played into it
Speaker 1: in some way. Yeah, I just don't like that they
Speaker 1: essentially tormented the uh this wild noble beast into submission inship.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, seriously, Like there's you can never enjoy pork again. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they could make a pork slurry
Speaker 1: for it, and they could drink it like a shake
Speaker 1: or something. But yeah, that's what it takes. See, that's
Speaker 1: what it takes to get somebody into Christmas. You think
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna have to rip all of my
Speaker 1: teeth out in order to to make me happy on
Speaker 1: the holiday. You can't see the sad face I'm making.
Speaker 1: So what better segue? Let's hit some listener mail. Guys.
Speaker 1: Is Arnie the robot here? Here is he is? He
Speaker 1: works on Christmas? Oh, he works all the time, robot.
Speaker 1: He has no beliefs. He can't complain. All he really
Speaker 1: fears is a loss of power supply. Oh interesting, Well,
Speaker 1: what does he got for us? All right? This first
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Facebook. We heard just the
Speaker 1: other day from listener Nick responding. Uh, I believed to
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes. Are M d M A series
Speaker 1: as well as our episode on psychopathic children? Uh? He
Speaker 1: writes in and says, would M d M A help
Speaker 1: psychopaths or sociopaths with their condition? I can't really find
Speaker 1: anything on this. Huh. Well, all right, we're not experts
Speaker 1: in these things. We just read about them and then
Speaker 1: talked about them for the podcast. But let's let's kind
Speaker 1: of back up here and see where next coming from
Speaker 1: on this. So theoretically M d M A helps those
Speaker 1: in therapy, like people with PTSD, with reducing their fear
Speaker 1: and developing their trust. Right. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: one of the principles of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals is
Speaker 1: that they're Essentially, they're there. Empathy mechanisms are present, but
Speaker 1: are in a default off position, so you have to
Speaker 1: you can. Research has shown that you can engage them
Speaker 1: in certain uh UM therapies and thought experiments to force
Speaker 1: those empathetic systems to come online. And their brains are
Speaker 1: as we know from our Killer Children episode, their brains
Speaker 1: are actually physically different. Yeah um had they have less
Speaker 1: gray matter in some scenarios. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: necessarily see a correlation just right off the bat that
Speaker 1: doing M D M A therapy would help with psychopathy.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't be surprised if that's a line of
Speaker 1: research that somebody would pursue. I I haven't seen. I
Speaker 1: did a brief search to see if any you know,
Speaker 1: research materials would come up, and I was not finding anything.
Speaker 1: But I guess, on one hand, it would be a
Speaker 1: really hard sell, especially since a lot of the psychopathy
Speaker 1: experiments that we've seen are conducted on criminals, because that
Speaker 1: is a great place to to find of psychopaths when
Speaker 1: it comes to, you know, population comparisons, and it would
Speaker 1: be hard to sell people on that, Hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get some prisoners and we're gonna put fullam up where
Speaker 1: we're much more comfortable with doing our experiments on college students. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Nick, I'm not quite sure that I
Speaker 1: can see like a direct connection there, But maybe there's
Speaker 1: somebody out there who knows a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the sort of neurochemistry going on. Yeah, because I think
Speaker 1: that's the thing is you're dealing with a slightly different neurochemistry,
Speaker 1: so the m d m A might not affect them
Speaker 1: in the same way. And plus we're still we're still
Speaker 1: figuring out exactly how m d m A assisted therapy
Speaker 1: works with just the average individual's brain. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see if stuff like that comes
Speaker 1: up down the line. I mean, as we said in
Speaker 1: the m dum A episode, I believe that they're looking
Speaker 1: at like a five to ten year a period of
Speaker 1: time before it becomes more publicly available. Yeah. I wasn't
Speaker 1: involved in the m d m A episode, but I
Speaker 1: can certainly see just based on the kind of anecdotal
Speaker 1: phenomenology reports about m d MY people often say things
Speaker 1: about it increasing empathy, and if empathy lack is exactly
Speaker 1: what right that may be Where Nick is getting the
Speaker 1: idea that it could be potentially helpful. Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I guess if it Yeah, if it decreases fear, which
Speaker 1: a psychopath doesn't have necessarily, then it would be difficult
Speaker 1: for it to increase trust as well. Yeah, Like their
Speaker 1: issue isn't that they're afraid or bundled up? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: therefore less willing to engage in open discussion about their
Speaker 1: feelings and other people's feelings. Yeah. Yeah, it's the actual
Speaker 1: feelings themselves. Well, i'd be curious there to it. All, Right,
Speaker 1: what do we got? What else do we got? Well,
Speaker 1: I decided that we we got so much listener mail
Speaker 1: that was so great about the episodes Robert and I
Speaker 1: did on Tetris. I'm going to have to confine my
Speaker 1: readings on this episode entirely to stuff we got about
Speaker 1: the Tetris episodes. But they're they're all worth it because
Speaker 1: people had some really great feats and come in they
Speaker 1: were really good ones. Yeah. People people love those episodes.
