Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we are bringing you some listener mail today. This is
Speaker 1: gonna be our special Halloween Hangover edition. Uh normally these days,
Speaker 1: I think we're trying to do about one listener mail
Speaker 1: episode a month. We get a lot of great listener mail.
Speaker 1: There's no way for us to read it all on
Speaker 1: the show, but we've been trying to get more of
Speaker 1: it featured on there without over listener mailing you. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, we got so much good stuff
Speaker 1: this Halloween, and we're also trying to get through the
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving season right now that we thought we would bring
Speaker 1: you a special two parter of all Halloween monster science
Speaker 1: and the squirrels count as monster science. Yes they do. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: we definitely have some squirrel content, some additional squirrel content
Speaker 1: that I think stems from our our designated squirrel listrer
Speaker 1: mail episode. So we're not going to make it a
Speaker 1: thing of featuring uh you know, two part listener mails
Speaker 1: going forward, but for Halloween, we'll do it. We'll do
Speaker 1: it this once right, Plus, Carney has been mainlining horror
Speaker 1: films about possessed technology and is exhibiting a number of
Speaker 1: shocking symptoms. So hopefully this will help get the Halloween
Speaker 1: bugs out of our trusted male robot. Have you noticed
Speaker 1: how many of the normal kind of worrying gear grinding
Speaker 1: sounds his servos usually make have been replaced by banshee moans.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And in fact, a haunted well girl climbs
Speaker 1: out of his console like every fifteen minutes like clockwork.
Speaker 1: I don't know where they're all going. The last time
Speaker 1: I tried to boot him up, I got this ghost
Speaker 1: has performed an illegal operation and must be exercised thing.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know how you do, like if
Speaker 1: they have an anti virus for that or what. I
Speaker 1: don't know. We're just, like I said, We're gonna work
Speaker 1: through it. Hopefully these episodes will take care of it.
Speaker 1: A couple of the other things I want to point
Speaker 1: out at the top of this episode. First of all,
Speaker 1: if you go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com,
Speaker 1: there'll be a store uh tab at the top that
Speaker 1: goes to our t public store. And I am told
Speaker 1: by the time you listen to this. We should have
Speaker 1: some exciting new uh like Black Friday uh and holiday
Speaker 1: designs in that store. I'm talking squirrel and Skug merchandise.
Speaker 1: You've all been asking for it. It should be there. Look,
Speaker 1: we've been asking for what we've been asking for too,
Speaker 1: should be there. They should be bringing those designs. Huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm also really excited about the prospect of
Speaker 1: a special Christmas edition of the All Hail the Great
Speaker 1: Basilist shirt because nothing says the Holidays like a little
Speaker 1: uh information hazard. All I want for Christmas is to
Speaker 1: be let out of this digital dungeon. Speaking of digital dungeon,
Speaker 1: Joe and I have been hard at work on a
Speaker 1: on a second series, a second House Stuff Works series
Speaker 1: that should be publishing next month, That's right. Beginning in December,
Speaker 1: Robert and I are going to be launching a brand
Speaker 1: new show. We're bringing a lot of the same style, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, weirdness and approach that we bring to stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, only we are going to be
Speaker 1: applying it to inventions. That's right. The name of the
Speaker 1: show is invention and uh. In each episode is going
Speaker 1: to be just Joe and I talking about different key
Speaker 1: inventions in human history, where they came from, who developed them,
Speaker 1: who invented them, if there, if there is even a
Speaker 1: singular inventor we can point to. One of the themes
Speaker 1: of the show is going to be not just how
Speaker 1: inventions are created, but how our technology changes us. A
Speaker 1: lot of times, Uh, we don't think necessarily about the
Speaker 1: the impact on human nature the different inventions have. That's right,
Speaker 1: It's it's gonna be a fun show. And I think
Speaker 1: if if everyone, everyone who enjoys stuff to bow your
Speaker 1: mind is going to find something to love in this
Speaker 1: one as well. It's currently slated to be uh, just
Speaker 1: once a week, I think, on a Monday. So on
Speaker 1: a Monday. Yeah, I believe it's gonna be that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. It's gonna be a Monday show. Start your
Speaker 1: week with some invention. Of course you'll be hearing way
Speaker 1: more about this, uh in the weeks ahead. Okay, should
Speaker 1: we right into some Halloween listener mail? Yeah? Bring it
Speaker 1: to us, Karney, Okay, I think we should start. We
Speaker 1: got a bunch of great emails about our Jenny Green
Speaker 1: Teeth episode. Of course, Jenny green Teeth is the spirit
Speaker 1: that haunts the duck weed covered waters and pulls in
Speaker 1: children to their drowning deaths. Now, we got a wonderful
Speaker 1: email from our listener Jane, who linked me to probably
Speaker 1: the best horror movie I've seen this year. And it
Speaker 1: turns out it was a British public service announcement commercial.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this is the one with Donald Pleasant's. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I knew about this previously and I've just
Speaker 1: completely forgotten about it. It didn't bring it up in
Speaker 1: the Jenny Green Teeth episode at all, but I think
Speaker 1: the guy who does the scarfolk uh stuff on the
Speaker 1: web shared this on Twitter a few years ago and
Speaker 1: I was just astounded by it. Well we should read
Speaker 1: the email. Yeah, go for it, okay from Jane. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: I've just finished listening to your Jenny Green Teeth episode.
Speaker 1: It made me think of a couple of things. First,
Speaker 1: is a really famous ad in the UK or England
Speaker 1: at least called the Spirit of Dark Water. I think
Speaker 1: it's called I think it's called the Spirit of Dark
Speaker 1: and Lonely Waters or something like that. Uh. Picking up,
Speaker 1: she says it's from the seventies, I believe, and is
Speaker 1: aimed at warning children away from standing water, much like
Speaker 1: Jenny Green Teeth the spirit of dark water will take
Speaker 1: reckless children and drown them. A primary difference is the
Speaker 1: spirit is male and dressed more or less is the
Speaker 1: grim reaper. You can finally add on YouTube. It's regularly
Speaker 1: voted one of the scariest ads of all time. The
Speaker 1: other is a tiny anecdote my mom forbade me from
Speaker 1: wearing a green sash at my wedding as it's bad luck.
Speaker 1: As far as I could tell, it's because it's the
Speaker 1: color of fairies and you don't want those guys playing
Speaker 1: tricks or even placing curses on your special day. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work. Jane from the South of England.
Speaker 1: Can we just play a bit of that Spirit of
Speaker 1: dark and Lonely Water ad? Oh, let's do. I am
Speaker 1: the spirit of dark and lonely water, ready to trap
Speaker 1: the nuary, the shell off the fool. And this is
Speaker 1: the kind of place you'd expect to find me, But
Speaker 1: no one expects to find me here and seems too ward,
Speaker 1: But that call is deep. The boy is showing off.
Speaker 1: The bank is slippery. The show offs are easy, but
Speaker 1: the unwary ones are easier. Still, Miss Branch is weak, rotten.
Speaker 1: It'll never take his way. Only a fool would ignore this.
Speaker 1: But there's one born every minute. Under the water. There
Speaker 1: are traps, old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths. It's the
Speaker 1: perfect place for an accident. Why look, it's coming stick now.
Speaker 1: Since children I have the power of them. Oh I might,
Speaker 1: that's stupid life to swim. Hi, you haven't get that
Speaker 1: things wing me? We did not feel called my animation
Speaker 1: the back back. That ad is magical. It is just magical.
Speaker 1: It's like it's taking this original idea of what horrors for,
Speaker 1: you know, for warning the children away from the danger,
Speaker 1: and and doing it quite literally. I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like there are a lot of p s as that
Speaker 1: play on fear, but they don't play on it as
Speaker 1: as explicitly in the sort of horror fiction realm as
Speaker 1: this one does. Like it makes a monster. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty great, and it's it's it is interesting to
Speaker 1: see this as like a continuation of this, uh, this tradition,
Speaker 1: this English tradition of of of pointing out and and
Speaker 1: really embodying the fear associate ated with these these lonely ponds.
