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

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We are

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Speaker 2: heading into the vault for an older episode of the podcast.

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Speaker 2: This one originally published May second, twenty twenty three, and

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Speaker 2: it's part one of our series about the game of

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Speaker 2: telephone and related research on how information is transmitted orally.

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Speaker 1: A Dame of telephone. All right, let's do it.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert.

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Speaker 2: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and today we wanted

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Speaker 2: to begin a series on the show talking about the

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Speaker 2: telephone game. Many of you probably already know the general

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Speaker 2: contours of a telephone game. Just in case anybody escaped

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Speaker 2: childhood without playing this, describe how it often goes. So

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Speaker 2: you might gather all the players in the room and

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Speaker 2: arrange them in a line or in a big circle.

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Speaker 2: We always played it in a circle at my elementary school.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, you played it in a circle too,

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And I was about to say, very much

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Speaker 1: an elementary school sort of game. This would be where

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Speaker 1: I remember playing it from.

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Speaker 2: So you begin with a secret message. I think maybe

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Speaker 2: often a teacher came up with the message, but I

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Speaker 2: guess a kid could too. The main thing is not

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Speaker 2: everybody gets to hear it at the beginning. The message

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Speaker 2: can be a varying lengths or genres. Usually it was

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Speaker 2: like a phrase or a sentence length, and for the

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Speaker 2: purpose of some of the experiments we're going to look

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Speaker 2: at later in this episode, it tends to get longer.

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Speaker 2: It's like a full narrative length, and that's where you

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Speaker 2: can start really seeing interesting things about how messages change

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Speaker 2: across generations of retelling. But for the purpose of the

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Speaker 2: kid game, yeah, it's often like a sentence. So let's

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Speaker 2: say the phrase for our example is this sentence he

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Speaker 2: learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature

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Speaker 2: and because of it, the greatest in the universe. So

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Speaker 2: somebody takes that message, they whisper it into the ear

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Speaker 2: of the first player in the line, and then that

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Speaker 2: player turns and whispers it back from memory as best

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Speaker 2: they can to the next player, and then on down

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Speaker 2: the line it goes. So each player is hearing what

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Speaker 2: the other player's impression of the message was, and when

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Speaker 2: it gets to the end, you reveal two things to

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Speaker 2: the whole group, what the original message was and what

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Speaker 2: final message emerged from the chain of players. Now, if

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Speaker 2: you played this game with the man as a feeling

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Speaker 2: creature message, and you played it with like a group

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Speaker 2: of I don't know, twenty elementary school kids, I would

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Speaker 2: imagine you'd end up with something radically different at the

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Speaker 2: end than what you started with, maybe something about peeling potatoes.

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Speaker 2: And then probably also, to be honest, if I remember

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Speaker 2: how this went with kids, something about like it might

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Speaker 2: end with the phrase and his head was made of

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Speaker 2: poo poo or something.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Because any any group of school kids, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna have some conscientious kids in there that are trying

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Speaker 1: to contain and accurately reproduce the message. But you're also

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Speaker 1: gonna have some distracted kids, and you're gonna have some troublemakers.

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Speaker 2: But hey, hats off to the trouble makers, because in

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Speaker 2: this case, you know, introducing weirdness to the message on

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Speaker 2: purpose is half of the game. So there are several

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Speaker 2: different ways that I think changes to the message are

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Speaker 2: usually introduced in this form of the game. You know,

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Speaker 2: whispering ear to ear among school kids. Number one is

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Speaker 2: errors of hearing or speaking, So you might mistake a

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Speaker 2: word in the message for a sound to like word

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Speaker 2: like a man is a feeling creature might turn into

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Speaker 2: something about peeling, and then that could be confusing, and

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Speaker 2: then something about peeling potatoes.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: On down the line, you could of course have errors

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Speaker 2: of memory forgetting what the second half of the sentence is,

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Speaker 2: or forgetting particular word choices, you know, transforming a phrase

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Speaker 2: into a kind of rough gist of the phrase instead

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Speaker 2: of getting the words right. And then finally you just

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Speaker 2: have deliberate changes. And concerning those deliberate changes, I think

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Speaker 2: it's important to point out that ostensibly the purpose of

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Speaker 2: the game is to see if you can preserve the

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Speaker 2: message intact, but a lot of children playing lose sight

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Speaker 2: of this goal and instead play with the goal of

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Speaker 2: introducing the funniest or most entertaining variations on the original message. Because,

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Speaker 2: after all, if you are playing in order to preserve

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Speaker 2: the message as best you can, the sort of win

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Speaker 2: condition the optimal outcome is also the most boring outcome.

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Speaker 2: It's like, oh wow, it's stayed the same the whole

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Speaker 2: way around, okay, But the more catastrophic your failure, the

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Speaker 2: more entertaining the game becomes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of this comes back to the

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Speaker 1: fact that children generally have a very unbalanced and honestly

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Speaker 1: developing sense of humor. They don't realize that the true

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Speaker 1: humor of the game comes out of an organic attempt

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Speaker 1: to accurately reproduce the data, and that if you were

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Speaker 1: to intentionally tweak it for entertainment's sake, you would have

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Speaker 1: to do so with care, because if it drifts too far,

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Speaker 1: if at the end it just becomes this, this, this, this,

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Speaker 1: this spill of of of childhood obscenities, then it's it's

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Speaker 1: not funny, it's it's meaningless. But it's still probably going

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Speaker 1: to end in laughter for these children. I mean they're

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Speaker 1: the audience after all.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think genuine mistaken nonsense is the more deeply

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Speaker 2: satisfying form of comedy. Then, you know, attacking on his

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Speaker 2: head was made of poo poo to the end of

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Speaker 2: the sentence. But you know, when you're a kid, you

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Speaker 2: can't really resist, right. So I was thinking about, you know,

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Speaker 2: my memories of playing this game, and we did play

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Speaker 2: this game at my elementary school, and I was kind

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Speaker 2: of wondering why we played it as children, I assume

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Speaker 2: it was to teach us not to believe everything we hear,

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Speaker 2: to give a kind of stern example about the pernicious

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Speaker 2: power of rumors. But in my experience, kids always quickly

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Speaker 2: figure out that the real point of the game is,

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Speaker 2: like we said, to change the message on purpose to

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Speaker 2: be more entertaining, or usually to be you know, more

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Speaker 2: nonsensical or more scatological. The game works very differently if

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Speaker 2: everyone isn't committed to trying to preserve the message intact.