Speaker 1: You guys, everybody can relate to Tetris. So here's the
Speaker 1: first one of these Tetris emails, and this is from
Speaker 1: our listener Luan, and Luan says, hey, guys, in your
Speaker 1: recent episode, on Tetris Syndrome, you briefly mused over the
Speaker 1: idea of a video game designed by Timothy Leary. Amazingly enough,
Speaker 1: such a game exists. Many years ago, I went down
Speaker 1: an abandonedware wormhole and discovered the gym Mind Mirror. I
Speaker 1: remember only playing it a couple of times and found
Speaker 1: it incredibly depressing. It was an utterly incomprehensible life simulator
Speaker 1: that begins in the womb. The game progresses as you
Speaker 1: make moral and life decisions from a number of options
Speaker 1: based on scenarios presented to you. There were other aspects
Speaker 1: to the program that I never explored. They appeared to
Speaker 1: be a number of psychological tools the user could utilize
Speaker 1: on a journey of self discovery. Anyway, I thought you
Speaker 1: would want to know because it's weird and awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds right up our alley. Thanks for the podcast.
Speaker 1: And then Luan also adds a PS saying pretty please
Speaker 1: do a show on either or both of my heroes,
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson and Sir Richard Francis Burton. Neither are
Speaker 1: as well known as they deserve to be. Yeah, Captain
Speaker 1: Sir Richard Francis Burton is indeed a phenomenal individual, and
Speaker 1: I could definitely see us doing an Illuminati Robert Anton
Speaker 1: Wilson type thing down the road. That would be very interesting.
Speaker 1: In fact, and this ties into what else I was
Speaker 1: going to say about Lunn's email. He might be one
Speaker 1: of our Psychedelic Avengers. So we've been talking about how
Speaker 1: over the last you know, a couple episodes that we
Speaker 1: keep mentioning the sort of psychedelic Luminaries, Timothy Leary being
Speaker 1: among them. I think we're putting together a team psycondelic Avengers,
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson might be. Now, would Timothy Leary be
Speaker 1: one of the Avengers or would he be the Samuel
Speaker 1: Jackson character. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. What's
Speaker 1: that guy's name, Nick Fury? Nick Fury, Yeah, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not as big a Yeah, I know, superhero and I'm
Speaker 1: a huge nerd uh. So you're saying the Timothy Leary
Speaker 1: is the one who gathers them up all together and
Speaker 1: and he's sort of the glue that keeps them together. No,
Speaker 1: he's the he's the guy who's unnecessarily propounding rules for
Speaker 1: everybody else. So okay, well, who do we have so far?