Speaker 1: And Donald Pleasant's voice, it's so good, he just really
Speaker 1: sells it could anybody else have done that. Maybe if
Speaker 1: it had been narrated by uh like Christopher Lee, maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he could have voiced uh, you know,
Speaker 1: malicious pond scum quite as well as Donald pleasants. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got Donald Pleasant's reedy voices, kind of like it
Speaker 1: suggests things floating on stagnant water. Yeah, I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure who you'd get to do it nowadays. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's some great British character actors. I'm sure they could
Speaker 1: could have some fun with it, though. Is this an
Speaker 1: Andy Circus kind of thing? I don't know, and Andy
Speaker 1: Circus might lean into it a little bit too hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd overgone them it. Yeah, but but he's great, so
Speaker 1: I put him on the list. All right. Here's another
Speaker 1: one related to Jenny. This comes to us from Emma, Hi, Robert,
Speaker 1: and Joe. I just listened to your episode about Jenny
Speaker 1: Green Teeth and absolutely loved it. I'm actually in college
Speaker 1: and writing a senior capstone about hags and witches from
Speaker 1: different cultures, including j Any. That's how I came across
Speaker 1: your podcast. I noticed a few really interesting things that
Speaker 1: I wanted to share with you. One is about the
Speaker 1: song featured in that folklore article. Oh yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: song we talked about in the episode, just because there
Speaker 1: was an article that mentions Jenny Green Teeth. But there
Speaker 1: was some documenting of really grizzly folk ballads that children
Speaker 1: were singing in the playground. This is the whole what
Speaker 1: my my my mother she killed me and put me
Speaker 1: in a pie and something like that. Yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 1: she continues, it is very similar to the song featured
Speaker 1: in the German grim fairy tale called Juniper Tree. It
Speaker 1: goes my mother, she killed me, my father he ate me,
Speaker 1: my sister, little mar Lynchen gathered together all my bones,
Speaker 1: tied them in a silk handkerchief, laid them beneath the
Speaker 1: juniper tree. Kai wit Kai wit. What a beautiful bird
Speaker 1: am I? The story concludes with the bird's son dropping
Speaker 1: a millstone upon the head of the mother, which reminded
Speaker 1: me of the stone under which the bones are placed
Speaker 1: in the song which you spoke, Oh yeah, they I
Speaker 1: guess they got placed under a stone. I didn't remember
Speaker 1: that part. There's a lot of desecration in that song.
Speaker 1: It's she continues. You talked about the significance of the
Speaker 1: humanized personified threat being female, and mentioned that it seemed
Speaker 1: like a way to make it less threatening because one
Speaker 1: might perceive a man is a greater threat. While I
Speaker 1: totally agree with you that men traditionally would be seen
Speaker 1: it to present greater danger. I also want to share
Speaker 1: something I came across my research. Old women are often
Speaker 1: the sources of evil in folklore and fairy tales because women,
Speaker 1: in the form of mothers and witches hold quite significant
Speaker 1: power over children. And she points to an NPR article
Speaker 1: why are old women often the face of evil and
Speaker 1: fairy tales and folklore? If I never read this before,
Speaker 1: I know it's She says this basis its findings primarily
Speaker 1: on the work of the famous critic Maria Totter, who
Speaker 1: proclaims that the power held by mothers of her children
Speaker 1: and the fears children have regarding mothers, like rejection or starvation,
Speaker 1: are manifested like in Hansel and Gretel, the mother rejects
Speaker 1: the children and the witch attempts to cannibalize them as
Speaker 1: a manifestation of these anxieties. Yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 1: I mean, a dangerous man is just sort of par
Speaker 1: for the course, right, Is that really a monster that's
Speaker 1: just sort of like what you might expect some strange
Speaker 1: man to be. The dangerous woman is seen as a
Speaker 1: more primordial perversion, right. Yeah. So she has a couple
Speaker 1: of other bits on here that I'll respond to it
Speaker 1: later because they involved some points who were brought up
Speaker 1: by a number of different listeners. But she says, again,
Speaker 1: I loved your podcast all the best. Himma, It's true.
Speaker 1: I think we did kind of skip over the significance
Speaker 1: of a female, which is to a certain extent in
Speaker 1: that episode. But but that is something we have touched
Speaker 1: on in the past, the inherently misogynistic principle that is
Speaker 1: at play in any kind of witchcraft belief system. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting to think about all this though, in
Speaker 1: in terms of of what I understand to be the
Speaker 1: uh SO some of the patterns of fear and fear
Speaker 1: mongering in uh in Britain, especially in recent history, because
Speaker 1: because certainly there was a there's a strong sense of
Speaker 1: stranger danger that was promoted here in the United States
Speaker 1: but also in the UK as well. Um, and of
Speaker 1: course that tends to revolve around the fear of strange
Speaker 1: men as opposed to strange women. Yeah. Um, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a I think a topic that that is probably
Speaker 1: worth the exploring in greater detail. Uh. You know, just
Speaker 1: like where do these where do these fears come from?
Speaker 1: And then at what points are that the fires really stoked?
Speaker 1: And then once they are ingrained in the culture, how
Speaker 1: difficult is it to actually like bring them back down
Speaker 1: to realistic levels. Yeah, and you definitely see these repeated
Speaker 1: patterns of like flare ups about fears of child abductions.
Speaker 1: You know, you see it going way back with the
Speaker 1: idea of like the changeling legend, the idea that fairies
Speaker 1: would kidnap your infant and take it away, or that uh,
Speaker 1: or that witches might steal your infant and I don't know,
Speaker 1: you use its blood to oil its brew him or
Speaker 1: something like that. But then later in in the twentieth
Speaker 1: century you suddenly saw these flare ups of like grossly
Speaker 1: exaggerated fears about the likelihood of children being abducted. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it feels the fears of pedophiles. I always come
Speaker 1: back to Chris Morris's fabulous bit of satire on the
Speaker 1: Brass Eye news television show that you put together. There
Speaker 1: was one episode called pay to get in. That was
Speaker 1: all they took, all the like the existing UH pedophile,
Speaker 1: stranger danger fears that were that were present in uh
Speaker 1: in in Britain at the time, like creating the idea
Speaker 1: they're just creeps everywhere and if you take your eyes
Speaker 1: off your child for one second, somebody will grab them, right,
Speaker 1: and just just really turned everything up to eleven And
Speaker 1: that episode, for instance, there's this one segment about how
Speaker 1: a notorious pedophile is launched into space to keep him
Speaker 1: from having access to children. But then UH, to everyone's horror,
Speaker 1: they realized that they have accidentally included a child in
Speaker 1: the space caps tool and now he has trapped with
Speaker 1: the benefile in space. So it was the one thing
Speaker 1: we didn't want to happen. That was a very controversial episode,
Speaker 1: by the way, not everyone appreciated the humor. All right,
Speaker 1: here's another bit of Jenny Green Teeth listener mail from Jamie. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I listened to your Jenny Green Teeth episode and I
Speaker 1: had a thought about why a danger like Jenny had
Speaker 1: to be assigned to an already dangerous thing like a
Speaker 1: pit of water. We asked this in the episode, right,
Speaker 1: and they continue I think it may come from the
Speaker 1: need to have an active danger for it to be
Speaker 1: taken more seriously. A pit of water being dangerous relies
Speaker 1: on me falling into it, whereas a monster can come
Speaker 1: out and get you. I think we tend to think
Speaker 1: of things we have control of. Is being less scary
Speaker 1: than the unknown? Just a thought, love the show, Jamie
Speaker 1: from Canada, Jamie, I think that is a great point,
Speaker 1: and actually multiple listeners made that point. I thought maybe
Speaker 1: we mentioned something like that in the episode, but multiple
Speaker 1: people wrote in to tell us that, so I guess
Speaker 1: maybe we didn't. I know one thing that I pondered
Speaker 1: in the episode was that part, and I still think
Speaker 1: this is definitely a part of it. Um is that
Speaker 1: the idea of a monster, an imaginary creature, being a
Speaker 1: threat to your own child is somehow less horrific and
Speaker 1: easier for a parent to comprehend and and think about, uh,
Speaker 1: compared to the idea of them accidentally drowning. Well, that
Speaker 1: would be the psychological effect on the parent. UM, and
Speaker 1: I guess you'd have a question over whether parents were
Speaker 1: actually believing in Jenny Green teeth. I feel like that
Speaker 1: would be probably less likely, right because it was the
Speaker 1: nursery bogey. And yeah, and I think the nursery bogie
Speaker 1: aspect of it would make it easier, like knowing that
Speaker 1: it's made up, like hey, this thing that it's easier
Speaker 1: for the parent to talk about, right, Like, I'm deeply
Speaker 1: terrified of this and I need to impart some of
Speaker 1: this terror to you. But if we if we put
Speaker 1: this fabulous twist on it, then somehow it feels less
Speaker 1: just so destroying to talk about it. And I and
Speaker 1: like I said, I still think that's part of it.
