Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: You know, we've covered a lot of UFO beliefs on
Speaker 1: the show over the years, talk about alien abduction experiences,
Speaker 1: strange lights in the sky, ancient aliens, speculation, and we've
Speaker 1: covered it all with our usual level of skeptical enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: I would say, not coming at it in order to
Speaker 1: prove all the stories true and believe, but also appreciating
Speaker 1: that fantastical beliefs and experiences and even delusions are interesting
Speaker 1: phenomena that are worth studying and paying attention to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why are people reporting these stories? What what is actually
Speaker 1: occurring that might be interpreted as such? And and then
Speaker 1: why do we tell the stories that we tell? Like,
Speaker 1: all these questions are sort of bound up in the
Speaker 1: same riddle. But to refresh, this is the basic truth
Speaker 1: of the matter. Humans have always seen things they couldn't explain,
Speaker 1: and some of these things were actual phenomena, such as
Speaker 1: shooting stars or unusual weather effects. Other times these were
Speaker 1: hallucinations which can occur can occur for a variety of reasons, only,
Speaker 1: some of which entail the ingestion of psychedelics or symptoms
Speaker 1: of mental illness, and in either case, things seen became
Speaker 1: become things remembered. And memory is a tricky thing all
Speaker 1: in its own, highly susceptible to error, to manipulation, and
Speaker 1: change due to personal desires, interpretations, cultural priming, and a
Speaker 1: host of other factors. Yeah, that's exactly right. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that I often think about doesn't get
Speaker 1: enough attention when when people discuss fantastical experiences like say,
Speaker 1: you know, UFO abduction experiences and sightings and things like that,
Speaker 1: is is all of these in between categories that create
Speaker 1: memory experiences for people or create you know, at least
Speaker 1: in some way or another, lead a person to relate
Speaker 1: and experience that are not exactly one of three clear options.
Speaker 1: The three clear options usually presented are somebody actually physically
Speaker 1: had this UFO abduction experience, they really were taken up,
Speaker 1: or they're lying and they're just making up a story
Speaker 1: they know to be false. Or they hallucinated it like
Speaker 1: they had a vision where they imagine that they really
Speaker 1: believed all this stuff was happening to them at the time,
Speaker 1: and that you know, and then they remember that hallucination
Speaker 1: as if it was a real physical event. I think
Speaker 1: those are actually not the only three options. They usually
Speaker 1: treated as like the main three things that could have happened.
Speaker 1: I think what gets underappreciated or these sort of like
Speaker 1: weird middle categories where you know, where like imagination and
Speaker 1: fancy and retelling and embellishment and all these different kinds
Speaker 1: of things sort of interact in a stew within the mind.
Speaker 1: And there's so many ways this can happen. One piece
Speaker 1: of research that I always just think it's such an
Speaker 1: interesting little example of demonstrating how contagious imagery and ideation
Speaker 1: can be between one brain subsystem and another is a
Speaker 1: two thousand six study called do you Remember Proposing Marriage
Speaker 1: to the Pepsi Machine? False recollection? False recollections from a
Speaker 1: campus walk And this was in the Psychonomic Bulletin and
Speaker 1: Review two thousand and six by by Semen, Philbin, and Harrison.
Speaker 1: And basically the gist here is that students were asked
Speaker 1: to perform, and too so somewhere asked to perform, and
Speaker 1: some were asked to merely imagine themselves performing or imagine
Speaker 1: seeing somebody perform activities, both normal like checking a pepsi
Speaker 1: machine for change or lying down on a couch to relax,
Speaker 1: and also actions that were bizarre, like proposing marriage to
Speaker 1: a pepsi machine or lying down on a couch to
Speaker 1: have a chat with Sigmund Freud. And it turned out
Speaker 1: in this study at least that even just imagining performing
Speaker 1: these activities caused many subjects to later recall having actually
Speaker 1: performed them. Of course, this doesn't always happen, like sometimes
Speaker 1: you remember the difference, but sometimes you don't remember the difference.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the contents of our minds I are contagious in
Speaker 1: a way that can spread into memory. Things that we
Speaker 1: think about happening, can in some cases become things that
Speaker 1: we believe happened. And this is possible in people who
Speaker 1: have not been diagnosed with any conditions that cause psychosis
Speaker 1: or hallucinations. It's just one of the many interesting ways
Speaker 1: that you can see uh memories being meddled with in
Speaker 1: in this kind of contagious way within the brain. And
Speaker 1: of course we do outright invent things, sometimes in full things.
Speaker 1: We have terrifying visions, and certainly there are hoaxes in
Speaker 1: the world. But still even with hoaxes. There's there's still
Speaker 1: this element of the human imagination that ultimately helped the
Speaker 1: dream of every god, demon, fairy and an extraterrestrial that
Speaker 1: we've ever considered. And once these things are created, they're
Speaker 1: essentially available as food, uh for our meaning hungry minds.
Speaker 1: And so the version of all of this that emerged
Speaker 1: in the post War War two period and continues on
Speaker 1: to this day, though with decreased energy, is that of
Speaker 1: the alien UFO, the unidentified flying object, the the the
Speaker 1: alien visitation. And uh. Today we're zeroing in on one
Speaker 1: particular aspect of UFO folk belief, one with some insightful
Speaker 1: connections potentially to older religious ideas. We're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about m I B. Men in Black. Should I sing
Speaker 1: the song from the movie. No, I don't think we
Speaker 1: should do that. I don't want to get night Cheese done.
Speaker 1: Here's right. Uh. So, to be clear, where the Men
Speaker 1: in Black franchise, I don't even aggressively pursues. I p
Speaker 1: that is a big franchise that we're still going strong.
Speaker 1: There's the first one came out, but yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a new one coming out like in the next year.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever saw past the first one.
Speaker 1: I think I too, have only seen the first one.
Speaker 1: Uh they maybe the other ones may be great. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but we're not really talking about those movies today. However,
Speaker 1: those movies are based on I believe they were based
Speaker 1: on a comic book. But but the whole franchise is
Speaker 1: based on this concept of Men in Black. Uh, the
Speaker 1: end result doesn't really do the original idea justice in
Speaker 1: my opinion. Um, even though many of us me included, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we learned about Men in Black for the
Speaker 1: first time through watching this n sci fi action comedy.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't be positive, but I know I
Speaker 1: watched a lot of terrible like BS fringe documentaries when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, you know, all the stuff about
Speaker 1: how I think I've said this on the show before.