Speaker 1: We've got Timothy Leary, We've got yeah, Alexander Shulgin, Terrence McKenna,
Speaker 1: Terrence McKenna, I think particularly, but possibly throwing Alan Watts, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe Grant Morrison. Grant Morrison would maybe be like
Speaker 1: a second year member. Yeah, I think you would have
Speaker 1: a different generation and the psychedelic of injuries you'd have
Speaker 1: to roll out. Yeah. And so this also brought to
Speaker 1: mind that Joe and I just recently watched a movie
Speaker 1: together that had Timothy Leary in it, Wes Craven's Shocker
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary TV Preacher. He's he's on TV talking about
Speaker 1: how the Lord wants more more cash for Christ, and
Speaker 1: then Shocker and the protagonist of the movie jump into
Speaker 1: the TV and are actually interacting with the Timothy Leary evangelist.
Speaker 1: Like as in some of our format I had no
Speaker 1: idea what the movie is worth watching that should go
Speaker 1: in the canons of the great bad movies. He's in
Speaker 1: nineties there. I don't know. I don't know why it's
Speaker 1: not up there with like a Highlander two and the
Speaker 1: other ones. Everybody knows Mitch Poleggy is the bad guy.
Speaker 1: Mitch POLEGGI could have been like the next Freddy Krueger
Speaker 1: of the nineties. What should I know him from? He's
Speaker 1: from X Files. He plays Skinner on the X Files.
Speaker 1: Oh he was. This is the guy that was later
Speaker 1: on the Motorcyle Show. Oh yeah, yeah, he was on
Speaker 1: Sons of Anarchy, and then he was on Supernatural for
Speaker 1: a little Yeah. Yeah. He plays the prisoner who gets
Speaker 1: electrocuted and somehow makes a deal with electric voodoo gods
Speaker 1: to become electricity. Yeah, what way, he's an electricity ghosts.
Speaker 1: What's so weird about that? It's it's amazing. Okay. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Elizabeth and she says, Hi,
Speaker 1: I just listened to your podcast about detectives and overall
Speaker 1: it was really interesting. So this was actually before I
Speaker 1: had officially joined the show. We did uh an episode
Speaker 1: together where I guest hosted. We talked about detective stories.
Speaker 1: So she says, part of it focused on a fascination
Speaker 1: we seem to have with the incredibly fantastically grotesque scenes
Speaker 1: in our modern detective style horror, like in the TV
Speaker 1: show Hannibal. And while that's true, it also reminded me
Speaker 1: of the author. I might be pronouncing this wrong. Ido
Speaker 1: go Wa Rampo, who is really known for those kinds
Speaker 1: of mystery stories. Iowa Rampo, though, is the pseudonym of
Speaker 1: the author here I Taro, who was greatly influenced by
Speaker 1: Western authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker 1: Uh And, as we discussed in that episode, Edgar Allan
Speaker 1: Poe is kind of like the father of the detective
Speaker 1: story with murders of the room work, right, Okay, His
Speaker 1: pseudonym sounds similar in Japanese celebrity to Edgar Allan Poe's name,
Speaker 1: as in Japanese phonetics, Poe's name would be Edo Ga
Speaker 1: Aaron Poe, and when you say it that way, it
Speaker 1: sounds really similar to Edo Gawa ron Po. Anyway, his
Speaker 1: body of work started out as more of a detective procedural,
Speaker 1: but after some time evolved into a literary genre called
Speaker 1: ero guru nonsensus, which stands for erotic, grotesque and nonsensical,
Speaker 1: which runs rather strongly and similar to scenes like in
Speaker 1: Hannibal that can be a complete trip or are psychologically haunting,
Speaker 1: and that it brings into question what we think of
Speaker 1: as personal space for humans. This sounds right up our alley, guys,
Speaker 1: now I want to read some of this stuff. He's
Speaker 1: a fairly modern writer, but he is active since pre
Speaker 1: World War Two and has some notable works which have
Speaker 1: been translated into English. I just thought this would be
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to share since it seemed like you
Speaker 1: guys cited some more modern examples of this. But Ito
Speaker 1: Gowa Gawa Rampo is I keep wanting to just say,
Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe is more of an early twenty century
Speaker 1: author in an international writer who is inspired by Western
Speaker 1: detective stories. Uh and then they Although not a mystery
Speaker 1: writer technically, Tycho Kono has also done some short stories
Speaker 1: that tend to diverge into pathology that runs along similar lines.