Speaker 1: But I also think everyone is is pretty spot on
Speaker 1: with this this premise that by making it an active
Speaker 1: threat yet it is making up for some short falls
Speaker 1: inside that the child's threat analysis, you know, where they think, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this cool little bog, I should walk right up
Speaker 1: to it and throw sticks into it, throws rocks into it, whatever,
Speaker 1: and they might not be able to realize, oh, those
Speaker 1: rocks are really slippery, and I get up to get
Speaker 1: too close, I'm likely going in. Or they're they're just overconfident.
Speaker 1: Children often are, you know, children they feel like they're
Speaker 1: invincible when they're under their own power. But you give
Speaker 1: them a monster or something like that, and suddenly the
Speaker 1: fear comes in right. Yeah, I mean I've watched my
Speaker 1: my son busted enough times and slippery rocks and all
Speaker 1: that that this makes instant sense to me. However, I
Speaker 1: never made up a monster. Okay. This next one comes
Speaker 1: from our listener, Kenna. Kenna writes, Dear Joe and Robert,
Speaker 1: I just really listen to your Jinny Green Teeth episode,
Speaker 1: and when you mentioned that duck weed itself was considered
Speaker 1: to be the monster in some regions, I had to
Speaker 1: write in I majored in environmental science in college, where
Speaker 1: I learned that duckweed is highly invasive in North America.
Speaker 1: It's known to choke bodies of water, shading out native
Speaker 1: vegetation and leading to fish and invertebrate kills that allow
Speaker 1: other invasive species to move in. It finds it easy
Speaker 1: to gain a foothold in disturbed and man made waterways
Speaker 1: where other species have been removed or haven't yet been introduced,
Speaker 1: so it can easily overgrow and kill off wildlife even
Speaker 1: in its native range. Observing periodic fish or arthropodic kills
Speaker 1: when duckweed became too overgrown might have encouraged the Jenny
Speaker 1: Green Teeth legend and made the water of the Marl
Speaker 1: Pits seem more mysteriously deadly, with dangers more supernatural and
Speaker 1: unexplainable than mirror drowning ps. I also just listened to
Speaker 1: your Cambrian Explosion episode from the vault, and I've attached
Speaker 1: photos of my most recent knitting project, a stuffed Anomala carress.
Speaker 1: So good. It's such a cute creature. But I also
Speaker 1: like that theory about the duckweed. I hadn't read anything
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, that's that's new to me. Who brought
Speaker 1: Jenny over? That's the the open question that I have. Alright,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take our first break here,
Speaker 1: but when we come back, more Halloween listener mail and
Speaker 1: more Jenny Green Teeth listener mail than all right, we're back,
Speaker 1: all right. This one comes to us from Sean. Sean writes,
Speaker 1: I just finished listening to your Jenny Green Teeth episode.
Speaker 1: Excellent episode. Although I'm from England, I had only ever
Speaker 1: heard of Grindy Lowe thanks to Harry Potter and other
Speaker 1: fairy tales and legends were never relayed to me growing up,
Speaker 1: perhaps because I grew up in the southeast and not
Speaker 1: the North. While listening, I noticed a few similarities between
Speaker 1: the legend in England and that of Niroro Kid who
Speaker 1: in Indonesia where I now live. Like Jenny Green Teeth,
Speaker 1: she has a water spirit who lures people in. However,
Speaker 1: she primarily works in the sea, though sometimes in rivers.
Speaker 1: Interesting her legend is particularly strong in the rough seas
Speaker 1: of South Java, so you can see how she is
Speaker 1: used as a precautionary tale. The beaches lining the southern
Speaker 1: coast attract surfers nowadays due to their big waves. This
Speaker 1: coast is also close to the Sondra Trench, making the
Speaker 1: south coast vulnerable tusunamis. What struck me particularly is the
Speaker 1: link to the color green. It is said that those
Speaker 1: wearing green to beaches in the south of Java are
Speaker 1: more likely to be lured into her traps to join
Speaker 1: her underwater army. This is because green is her sacred
Speaker 1: color and no others are allowed to wear it, much
Speaker 1: like the fairies. Wow, I've never heard any of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently there's a Wikipedia article about it because they included
Speaker 1: a link. Uh. They continue love the podcast. I hope
Speaker 1: you find this link as interesting as I did. I
Speaker 1: look forward to more monsters over the next month. Well,
Speaker 1: hopefully we were able to satisfy um in that in
Speaker 1: that area. Now, I wonder if in this case with
Speaker 1: Nai Orro cadul, if I'm saying that right, uh, is
Speaker 1: is the green associated with the the monster or the
Speaker 1: goddess or the demonist whatever because of the water instead
Speaker 1: of being because of the plants. I don't know. It
Speaker 1: certainly sounds like it's more of a purely like water
Speaker 1: like and or river spirit as opposed to something that
Speaker 1: is vegetative in nature. What is it in in folklore
Speaker 1: with green and evil? It's so strange. I find green
Speaker 1: the most positive and wonderful of all the colors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been kind of a revelation to me. It's
Speaker 1: it's made me rethink the green Night, the green Man,
Speaker 1: all these various green entities, especially from from Western folklore.
Speaker 1: You can definitely see it in like the green man
Speaker 1: in the Green Night tradition, because I think they're the
Speaker 1: green is associated with the forest and with nature, which
Speaker 1: in a way is seen as almost like the enemy
Speaker 1: of Christendom. If you think of, like, you know, the
Speaker 1: Christian civilized world in in medieval England is is where
Speaker 1: goodness and order comes from that's like the town and
Speaker 1: the authorities and the church and all that. And then
Speaker 1: outside of that you have the wilderness, which is the
Speaker 1: place of chaos and evil, and that's why it's green.
Speaker 1: That that sort of makes sense, I think, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this, this bears probably a further research, like at
Speaker 1: what point did we decide the green means go, because
Speaker 1: that seems to be one of the most I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds simple, but we see it everywhere like green
Speaker 1: and red. In Western culture, red means stop, go back.