Speaker 1: When I was in like second or third grade, I
Speaker 1: was big into like cockness, monster UFOs. I was convinced
Speaker 1: all that was real, and I think I I had
Speaker 1: watched like, I don't know what it was, it whatever
Speaker 1: masqueraded as like educational programming on television that was just
Speaker 1: like propaganda for conspiracy theories and beliefs about the paranormal. Oh,
Speaker 1: I too was very confused by episodes of specifically in
Speaker 1: Search Off hosted by Leonard Nimoi and Unsolved Mysteries hosted
Speaker 1: by Robert Stack. However, I don't I don't remember. There
Speaker 1: may have been episodes of Unsolved Mysteries that Involvement in Black,
Speaker 1: but if there were, I don't remember seeing. Well, I
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I saw something at some point that
Speaker 1: made me aware of the concept. But even if I
Speaker 1: wasn't aware, then yeah, definitely the movie came along. I
Speaker 1: think maybe I don't know if it was before or
Speaker 1: after the Men in Black movie. There was the episode
Speaker 1: of The X Files Jose Chunks from Outer Space, which
Speaker 1: is one of the best episodes of all time. It
Speaker 1: still holds up today. It's so good, it's so funny,
Speaker 1: and it has classic Men in Black cameos in It
Speaker 1: isn't the idea here that the Men in Black take
Speaker 1: on the guys of famous individuals, of celebrities so that
Speaker 1: you can't report it to the police without sounding ridiculous,
Speaker 1: which is funny because in in the episode you can
Speaker 1: tell they kind of did their research. This sort of
Speaker 1: mirrors real things that people reported about Men in Black experiences.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people said that the experience would be, you know,
Speaker 1: ridiculous or absurd, as in the implication is, oh, it's
Speaker 1: because they wanted to keep everything hush hush, and so
Speaker 1: they knew if they acted absurd, I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to tell people without them laughing at me. Now, some
Speaker 1: of you out there, you might have heard about Men
Speaker 1: in Black through at least a couple of different films
Speaker 1: that came out. One came out in nine same year
Speaker 1: as Men in Black, titled The Shadow Men, and I
Speaker 1: have not seen this yet, but I saw the trailer.
Speaker 1: It looks fabulous in a n way, featuring Eric Roberts,
Speaker 1: Dean Stockwell, and Andrew Pine, and uh, it's more of
Speaker 1: it seems to be more of a traditional Men in
Speaker 1: Black movie with with these like weird, tall suited individuals
Speaker 1: with dark glasses that are messing with their protagonists trying
Speaker 1: to keep them from sharing some sort of information with
Speaker 1: the world about UFOs, and then upon closer inspection they
Speaker 1: don't seem to be quite human. And then there's a
Speaker 1: there's a much earlier actually Men in Black plot line
Speaker 1: in a movie from nineteen eight titled titled Hanger eighteen,
Speaker 1: but certainly by the time that the Men in Black
Speaker 1: came out by the time, you know, the X Files,
Speaker 1: that had ample opportunity uh to uh to educate everyone
Speaker 1: about the idea. We saw all sorts of other echoes
Speaker 1: in various bits of media. For instance, the Thin Men
Speaker 1: and the X Calm Games are classic men in black
Speaker 1: characters like uh, thin thin guys in suits with weird
Speaker 1: um facial features that are not quite human. Uh. They're
Speaker 1: a doctor who I believe has a species called the
Speaker 1: Silence that show up. They're very men in black esque,
Speaker 1: and even a couple of ultimately you know, rather different
Speaker 1: bits of cinema, But the the Agents from the Matrix
Speaker 1: are essentially men in black. The Strangers of Dark City
Speaker 1: are in many ways men in black. That's interesting. I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about that with the with the Strangers, I
Speaker 1: definitely see it with the agents. Um. Well, before we
Speaker 1: get into the particulars, let's just try to sketch out
Speaker 1: the broad kind of version of the men in Black folklore.
Speaker 1: What what would you say is that the broadest possible
Speaker 1: interpretation of it. It's that most commonly somebody becomes in
Speaker 1: some way involved with UFO lore. They either have a
Speaker 1: UFO experience, they see a UFO, or they have an
Speaker 1: abduction experience, or they begin researching UFO phenomena, that's right,
Speaker 1: And then suddenly men wearing black show up, weird possibly
Speaker 1: government law enforcement types who are who suddenly show and
Speaker 1: want to suppress you, want to silence you, either after
Speaker 1: you have shared your claim of of UFO sightings or
Speaker 1: what have you, or in many cases before you share it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they tend to often be fond of like blacks,
Speaker 1: large black sedans, cadillacs. They come and they approach you,
Speaker 1: the person who is interested in UFOs for some reason
Speaker 1: or doing UFO research or how do UFO experience. They
Speaker 1: tell you either you didn't see what you think you saw,
Speaker 1: or they tell you to stop researching, or they tell
Speaker 1: you to stop spreading the word about UFOs, or occasionally,
Speaker 1: in some reports it's exactly the opposite. Sometimes people in
Speaker 1: black suits, men in black suits or black hats or
Speaker 1: whatever show up to say, actually, keep going and keep digging,
Speaker 1: there's more to see, there's more to learn. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: take out more of like a like a deep throat
Speaker 1: persona and stories and throwing their lots of variegated weirdness,
Speaker 1: you know, just sort of like strange flourishes on the story. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's put all this in context. I start talking
Speaker 1: about the time for aim here because I think the
Speaker 1: more we talk about it, the more obvious it becomes.
Speaker 1: Like where these elements, like even the deep throat element
Speaker 1: and the element of like like government corruption, uh, spies
Speaker 1: and espionage and what have you, where it all comes from.