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Speaker 2: But then again, I guess you could say that even

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Speaker 2: with people throwing scatological nonsense in the gear is just

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Speaker 2: for fun, it still sort of works as a lesson

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Speaker 2: about the real world fallibility of word of mouth transmission chains,

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Speaker 2: because you know, the same thing happens there really in

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Speaker 2: a less obvious and less immediate form. But when people

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Speaker 2: retell a story or a rumor about their classmates, they

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Speaker 2: also will often introduce details in order to make it

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Speaker 2: more entertaining in their view on the retelling.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have to say that I don't remember

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Speaker 1: any kind of lessons attached to being made to play

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Speaker 1: this game in like elementary school or what have you.

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Speaker 1: It's just kind of like, this is what we're doing.

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Speaker 1: We're about to kill some time with a fun game,

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Speaker 1: and you know, and then the game, of course, just

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Speaker 1: descends into nonsense and childhood laughter, and that at some

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Speaker 1: point the adults that are carrying this out realize that

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Speaker 1: it's gone too far and we need to get these

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Speaker 1: kids involved in something else. But yeah, as we'll be

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Speaker 1: discussing on the show here, like, there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of different ways you can crack this nut, a lot

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Speaker 1: of different ways you can think about it. And I'll say,

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Speaker 1: the other thing that comes to mind is that I

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Speaker 1: can't help but make this connection between this game and

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Speaker 1: humor based on intentionally mishearing something. M Yeah, this was

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Speaker 1: really big in my family, to the point that I

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Speaker 1: think it was a bit overdone and got a little

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Speaker 1: annoying at times. And I don't know if that was

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Speaker 1: us or if that meant for all I know, maybe

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Speaker 1: it was fueled by everyone having played the Telephone game

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Speaker 1: in school, Like maybe it teaches you that, hey, if

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Speaker 1: you slightly mishear something, it becomes more fun and you

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Speaker 1: can just sort of revel in that, you know, and

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Speaker 1: why save the world when you can Save the Squirrel. Ha.

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Speaker 1: It's instantly funny, but it easily gets out of hand

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Speaker 1: if you just keep going back to that. Well.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's a common genre of joke on Mystery Science

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Speaker 2: Theater three thousand to take a kind of mumbled, hard

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Speaker 2: to hear Lyne and say, wait a minute, what did

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Speaker 2: he say about cheese?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean it's a great way to just tweak

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Speaker 1: something a little bit, create something that's minimally counterintuitive, something

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Speaker 1: that has just the right level of absurd. Again, assuming

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Speaker 1: a child is not, you know, doing this just willy nilly,

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Speaker 1: just drive things a little bit off the road into

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Speaker 1: the realm of humor. Yeah, it's an easy way to

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Speaker 1: get there.

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Speaker 2: For other variations on the basic idea of the game,

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Speaker 2: I was looking around and I came across one thing

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Speaker 2: I'd never played or even heard of before. But there

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Speaker 2: is apparently a variation called apologies for the name of this.

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Speaker 2: I don't know where this comes from, but it is

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Speaker 2: called Eat Poop You Cat. And it's the same as

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Speaker 2: the telephone game, except you play it on a piece

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Speaker 2: of paper, and at each stage of transmission you alternate

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Speaker 2: back and forth between text and drawing, which I think

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Speaker 2: is a fantastic idea. So you start with a text message,

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Speaker 2: the first person has to represent that as a picture,

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Speaker 2: and then the next person has to translate that picture

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Speaker 2: into text, and then back to a picture, then back

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Speaker 2: to text, and so on and so I think in

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Speaker 2: that format, especially because at the end you have a

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Speaker 2: written document of each stage of transmission that everybody can

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Speaker 2: inspect and enjoy it. That sounds like a much more

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Speaker 2: satisfying version of the game.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, terrible title, that makes it a little

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Speaker 1: difficult to research online. But yeah, I'd not heard of

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Speaker 1: this one. Yeah, same concepts of going back and forth

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Speaker 1: between drawings and written sentences rather than depending on a

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Speaker 1: chain of whispers. Not sure about its origins, but I

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Speaker 1: did notice that it's listed on board game Geeks due

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Speaker 1: to its popularity as a party game, but not because

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Speaker 1: it's like a typical board game or card game or

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Speaker 1: something of that nature. It's just like a party game

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Speaker 1: of parlor game, and it seems to be popular, though

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Speaker 1: I'd never heard of it before. Now there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of additional alternate names for the Telephone Game. In fact,

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Speaker 1: some of you might have gone into this episode wondering, well,

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Speaker 1: what is the telephone game. What are they talking about?

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Speaker 1: A lot of the names for what we're talking about

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Speaker 1: here do and seem to involve the technological metaphor of

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Speaker 1: the telephone, though at this point I guess it's increasingly

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Speaker 1: an outdated metaphor an outdated reference. We might need to

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Speaker 1: explain what a telephone is, because we're not talking about

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Speaker 1: a tiny pocket computer. We're talking about ultimately allusions to

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Speaker 1: like mid twentieth century telephones.

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Speaker 2: One of the early sources that I was reading about

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Speaker 2: a version of this game, which I'll get into later

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Speaker 2: in this episode, referred to it as a variation on

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Speaker 2: the quote Russian scandal. I've never heard of that name.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll come back to that in just a minute.

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Speaker 1: There are still other names that invoke snail mail, just

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Speaker 1: traditional mail, gossip, or listening. Though there is one major

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Speaker 1: name for this alternate name for it that's worth mentioning

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Speaker 1: because it actually is the primary name for this game

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Speaker 1: in many areas. In fact, if you look up the

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Speaker 1: Telephone game, say just a quick Google search or something,

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Speaker 1: you will find that say that the Wikipedia article, for example,

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Speaker 1: is not about the Telephone game. That is not the

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Speaker 1: title of the entry. The title of the entry is

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Speaker 1: Chinese Whispers. Now I have to admit that, yeah, I'd

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Speaker 1: never heard of Chinese whispers. I'd only heard of the

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Speaker 1: Telephone game. And I was a bit and I was

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Speaker 1: a bit surprised and a bit worried when I saw

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Speaker 1: that in the United Kingdom, in Australia and in New Zealand,

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Speaker 1: this is the primary name for it. And I was

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Speaker 1: afraid that there is going to be something at least

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Speaker 1: xenophobic in the tradition here. And it's interesting that it's

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Speaker 1: not an antiquated name for the game in these regions

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Speaker 1: as well. For instance, there are plenty of academic papers

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Speaker 1: that I ran across from twenty twenty three even that

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Speaker 1: use this terminology, where it's sometimes dealt with directly as

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Speaker 1: a concept, like some of the papers will be referring

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Speaker 1: to in a bit, and other times it's used as

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Speaker 1: a metaphor for something or just a snappy title. Now

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Speaker 1: what does this mean? Where does it come from? Well,

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Speaker 1: the primary explanations I've run across focus on the idea

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Speaker 1: of it being a mashup of whispers themselves being difficult

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Speaker 1: to understand. Again, that's how the game kind of works,

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Speaker 1: and this idea of the Chinese language, being from a

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Speaker 1: Western standpoint, arguably difficult a difficult language to learn. However,

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Speaker 1: I've also seen sources acknowledge that this could at least

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Speaker 1: be misinterpreted as referring to as a language that is

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Speaker 1: pure confusion or something along those lines, and of course

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Speaker 1: this would be very xenophobic way of approaching things. There

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Speaker 1: also seems to be some level of influence from the

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Speaker 1: ideal of Cold Wars and espionage here, which again is

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Speaker 1: particularly fair, as Junte Huang points out in Chinese Whispers

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Speaker 1: published in Verge Studies in Global Asians from spring twenty fifteen.