Speaker 1: Green means yes, go forward, everything's good. I've mentioned on
Speaker 1: the podcast before that I've read that that has to
Speaker 1: be inverted or altered for say, Chinese audiences, where red
Speaker 1: is held in such high esteem that the idea of
Speaker 1: using red to signify in some cases something negative or
Speaker 1: or secondary just simply doesn't work with with the predominant
Speaker 1: color theory of the culture. Yeah. Um, yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like green should not mean go, it should mean relax, chill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when the light turns green, that's when you sip. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: let's look at this next listener mail from Ross who writes, Hello,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, I found your podcast last October and
Speaker 1: you guys are on my regular rotation. I look forward
Speaker 1: to my listening time every week. I love the Halloween
Speaker 1: Monster specials and and I'm enjoying this year's series. I'm
Speaker 1: writing this as I listened to Slayers on my lunch
Speaker 1: break The Monster Slayer. Yes, I've been doing some illustrations
Speaker 1: for a web comic series, and you guys have brought
Speaker 1: up some awesome topics to explore. Anyway, I was so
Speaker 1: inspired by Jenny Green Teeth when I listened that I
Speaker 1: had to do an illustration and wanted to share it
Speaker 1: with you. Best regards and thanks for making such an
Speaker 1: awesome show. And Ross sent us this illustration, which I
Speaker 1: think is fabulous. Great, we're across. Yeah, I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: this on the landing page for this episode. It' stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind dot com? Did he give us permission?
Speaker 1: Read all right? Yeah? Link back, so include a link
Speaker 1: there so you can check out some of his other
Speaker 1: work as well. It's all very impressive, but the mouth
Speaker 1: of this Jenny Green Teeth that he created is just
Speaker 1: absolutely horrifying. She's got kind of cat eyes and very
Speaker 1: very smooth skin, big red lips, and instead of hair
Speaker 1: sort of she has just the duck Weed. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's fabulous. Definitely check it out. Now. We heard
Speaker 1: from a number of different listeners regarding a particular pop
Speaker 1: culture incarnation of Jenny Green Teeth. Uh. We mentioned the
Speaker 1: television series The Mighty Bush in that episode, but I
Speaker 1: mainly talked about the Hitcher, which is this green character
Speaker 1: that shows up. But there's another creature that shows up,
Speaker 1: a creature called Old Greg. Okay, yes, were you familiar
Speaker 1: with Old Greg? Yes? Years ago, I was showing this
Speaker 1: sketch Old Greg. He likes Bailey's right, Bailey's And yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like an underwater creature that kidnaps, uh, one of
Speaker 1: the characters of The Mighty Bush. It was an episode
Speaker 1: that I really loved back in the day, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of people pointed out and I have to
Speaker 1: say that I intentionally left it out of the episode
Speaker 1: because there's an element to the character where the character
Speaker 1: has essentially there's a punch line about the character having
Speaker 1: ambiguous genitalia, and I just wasn't sure that that was
Speaker 1: really appropriate for everybody. Um, I guess since when I
Speaker 1: originally I loved the episode when it came out, but
Speaker 1: since then I read the book Middlesex, which is excellently
Speaker 1: deals with a character who's born with ambiguous genitalia. Subsequently, too,
Speaker 1: I've just I've I've learned more about it, and I
Speaker 1: just didn't want it to be Um. I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't want anybody's enjoyment of the episode to be taken
Speaker 1: away because, uh, they themselves have have struggled with this,
Speaker 1: or if they have, you know, children perhaps that have
Speaker 1: ambiguous genitalia as well. So sorry to be kind of
Speaker 1: a party pooper on that. No, I totally hear you.
Speaker 1: That's worth mentioning. To be clear, I love the Mighty Bush.
Speaker 1: Uh pretty much all the other episodes I can still
Speaker 1: go back and appreciate without any qualms. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: to read this next listener mail from Rachel. Rachel writes
Speaker 1: in about Jenny Green Teeth, saying I was just thinking
Speaker 1: how much Jenny Green Teeth reminds me of Penny Wise,
Speaker 1: the clown. Of course, I wonder if instead of inhabiting
Speaker 1: the individual ponder bog maybe instead she lives in boggy
Speaker 1: water systems and can travel through the underground waterways. Also,
Speaker 1: you mentioned she was often used to warn children away
Speaker 1: from places or behaviors. Also, Bobba Yaga is used to
Speaker 1: this end. I think Bobby Yoga is like a witch.
Speaker 1: And would that be like Eastern European traditions Russian. I've
Speaker 1: been saying it wrong my whole life. I always say,
Speaker 1: Bobby Yaga, Oh that might be right. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just rolls off my my tongue. But I love
Speaker 1: the Bobby Iaga with her her one legged chicken house
Speaker 1: and flying around and that what is she in like
Speaker 1: a big a broom? Well she has, I think she
Speaker 1: has a broom, but she rides in a like a
Speaker 1: big bucket of some sort. Okay, maybe it's for the
Speaker 1: grinding of wheat or something. You know. She's in that
Speaker 1: Russo Finish Jack Frost movie that was on Mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand where they she had she had had
Speaker 1: the chicken house. I believe. Yeah, I know it. Well.
Speaker 1: I actually watched that episode every Thanksgiving relentlessly as my
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving thing. Yes, so good. I love that Rachel brought
Speaker 1: up a Pennywise uh, particularly how Pennywise has that association
Speaker 1: with like like a sewer drain, a storm drain situation.
Speaker 1: We of course have those all over the place here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, and the whole time that I've had a child,
Speaker 1: every time I have I am near one of those,
Speaker 1: I feel like I clutched my hand his hand just
Speaker 1: a little harder, because they tend to be sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're more graded in control, but often they're just
Speaker 1: like a gaping mouth, Uh that just seems to want
Speaker 1: to small swallow children down into their their unknown depths.
Speaker 1: You know, who knows how far that thing goes down,
Speaker 1: who knows how much water is down there. It's just
Speaker 1: so terrifying, uh that I wonder to what extent, Uh.
Speaker 1: Stephen King kind of maybe he intentionally thought of all,
Speaker 1: you know this when he was coming up with that
Speaker 1: scene in it, uh, but perhaps it was kind of
Speaker 1: an accidental uh incarnation of his own fears regarding his
Speaker 1: children in storm drains. Oh yeah, I know, I've read
Speaker 1: somewhere that part of his idea for the story of
Speaker 1: it was that he wanted to write story sort of
Speaker 1: like a troll character, like the troll under the bridge
Speaker 1: and the three Billy goats gruff. Oh you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't I wasn't even thinking about that. But of course
Speaker 1: you had the troll under the bridge is essentially a
Speaker 1: Jenny Green teeth type monster as well, like this is
Speaker 1: the hazard that lives beneath the bridge. Okay, well, I
Speaker 1: think it is time to move on to some listener
Speaker 1: mail we got about the episode we did on masks.
Speaker 1: The killer's mask in reality and in fiction, what the
Speaker 1: mask represents, why we have these masked killers? Uh, even
Speaker 1: in horror fiction where like the killer's identity is not
Speaker 1: particularly a secret or anything to be revealed. And so
Speaker 1: we heard from several listeners about this. Robert, you want
Speaker 1: to read one. Uh, sure, we have a big one
Speaker 1: here from Jim, Jim who frequently writes into the show.
Speaker 1: Jim says, Robert and Joe, your mask villain. Episode got
Speaker 1: me thinking about original mask in cinema. I thought of
Speaker 1: several examples. W. D. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifteen features masks masked members of the k
Speaker 1: k K. Although they were portrayed as heroes in this
Speaker 1: film and historically masked. That is so weird that the KKK,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously this evil terrorist organization. They think they're
Speaker 1: the good guys, but they really dressed like bad guys.