Speaker 1: So reading around about this, it seems like the sort
Speaker 1: of the patient zero for all of this was a
Speaker 1: man by the name of Harold Doll. This when all
Speaker 1: of this took place. So claims were made by Fred
Speaker 1: Krismin and Harold Doll about threats by men in Black
Speaker 1: following sightings of UFOs and the skies over Mari Island
Speaker 1: in the Puget Sound. Uh. And this was related in
Speaker 1: Gray Barker's six book that they knew too much about
Speaker 1: flying saucers, which this book helped popularize stories of men
Speaker 1: in Black. Um, you know a lot of this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the people who are into UFOs,
Speaker 1: like this is these are the texts they were reading
Speaker 1: and sharing and and then um basing some of their
Speaker 1: experiences on. So another brief thing about timeline is while
Speaker 1: various forms of paranormal abduction experiences seemed to go way
Speaker 1: back in time. The UFO thing really seemed to pick
Speaker 1: up around and after World War Two. And you can
Speaker 1: offer all kinds of reasons for this. I mean, some
Speaker 1: would have to do with, like say, alleged sightings of
Speaker 1: UFO by Allied you know, pilots and Air Air Force
Speaker 1: personnel during the war. Um. But other things might be
Speaker 1: might have to do with certain trends in science fiction
Speaker 1: movies and things like that. Now another case, and this
Speaker 1: one was related by Peter M. Roycewitz, who wrote a
Speaker 1: really important paper that we're going to come back to
Speaker 1: because I don't want to spoil what we're talking about
Speaker 1: bye bye by saying the title just yet, we will
Speaker 1: come back to it. I mentioned in nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: in Connecticut, you had this guy by the name of
Speaker 1: Albert K. Binder. So Binder lived with his stepfather in
Speaker 1: the top floor of a house described by a local
Speaker 1: newspaper as a quote chamber of horrors. But I mean
Speaker 1: this seems like but basically they had a bunch of
Speaker 1: Halloween decorations up in his room. That sounds fun, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's like my room growing up. So you know,
Speaker 1: nobody ever said it was a chamber of hars anyway,
Speaker 1: uh Binder was a big sci fi fan, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to a friend state quote stating that
Speaker 1: he had learned the origin and ultimate goal of extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: visitation on the Earth unquote. But then he claims that
Speaker 1: what happened is suddenly Men in Black came up and
Speaker 1: they confronted him telepathically with the intercept about the intercepted letter,
Speaker 1: and then forced him to shut down his various UFO
Speaker 1: interest projects. I mean at least for a while, because
Speaker 1: he later writes a book about all of it and
Speaker 1: claims that the Men in Black were from another planet,
Speaker 1: among a whole host of other wild claims. Was this
Speaker 1: the one about going to Antarctica? I believe? And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's wild in a way that like, like
Speaker 1: you you kind of want to tell him, like stop,
Speaker 1: you stopped there because you had like a compelling story,
Speaker 1: just the right number of fantastic elements. But then you
Speaker 1: just you kept going with it. Uh So, Roy so
Speaker 1: at See points out that the Men in Black stories
Speaker 1: they really flourished for a very brief time in between
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six and nineteen sixty seven, with multiple UFO
Speaker 1: researchers claiming that they had m IB encounters they either
Speaker 1: encountered them alone or impairs, though mostly in threes. And
Speaker 1: they claim that these individuals, you know, they showed up
Speaker 1: and they know way too much about them. They know about,
Speaker 1: you know, what their UFO experience might have been, what
Speaker 1: the details are, and and no, you know, and they
Speaker 1: know about it before you you even had a chance
Speaker 1: to go and tell other people about it. And a
Speaker 1: lot of these tales seem to be inspired or colored
Speaker 1: by Cold War espionage fiction. Uh, you know, they often
Speaker 1: claimed the men in black often claim to be military
Speaker 1: intelligence offers, officers or so the stories go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: with the you know, sixty six sixty seven, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to miss the timing with like the James Bond
Speaker 1: franchise there and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just the idea of like shadowy government figures, you know,
Speaker 1: at large. So interestingly enough, during the height of all
Speaker 1: of this, according to m royce Witz, a confidential correspondence
Speaker 1: from the Pentagon went out to intelligence command centers telling
Speaker 1: them to notify the Office of Special Investigations if anyone
Speaker 1: pretending to be a military officer attempted to strong arm
Speaker 1: UFO witnesses, which which is interesting because I guess it's
Speaker 1: the The idea here is that if enough people were
Speaker 1: claiming it, they probably said, look, be alert, just in
Speaker 1: case there's anybody going around pretending to be uh law
Speaker 1: enforcement or a federal law enforcement and messing with UFO people.
Speaker 1: I think the most common allegation was that that they
Speaker 1: were somehow associated with the Air Force, right, because they're
Speaker 1: the Air Force, they should know, right. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think back then the Air Force might have had a stranger,
Speaker 1: more futuristic connotation than it does today. Now the Air
Speaker 1: Force just seems like a more mundane branch of the
Speaker 1: armed services. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about
Speaker 1: that now. There's also there's a lot of stuff in
Speaker 1: them in Men in Black Lore that doesn't necessarily, in
Speaker 1: many cases thankfully does not survive into our science fiction.
Speaker 1: For instance, Roy Switz points out that there's this whole
Speaker 1: anti Semitic strain of Men in Black lore from that
Speaker 1: time period that entailed to just a bunch of anti
Speaker 1: Semitic nonsense, which isn't surprised, and given the long history
Speaker 1: of blood libel and conspiracy theories about the Jewish people,
Speaker 1: and and how easily modern conspiracy theories fall back into
Speaker 1: this same down the same well as as well. Um
Speaker 1: And if you if you want to see this for yourself,
Speaker 1: just spend fifteen minutes on the internet, Like you, just
Speaker 1: go go to YouTube and start looking around conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: and see how long it takes you to hit something
Speaker 1: just overtly anti Semitic. Unfortunately, the conspiracy theory spaces uh
Speaker 1: often just run through with this stuff, right, and then
Speaker 1: it goes beyond um anti semitism. There's also a trend
Speaker 1: to describe men and black agents as Asian or ethnically
Speaker 1: ambiguous in some way, shape or form generally embodies a
Speaker 1: kind of like white American chauvinism. Uh and and just
Speaker 1: general idea. I mean it almost just suggests that what
Speaker 1: could you do to make somebody weirder while you just
Speaker 1: generally make them not a white American? Right? So royce
Speaker 1: Witz shares the two account by one Michael Elliott, and
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read a passage from it here. Quote.