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Speaker 1: The term became popular mid twentieth century, and other Cold

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Speaker 1: War influenced and unnecessarily nationalistic names for the game include

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Speaker 1: Russian scandal, Russian gossip, and Russian telephone Now interesting. The

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Speaker 1: author also points to a pair of thought experiments linked

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Speaker 1: or possibly linked to the Telephone game that I think

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Speaker 1: are probably worth mentioning here. One stems from American scientist

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Speaker 1: Warren Weaver, who lived eighteen ninety fourth through nineteen seventy eight,

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Speaker 1: who apparently in a nineteen forty seven letter to MIT's

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Speaker 1: Norbert Weiner, commented on a translation problem and communication problem

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Speaker 1: writing quote. It is very tempting to say that a

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Speaker 1: book written in Chinese is simply a book written in

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Speaker 1: English which was coded into the Chinese code. Of course,

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Speaker 1: this is not exactly how it works. You know, we

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Speaker 1: discussed linguistic differences on the show before in translations, but

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Speaker 1: I think that's part of what Weaver was getting at here.

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Speaker 2: I mean, there's not sort of a universal meaning key

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Speaker 2: where all languages can just be endlessly coded in and

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Speaker 2: out of each other. That a language, a message in

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Speaker 2: a language, brings its own peculiarities, and any translation is

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Speaker 2: always an approximation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think this is perhaps more visible to

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Speaker 1: people today with access to various online translation tools, like

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Speaker 1: you don't have to toy around with those much to

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Speaker 1: realize that you lose something. And in fact not unrelated

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Speaker 1: to the telephone game. I remember pretty early on when

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Speaker 1: these translation tools began to become available for some language translations.

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Speaker 1: One thing you could do is you could take a

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Speaker 1: phrase like say I don't know a line from Shakespeare

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Speaker 1: translated into say Spanish or German, and then translated back

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Speaker 1: into English. Now do you get your perfect example back again?

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Speaker 1: Does it give you exactly what you put in no,

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Speaker 1: you end up losing something in the translation and retranslation,

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Speaker 1: and you can have some sort of telephone game esque

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Speaker 1: fun that way.

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Speaker 2: Whenever online translation first became a thing, I don't know

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Speaker 2: if that was Babbelfish or babbel dot com or whatever

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Speaker 2: it was, we thought it was absolutely hilarious to run

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Speaker 2: Metallica lyrics. They're about ten layers of translation and what

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Speaker 2: came out was solid.

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Speaker 1: How does that still hold up, you think, or have

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Speaker 1: the translation tools improved or changed over time? I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I was actually just trying to do it now and

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Speaker 2: something wouldn't work, and I mean it was like it

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Speaker 2: was too close in the end. Maybe there's some AI

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Speaker 2: detection of like, oh, it looks like you're trying to

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Speaker 2: translate Metallica lyrics. Let's shape that a little bit closer

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Speaker 2: to the original.

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Speaker 1: All right now. Another example that this author brings up

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Speaker 1: is this idea that was presented by philosopher John Cyril

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Speaker 1: born in nineteen thirty two, the concept of the Chinese room.

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Speaker 1: Some of you may be familiar with this. The Chinese room,

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Speaker 1: in this thought experiment, is a cell that contains quote

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Speaker 1: baskets of Chinese characters and a rule book correlating those

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Speaker 1: symbols to symbols on Chinese texts, texts that are going

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Speaker 1: to be passed to a single human occupant of the room,

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Speaker 1: like by you know, sliding them under the door. The

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Speaker 1: single human occupant of this Chinese room does not know Chinese,

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Speaker 1: but again these texts are passed under the door to them.

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Speaker 1: They take these texts, they compare the symbols to the

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Speaker 1: rule book, and then they get the response symbols out

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Speaker 1: to build a response, a string of responses that are

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Speaker 1: then passed back under the door.

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Speaker 2: I would say, with the Chinese room thought experiment, the

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Speaker 2: particular use of Chinese as a language as is not

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Speaker 2: important to the experiment. It could be any language unknown

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Speaker 2: to the person in the room.

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Speaker 1: Right right, and so hung it up by saying quote.

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Speaker 1: Although his Chinese interlocutories outside the room consider these strings

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Speaker 1: to be clever responses to their inquiries, the prisoner actually

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Speaker 1: has no idea of the meaning of the texts he

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Speaker 1: has produced. The scenario proves. Cyril argued that a machine

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Speaker 1: cannot think, just as the prisoner does not know the

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Speaker 1: meaning of the Chinese texts, so it's meant as a

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Speaker 1: means of refuting the idea of say strong ai that

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Speaker 1: reproduces human thought.

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Speaker 2: Now, we could spend a whole series of episodes debating

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Speaker 2: the validity of the Chinese room thought experiment, and in

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Speaker 2: fact it has come up on the show before. But yeah, basically,

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Speaker 2: I think cyl is trying to assert that there's something

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Speaker 2: that goes on when a human is thinking that we

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Speaker 2: call understanding, meaning when a human manipulates symbols, they have

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Speaker 2: some deeper recognition of what those symbols mean that has

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Speaker 2: validity to the whole of existence. Whereas in this experiment,

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Speaker 2: this is what he considered a machine that can you know,

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Speaker 2: like a like a chat GPT type machine, one that

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Speaker 2: can manipulate text and then spit out text that seems

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Speaker 2: to make sense. He says, Ultimately, it is a machine

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Speaker 2: manipulating symbols without actually understanding them. There's a ton of

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Speaker 2: back and forth between philosophers about like what it actually

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Speaker 2: means to understand, whether a human could truly be said

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Speaker 2: to understand, whether what we're doing is fundamentally different or not.