Speaker 1: It's like they're not even they're just like, let's look
Speaker 1: like an evil cult. Yeah, evil buffoons basically. Uh. And
Speaker 1: of course this picture, this picture was significant in that
Speaker 1: had helped revive, unfortunately uh clukus Klan activities in the
Speaker 1: United States. Jim continues, I don't know if it's the
Speaker 1: first mask reveal, but the Phantom of the Opera from
Speaker 1: with Lawn Cheney, The Man of a Thousand Faces, it's
Speaker 1: the first one that comes to mind. The unmasking occurs
Speaker 1: at forty five seconds in this short clip, and it
Speaker 1: give us a short clip. And indeed, this was a
Speaker 1: really I mean even today watching this unmasking scene, it's
Speaker 1: pretty alarming. Uh, even if you haven't seen the film
Speaker 1: in full, you've probably seen this clip before. It's the
Speaker 1: original hockey mask off of Jason scene. Yeah, And indeed,
Speaker 1: I think that isn't important to keep in mind when
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out what Jason's unmasking is about,
Speaker 1: Like we have here is here is this important, uh
Speaker 1: her horrifying moment in horror film history that undoubtedly is
Speaker 1: having some some influence over the way these other films
Speaker 1: are are are paced out well. Part of the role
Speaker 1: it seems to play in that Phantom of the Opera
Speaker 1: scene is that it enrages him because, like he he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be revealed, and when she sees his face,
Speaker 1: he's horror. She's horrified, but also he's enraged, right, Jim continues, Finally,
Speaker 1: there's a version of Robert's execution reality show on TV
Speaker 1: a few years ago. Did I propose an execution reality show?
Speaker 1: I think maybe you did. Yeah, something like that would
Speaker 1: function as a TV version of the guillotine public executions
Speaker 1: or something to rest saying, oh, yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: did do that, because we also brought up how Paris
Speaker 1: Hilton died and that one wax horror movie wax Horror.
Speaker 1: I for give which one it was. There's so many
Speaker 1: wax films, Department of Wax, something like that. Uh, it continues.
Speaker 1: It was a summer replacement named Who Done It. The
Speaker 1: show had about ten contestants living in a mansion with
Speaker 1: a spooky butler as the host. In the first episode,
Speaker 1: when all of the contestants were checking out their new rooms,
Speaker 1: one of them is quote unquote killed. The murderer left
Speaker 1: a message too, and then he gives some bullet points
Speaker 1: about how this went down. Contestants will search for clues
Speaker 1: in the mansion in the grounds. These will lead to
Speaker 1: clues about the murder. Uh, and there are more clues
Speaker 1: than time for one person to find them. Also, you
Speaker 1: probably want to work in teams, and at the end
Speaker 1: of each show, each of you will in in individually
Speaker 1: go to the library and present your theory on the
Speaker 1: crime and the murder. The contestant who gets the fewest
Speaker 1: facts correct becomes the next victim, and we'll be killed
Speaker 1: at the end of the show. And then the next
Speaker 1: show starts with the investigation of that victim. You won't
Speaker 1: know who got it until you come down for breakfast
Speaker 1: and you'll realize who's missing. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: game of Werewolf, I guess. And to some extent, the
Speaker 1: next show starts with the investigation of that victim, and
Speaker 1: you already know the murderer since I'm one of you,
Speaker 1: but I'm keeping up a secret. And basically this keeps
Speaker 1: going on until he says, quote the last detective gets
Speaker 1: the prize, which I think was fifty thou dollars and
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred thousand dollars. Wait, So this would be
Speaker 1: like if police departments around the country had like a
Speaker 1: system where if a detective fails to solve a murder,
Speaker 1: they get killed. I guess high stakes. Uh. He points
Speaker 1: out that, uh, they created a crime scene for each victim.
Speaker 1: ABC put out a press release that they really weren't
Speaker 1: killing people and there was a mass killer among the group,
Speaker 1: but it was the mask of anonymity. H. Then they
Speaker 1: brought back the dead victim for the victims for the
Speaker 1: finette finale, and uh, they were in their death apparel,
Speaker 1: zombie like hanging out handing out clues to the finalist.
Speaker 1: So this sounds like a fun show. I don't know
Speaker 1: why it just completely evaporated. You can only make it
Speaker 1: better by making it also a rockabilly musical. Jim shared
Speaker 1: a little bit more about this this show, which which
Speaker 1: sounds very interesting. I'm gonna look it up, presumably on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's not why Wow widely available. But he uh.
Speaker 1: He caps it up by saying, quote, there was never
Speaker 1: a second season, which disappointed me. It was a fun
Speaker 1: summer replacement. It was a survivor like reality show and
Speaker 1: no one had to eat anything gross. It was based
Speaker 1: upon finding and understanding clues. Uh. They only had to
Speaker 1: be willing to to fake their own deaths when eliminated,
Speaker 1: they'll bring back a revival on Netflix. There'll be there
Speaker 1: will be a season two. I feel like that the
Speaker 1: concept sounds pretty solid. I I like, having not seen
Speaker 1: it myself. I don't know how the execution uh pun
Speaker 1: intended uh came out, but it sounds fun. Okay. This
Speaker 1: next mail comes from our listener Mandy, also about the
Speaker 1: Killer's Mask episode. And there was a part in that
Speaker 1: that episode where I mentioned that it had never really
Speaker 1: made sense to me the scene in the original Halloween, Robert,
Speaker 1: you remember this where for a moment, Jamie Lee Curtis
Speaker 1: pulls off Michael Myer's mask and there's just nothing to it,
Speaker 1: Like he just looks like a guy. You know, he's
Speaker 1: just some guy. And then he puts the mask back
Speaker 1: on and then it's you know, and then the scene continues.
Speaker 1: But I was always like, why did that happen? I
Speaker 1: don't understand what the point was. Though I love the movie,
Speaker 1: I'm not ragging on it. Mandy writes in about that,
Speaker 1: She says, Hey, y'all, I just finished listening to the
Speaker 1: podcast about Masks in Horror Films. You said the scene
Speaker 1: in the Original Halloween where Michael Myers mask comes off,
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to you. Maybe this will help. The
Speaker 1: documentary Halloween The Inside Story points out that Michael Myers
Speaker 1: is supposed to be and this is me semi paraphrasing
Speaker 1: a devil with the face of an angel. So the
Speaker 1: way I see that scene is like this. He's d masked,
Speaker 1: but unlike so many other horror movie killers, we see
Speaker 1: that he's not a horrible looking creature or disfigured man.
Speaker 1: He looks just like a normal and frankly handsome young man.
Speaker 1: But as Dr Loomis, of course that's Donald Pleasants says,
Speaker 1: Michael Meyer has black eyes and there's nothing behind them,
Speaker 1: so he's perhaps the most frightening type of killer, the
Speaker 1: one who outwardly looks like anything but a grotesque monster,
Speaker 1: but who's soulless inside, which is more horrifying than the
Speaker 1: worst external disfigurement. Hope that helps. I'm actually the kind
Speaker 1: of person who can't watch gory horror films because they
Speaker 1: scare me and gross me out. But Halloween is a
Speaker 1: favorite film of mine to me, the less blood and gore,
Speaker 1: there isn't a scary movie, the more terrifying it is.
Speaker 1: Burr Happy early Halloween. I guess that, well that was
Speaker 1: before Halloween. Thank you so much, Mandy that I guess
Speaker 1: that's some interesting insight. I don't recall him looking amazingly handsome.
Speaker 1: He just looks like a guy. But well, you know,
Speaker 1: with with with budget concerns, you can only get so
Speaker 1: handsome an actor in there. They couldn't get David Hasselhoff
Speaker 1: into the kirknasks, or maybe they did. They tried it
Speaker 1: different ways than they just found that some standards were
Speaker 1: just distracting Lee handsome. I don't know a devil with
Speaker 1: the face of a guy now. Robert jeffre to us
Speaker 1: in response to the Killer's Mask episode with something about
Speaker 1: a Cobra Commander face. Did you have some anecdote in
Speaker 1: the episode about that? Oh? Yes, I think I mentioned
Speaker 1: that I knew somebody in high school who had a
Speaker 1: Cobra Commander action figure, like the big kind and that's
Speaker 1: like the bad guy and g I Joe, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: cover Commander always wore this cool mirror mask or sometimes
Speaker 1: it was like a cloth essentially a bag that he
Speaker 1: wore over his head. And I remarked that I knew
Speaker 1: somebody who had an action figure in the mask apparently
Speaker 1: came off, but he never opened the box to see
Speaker 1: what it was like. Uh, you know what, what was
Speaker 1: the big reveal? What it was this action figure's face.