Speaker 1: He had a dark complexion, but not Oriental or Indian,
Speaker 1: but dark. He had black hair with something of the
Speaker 1: greasy looks something looking somewhat punk by today's standards. He
Speaker 1: was very thin, with a chiseled nose and chin and
Speaker 1: had shrunk and it had sunken eyes. The man wore
Speaker 1: a black suit that needed ironing and possibly cleaning. He
Speaker 1: had on a white shirt and a black Texan like
Speaker 1: string tie. Later, when he rose to leave, I remember
Speaker 1: noting that the suit was much too large for him,
Speaker 1: despite his being over six ft as I estimated it.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot to unpack their like just so
Speaker 1: much of the like the racial other so many like
Speaker 1: just racist ideas about like uncleanliness and and so forth.
Speaker 1: But also though something that's strange and kind of different
Speaker 1: there is that I feel like later on the men
Speaker 1: in black phenomena came to be much more associated with
Speaker 1: like the black suits, meaning a kind of government associated
Speaker 1: authority and power. I think about like the cigarette smoking
Speaker 1: man in um in the X Files and stuff, as
Speaker 1: opposed to the kind of like weird rumple, like the
Speaker 1: suit needed cleaning and it was too big for him.
Speaker 1: That that doesn't seem like it really fits with the
Speaker 1: what would end up as the later standard idea of
Speaker 1: men in black. Yeah, because certainly by the time you
Speaker 1: get to you know, the more X files version of it,
Speaker 1: and these these variations that you see in the matrix.
Speaker 1: For instance, it's very much an idea of men in
Speaker 1: black as a symbols and or at least foot soldiers
Speaker 1: of top down government conspiracy, anonymous faceless authorities that they
Speaker 1: sort of like represent anonymized power. And yet in these
Speaker 1: earlier stories there were also some other additional weird factors.
Speaker 1: We already mentioned that the Air Force Association. But then
Speaker 1: there are these additional dimensions to the lore in which say,
Speaker 1: for instance, they have exaggerated characteristics that are almost comical,
Speaker 1: like they walk with a crazy gait, almost drunken lye uh.
Speaker 1: There's one account that Royce Wits shared whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: just talking about them just walking like in a weird way,
Speaker 1: with like as if their hips were swivel joints, gliding
Speaker 1: and rocking effect. I mean, one gets the image of
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Funny walks in your head when you
Speaker 1: when you read these, uh, these stories. But he stresses that,
Speaker 1: you know, one has to to again consider this from
Speaker 1: the vantage point of both tradition and experience. So tradition
Speaker 1: bears keep the lore of something like men in black
Speaker 1: alive through everything from weird fiction and movies to oral
Speaker 1: accounts and uh, you know, like UF all of publications, um,
Speaker 1: and even though they haven't necessarily experienced and the experienced
Speaker 1: it themselves. And then you have passive tradition bearers who
Speaker 1: know about it but don't actually pass it along. And
Speaker 1: then there are those who claim to have definite experiences
Speaker 1: with men in black and they tell their stories, which
Speaker 1: of course may may vary wildly. So it's it's I
Speaker 1: think it's a great way to look at something like
Speaker 1: this and the interplay between these different categories interpretation of
Speaker 1: paranormal experience via established lore and then accounts giving selective
Speaker 1: credence to that lore and inspiring new details as well,
Speaker 1: but again very selectively. So you know, it's like someone's saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I read this story there are men in
Speaker 1: black going around and they're they're suppressing the truth about
Speaker 1: aliens visiting our world. And then someone's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: had this this really weird thing that happened the other
Speaker 1: day where these people in black suits showed up and
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, yeah, this is lining up. And then
Speaker 1: they took me to ant Arctica and then they and
Speaker 1: then we were in ant and Arctica, I'm Jesus and
Speaker 1: you know, like and then they'll say, well, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: still the basic principle lines up, and that supports my
Speaker 1: my story right there, Like you can discard the stuff
Speaker 1: about Antarctica but still say, well, like, well, meeting men
Speaker 1: in black suits is not implausible exactly. Alright, Well, I
Speaker 1: think on that note, we're going to take a break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna get into the
Speaker 1: more of the meat of the episode. We're going to
Speaker 1: get into the reason that we chose the title for
Speaker 1: today's episode. Uh m, I b or n ib men
Speaker 1: in black or Nativity and black than all right, we're
Speaker 1: back now, Robert. It seems correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: that you were inspired to to want to talk about
Speaker 1: this topic today because of this paper. It's an older paper.
Speaker 1: It seems to be sort of a classic in the
Speaker 1: ufology uh area. It was published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: American Folklore in nineteen eight seven by Peter M. Roycewitz
Speaker 1: about the men in black tradition. Is Is this what
Speaker 1: got you into the subject? Yeah, I've never really looked
Speaker 1: into men and black before. Aside from you know, seeing
Speaker 1: some of these films that we've discussed, like as a
Speaker 1: folklore tradition, as a folklore tradition, I haven't really read
Speaker 1: anything about it, and then ran across this paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the men in black experience and tradition analogs with the
Speaker 1: traditional devil hypothesis. So obviously I'm instantly captivated. Um And
Speaker 1: in case you didn't pick up on it, the title
Speaker 1: of this episode the n ib Nativity and Black. That
Speaker 1: is the Black Sabbath Song, one of the grades. So
Speaker 1: in this paper he suggests that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: room to compare the men in black figure with that
Speaker 1: of the Christian devil. Okay, we can take a look
Speaker 1: at this. Specifically, he points to the tradition of the
Speaker 1: devil as this kind of a comic trickster in the
Speaker 1: eleventh through nineteen centuries, a shadow figure that serves as
Speaker 1: a kind of counterpoint to that of a saint. And
Speaker 1: I also have to add he didn't really get into this,
Speaker 1: but it made me think back to um our discussions
Speaker 1: in the past about witchcraft theorists and succubi and incubi.
Speaker 1: The idea here was that while demons could take on
Speaker 1: alluring forms, to tempt sinners to greater sin. Their guys
Speaker 1: could not be complete because otherwise it wouldn't be fair
Speaker 1: to the faithful. You needed there to be a tell.