Speaker 1: Her stories in particular were really interesting, to say the
Speaker 1: least to myself and my classmates at the time, because
Speaker 1: they would start out completely normal and then they would
Speaker 1: take a turn that no one expected. They left quite
Speaker 1: an impression on us. And that's from Elizabeth. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds awesome. I want to check that out. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm adding that to my my my wish list of
Speaker 1: of books that's growing by the minute, especially since after
Speaker 1: hearing that, I'm instantly thinking of various examples of particularly
Speaker 1: in a Japanese horror and some some of the Japanese
Speaker 1: comic material and wondering it does it have its roots
Speaker 1: and yeah, or if the same cultural influences on those
Speaker 1: things influence this, then it also sounds like would be
Speaker 1: perfect for me. Okay. Going back to a lot of
Speaker 1: the response we got on our Tetris episodes, a good
Speaker 1: bit of this came to in the episode we asked
Speaker 1: question about the subject of E M d R, which
Speaker 1: is a type of therapy that is uh. They has
Speaker 1: a lot of support um and a lot of people
Speaker 1: are are very into it and say that it really works,
Speaker 1: but I think it's also controversial, and so we asked
Speaker 1: if anybody has practiced this in their own in their
Speaker 1: own therapy sessions and what they had to say about it,
Speaker 1: and we got a lot of feedback on us, mostly positive.
Speaker 1: We heard from a couple of people saying they thought
Speaker 1: it didn't work, or at least it didn't work for them,
Speaker 1: and then we also heard from a lot of people
Speaker 1: saying that it was a big it made a big
Speaker 1: difference in their lives. And I'm going to read one
Speaker 1: of these and this is from our listener Kristen Kristen says, Hey,
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. Loved your Ignobel Prize episode.
Speaker 1: But to get to the real reason I'm sending this
Speaker 1: email is because I've received am about to begin another
Speaker 1: set session of e M d R. I served in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan in two thousand eleven and two thousand twelve with
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army psy OPS, which is Psychological Operations
Speaker 1: SCORE working with detainees in prisons overseas. After coming home
Speaker 1: from Afghanistan and getting out of the Army, it was
Speaker 1: difficult to deal with the memories and experiences doing what
Speaker 1: I did. I went to traditional therapy for a few years,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't really working with addressing the crippling flashbacks.
Speaker 1: My therapist and I had built a great rapport very
Speaker 1: needed in this type of intensive therapy and decided to
Speaker 1: try it with a smaller, less intrusive negative memory that
Speaker 1: wasn't combat related. The goal is to find the right
Speaker 1: since driven outlet to the e M d R. Before
Speaker 1: getting started. You can do audio visual or tactile, or
Speaker 1: as I did, a combination three out of three. You
Speaker 1: talk through whatever memory or experience you're hung up on
Speaker 1: while audio hearing clicks or beeps or chimes and headphones,
Speaker 1: visual studying light patterns on an l e ED type screen,
Speaker 1: or tactile hand buzzers held in the hands that either
Speaker 1: very in intensity, speed, flipped from hand to hand, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I've heard of the retinal version of this before. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the main ones we knew about going in. We're just
Speaker 1: mentioning that that it had to do with eye movements.
Speaker 1: But what we heard from multiple listeners is that it's
Speaker 1: not just eye movements but multiple types of physical, physical
Speaker 1: spatial interactions. Uh So, Kristen continues, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: very honest and open about this as I am with
Speaker 1: all my experiences with therapy, because this is something important.
Speaker 1: Soldiers are hurting. E m d R is extremely difficult
Speaker 1: to get through. After my first session, and this memory
Speaker 1: wasn't even combat related, I cried for true story hours.