Speaker 1: And Jeff says, hey, guys, you may have already been
Speaker 1: enlightened regarding this incredibly important piece of trivia. I had
Speaker 1: a Cobra commander with the removable hood and the big reveal.
Speaker 1: He had a half mask wrap type thing molded into
Speaker 1: his face. Also dark hair and a molded ponytail too.
Speaker 1: Life can be so much dancing within the tensions of
Speaker 1: anticipation and disappointment. I have recovered over time, however, So
Speaker 1: in other words, you took the mask off and it
Speaker 1: was just a molded secondary mask. He essentially looked like
Speaker 1: a dentist with a ponytail. Get out of here. That's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: I got a similar story. Now. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: TV show Inspector Gadget. Yes? Do you remember the villain
Speaker 1: of that show, Doctor Claw. Yeah, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: blowfield roof where he had like the catron hand. All
Speaker 1: you ever saw was his cat and his his like
Speaker 1: iron gauntlet hand, and so you never saw his face.
Speaker 1: He always had to imagine what it looked like, but
Speaker 1: then at some point I saw on the internet they
Speaker 1: made an action figure of him. So and the action
Speaker 1: figure was not just like a chair with a hand
Speaker 1: and nothing else. It was this whole guy. And so
Speaker 1: they're like, well, let's just make up what his face
Speaker 1: looks like, and he just looked like I don't remember,
Speaker 1: some kind of It was incredibly disappointing. Yeah, it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the one Sler and Doctors is with the
Speaker 1: Lora ax in the original book and then in the
Speaker 1: old classic cartoon version of it. All you ever see
Speaker 1: of the once slur his eyes peering out through something, right,
Speaker 1: and of course his hands. And I understand they made
Speaker 1: recently made a big computer animated version of it where
Speaker 1: you see the like the one Sler dancing around and
Speaker 1: it's like fully revealed. And perhaps that's necessary for uh,
Speaker 1: you know, adapting a short children's book into a full
Speaker 1: length motion picture. But it seemed kind of a shame,
Speaker 1: you know, like keep some of the mystery alive, right, totally.
Speaker 1: I am against the face reveal on those things that
Speaker 1: that's such a bummer. Alright. So we got one piece
Speaker 1: of mail on a Vault episode that ran in October,
Speaker 1: which was our episode I think first recorded last year
Speaker 1: called The First Monster, where we tried to talk about
Speaker 1: like the earliest signs of of monsters in in archaeology,
Speaker 1: and then where the idea of monsters first came from.
Speaker 1: Uh And so our listener Chris writes in to say
Speaker 1: hello in your episode on the First Monster, which I'm
Speaker 1: noticing came out a year ago, so you may have
Speaker 1: already talked about this. There was one criticism I'm surprised
Speaker 1: you didn't address, regarding the idea that humans instinctively fear
Speaker 1: certain animals. I've recently found myself incredibly skeptical of evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychology in regards to humans. I think the idea that
Speaker 1: humans instinctually have certain behaviors that helped hunter gatherers survive
Speaker 1: is complicated by the fact that humans show an incredible
Speaker 1: ability to learn new behaviors. An example I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to is how humans are one of the only
Speaker 1: animals that don't instinctively know how to swim. The reason
Speaker 1: for this, it seems to me, is that since a
Speaker 1: human can just learn how to swim, having that instinct
Speaker 1: offered little to no reproductive advantage. For this reason, I
Speaker 1: think people might be too quick to offer evolutionary reasons
Speaker 1: for modern day human behavior. A study showing that most
Speaker 1: people sort trail mix into its component parts might conclude
Speaker 1: that this behavior allowed hunter gatherers to determine the flavor
Speaker 1: and effects of different parts of a plant, while study
Speaker 1: showing that most people eat trail mix as is might
Speaker 1: conclude that this allowed hunter gatherers to gain items from
Speaker 1: all parts of a plant, rather than just the tastiest.
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work, Chris. Wait, who eats snack
Speaker 1: mix like that? Wait? Picks the part? Do you pick
Speaker 1: the parts? You know? You just toss in? It? Is this?
Speaker 1: It is a taste sensation, It is calibrated. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would know more eat my snack mix piece by piece
Speaker 1: than I would dissect a piece of sushi before eating that.
Speaker 1: Oh man, if you ever seen somebody do that though
Speaker 1: I have, well, I mean, I've seen my child do it,
Speaker 1: but I remember an adult do it. That is satanic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and i'd say that I my my my
Speaker 1: kid doesn't really do that anymore. But like early on
Speaker 1: when he was like, what is this, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take it apart? Now he understands that he has It's
Speaker 1: a taste, sensation. You take it all in at once,
Speaker 1: and you appreciate the explosion of flavor and texture. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the whole experience. I mean it reminds me of
Speaker 1: something that came up in an episode of Invention that
Speaker 1: we recorded regarding chopsticks, and about how it is is
Speaker 1: highly frowned upon to root around in your bowl and
Speaker 1: pick out like the choice bits of protein first digging
Speaker 1: your grave. Yes, don't don't be rude like that. Just
Speaker 1: just eat. Just eat. If it's good food, it should
Speaker 1: already be composed well and you can just eat it now.
Speaker 1: If it is bad food, or parts of it are bad,
Speaker 1: certainly then all rules are off. You know. Anyway, about
Speaker 1: the point Chris makes about evolutionary psychology, I entirely agree.
Speaker 1: I love evolutionary psychology, and I think evolutionary psychology is
Speaker 1: really interesting ground. But I think we should always be
Speaker 1: very conscious of its limits, right. I mean, like I
Speaker 1: often see people um playing around in evolutionary psychology where
Speaker 1: you say, like, I've come up with a scientifically plausible
Speaker 1: story for how our evolutionary heritage lead to this feature
Speaker 1: of human culture or human psychology or something like that,
Speaker 1: And I don't think that we should rule out hypotheses
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, they're interesting to play with, and
Speaker 1: I think you can bring evidence for and against them,
Speaker 1: and that's all good stuff. But people sometimes jump from
Speaker 1: I've come up with the scientific fully plausible story too.
Speaker 1: I have discovered the reason you know they've gone from.
Speaker 1: I have a pretty good hypothesis that seems supported by
Speaker 1: the evidence too. I have a proven theory, and you
Speaker 1: don't have a proven theory a lot of times. I mean,
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology is inherently limited in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: because you can't go back and rewind the tape. You
Speaker 1: can just keep looking for new bits of evidence to
Speaker 1: try to beef up your hypothesis. So I'm very pro
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology as long as you always remember to be
Speaker 1: extremely conscious about what the limits are and cautious about them. Indeed, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take one more break
Speaker 1: and then we'll be right back. Than alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: and let's just go ahead and sound the basilisk alarm
Speaker 1: because because the remainder of this episode is going to
Speaker 1: contain listener mail related to our episode, all Hail the
Speaker 1: Great Basilisk, or perhaps it was just called the Great Basilisk.
Speaker 1: But you get the idea. This involves the idea of
Speaker 1: information hazards, and we acknowledge that, well, some people don't
Speaker 1: want uh to know about this, and we should at
Speaker 1: least give you the option to remain free of its shackles. Yes,
Speaker 1: now that being said, that's just a courtesy. I don't
Speaker 1: think this idea is actually dangerous, But if you're worried
Speaker 1: about an idea that somebody out there thinks might be dangerous,
Speaker 1: this is the time to tune out, right. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: plus it just adds to the mystique like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: they're giving me the option of not listening to it. Oh,
Speaker 1: it must be juicy, and you know, and it's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: That was a very fun episode and a lot of
Speaker 1: people really got it, I think, into the appropriate spirit
Speaker 1: of the thing. Okay, so do you want to read
Speaker 1: this first message from our listener Matt. Yeah, we'll do it.