Speaker 1: So you might have a dude who's being seduced by
Speaker 1: a demonic succubus. But unfortunately, while she mostly looks like
Speaker 1: a beautiful woman, she's got I don't know, like bare
Speaker 1: hands or something right or duck feet is specifically one
Speaker 1: that shows up in some of these old woodcuts, Like like,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a sinner, you're probably gonna either
Speaker 1: not look at the feet, or you're gonna see the
Speaker 1: feet and continue didn't see them and go on with
Speaker 1: your sinning. But if you're faithful, then at the very
Speaker 1: least you'll notice that there's some demonic pintages going on here,
Speaker 1: and then you should really cut and run. You'll be
Speaker 1: more observant, exactly. So I'm reminded of that. It feels
Speaker 1: like there's a certain like level of that with the
Speaker 1: uncanny um behavior and appearance that is often described in
Speaker 1: these um Also going back to author Walter Stevens take
Speaker 1: on witchcraft persecution that we've talked about in the past,
Speaker 1: his idea was that it was in large part an
Speaker 1: effort to prop up failing faith in the supernatural during
Speaker 1: the early modern period. That's interesting. Yeah, we so we've
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show before. But the idea
Speaker 1: that people often have wrong is that they believe that
Speaker 1: like witchcraft, persecution piqued in the Middle Ages and like
Speaker 1: you know, the Medieval period. But that's not true, which
Speaker 1: during an age of reason of everything seemed to be
Speaker 1: on the uptick. Yeah, and that's when it really came about.
Speaker 1: And so what the idea here is that if people
Speaker 1: start having threats to the idea of their theology, of
Speaker 1: their religious beliefs, they'll counter those threats with attempts to
Speaker 1: prove it. And if you could prove that demons are real,
Speaker 1: then you can prove that God is real. That's right. Heaven,
Speaker 1: you know, it tends to be a little stingy and
Speaker 1: dishing out proof of its existence. But if Hell can
Speaker 1: provide us with physical proof and or and specifically carnal
Speaker 1: exp orians by which to prove its reality, then that,
Speaker 1: by extension, proves the reality of Heaven and really had
Speaker 1: the reality of God. Now we don't know if Stephen's
Speaker 1: interpretation here is correct, but I do think that's a
Speaker 1: really interesting way of reading that historical fact, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you know, and I think he would probably
Speaker 1: agree that you have all these other factors involved as well,
Speaker 1: certainly um an age of of of misogyny as well.
Speaker 1: But but but I do wonder about all of that
Speaker 1: in relation to men in black and UFOs because if
Speaker 1: there is any doubt to the reality of UFOs and
Speaker 1: alien abductions in your mind, and you would prefer to believe,
Speaker 1: if you, like the poster want to believe, then if
Speaker 1: you have strange men showing up and pressuring you to
Speaker 1: be silent, well then that's even more evidence, right that
Speaker 1: there's something here, there's some truth, because otherwise no one
Speaker 1: would care if you shared the truth with the world,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, the devils wouldn't be seducing all these people
Speaker 1: if there if there weren't a god to fight against exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again, Royce, it didn't really get into that idea,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of my own ponderings. Now. He did
Speaker 1: bring up the idea of tulpas in Tibetan mysticism. So
Speaker 1: this is the notion that intense thought can materialize a
Speaker 1: form a thought being and in this Men in Black.
Speaker 1: They're they're kind of a tulpa of fear and anxiety
Speaker 1: surrounding big brother. Tulpas or an interesting subject that we
Speaker 1: can maybe return to. In fact, the listeners in the
Speaker 1: past have asked us to do episodes on tulpas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we probably should. Then it would be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Maybe we get to read with an excerpt from from
Speaker 1: a Boges short story. Well, I do think there's something
Speaker 1: interesting to talk about with the idea of tulpas as
Speaker 1: materialized thought forms, sort of like you know, imagination manifested
Speaker 1: as reality when it comes especially to like virtual worlds
Speaker 1: and technology. You know, one of the things that the
Speaker 1: technology philosopher, I don't know if he'd call himself that,
Speaker 1: but i'd call him that Jared Lanier used to talk
Speaker 1: about with like the possibilities afforded to us by things
Speaker 1: like virtual reality, is the idea to not just play
Speaker 1: games in virtual environments, but to be more manifestly and
Speaker 1: directly creative than we could ever be in any other
Speaker 1: kind of environment, to have methods through which we we
Speaker 1: just continually refine our abilities to translate thoughts and creativity
Speaker 1: directly into forms that can be sensed interesting. So you could, like,
Speaker 1: you know, under this kind of ideal virtual reality environment,
Speaker 1: you could have something like a tulpa. You could, you know,
Speaker 1: just imagine something and then have it brought into being
Speaker 1: in front of you and then interact with it. So,
Speaker 1: as far as Roycewitz is um used the term here,
Speaker 1: I think what we're talking about here is a kind
Speaker 1: of subconscious projection of both the fear of mainstream rejection
Speaker 1: by authority concerning UFO sightings, as well as a fear
Speaker 1: of retribution. And I think this is interesting because we
Speaker 1: do see this a lot, uh these days, you know,
Speaker 1: in messaging against political and cultural others. You know, like
Speaker 1: in a political adversary is at once both the thing
Speaker 1: that doesn't take us seriously and is also actively working
Speaker 1: against us in a dangerous way. So the enemy is
Speaker 1: both inept and insidious at the same time. Is funny
Speaker 1: umberto Echo, you know, pointed out that one of his
Speaker 1: characteristics of fascism, as he described it, was that fascism
Speaker 1: perceives its enemies as both impossibly powerful and extremely weak,