Speaker 1: Your brain pathways are being redirected through magic kidding, and
Speaker 1: this will impact how you really view your world and
Speaker 1: who you believe you are. But if you stick with it,
Speaker 1: whatever negative way, the brain prints this memory, E m
Speaker 1: d R will rewrite it, help you deal with it,
Speaker 1: and my favorite part of it, forgive you for it
Speaker 1: and change your view of it. Any other questions, I
Speaker 1: have no problems answering. Thank you so much for bringing
Speaker 1: this up. And then Kristen also says in a PS,
Speaker 1: I should have put this before, but my therapist is
Speaker 1: with the vet center, separate from the v A, and
Speaker 1: she as uh and the rest of the staff she
Speaker 1: would get a very huge shout out. They do more
Speaker 1: work than the v A and get none of the credit.
Speaker 1: The staff at vet centers across the country is literally
Speaker 1: saved my life, and I'm sure they saved countless others.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and she thanks her doctor. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: really heartwarming to hear, first of all, like a firsthand
Speaker 1: account of this. Uh. The other thing that particularly struck
Speaker 1: me was we received this right as Robert and I
Speaker 1: were doing the research for the m d m A
Speaker 1: episode on how m d m A is used to
Speaker 1: treat PTSD. Yeah. We didn't plan to do those back
Speaker 1: to back like that, but yeah, just sort of accidental
Speaker 1: synchronicity there, Yeah, which we often find between episodes. Mm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, I'd be curious if Kristen, Uh, it
Speaker 1: sounds like she probably doesn't have an experience with this,
Speaker 1: but if she knows other soldiers who have potentially uh
Speaker 1: experimented with the M d M a treatment for PTSD.
Speaker 1: It sounded like from the research that we had read
Speaker 1: that there had been great strides with it, specifically with vets.
Speaker 1: Yeah when you look at the Yeah, that the the
Speaker 1: success of percentiles for sure. Yeah. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: give a big thanks to Kristen and to all the
Speaker 1: other people who got in touch with us about their
Speaker 1: stories using E M d R and and how it
Speaker 1: has affected their lives. All right, we have another one here.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us, So this is a less
Speaker 1: happy with your mail. This one comes to us from Maria,
Speaker 1: and I do want to go ahead mention that Maria
Speaker 1: is a special education teacher and she entitled this one
Speaker 1: babysitting a psychopathic kid. So we just got this man
Speaker 1: in response to the episode of Christian and I did
Speaker 1: about that just published yesterday. See how fast we get these.
Speaker 1: I haven't even read this one yet. Well here we
Speaker 1: got back. Here it goes and this is kind of
Speaker 1: a linked email, so I'm just gonna read selections from it,
Speaker 1: uh four time. But but again I want to thank
Speaker 1: her for for writing in and giving us a little
Speaker 1: more personal insight into this topic. She says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: wanted to write in about my own experience with babysitting
Speaker 1: a psychopathic child. There's some anecdotal stuff coming, but at
Speaker 1: the end I have an interesting thought for you. As
Speaker 1: a teenager, I got a babysitting gig for a very
Speaker 1: special family. Of their five children, the oldest is autistic
Speaker 1: and the youngest has down syndrome, but they were the
Speaker 1: easy ones to take care of the second oldest child.
Speaker 1: We will call her Molly, not her real name, was
Speaker 1: outwardly normal, but turned out to be the real trouble.
Speaker 1: After listening to your podcast, you confirmed at the suspicions
Speaker 1: I had formed all those years ago about Molly. She
Speaker 1: made me uncomfortable as no other kid ever had. She
Speaker 1: was precocious, but oddly heartless, discarding the feelings of her
Speaker 1: siblings just a little too easily. I thought that she
Speaker 1: was a psychopath. I wish I had been wrong. The
Speaker 1: first sign that something was off was that Molly threw
Speaker 1: tantrums well after her sixth birthday. Have you ever tried
Speaker 1: to pull a six year old off her younger brother
Speaker 1: after he ate the last marshmallow? She was big enough
Speaker 1: to hurt me while I attempted to carry her off
Speaker 1: to her room, leaving me with a bloody nose and
Speaker 1: a black eye. At least once. She wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: hurt me, but she certainly didn't care that she had.