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Speaker 1: Again, though for our purposes, Chinese language is not really

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Speaker 1: part of the whole scenario and really won't be something

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Speaker 1: we're dwelling on moving forward. But if you are interested

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Speaker 1: in the topic of Chinese language and technology, there's a

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Speaker 1: great book that came out several years ago, The Chinese Typewriter,

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Speaker 1: a History by Thomas S. Mulaney. We had him on

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Speaker 1: the show interviewed him about the book and the topic,

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Speaker 1: So go back and find that in the archives if

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Speaker 1: that's what you're interested in. But coming back to the

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Speaker 1: telephone aka Chinese Whispers, Yeah, I'm going to keep calling

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Speaker 1: it the telephone game. I have seen some sources online

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Speaker 1: that steer people away from referring to it as something

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Speaker 1: like Chinese Whispers or Russian gossip, or whatever the case

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Speaker 1: might be.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've only ever known it as the telephone game.

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Speaker 2: I think that's what basically everybody in the US at

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Speaker 2: least calls it.

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Speaker 1: A more accurate name, though, especially for children, might be

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Speaker 1: Goofy Whispers.

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Speaker 2: I think now, I think you could argue about what

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Speaker 2: is actually learned or revealed from the version of the

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Speaker 2: game we described at the beginning, by having kids sit

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Speaker 2: in a circle and whisper a message in each other's

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Speaker 2: ears around the chain. But variations on the telephone game

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Speaker 2: have actually been used in scientific research in psychology studies

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Speaker 2: going back over one hundred years at this point and

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Speaker 2: have been very influential. So there are variations on telephone

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Speaker 2: game experiments that have sometimes been called serial reproduction experiments

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Speaker 2: or transmission chain experiments. Serial reproduction is very influential in

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Speaker 2: the history of psychology for understanding a number of different

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Speaker 2: phenomena communication, cultural transmission, and memory. Serial reproduction experiments were

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Speaker 2: famously crucial to the work of the British psychologist Frederick

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Speaker 2: Charles Bartlett often written as F. C. Bartlett, who was

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Speaker 2: a professor at Cambridge University. But Bartlett discussed serial reproduction

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Speaker 2: experiments in his very important nineteen thirty two book Remembering

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Speaker 2: a Study in Experimental and Social Psychology that was all

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Speaker 2: about phenomena of memory. So serial reproduction was one of

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Speaker 2: two major techniques that Bartlett studied. The other was called

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Speaker 2: repeated reproduction, and the difference was, like this repeated reproduction,

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Speaker 2: you would ask a single person to try to remember

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Speaker 2: an original piece of information and reproduce it over and

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Speaker 2: over at different intervals of time. So rob I might

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Speaker 2: give you a story like a text to read that's

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Speaker 2: a folk tale or a newspaper article, or a description

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Speaker 2: of an event, or a passage from a book, anything,

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Speaker 2: I'd ask you to read it several times, and then

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Speaker 2: I would ask you to write it down from memory

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Speaker 2: five minutes later or an hour later, a week later,

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Speaker 2: a year later, two years later, and see how well

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Speaker 2: you could remember it. But also, maybe most importantly, what

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Speaker 2: are the patterns of changes that you observe when you

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Speaker 2: do this with lots of people. That to me is

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Speaker 2: a very interesting question. Are there consistent differences what tends

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Speaker 2: to change when a memory fades over time? Serial reproduction

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Speaker 2: is a very similar experiment, except you add in the

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Speaker 2: telephone game element. So one person's attempt to remember the

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Speaker 2: text becomes the next person's study material, their text to memorize,

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Speaker 2: and then their attempt to reproduce it becomes the next

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Speaker 2: person's study material. And you do this on down the

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Speaker 2: chain with lots of different people, with lots of different

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Speaker 2: types of text, to see what sorts of trends emerge. Now,

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Speaker 2: the goal of the repeated reproduction experiments was to sort

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Speaker 2: of study how people remember the same event over time.

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Speaker 2: You know, how well do people remember something that happened

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Speaker 2: to them a year ago or several years ago, or

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Speaker 2: remember something they read from a year ago and what

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Speaker 2: tends to change. But the goal of the serial reproduction

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Speaker 2: study the telephone game version, was to study the effects

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Speaker 2: of the social transmission of information through word of mouth

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Speaker 2: in culture or through memory of written sources in culture.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is fascinating. On one hand, I can't help

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Speaker 1: but think, like with repeated reproduction, you know, we kind

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Speaker 1: of engage in this all the time, different people trying

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Speaker 1: to remember what happened in a movie. We can always

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Speaker 1: go back and look at the movie, and in many

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Speaker 1: cases we will go back and look at the movie

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Speaker 1: and see what actually happened, or trying to remember what

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Speaker 1: happened in the book. There's still that primary source. But

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Speaker 1: it makes me think of Fahrenheit four fifty one towards

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Speaker 1: the end of that, the Ray Bradbury book, where a

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Speaker 1: book about books being banned, books being burnt, and the

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Speaker 1: books then having to be committed to memory and then

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Speaker 1: passed on as an oral tradition again, which means that

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Speaker 1: you open it up to serial reproduction errors, which I

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Speaker 1: always found kind of fascinating. Like on one level, I

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Speaker 1: remember as a young reader of the book, I was like, oh, no, well,

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Speaker 1: they can't possibly truly memorize I don't know, moby dick,

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Speaker 1: and then pass it on like how like this seems

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Speaker 1: like this is such a feat of memory, and then

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Speaker 1: realizing well, they couldn't possibly keep it all intact. Something

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Speaker 1: would change, and this would be a process of these

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Speaker 1: of a literature becoming oral tradition again within these people

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Speaker 1: that are keeping the books alive until some sort of

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Speaker 1: regime change can happen and they can all be put

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Speaker 1: back on paper again.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting because I think in that kind of scenario,

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Speaker 2: what these experiments tend to show is that the original

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Speaker 2: form of the story would be lost. There would be

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Speaker 2: radical changes introduced through attempts to serially reproduce, especially a

437
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 2: long text over time, but the people reproducing it would

438
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:24,000
Speaker 2: introduce their own literary flourishes to it, So it would

439
00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 2: essentially become no longer the original work of Herman Melville,

440
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 2: but sort of a product of a serial reproduction culture.

441
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,199
Speaker 2: So it would have elements of the original story in it,

442
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 2: but it would have elements added in along the way,

443
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 2: some of which get reproduced pretty faithfully and some of

444
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 2: which fade away.

445
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:46,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of interesting to think about this in

446
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:50,920
Speaker 1: terms of remakes of movies, because sometimes it feels more

447
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 1: like a telephone game. What does John Carpenter's The Thing

448
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 1: have to do with the Thing from another world versus

449
00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:00,200
Speaker 1: the short story was based on. Other times, things feel

450
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: more like serial reproduction, where someone's like, Okay, this new

451
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:05,560
Speaker 1: adaptation is going back to the original source material and

452
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:08,920
Speaker 1: not the most recent film or TV adaptation of the material.