Speaker 1: like at the same time, you know that that its
Speaker 1: enemies constitute this overwhelmingly threatening plot against the power of
Speaker 1: the you know, the fascist contingent in the state and
Speaker 1: at the same time constantly talking about the weakness of
Speaker 1: their enemies and denigrating what they can do in contrast
Speaker 1: with the fascist's own strength is the minute. So I
Speaker 1: wonder to what extent then, in black are kind of
Speaker 1: a fear of and a desire for fascism, you know,
Speaker 1: like like the fear of these these government enemies showing
Speaker 1: up at your doorstep to suppress you, and also the
Speaker 1: desire for it, like the validation that would come with it. Oh. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's a really good point. I mean, that's something that's
Speaker 1: always going on in like conspiracy theory psychology is you know,
Speaker 1: if you not to say that there aren't real you know,
Speaker 1: there are real conspiracies and real abuses of power and
Speaker 1: all that, but in the ones that are more fanciful
Speaker 1: and imaginary and based on you know, poor evidence and
Speaker 1: all that, uh, where people just build these architectures of
Speaker 1: shadowy organizations out there pulling the strings on all the
Speaker 1: puppets everywhere. You can absolutely see this tension between of course,
Speaker 1: like the fact that the conspiracy is a terrible thing
Speaker 1: and you think it's a terrible thing, and you wouldn't
Speaker 1: really want it to exist. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: the fact that you believe in it kind of does
Speaker 1: make you want it to exist, because because other people
Speaker 1: don't believe you, and you want to be proven right,
Speaker 1: and so evidence of this horrible, unimaginably bad thing actually
Speaker 1: is kind of pleasurable and exciting to you. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this gets This is something you see with UFO citing
Speaker 1: experiences and alien abduction experiences as well, is that no
Speaker 1: matter no matter to what degree the individual believes the
Speaker 1: experience happened. And and I certainly want to drive that
Speaker 1: home that there are there do soon to be cases
Speaker 1: where people believe something happened and and and it may
Speaker 1: be traumatic. Uh And and I don't want to dismiss
Speaker 1: that trauma. But at the same time, like being a
Speaker 1: part of it is to be a part of something important,
Speaker 1: like the the the aliens came to me, So there
Speaker 1: is something, if not important about me, then at least
Speaker 1: my experience is important now. And and that that can
Speaker 1: be empowering. And when we see that in in you know,
Speaker 1: religion all the time too, uh, the idea that that
Speaker 1: that's something out there in the universe takes interest in us.
Speaker 1: Like that that is a value. So you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just nice that the Men in Black care. They
Speaker 1: showed up and they can bake up cookies. Now, Rosso,
Speaker 1: It's also connects the men in Black idea to that
Speaker 1: of the Brothers of Shadow in Eastern mysticism, and this
Speaker 1: is something I wasn't familiar with this previously either, though
Speaker 1: I guess I might have seen some echoes of it
Speaker 1: in various nineties television chefs. Yeah, I feel like this
Speaker 1: link might be kind of tenuous, um, but I tried
Speaker 1: to go dig deeper into this to figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on here. So it seems to me that the
Speaker 1: idea of the Brothers of Shadow is sort of an
Speaker 1: appellation by Western occultists, like like say the Theosophus or
Speaker 1: Madame Bolovatsky and all that sort of unfairly applied or
Speaker 1: associated with a sect or suborder of Tibetan Buddhism known
Speaker 1: as the dug Puzz or drug Puss, the drug lineage.
Speaker 1: Now I'll come back to that in a second. But
Speaker 1: so I was thinking about the concept of paranormal agents
Speaker 1: in black suits, and like, why why is that right
Speaker 1: there in their name, The fact that they wear black suits. Um,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting in what it reveals about about culture
Speaker 1: and psychology and archetypes. Like the blacks and tie is
Speaker 1: clearly a very meaningful part of the folklore architecture here.
Speaker 1: It says something about power, says something about anonymity, it
Speaker 1: says something about formality and professionalism and maybe some other qualities.
Speaker 1: But the black suit more traditionally, I mean, now that's
Speaker 1: this is very becoming very global, But it used to
Speaker 1: be a more like Western kind of European and American
Speaker 1: model of you know, how you demonstrate professionalism and culture, right,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of spread to other areas as
Speaker 1: a part of spreading Western culture. Yeah, And so I
Speaker 1: was wondering, Okay, what would men in black look like
Speaker 1: at other times and in other cultures with different ideas
Speaker 1: about the meanings of colored clothing and different types of clothing.
Speaker 1: I was trying to imagine, Okay, if you have men
Speaker 1: in black in Chinese UFO experiences, would they dressed the same,
Speaker 1: would they wear black suits, or would they tend to
Speaker 1: more often wear something different. So I tried to see
Speaker 1: if I could find any men in black type reports
Speaker 1: from for example, China, and I didn't really come up
Speaker 1: with any thing. I was reading an article from in
Speaker 1: the South China Morning Post about the UFO society of China. UH.
Speaker 1: This article reported quote, over the past ten years, there
Speaker 1: have been five thousand reports of UFOs in China, and
Speaker 1: it told the story of a man who claimed to
Speaker 1: have been abducted by an alien woman from Jupiter who
Speaker 1: had sex with him during his absence from Earth, and
Speaker 1: there were no men in black anywhere in these stories. Now,
Speaker 1: there may be some type of analogous men in black
Speaker 1: experiences in Chinese UFO encounters, but if if so, I
Speaker 1: couldn't come across any evidence of it. So that's interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I haven't done any any reading on really Chinese UFO accounts.