Speaker 1: Once she hid in the house after I had scolded her,
Speaker 1: I looked for for over an hour, my panic growing.
Speaker 1: When I found the front door unlocked, I knew she
Speaker 1: was capable of running away. As I braced myself to
Speaker 1: call her parents and the police, and after stirring myself
Speaker 1: up into hysterics, she came downstairs and laughed at me.
Speaker 1: She was constantly manipulating me and her parents. Between the
Speaker 1: three of us, we never knew what to believe. Finally,
Speaker 1: we just wouldn't let her do anything without verifying it
Speaker 1: with another adult. That made her angry, cue another tantrum.
Speaker 1: I also remember her trying to convince me that she
Speaker 1: was allowed to do something. She crawled into my lap
Speaker 1: and stared deep, deep into my eyes while she tried
Speaker 1: to convince me, almost like she was trying to hypnotize me.
Speaker 1: Very ep Sometimes we thought it was just jealousy. After
Speaker 1: her mom gave birth to twins, and she and the
Speaker 1: babies had to spend a few weeks in the hospital.
Speaker 1: Maybe she just needed a little extra attention, so we
Speaker 1: made sure she got it. But once she had you
Speaker 1: in her control, you couldn't walk away. No matter what
Speaker 1: was going on outside her bedroom, whether dinner needed to
Speaker 1: be cooked or if another kid was crying. She would
Speaker 1: put herself between me and the doorway and say I
Speaker 1: couldn't leave. When I had to insist and physically push
Speaker 1: my way past her, that would start a tantrum too
Speaker 1: fast forward a few years, I met her family at
Speaker 1: a down syndrome benefit and nearly fainted when I saw Molly.
Speaker 1: Her hair was gone, cheered off into uneven, stubbly mess.
Speaker 1: Noticing my shock, her mother explained, by age nine, Molly
Speaker 1: had developed Trictottlemania, where she compulsively pulled out her own hair, eyebrows, eyelashes.
Speaker 1: But it didn't stop there. The family cats were suddenly
Speaker 1: missing whiskers and for two. On a brighter note, Maria
Speaker 1: relates that Molly has been receiving therapy since she was
Speaker 1: about five, and she happens to live in an area
Speaker 1: where there's a There are a lot of opportunity these
Speaker 1: for for care and therapy for children like this with
Speaker 1: special needs. She closes out here by saying, but speaking
Speaker 1: of the stigma of psycho psychopathy, I can't help but
Speaker 1: remain cautious about Molly. She's a teenager now and comes
Speaker 1: across it is very sweet when you meet her, but
Speaker 1: somewhere deep down I will always wonder if that shrieking
Speaker 1: banshee of a child is just waiting to emerge. Anyway,
Speaker 1: have a lovely, lovely evening, gentleman. I wish I could
Speaker 1: have written on a happier topic. Keep up the good work. Well,
Speaker 1: I can see now why she responded so quickly. Uh
Speaker 1: that it sounds like she had a very personal experience
Speaker 1: and what we mentioned in the episode definitely struck her
Speaker 1: as potentially being what she was experiencing here. So okay,
Speaker 1: from the research we did for the episode. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I'm not a doctor, but yeah, the the level of
Speaker 1: violence and manipulation sounds like the psychopathy. Um. There's something
Speaker 1: about seeing this kind of condition in a child that
Speaker 1: emphasizes the unfairness of it. Like we're so used to
Speaker 1: being able to um to assign blame to people when
Speaker 1: they're awful as adults. You know, people just if somebody
Speaker 1: manipulates people and is violent and all that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty easy to condemn them, and certainly we
Speaker 1: do have to take defensive measures against people who who
Speaker 1: have destructive behaviors. But I don't know that there's another
Speaker 1: side to it that's sad when when you imagine that,
Speaker 1: you know, to a certain extent, people can be born
Speaker 1: with conditions that they didn't pick. You know, they didn't
Speaker 1: ask to be born with a with a brain condition
Speaker 1: that makes them violent and manipulative. And our culture certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't UM at the moment, really understand how to cope
Speaker 1: with this kind of condition. And so I don't know anyway,
Speaker 1: especially when you see it in a child, just the
Speaker 1: the stark unfairness of the situation emerges, at least to me.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I think is important to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is one of one of the points that
Speaker 1: we kept, you know, kind of the main theme of
Speaker 1: that episode we kept coming back to, which is that
Speaker 1: it's a combination of nature and nurture, right that UM
Speaker 1: children with psychopathy in the case that we were talking
Speaker 1: mainly about where juvenile homicidal offenders, they do have different brains.