453
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:13,120
Speaker 2: Though interestingly, there are very different mechanisms in play there,

454
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:16,680
Speaker 2: because it is assumed that a big issue with the

455
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 2: loss of fidelity in serial reproduction is memory, right, people

456
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,600
Speaker 2: failing to remember certain elements of the story, and that

457
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:28,480
Speaker 2: failure of memory causes them to either just omit something

458
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:31,480
Speaker 2: or to substitute something else. In the case of remakes,

459
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's choices made for some reason. Presumably

460
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:38,120
Speaker 2: they can always consult the original source. So there all

461
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:40,680
Speaker 2: the changes are, you know, and his head was made

462
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 2: of doo doo or whatever, deliberate changes because the person

463
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 2: thought it would be more entertaining this way or more

464
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:48,439
Speaker 2: marketable or whatever.

465
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 1: True.

466
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 2: True, though it's very interesting how One of the things

467
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 2: we'll get into this in a bit. One of the

468
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 2: things revealed in Bartlett's research is that some changes that

469
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:00,919
Speaker 2: we would interpret as not just failures of memory, but

470
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:05,199
Speaker 2: as real editorial changes to a story do creep in

471
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 2: even when people are just faithfully trying to reproduce it.

472
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:12,439
Speaker 2: We unconsciously make editorial changes to narratives.

473
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's fascinating to break into that and see

474
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: what changes are more likely to be made, why we

475
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:20,120
Speaker 1: make them, etc.

476
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 2: Now, I thought it might be good to illustrate how

477
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 2: much actually changes in these serial reproduction experiments by reading

478
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 2: the text of one original text give into the subjects

479
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:36,159
Speaker 2: in Bartlet's experiments, and one example of what that text

480
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 2: looked like after ten transmission, after ten links in the

481
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 2: transmission chain. So this is probably the most famous example.

482
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:49,359
Speaker 2: It is a folk tale called the War of the Ghosts.

483
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 2: This is something that Bartlett presents as a Native American

484
00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:56,360
Speaker 2: folk tale. Now, I was trying to find out more

485
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 2: about the origins of this folk tale, like specifically what

486
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:02,680
Speaker 2: group people it came from, and when it was first

487
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 2: putting down in writing and so forth. I was not

488
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:07,639
Speaker 2: able to turn up that information, So I can't vouch

489
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 2: for how authentic this is to the actual tradition. The

490
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 2: folk tradition that this written version of the story is

491
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 2: based on but you can say at least that this

492
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 2: written version is the original version for the purpose of

493
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:24,359
Speaker 2: the experiment. Okay, so I'm going to read this original

494
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 2: written interpretation of the story. It's called the War of

495
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 2: the Ghosts. One night, two young men from Egguloch went

496
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:34,719
Speaker 2: down to the river to hunt seals, and while they

497
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:38,440
Speaker 2: were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard

498
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 2: war cries, and they thought maybe this is a war party.

499
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:44,639
Speaker 2: They escaped to the shore and hid behind a log.

500
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 2: Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of

501
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:51,360
Speaker 2: paddles and saw one canoe coming up to them. There

502
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 2: were five men in the canoe, and they said, what

503
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:56,879
Speaker 2: do you think we wish to take you along. We

504
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 2: are going up the river to make war on the people.

505
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 2: One of the young men said, I have no arrows.

506
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 2: Arrows are in the canoe. They said, I will not

507
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 2: go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not

508
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 2: know where I have gone. But you, he said, turning

509
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:15,919
Speaker 2: to the other, may go with them. So one of

510
00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 2: the young men went, but the other returned home, and

511
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 2: the warriors went on up the river to a town

512
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 2: on the other side of Kalama. The people came down

513
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:27,840
Speaker 2: to the water, and they began to fight, and many

514
00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 2: were killed. But presently the young man heard one of

515
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 2: the warriors say, quick, let us go home. That Indian

516
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 2: has been hit. Now he thought, oh, they are ghosts.

517
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 2: He did not feel sick, but they said he had

518
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 2: been shot. So the canoes went back to Egguloch, and

519
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 2: the young man went ashore to his house and made

520
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 2: a fire, and he told everybody and said, behold, I

521
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 2: accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of

522
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 2: our fellows were killed, and many of those who attacked

523
00:28:57,160 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 2: us were killed. They said I was hit and I

524
00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:02,680
Speaker 2: did not feel sick. He told it all, and then

525
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 2: he became quiet. When the sun rose, he fell down.

526
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:11,000
Speaker 2: Something black came out of his mouth, his face became contorted.

527
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 2: The people jumped up and cried he was dead. Very

528
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 2: haunting story.

529
00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: I think a little bit of a ghost arrow Elf

530
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: arrow action in there too.

531
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 2: Kind of okay. So Bartlett's method in the serial reproduction

532
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 2: experiments was he would begin with a text like that,

533
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 2: He would let the subject read the text in full

534
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 2: twice over at their own pace, and then fifteen to

535
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 2: thirty minutes later, the subject was asked to reproduce the

536
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 2: passage from memory. Would you like to hear what the

537
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 2: War of the Ghosts looked like in one of these

538
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 2: transmission experiments ten steps down the chain, Oh, let's hear

539
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:52,280
Speaker 2: it the War of the Ghosts. Two Indians were out

540
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 2: fishing for seals in the Bay of man Papan when

541
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 2: along came five other Indians in a war canoe. They

542
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 2: were going fighting. Come with us, said the five to

543
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 2: the two and fight. I cannot come, was the answer

544
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 2: of the one, for I have an old mother at

545
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 2: home who is dependent upon me. The other also said

546
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 2: he could not come because he had no arms. That

547
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 2: is no difficulty. The others replied, for we have plenty

548
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:20,400
Speaker 2: in the canoe with us. So he got into the

549
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 2: canoe and went with them in a fight. Soon afterwards,

550
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 2: this Indian received a mortal wound. Finding that his hour

551
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:30,880
Speaker 2: was come, he cried out that he was about to die. Nonsense,

552
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 2: said one of the others. You will not die, But

553
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 2: he did.

554
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: Absolutely terrible. They're totally ruin, said yes, like all the

555
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 1: great stuff in the original and is gone, like obviously

556
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: the stuff with the contorted face and the black bile

557
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:50,360
Speaker 1: leaking out of the mouth, like that's gone, and that

558
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:54,880
Speaker 1: was great. But also the relationship between the two warriors

559
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 1: that was pretty interesting in the original, you know, the

560
00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: idea that did one kind of like the butt to

561
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: the other and it's like, why I can't go but

562
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 1: you can. All that is gone.