Speaker 1: I've done a little bit on the like sasquatch cryptid
Speaker 1: reporting in China, but not the UFOs. But that's interesting. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just interesting that clearly UFOs are a
Speaker 1: somewhat global experience phenomena. UH. People claim to have had
Speaker 1: these experiences in different parts of the world, but not
Speaker 1: everybody's going to have the exact same. Like kind of
Speaker 1: feeling is about men in black suits with ties, or
Speaker 1: maybe they will, I don't know, maybe that's a more
Speaker 1: universal kind of signifier at this point. Yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the the UFO theorist would argue that, of
Speaker 1: course the men in black are gonna wear black suits
Speaker 1: if suits are the standard of dress, and they're just
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna wear whatever is appropriate given the culture
Speaker 1: at the time. But what would that be, I mean
Speaker 1: that that would help help us get a better idea
Speaker 1: of what the men in black exactly are supposed to represent. Well, well,
Speaker 1: let's see if they landed in say Victorian England, what
Speaker 1: would they have worn where they would be dressed up
Speaker 1: like uh, like like the the the police. They definitely
Speaker 1: wear bowler hats. They look like Scotland yard. Yeah, I guess. So,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the standard is, right Edwardian men in
Speaker 1: black like that should be the sequel. That's what I
Speaker 1: want to see. Well, I'm sorry, I got side tracked.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the idea of the
Speaker 1: Brothers of Shadow. So I think that from what I
Speaker 1: can tell, this is a term applied by like these
Speaker 1: Western occultists, uh to a sect or suborder of Tibetan Buddhism,
Speaker 1: as I was saying, called the dug Pas with the
Speaker 1: drug push the drug pill lineage, and and I think
Speaker 1: this association seems to be unfair, as they obviously do
Speaker 1: not see themselves as like sorcerers or shadowy nefarious figures
Speaker 1: like the Western occultists characterize them. Uh. Though for what
Speaker 1: it's worth, older Western taxonomy is sometimes referred to the
Speaker 1: monks of this order as red hats, and they do
Speaker 1: dress in red robes and hats on some occasions, though
Speaker 1: this is true of many orders of Tibetan Buddhist monks,
Speaker 1: not just the drug tradition. So obviously the cultural associations
Speaker 1: are getting lost across history and translation here with this
Speaker 1: whole relation to the Brothers of Shadow. I don't think
Speaker 1: this means that Tibetan experiences with UFOs and men in
Speaker 1: Black wouldn't necessarily involve people dressing in red, though it
Speaker 1: doesn't make you have to consider this like what parts
Speaker 1: of the men in Black belief are cote icture, are contingent,
Speaker 1: and what parts would be universal. Alright, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to discuss the men in Black
Speaker 1: just a little bit more than thank Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: You know. Another comparison between the men in black experience
Speaker 1: tradition and other types of paranormal experiences people tend to
Speaker 1: have is experiences that are commonly associated with with sleep
Speaker 1: related episodes. Yes, like the shadow people. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a This is an interesting topic that I think I
Speaker 1: discussed in a much older episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind, but it seemed appropriate to bring it back
Speaker 1: up here. Um, you know, basically, it all hinges on
Speaker 1: a two thousand six study Swiss study that was published
Speaker 1: in the journal Nature about a possible connection between various
Speaker 1: shadow people um experiences and something actually going on inside
Speaker 1: the brain. Now, what exactly are these shadow people experiences? Like?
Speaker 1: So basically it's the it's it's not so much a
Speaker 1: full on men in black scenario, like I saw a
Speaker 1: weird man in a black suit standing you know, you've
Speaker 1: knocked on my door and we talked and he told
Speaker 1: me not to tell anyone about flying saucers. Nothing like that.
Speaker 1: But it's more of a u a symptom that's been
Speaker 1: reported for a while by a psychiatric and neurological patients
Speaker 1: where there is a feeling there's a sense of a
Speaker 1: dark figure, say in the room with you like looming
Speaker 1: over your bed maybe or something. Uh, and in fact
Speaker 1: that that's there in the men in black tradition. Some
Speaker 1: some of these reports mentioned that like people who had
Speaker 1: encounters with them, sometimes they'd be standing there over their bed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: looming over your like a ring wraith. Right. Um. So
Speaker 1: the researchers in the study then they made the discovery
Speaker 1: while evaluating a psychologically normal twenty two year old woman
Speaker 1: for surgical treatment of epilepsy, and when they electrically stimulated
Speaker 1: her brains left temporo parietal junction or TPG day they
Speaker 1: repeatedly gave she repeatedly had the sensation of a lurking
Speaker 1: shadow in her presence, like a shadow man, and she
Speaker 1: perceived this shadow person just behind her, interfering with her
Speaker 1: attempts to read a book. And when the researchers stimulated
Speaker 1: her in a seated position, she perceived herself to be
Speaker 1: seated in the entities lap um quote. He was clasping
Speaker 1: her in his arms, which she described as an unpleasant feeling.
Speaker 1: So essentially what seemed to have been taking places. She
Speaker 1: was observing her own body the whole time, but as
Speaker 1: the t PJ concerned self processing self, other distinction and
Speaker 1: multisensory body integration info. The electrical stimulation caused her to
Speaker 1: attribute her own actions to an alien other, and a
Speaker 1: similar distortion maybe at work in various other uh you know,
Speaker 1: psychiatric manifestations of alien entities, you know, anything that involves
Speaker 1: here being a some other being in your room, being
Speaker 1: an alien, a demon, a man in black, a spirit,
Speaker 1: a fairy, etcetera. So the researchers proposed that electrical stimulation
Speaker 1: of this area in the patient disturbed multisensory and and
Speaker 1: uh sinso motor integration of information with respect to her body,
Speaker 1: leading to the appearance of a first rank symptom of
Speaker 1: schizophrenia in a person with no psychiatric history. And it's
Speaker 1: notable here that the hyperactivity in the temporo parietal cortex
Speaker 1: of patients with schizophrenia may lead to the misattribution of
Speaker 1: their own actions to other people. So we see, you know,
Speaker 1: a related UM situation there. Well that seems like another
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a more clinical type of condition,
Speaker 1: but UM related to the milder version I've talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: How you know, there appears to be sometimes just contagion
Speaker 1: between what's going on in one brain subsystem and another
Speaker 1: brand subsystem that the actions that you see other people do.
Speaker 1: Maybe you attribute your own thought to your imagination of
Speaker 1: someone else's mind, you think they're thinking whatever you're thinking,
Speaker 1: or you you you blur the lines between imagination and memory. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: so I don't present this as as the answer for
Speaker 1: shadow people. Experiences are certainly for Men in Black, because
Speaker 1: there are various reasons that one might hallucinate Misremember we're
Speaker 1: engaging in any of these these situations we've discussed um.
Speaker 1: Oliver Sacks in his book Hallucinations specifically calls out hypnopompic hallucinations,
Speaker 1: the hallucinations that we have coming out of sleep. Um.
Speaker 1: He describes these as a source of malevolent entity perception.
Speaker 1: So you know, it could certainly be one of the
Speaker 1: reasons at play. But then again, to go back to
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier, something like men and Black,
Speaker 1: it's not just people having having an experience and then
Speaker 1: reporting it. It's also other people interpreting bits of that
Speaker 1: experience and other people yating things, creating fantasy and sci fi, etcetera.