Speaker 1: There's definite evidence that shows that their brains have different
Speaker 1: structures in them, they have less gray matter, but there's
Speaker 1: also evidence that through treatment you can help these things.
Speaker 1: You can help add back in gray matter or help
Speaker 1: their brains sort of you know, become quote unquote more normal, right,
Speaker 1: But you know that requires a very specific type of
Speaker 1: caring for these children. And Maria's letter reminded me of
Speaker 1: this New York Times piece that was a very well
Speaker 1: written feature about a family that had a child like
Speaker 1: this and all of the measures that they went through
Speaker 1: and the um treatment that they were going through with
Speaker 1: their child as well. It just kind of reminded me
Speaker 1: of that. So I hope that that, you know, um,
Speaker 1: the child that she's referring to is getting that same
Speaker 1: kind of care, and it sounds like she is. But
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things is you just know
Speaker 1: that there are also children out there. They are not
Speaker 1: receiving this level of treatment, this level of care, and
Speaker 1: their their condition is not being approached with this level
Speaker 1: of understanding, and yeah, they're just gonna fall through the crap. Luckily,
Speaker 1: it sounds like her parents are engaged with her, whereas
Speaker 1: like some psychopathic children who have these natural brain uh
Speaker 1: malformations I guess are also neglected and abused by their parents,
Speaker 1: which only makes the problem worse. Okay, moving on to
Speaker 1: the next email. We got some great correspondence from our listener,
Speaker 1: Jim also about the Tetris episode. He sent us several
Speaker 1: really great emails and I don't have time to read
Speaker 1: the whole correspondence, but here's some selections from it. Jim
Speaker 1: opened on the question that we started our first Tetris
Speaker 1: episode with about about math, whether math is a human
Speaker 1: invention or a human discovery, and Jim says, you start
Speaker 1: with the old philosophical question of mathematics being an invention
Speaker 1: or discovery. I had written to you several years ago
Speaker 1: in this when you brought it up in a previous podcast.
Speaker 1: I won't repeat that, but the best description I've heard
Speaker 1: was from Steven Strogats book The Joy of X. I
Speaker 1: am paraphrasing, but he said that the axioms of a
Speaker 1: mathematical system are the invention, then the conclusions from those
Speaker 1: axioms would be a discovery. I thought this was an
Speaker 1: interesting distinction. I liked it. He goes on. He says,
Speaker 1: I like to use a chess analogy for this. The
Speaker 1: game of chess is an invention. That is, the board,
Speaker 1: the pieces, their movements capture. A description of this invention
Speaker 1: fits on a single sheet of paper. However, there are
Speaker 1: shelves of books that go into the extensive discovery of chess,
Speaker 1: that is, how to play the game well, forks, pins,
Speaker 1: pawn strategy, book upon book, catalog the discovery of chess
Speaker 1: that comes from the simple one sheet invention. The same
Speaker 1: is true of mathematics. Most mathematical inventions are fairly small,
Speaker 1: but the discovery conclusions are endless. So I think the
Speaker 1: adaptation of that would be that the mathematical sort of
Speaker 1: symbols and concepts we come up with our human inventions,
Speaker 1: they don't, at least on this point of view, exist
Speaker 1: anywhere in the universe. You know, three and the and
Speaker 1: the plus and the equals don't. But three plus three
Speaker 1: equal six is not an invention. That's a discovery. It's
Speaker 1: a fact that existed about the universe before we invented
Speaker 1: these tools to discover it. Um And then also he
Speaker 1: has some great thoughts about whether Tetris is solvable. So
Speaker 1: this is the thing we talked about in the first
Speaker 1: Tetris episode. He says, I'd like to clarify something about
Speaker 1: tetris being unsolvable. It is solvable, but the solution is
Speaker 1: for all practical purposes too inefficient to be useful. Since
Speaker 1: tetris is part of the MP complete problem set, no
Speaker 1: known efficient solution exists. These type of problems are called intractable.