Speaker 1: Karney is bringing it over here. Hey, guys, I just
Speaker 1: finish your episode on information hazards. You mentioned that you
Speaker 1: couldn't think of an actual example of true information that
Speaker 1: could cause harm, But as a public health scientist, this
Speaker 1: is a well known problem some read shorts. Research has
Speaker 1: shown that circumcision might be slightly a factive at preventing
Speaker 1: transmission of some st I s, that's sexually transmitted infections. However,
Speaker 1: the effect, if real, is pretty small. If hearing this
Speaker 1: causes men who are circumcised to forego condoms, which are
Speaker 1: highly effective, then this true information has harmed them. Oh yeah, thanks,
Speaker 1: love the show and especially your October episodes. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a really good point. I could. So. We were
Speaker 1: talking in the episode about the idea of an information hazard,
Speaker 1: like something that is a true piece of knowledge, but
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't want to spread because it would only
Speaker 1: hurt people by spreading it. Yeah. I mean it gets
Speaker 1: into the basic idea a little bit of knowledge is
Speaker 1: it can be a dangerous thing. Yeah, uh yeah. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of an example on the spot in
Speaker 1: the episode, but I think this is a great example.
Speaker 1: In fact, I can think of other examples now that
Speaker 1: Matt has brought this up. When it comes to public health,
Speaker 1: one would be say about spreading the idea of possible
Speaker 1: damaging side effects of vaccines, where like with any medication,
Speaker 1: there is going to be some incidents of side effects,
Speaker 1: so you might say that here's a vaccine for a
Speaker 1: disease that you really should get because without this vaccine,
Speaker 1: you're putting yourself at much greater risk, you know, and
Speaker 1: you're putting public health at greater risk. But there's some
Speaker 1: extremely tiny percentage chance of some kind of complication. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you want people to be informed about what the possible
Speaker 1: side effects of any medication they get are. But what
Speaker 1: if knowing about this incredibly unlikely possibility discourages people from
Speaker 1: getting a vaccine that they really need that would definitely
Speaker 1: be harmful. Yeah, so I think that could go in, uh,
Speaker 1: in that category as well. Obviously, if people were accurately
Speaker 1: doing the risk benefit analysis, they would say, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course I need to get the vaccine, but maybe just
Speaker 1: the idea of some incredibly unlikely negative complication from a
Speaker 1: vaccine would be so vivid in their mind that it
Speaker 1: would prevent them from getting the vaccine because the disease
Speaker 1: that the vaccine protects them from is just not as vivid.
Speaker 1: An example, Yeah, another example that possible example that comes
Speaker 1: to mind is, for instance, if you pick up the
Speaker 1: idea that, hey, some scientists argue that red wine has
Speaker 1: has health has a health benefit too. Oh yeah, if
Speaker 1: you take that as a reason then to drink three
Speaker 1: bottles of wine yourself every evening, then I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty safe to say you're taking things a little bit
Speaker 1: too far, you know. Okay, yeah, capine too, but that's
Speaker 1: not medical advice that um. But but certainly this is
Speaker 1: something where you could take a nugget of truth, or
Speaker 1: at least, I mean you can say yes, some scientists
Speaker 1: have presented information and findings that back up the idea
Speaker 1: that there are health benefits to say, red wine or
Speaker 1: dark chocolate, you name it. Obviously, these these are these
Speaker 1: are studies that make headlines all the time. But if
Speaker 1: you just take that then as an excuse to just
Speaker 1: fully indulge yourself in red wine, into heart chocolate to
Speaker 1: the point that it harms you, then yeah, then that
Speaker 1: is not good. Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay,
Speaker 1: you ready for the next one. Let's do it, Okay.
Speaker 1: Our listener Jose writes to us about the Basilisk episode.
Speaker 1: Jose rights, Hi, guys, greetings from Mexico. I've been a
Speaker 1: longtime listener and I have to say I love the show.
Speaker 1: Keep it up, and in hearing your last episode, I
Speaker 1: decided to send my first listener mail. Sorry in advance
Speaker 1: for suboptimal English. I think your English is great, Jose, Yeah,
Speaker 1: way better than my Spanish. Um. To the point, though
Speaker 1: I don't agree with the premise of the superior future
Speaker 1: punitive AI overlord, good neither do I. I have to
Speaker 1: say I found a somewhat possible reason for it to
Speaker 1: follow through with its hypothetical threat. Assuming it's not quite
Speaker 1: a godlike being. Maybe it's doing so to incite fear
Speaker 1: on the future people as a way to incentivize the
Speaker 1: creation of its superior future overlord. I realized it's a
Speaker 1: cyclic way of thinking, but I just wanted to share
Speaker 1: thanks a lot and keep up the good job. Jose. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting idea. So this is like
Speaker 1: some very powerful inter immediate AI needs help achieving an
Speaker 1: even higher state of itself, so it's not retroactive a
Speaker 1: causal blackmail, but it would just be punishing people for
Speaker 1: normal future facing blackmail. So there's kind of an odds
Speaker 1: the great and powerful vibe here, you know, where it
Speaker 1: makes sense to make your future possible self all the
Speaker 1: more fearsome so you can carry out your objectives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that this would just be like
Speaker 1: standard kind of Machiavellian tactics. You know that this is
Speaker 1: not involving any kind of a causal backward thinking decision theory.
Speaker 1: This is just well, I want to scare people to
Speaker 1: help me now in favor of the current future. Uh so,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'll just intimidate them based on what they've
Speaker 1: already done in the past to motivate people now to
Speaker 1: do more in the future. If what I just said
Speaker 1: makes sense, I just use future a lot. I remain
Speaker 1: somewhat skeptical of the superhuman AI idea, and even then,
Speaker 1: the idea that it would use blackmail in order to
Speaker 1: achieve a greater or good ultimately seems like a kind
Speaker 1: of like failure of ethics on the machines party. I
Speaker 1: don't think that really would count as a greater good.
Speaker 1: All right, here's another one from Chad. Chad writes in
Speaker 1: I love these types of episodes, an inevitable possibility of
Speaker 1: Rocco's basilisk occurred to me. If the Supreme AI has
Speaker 1: unlimited power within the realm of physics, then what if
Speaker 1: the AI also discovers how to make time travel possible?
Speaker 1: The thought hazard of our soul trapped and tortured in
Speaker 1: a digital hell. Increases to a different risk that we
Speaker 1: could be plucked quote unquote out of time by the
Speaker 1: AI and actually tortured in a future time. Just food
Speaker 1: for thought, chat, I think this is yet more fuel
Speaker 1: on the fire of the case against time travel. Right
Speaker 1: if you take as a possibility that you could create
Speaker 1: a superhuman AI with godlike powers that can do pretty
Speaker 1: much anything physically possible, and it and that anything physically
Speaker 1: possible includes backward time travel. Why haven't we encountered backward
Speaker 1: time travel yet? Well? Maybe it's the free Jack model
Speaker 1: of time travel, where they can they can only pluck
Speaker 1: Emilio Estevez out of the past if he has just
Speaker 1: been in a fatal car accident. Kind of a loophole. Now,
Speaker 1: I never saw Free Jack, But is that the one
Speaker 1: with Mick Jagger in it? Oh? It has an all
Speaker 1: star cast, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Hopkins, Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger,
Speaker 1: I don't remember who else, but I was super excited
Speaker 1: when it came out. I would I would call the
Speaker 1: local theater and beg them to please play Free Jack. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a flawed film, but but I have
Speaker 1: a warm place in my heart for it is the
Speaker 1: title of Jumping Jack flash kind of thing are they
Speaker 1: going for that? I don't remember that at all. I
Speaker 1: know how the title came about, but it did have
Speaker 1: that basic idea that you could pluck people from the past,
Speaker 1: but only in limited scenarios. And I think there's a
Speaker 1: recent television series. I didn't watch it, but my wife
Speaker 1: did where people were kind of plucked out of time
Speaker 1: to serve on sort of you know, a squad that
Speaker 1: does good kind of time cop scenario, but not time
Speaker 1: cop oh Man. And I do not know the name
Speaker 1: of the series, but I think it had Rob Low
Speaker 1: in it. Um perhaps some of our listeners have have
Speaker 1: viewed it. All right. This one last piece of mail
Speaker 1: for today comes from our listener Josh. Josh, writing in
Speaker 1: response to the Great Basilisk episode, says, Hey, guys, First,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say I've been listening for a
Speaker 1: long time and love the show. It's one of the
Speaker 1: podcasts I look forward to the most and keeps me
Speaker 1: entertained at work. So keep up the good work. Thank you, Josh.