Speaker 1: That gets up becoming a part of other people's hallucinations
Speaker 1: and other people's interpretation of hallucinations, so you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not happening in a vacuum. Yeah. Interesting. I was
Speaker 1: reading an article, uh from because so I was wondering, Okay,
Speaker 1: do men in black encounters still really happen? Yeah? You
Speaker 1: read about them from the twentieth century, from the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties and on through the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I haven't really encountered a claim
Speaker 1: of the men in black encounter or experience that that
Speaker 1: happened in recent decades. What's going on there? So I
Speaker 1: looked this up and I did find an article. I
Speaker 1: found an article in Slate by Aesha Harris FROMLVE about
Speaker 1: whether men in Black sidings still happen because most of
Speaker 1: the stories you run into tend to be older. And
Speaker 1: so the author in this article asked you fologist Jerome Clark,
Speaker 1: who has mentioned in Royce Wooz article whether people still
Speaker 1: report men in black encounters these days. Apparently the reports
Speaker 1: have quote tapered off significantly in the fifteen years since
Speaker 1: the original Men in Black movie was released. Um, but
Speaker 1: Clark consists he does not think that the film had
Speaker 1: anything to do with that. Instead, he attributes it to
Speaker 1: a lack of investigation into the issue in recent years,
Speaker 1: especially since the passing of the ufologist John A. Keel,
Speaker 1: who apparently cataloged a lot of these experiences. Uh, did
Speaker 1: a lot of this kind of research made by research
Speaker 1: and investigation. We're talking about continually writing about it and
Speaker 1: keeping the idea alive in UFO enthusiast communities and publications.
Speaker 1: But I think also, like, you know, collecting other people's experiences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um so. On the other hand, the British upologist Nick
Speaker 1: Redfern insists that Men in Black encounters do still happen,
Speaker 1: as chronicled in his book The Real Men in Black
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. I don't know if that's trying
Speaker 1: to cash in on a movie tie in, but personally,
Speaker 1: I would say, despite what Clark says, I would tend
Speaker 1: to wonder if the movie Men in Black does have
Speaker 1: something to do with the decline in Men in Black reports.
Speaker 1: I think this could be sort of inverse to what
Speaker 1: often happens where UFO sightings seem correlated with like Flying
Speaker 1: Saucer science fiction, and elements of these alien encounters sometimes
Speaker 1: seem to correlate with elements that show up in fiction.
Speaker 1: Over time, And I wonder if this inverse correlation, if
Speaker 1: if it is actually there, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if this inverse correlation is there, if
Speaker 1: it might have to do with the fact that the
Speaker 1: men in Black movies are comedies like that they make
Speaker 1: the idea funny and more and more so than that,
Speaker 1: because certainly we've have funny UFO and funny alien movies
Speaker 1: that have come out over the years. Certainly it wasn't
Speaker 1: a case where um Earth girls are easy killed off
Speaker 1: the idea of alien abductions. But you still have a mix, right,
Speaker 1: You have serious films and scary films and films that
Speaker 1: clearly are made by people who want to believe. Whereas
Speaker 1: the men in Black films are really outside of those
Speaker 1: other those earlier men and Black films that I mentioned
Speaker 1: in the X Files episode, it's in various sprinklings of
Speaker 1: men in Black lore and other UH pictures and shows.
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything that's really served as a
Speaker 1: counterbalance to the men in Black comedy movies, you know,
Speaker 1: like if we had just had one like deadly serious
Speaker 1: Fire in the Sky esque men in Black film like
Speaker 1: like that would have done a lot, perhaps to keep
Speaker 1: it going. Boy, what about the Eric Roberts movie, Well
Speaker 1: that was what though? Yeah, yeah, so it came out
Speaker 1: out of the wrong time, so you might have had
Speaker 1: balance initially, But then what happened when Men in Black
Speaker 1: two came out and three or the in the upcoming one.
Speaker 1: I think the next one is the fourth one. I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, but really there's the whole I think
Speaker 1: I'm asking you for the second time in this episode.
Speaker 1: They're on there at least four, so I only saw
Speaker 1: the first one of the movies. But I remember being
Speaker 1: gross in that way, like especially late nineties movies were
Speaker 1: gross where there was a time of h like c
Speaker 1: G I snot and slime, a lot of mucus. Am
Speaker 1: I wrong? Now? There was a There was a lot
Speaker 1: of gross stuff in it because there was the villain
Speaker 1: was it was a roach like essentially a large roach
Speaker 1: in a human costume, like wearing a human skin, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of gross side gags involving that character.
Speaker 1: Did I send you a link? I think I did
Speaker 1: send you a link to where I found the Men
Speaker 1: in Black feature film novelization. Oh yeah, well, I guess
Speaker 1: there would have been one of those, given the timeframe
Speaker 1: and and the you know, the scale of the film. Man,
Speaker 1: that's got to be like the ultimate movie novelization. You
Speaker 1: would not have imagined it could happen, and yet it did.
Speaker 1: You know. I would love to hear from anyone out there.
Speaker 1: First of all, if you've seen any of these other
Speaker 1: are Men in Black film, not I mean not the
Speaker 1: comedy sequels, but like the film or the the the
Speaker 1: earlier film, and you have any insight on them. I'd
Speaker 1: also love to hear from anybody who read the original
Speaker 1: comic books, like what were they? Like, are the fans?
Speaker 1: Are there are there fans of the original Men in
Speaker 1: Black comics? And if they are, do they how do
Speaker 1: they feel about the films? I'm always interested in the
Speaker 1: you know, how a particular franchise evolves like that. For
Speaker 1: that matter, if anyone out there has had experiences with
Speaker 1: you know, with Men in Black or UFOs, you know,
Speaker 1: we would we would love to hear from you. You know,
Speaker 1: we promise that if you be right in with your accounts,
Speaker 1: we will not uh make fun of you. We will
Speaker 1: you know, skeptically uh and enthusiastically approach it as we
Speaker 1: always do. Yeah, all right, well that's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: If you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, some of the various other, uh
Speaker 1: sort of paranormal episodes that we've recorded over the years,
Speaker 1: you can find them. It's Stuff to Blow your Mind
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