Speaker 1: In essence, the known solution is to try every possible
Speaker 1: combination of moves, then pick the best out of the
Speaker 1: entire set. It's a solution, but it's brute force, and
Speaker 1: except for the smallest scenarios, there isn't enough computing power
Speaker 1: to run all of the combinations efficiently. MP complete problems
Speaker 1: are very interesting. There are a subset of MP problems.
Speaker 1: I won't go into the formal definition of P n
Speaker 1: P or MP complete, but like tetris, NP problems are
Speaker 1: solvable only by brute forcing through every possible combination. What
Speaker 1: makes MP complete problems interesting is that any MP problem
Speaker 1: can be reduced or transformed to an instance of an
Speaker 1: MP complete problem in an efficient amount of time. Therefore,
Speaker 1: if we find an efficient solution to just one MP
Speaker 1: complete problem, then we would have an efficient solution for
Speaker 1: all MP problems. Efficient solutions are identified as P the
Speaker 1: biggest question in computer theory and possibly mathematics as a whole,
Speaker 1: is whether P and n P are two different sets
Speaker 1: or really the same set. The problem has been around
Speaker 1: for forty or more years and no one has proved
Speaker 1: the equality or inequality, and a lot of brilliant minds
Speaker 1: have tried. This is actually a subject that I'm speaking
Speaker 1: for myself now. I've wanted to do this for a while,
Speaker 1: but it's been really difficult. Whenever I get into the
Speaker 1: preliminary research for it is just like dealing with the
Speaker 1: abstract problems and it's it's just difficult to concretize. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is this huge fascinating question in computation theory. Are
Speaker 1: all problems that can be checked for a solution inherently
Speaker 1: solvable efficiently? It sounds like a real Kobashuma road to me.
Speaker 1: And Jim has some other great comments about the the
Speaker 1: p NP issue. But um, but yeah, that is something
Speaker 1: that if I can never figure out a way to
Speaker 1: concretize it, I'd like to come back and deal with
Speaker 1: on the show someday. Reminds me of that David Foster
Speaker 1: Wallace book about infinity that like, it's such an incredibly
Speaker 1: dense difficult topic, but he's somehow everything and more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he somehow tried to make it sexy. Yeah, Infinity is
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderful topic we covered in a previous podcast episode.
Speaker 1: But it's it's the kind of thing I would love
Speaker 1: to explore it again. I love to revisit Alright, So
Speaker 1: there you have it. You know, the robot is giving
Speaker 1: us some signals here, uh and uh, it means that
Speaker 1: we are out of time for listener Mail. We weren't
Speaker 1: able to fit in as mini on this episode, but
Speaker 1: that's because we uh, we include some monsters fair holiday,
Speaker 1: and you know what we're gonna be back in. We'll
Speaker 1: have lots of episodes and lots of ways to read
Speaker 1: listener Mail. I already got some ideas for new episodes
Speaker 1: just from uh this this episode. Al Right. Well, in
Speaker 1: the meantime, head on over to stuff about your Mind
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Speaker 1: links out to our our many wonderful social media accounts. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: We'll be on Periscope on Friday's noon Eastern Standard time,
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Speaker 1: of the holidays and weirdness with traveling schedules, and during Christmas,
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