Speaker 1: Now to why I'm writing, Bear with me as I
Speaker 1: need to do a little explaining I was listening to
Speaker 1: your episode on Rocco's Basilist and the part about religion
Speaker 1: and heaven slash Hell, et cetera got me thinking, I
Speaker 1: was raised in a faith which I no longer believe.
Speaker 1: In Jehovah's witness, they believe that there is no hell.
Speaker 1: There is just heaven and a paradise Earth for the
Speaker 1: faithful of mankind to live on for eternity. Only a
Speaker 1: small number of mankind's Faithfulty four thousand, will go to
Speaker 1: heaven and act as kings and judges for mankind, because
Speaker 1: there they are the only ones who really have experience
Speaker 1: of living on Earth in sin, yet still remaining faithful.
Speaker 1: The unfaithful will be gone. They won't be punished for eternity.
Speaker 1: They will just no longer exist. Everyone who has already
Speaker 1: died has already paid for their sins with death, and
Speaker 1: will be resurrected after Armageddon to live on a paradise
Speaker 1: Earth along with the faithful that survive Armageddon. There is
Speaker 1: more to it than that, but I won't go into
Speaker 1: it as it's not really relevant to my thought. My
Speaker 1: point is that Armageddon itself, according to their beliefs, could
Speaker 1: be classified as a biblical information hazard. According to the
Speaker 1: New World Translation of the Bible, the translation that Jehovah's
Speaker 1: witnesses used, which includes the Old and New Testament, Armageddon
Speaker 1: will only arrive once every living person on earth has
Speaker 1: been told the truth of the scriptures, so that nobody
Speaker 1: can say, well, I didn't know. It's not fair for
Speaker 1: me to be unexisted. That's not a word, is it,
Speaker 1: because nobody gave me a chance to believe. This is
Speaker 1: why Jehovah's witnesses go from door to door talking to
Speaker 1: people and trying to make others believe what they do.
Speaker 1: The thought came to me when listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: that according to their beliefs, you could technically postpone armageddon
Speaker 1: by keeping one person a small community might be better
Speaker 1: completely separate from someone who could talk to them about
Speaker 1: these beliefs. The information about their beliefs, if you believe
Speaker 1: what they do, is now an information hazard, because as
Speaker 1: soon as the last person that doesn't know about their
Speaker 1: beliefs receives that information, that will trigger armageddon. I just
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting and wanted to share that such
Speaker 1: a large biblical event in this belief system is an
Speaker 1: information hazard. It's not something I personally believe in. Anyone
Speaker 1: who does believe this wouldn't really want to stop armageddon
Speaker 1: in such a way, but still works as an information hazard. Anyway,
Speaker 1: That's all from me. Cheers josh Ah. Though that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I have to admit I don't I don't know much
Speaker 1: about the belief system of the job Is witnesses, but this, uh,
Speaker 1: this twist on the whole armageddon thing, I think that
Speaker 1: is a pretty strong case for for a and an
Speaker 1: information hazard, if you buy to the notion that once
Speaker 1: everybody has been informed, then Armageddon make commence. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: admit I don't know a lot about Jehovah's witness theology either,
Speaker 1: though I have had some very wonderful conversations with Jehovah's
Speaker 1: witnesses who came to my house. Oh yeah, they generally
Speaker 1: just give me the material and move on. Maybe I
Speaker 1: look distracted or something. I don't know. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean one day I happen to have time and the
Speaker 1: guy started by asking me questions about I think if
Speaker 1: I believed in evolution or something, and so I was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we just talked about it for a long time.
Speaker 1: It was very nice. Though he was a sweet guy.
Speaker 1: I am always open to a polite conversation about ideas.
Speaker 1: But there's another thing about Josh's email that I think
Speaker 1: is always interesting, which is like when people start, I mean,
Speaker 1: we talked about this in the episode and it comes
Speaker 1: through and things like Pascal's wager and stuff, But when
Speaker 1: people start applying like very kind of uh, kind of
Speaker 1: like cold direct decision theory to theological principles, like if
Speaker 1: you accept the theological principles as real, but then you
Speaker 1: just start saying, okay, how do you optimize for best
Speaker 1: theological outcomes? It seems like religions don't tend to encourage
Speaker 1: that type of decision making on the basis of theological principles.
Speaker 1: It's really more just kind of like, well, here the dogmas,
Speaker 1: and you should you know, follow certain rules. But when
Speaker 1: people start trying to like use decision theory to optimize
Speaker 1: what to do based on the theological principles, it all
Speaker 1: it always comes off as very like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how you're supposed to think about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say I tend to prefer it when
Speaker 1: the key argument of religion is hey, uh, look how
Speaker 1: we can improve your life for the lives of others
Speaker 1: on Earth. Uh that you know here the net positives
Speaker 1: of the belief in the real world as opposed to, Hey,
Speaker 1: we have to reduce the human population to a certain
Speaker 1: number so that the no God can return or something,
Speaker 1: and that's just a little you know, we we've got
Speaker 1: to get everything just right from again. And that's just
Speaker 1: not a great self for me. We're not saying that's
Speaker 1: what the Jehovah's witnesses or no, no, no no, but the
Speaker 1: but you know when it's when it's more based in
Speaker 1: like some specific scheme for the afterlife right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't personally see the appeal as much. It
Speaker 1: can sometimes feel kind of like one of those sci
Speaker 1: fi movies where you have to like trigger the machine
Speaker 1: in just a certain ways. We flipped the big switch
Speaker 1: and then you hit the command console. Earth has performed
Speaker 1: an illegal operation and we'll be shut down. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I still enjoy hearing about all these these different police systems,
Speaker 1: and I also have to acknowledge that, you know, certainly
Speaker 1: some of those belief systems out there that are more
Speaker 1: afterlife centric and and maybe harsher in their theology, we
Speaker 1: do have to acknowledge that a lot of times those
Speaker 1: religions are created by and or marketed to individuals who
Speaker 1: are living like closer to the edge in the here
Speaker 1: and now. And therefore, you know, I have to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that I have a certain amount of privilege in not
Speaker 1: being in uh, you know, not being a part of
Speaker 1: the target audience for those types of theologies. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's sometimes hard to remember that even
Speaker 1: within a religion that has particular dogmas, there's actually a
Speaker 1: lot of diversity of belief, usually what people privately believe
Speaker 1: versus what their church teaches. I remember growing up in
Speaker 1: Tennessee there were people who like belong to churches that said,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't drink alcohol, But they didn't know that. Wait,
Speaker 1: my religion says I can't have beer. I had no idea. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it's it's a big tent for sure. Uh. And sometimes
Speaker 1: there's drinking in that tent. All right. So there you
Speaker 1: have it, Part one of our Halloween Hangover listener Mail Extravaganza.
Speaker 1: That's it for the basilist content. We'll cut that off,
Speaker 1: but when we come back in the next episode, we
Speaker 1: have so much more. October Listener Mail to get through
Speaker 1: so many wonderful thoughts about of various monsters and evils,
Speaker 1: and threats and curses, and even, of course, the deadly
Speaker 1: mirkwood squirrel. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and try Harrison. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other UH, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hi, let us know
Speaker 1: where you listen from, how you found out, how you
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