563
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 2: That's the interesting character drama. The atmosphere at the beginning

564
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 2: is lost, the elements that it became that it was

565
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 2: foggy and calm when when the boats arrived. Bartlett himself

566
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 2: points out that the story has changed so so much,

567
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 2: and it's it's in fact, it's changed so much it's

568
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 2: easy to miss lots of the ways that it has changed.

569
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 2: It is drastically shorter. Basically all the supernatural elements have

570
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 2: been removed and it's just left as a material story

571
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:36,760
Speaker 2: of violent conflict with like none of the none of

572
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:39,240
Speaker 2: the ghosts. And it's still called the War of the Ghost,

573
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:40,479
Speaker 2: but there are no ghosts in it.

574
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: Yeah.

575
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 2: Pretty much all of the cultural conventions in the story

576
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 2: that would have been less familiar to the subjects at

577
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 2: Cambridge trying to reproduce this story, they've been removed or

578
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:55,960
Speaker 2: replaced with more familiar cultural elements, like, for example, just

579
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 2: the use of the word fishing for seals at the beginning.

580
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: And instead of referring to one's relatives back at home,

581
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: it's just oh me old mom.

582
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:10,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And Bartlett points out three major patterns that

583
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 2: have happened to the story. Number one, a series of omissions.

584
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 2: Details are just continually at each stage being left out.

585
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 2: Second is, he says, quote, by the provision of links

586
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 2: between one part of the story and another, and of

587
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 2: reasons for some of the occurrences, that is to say,

588
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 2: by continued rationalizations. So there were things in this story

589
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 2: that might not have made sense to the subject, might

590
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 2: well have made perfect sense to the intended original audience,

591
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 2: but because of cultural unfamiliarity, the subject didn't really understand

592
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:47,920
Speaker 2: why somebody was doing something, so they added in a

593
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 2: rationalization for it. And then the third thing is the

594
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 2: transformation of minor detail, which can snowball into major changes

595
00:32:57,800 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 2: over serial reproductions.

596
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:03,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating, And again it's interesting to keep in

597
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:07,280
Speaker 1: mind that, of course, the the oral transmission of stories

598
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 1: was of the original way that we pass these things on.

599
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:15,479
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you might have some sort of a

600
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: text refer back to, or some sort of you know,

601
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: iconography or or even like geographic features or what have

602
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:27,000
Speaker 1: you that that help inform the story. But otherwise it's

603
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 1: like it's kind of a miracle that any creative story

604
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: remained good over time, right, that it would just I

605
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: guess that that speaks to the role of a dedicated,

606
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: like storytelling class within a given culture.

607
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:41,520
Speaker 2: But even in those cases, I think you could not

608
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 2: assume that the story would remain the same. It would

609
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 2: be a tradition, and you might have a core of

610
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 2: a story that is sort of stable over time. But

611
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:55,320
Speaker 2: like storytellers are in a way also story writers when

612
00:33:55,360 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 2: they reperform. When we when anybody reperforms a story learned orally,

613
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 2: they lose some original detail and supply new details of

614
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:09,840
Speaker 2: their own, so they become a creative participant in the

615
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 2: story tradition.

616
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if your culture's storyteller happens to be Michael Bay,

617
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:17,839
Speaker 1: then you suddenly there's all these explosions that weren't there.

618
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,880
Speaker 1: It's the previous version. It takes on a certain character.

619
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 2: So in the chapter on serial reproduction in Bartlett's book,

620
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 2: he gives a bunch of different examples and he shows

621
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:39,800
Speaker 2: actually each reproduction along the chain so you can follow

622
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 2: it and see what changes they are introduced at each stage.

623
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:44,800
Speaker 2: It does this for a number of different types of texts,

624
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:50,760
Speaker 2: several different folk tales, different experiments with the same folk tale,

625
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 2: different like newspaper articles or passages from books, like passages

626
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 2: from Ralph Waldo Emerson, or just like stories from the

627
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 2: newspaper about tennis matches, all different kinds of texts, and

628
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,840
Speaker 2: he says, in every case, for every genre of information

629
00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:11,880
Speaker 2: he has tried, with the exception of what he calls

630
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 2: cumulative stories, and I think this might be stories where

631
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:21,400
Speaker 2: like each little element that happens is logically dependent on

632
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 2: the thing that happened before. And he says, quote the

633
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 2: final result after comparatively few reproductions, would hardly ever be

634
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 2: connected with the original by any person who had no

635
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 2: access to some intermediate versions. There is little doubt that

636
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:41,440
Speaker 2: with the ordinary free handling of material, which is characteristic

637
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 2: of daily life, much more elaboration commonly takes place, though

638
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,879
Speaker 2: it is perhaps difficult to imagine that very much more

639
00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 2: startling changes could occur. So he's saying that conditions of

640
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 2: the experiment are probably producing higher fidelity transmission than you

641
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 2: would expect in everyday life. Even in this setting, the

642
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:02,920
Speaker 2: changes are drastic.

643
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it brings me back to various folk

644
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 1: tale traditions and legends and myths that we've discussed in

645
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:11,360
Speaker 1: the past, you know, where there's sometimes a question of,

646
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 1: well does the myth in this culture, does this have

647
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: an actual connection to this similar myth in another culture

648
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: or where are they both independent creations? And you know,

649
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:26,959
Speaker 1: given the amount of drift that would that would take

650
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 1: place if something were transmitted to this other culture, potentially,

651
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:33,759
Speaker 1: I mean you can see where you could go either way,

652
00:36:34,239 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 1: like like it would just be so so much would

653
00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 1: be lost in it becoming a part of this other culture.

654
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:43,920
Speaker 2: Yes, And this actually connects to a broader idea that

655
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 2: Bartlett has Maybe we can get into this later or

656
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:49,080
Speaker 2: in the next episode, about the idea of schema. His

657
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 2: proposal was that in order to remember something, you don't

658
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 2: just remember the event itself, you encode it with the

659
00:36:56,680 --> 00:37:00,800
Speaker 2: help of what he calls a schema or schemata, basically

660
00:37:01,160 --> 00:37:04,919
Speaker 2: an existing body of knowledge about the world and about

661
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 2: your culture that can sort of like be a shorthand

662
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 2: for elements of the thing you're trying to remember, and

663
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:17,320
Speaker 2: thus things that fit with your available schema are easier

664
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 2: to remember. And things that don't just kind of either

665
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 2: get transformed to fit your schema or get forgotten. And

666
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 2: this would account for one thing, people's tendency to make changes,

667
00:37:28,719 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 2: especially to culturally unfamiliar elements from a folk tale from

668
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:36,320
Speaker 2: a different culture. But anyway, at the end of this chapter,

669
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 2: Bartlett was able to document a fairly consistent array of

670
00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 2: changes that he thought were most often introduced through serialized retelling.

671
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,080
Speaker 2: So I thought it'd be really interesting to look at, like,

672
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:51,919
Speaker 2: what are the changes that happen most often with this

673
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:54,800
Speaker 2: form of the telephone game where you're going you're reading

674
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 2: a text and then you're trying to reproduce it from memory,

675
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,239
Speaker 2: and then you go on down the line, what kind

676
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:01,799
Speaker 2: of changes show up the most? So, first of all,

677
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:06,520
Speaker 2: he says, proper names and titles of pieces. He says

678
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 2: consistent across the different examples. Some of the most unstable

679
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 2: details were proper names and titles. And this was true

680
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 2: for every genre of material, with every group of subjects tested. Now,

681
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 2: when it comes to proper names, the examples in the

682
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 2: reproductions printed in the chapter are numerous. I just I

683
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 2: dug through to try to find some particular examples. One

684
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 2: of them comes from a paragraph that was used for

685
00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:37,480
Speaker 2: an experiment about evolutionary theory, and the name is a

686
00:38:37,560 --> 00:38:40,840
Speaker 2: name to which an argument about evolutionary theory is attributed.

687
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 2: The name is mister Gulick, and the name mister Ghuliic

688
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 2: is transformed into mister Garlic by the second reproduction, and

689
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 2: it stays that way for ten more steps down the chain. Now,

690
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:57,240
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting that Gulick quickly changes to garlic,

691
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 2: but the garlic name doesn't change nearly so easily. It

692
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:03,760
Speaker 2: sticks for many more transmissions. I wonder if that's because

693
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 2: Gulick would have been a relatively unfamiliar name to the subjects,

694
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 2: and of course so would Garlick as a name, Except

695
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:14,000
Speaker 2: Garlick as a name for a scientist is weirdly evocative

696
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 2: of garlic, the food, so it kind of sticks in

697
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 2: the mind.

698
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah. And and just in general, so some

699
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:21,920
Speaker 1: of the weirder names are the ones that stick with you.

700
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:25,839
Speaker 2: But I would say my intuition would be more likely

701
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:29,440
Speaker 2: if it's a word in your language, especially an unusual

702
00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 2: word in your language, as opposed to like just a

703
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 2: name that that isn't like a noun in your language,

704
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:40,360
Speaker 2: but is also not one that's very common to you anyway.

705
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 2: There's another example. It's a story about a lawn tennis

706
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 2: match where the name Tilden transforms into Felden and the

707
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 2: name Brooks transforms into Bowden, and then a player named

708
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:58,080
Speaker 2: Captain Wilding becomes Captain wild and then his name just

709
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:03,239
Speaker 2: completely disappears from retelling. And this last pattern reflects that

710
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:07,239
Speaker 2: sometimes names don't just change, they completely disappear. They go

711
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 2: down the drain into anonymity. So you might start with

712
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 2: a story about a man named John Agar who might

713
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 2: then become a man named Garfield, and then he might

714
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:20,840
Speaker 2: just become a man. And Bartlett thinks that it's understandable

715
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 2: that proper names should change through retelling of a story

716
00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:27,680
Speaker 2: from memory, because he says, quote, their significance and application

717
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 2: are local and vary from group to group. And this

718
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:34,000
Speaker 2: sort of makes sense to me, like it usually makes

719
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 2: very little difference in a story what the person's name

720
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 2: is unless that name is connected to a known identity.

721
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 2: So it'd be kind of weird if the name of

722
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:47,320
Speaker 2: somebody you knew personally changed, or if the name of

723
00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 2: a famous person whose reputation you were familiar with changed.

724
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 2: But since the characters in these stories are usually not

725
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:58,480
Speaker 2: known to the subject. Their names are easily changed or

726
00:40:58,520 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 2: forgotten completely.

727
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: So if you were given a story about Yvonne and

728
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:07,719
Speaker 1: you didn't know that Yvonne is an important character in

729
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:11,839
Speaker 1: a body of folklore, you know, particularly like Russian folklore,

730
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 1: you could easily switch it out for Ivan or anything

731
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:16,919
Speaker 1: else and it would lose it. But if you had,

732
00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:18,440
Speaker 1: if you felt the weight of that, if you had

733
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,000
Speaker 1: a cultural attachment to a particular name, it would be

734
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:21,720
Speaker 1: a different story.

735
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:24,280
Speaker 2: It's this character, I.

736
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:27,439
Speaker 1: Know him, m hmm. Otherwise it's just a name now.

737
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:31,000
Speaker 2: More interesting to Bartlett is the finding that usually the

738
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 2: titles of stories are dropped fairly quickly from reproductions, so

739
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,439
Speaker 2: like the title just disappears, it is left off.

740
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:39,719
Speaker 1: Now.

741
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 2: These titles can be the conventional names of folk tales

742
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:45,839
Speaker 2: or the headlines of newspaper articles. It doesn't really seem

743
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 2: to matter. People very often just simply drop them. And

744
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:53,240
Speaker 2: this might seem kind of strange, since titles, including headlines

745
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 2: often provide the important element of setting for the story,

746
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 2: the context you need in order to understand what the

747
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 2: story is about or what the point.

748
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 1: Of it is. You know, part of me wants to

749
00:42:05,520 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: resist this idea and be like, well, how could you

750
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 1: forget the title? Because the titles like the thing that

751
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 1: you would like? How do you request it? How do

752
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:14,760
Speaker 1: you sort of catalog it? But then I think too

753
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:18,279
Speaker 1: various examples that came up in some sources I was

754
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 1: looking at, you know, looking at like urban legends, you know,

755
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: where you're not really perhaps attaching any kind of like

756
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 1: cultural value to it or really it's not the idea

757
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:32,800
Speaker 1: that this story is like important, you know, culturally or historically,

758
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:35,839
Speaker 1: but there's some other reason it's being transmitted and in

759
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:38,440
Speaker 1: doing so, Yeah, these are stories that don't necessarily have

760
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 1: a name or any kind of concrete name, like, for example,

761
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 1: like the old story about the you know, oh and

762
00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 1: then when he pulled up the hook was was hanging

763
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:50,560
Speaker 1: from the door of the car. You know. Some of

764
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: those kind of stories like those don't necessarily have names

765
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:55,680
Speaker 1: they I mean, I'm sure you can find a handful

766
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: of names for them, but there's going to probably be

767
00:42:57,200 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: a fair amount of drift. I guess the exception to that

768
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:02,319
Speaker 1: would be a case where an urban legend has is

769
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: so centered around a particular character or monster or something

770
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:08,719
Speaker 1: like if it were s that I don't slender man

771
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,839
Speaker 1: like that. The name is evocative. It brings to mind

772
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: a certain thing, and no matter what else is changing,

773
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,239
Speaker 1: you're probably going to hold onto that, and it's not

774
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:19,760
Speaker 1: going to be like skinny dude or something.

775
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 2: You know. Based on his comments about the role of

776
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 2: titles and how they're easily forgotten even though they are

777
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:29,400
Speaker 2: very important contextual information that colors are understanding of a

778
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:33,320
Speaker 2: story or an article, Bartlet writes quote. With this general

779
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 2: consideration in mind, it would be a matter of some

780
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 2: interest to study experimentally the psychological effects of newspaper headlines.

781
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 2: It looks as if the merely descriptive headline is the

782
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 2: most ineffective, and as if the biased headline may produce

783
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,280
Speaker 2: a profound effect, though or perhaps even because it itself

784
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:55,359
Speaker 2: is speedily forgotten. So, if I understand him right here,

785
00:43:55,400 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 2: I think the insight he's claiming is that you know,

786
00:43:57,719 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 2: the title or headline is able to make an impression,

787
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:04,800
Speaker 2: a strong impression that colors your understanding of the story

788
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:07,600
Speaker 2: or the article, whatever it is you're reading. But because

789
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:11,319
Speaker 2: the title or the headline is by nature forgettable, you

790
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 2: may sort of forget the kind of work that it

791
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 2: did on you that it did on coloring your understanding

792
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:20,080
Speaker 2: of a story. So you could write a perfectly accurate

793
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 2: newspaper story, slap a misleading headline on it, and the

794
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:28,799
Speaker 2: headline would strongly influence what people remember as the gist

795
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 2: of the story, even if they don't actually remember the

796
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 2: headline itself, so they wouldn't remember that the headline did

797
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:35,319
Speaker 2: that to them.

798
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:37,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, this is a great example too, and

799
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:42,759
Speaker 1: that traditionally the headline itself is a choice made by

800
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: the editor as opposed to the writer of the article.

801
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 1: And especially nowadays, you'll sometimes see a particular article or

802
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: story that comes out and you'll observe its title changing online.

803
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:58,440
Speaker 1: Either it may change on the same page that it

804
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:01,920
Speaker 1: has been initially published, or a change with republication on

805
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 1: other websites. So, yeah, great example.

806
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:08,640
Speaker 2: I can't tell you how often I've seen people arguing

807
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 2: about an article on the Internet, and what it turns

808
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 2: out they're really arguing about is the title of the article,

809
00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:17,399
Speaker 2: which is not something the writer even picked.

810
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:21,120
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, very often the cliche is that the

811
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:23,920
Speaker 1: editor comes along and slaps the title onto the article.

812
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 1: That is just going to be the most it's going

813
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:28,399
Speaker 1: to lead to the most engagement. It's got to hook

814
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:31,759
Speaker 1: people and potentially make them read at least part of

815
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:32,280
Speaker 1: the article.

816
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 2: Okay, but anyway, we dwelt on that one a bit,

817
00:45:43,320 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 2: the idea of proper names and titles. There is a

818
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 2: tendency over time in this type of serial reproduction experiment

819
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:52,440
Speaker 2: for those things to go by the wayside to change

820
00:45:52,560 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 2: or disappear. Second thing Bartlett says is a general trend

821
00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 2: in the sort of experiment, the bias towards the concrete.

822
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 2: He says, concrete physical details in drama are more likely

823
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 2: to be preserved in their original form than abstract content.

824
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 2: And Bartlett writes that with one notable exception quote, every

825
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 2: general opinion, every argument, every piece of reasoning, and every

826
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 2: deduction is speedily transformed and then omitted. Now that makes sense,

827
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 2: and I think we can see some elements of that

828
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:26,360
Speaker 2: in the examples he gives in his chapter. But he

829
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 2: says there's one exception to the bias for concrete detail

830
00:46:29,560 --> 00:46:35,720
Speaker 2: and against the preservation or expansion of abstract or mental detail.

831
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 2: And Bartlett says the exception here is the tendency of

832
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 2: folk tales to have a moral. Now, a quick caveat

833
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 2: on terminology. I think it can be confusing in this

834
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 2: context sometimes to talk about a moral of the story, because,

835
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:52,760
Speaker 2: of course, the moral of a story is not always

836
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 2: moral in character, meaning it's not always about doing what's

837
00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:58,959
Speaker 2: good or right. Sometimes it's just teaching you something about

838
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 2: the way the world allegedly works, or showing a way

839
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:04,759
Speaker 2: to be clever. And sometimes these lessons are not particularly

840
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:07,719
Speaker 2: moral at all. So when we say moral, you can

841
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:09,840
Speaker 2: think of it as the lesson of the story, the

842
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 2: part at the end where you might say the point

843
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:15,600
Speaker 2: of this story is to show you that. So while

844
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 2: a lot of non concrete detail and narratives tends to

845
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 2: change and disappear over time, this was not so much

846
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 2: the case with the moral of the story. In fact,

847
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 2: I thought this was very interesting. Bartlett says that when

848
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:29,560
Speaker 2: you do serial reproduction experiments with a folk tale that

849
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:34,240
Speaker 2: does not specify a moral in its original form, people

850
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:38,760
Speaker 2: will often add one during attempts to retell the story.

851
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 2: People actually subconsciously add on a moral of the story,

852
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 2: thinking it was already part of what they just read.

853
00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:47,680
Speaker 1: Hmmm, that's fascinating.

854
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 2: Next Trendy says is loss of individual characteristics. So there

855
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 2: is across the board, a loss of what Bartlett calls

856
00:47:56,520 --> 00:48:02,840
Speaker 2: the individualizing features of stories. Quote, the descriptive passages lose

857
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:06,359
Speaker 2: most of the peculiarities of style and matter that they

858
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:09,319
Speaker 2: may possess, and the arguments tend to be reduced to

859
00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 2: a bald expression of conventional opinion. So, in general, it

860
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 2: seems to me that even if a passage manages to

861
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 2: maintain the gist of a story, a story told, or

862
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 2: an argument expressed through the chain of transmission, these stories

863
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 2: tend to lose their soul. They become stripped of nuances

864
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 2: and stylistic details, the details that really make them what

865
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:38,880
Speaker 2: they are. And so Bartlett says that carefully articulated, sophisticated

866
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:43,160
Speaker 2: expressions of opinion or argument tend to get translated into

867
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 2: loosely related conventional views expressed in cliches. And I think

868
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 2: we've probably all had that experience of like trying to

869
00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 2: express something very carefully in a very clear and particular way,

870
00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 2: only to have somebody sort of translated back to us

871
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 2: as a very blunt or conventional statement that does not

872
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:05,960
Speaker 2: capture what we think we were trying to say.

873
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:09,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Or if someone's summarizing moment in a work

874
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: in a film or a book. You know, sometimes if

875
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 1: you have to, you find yourself explaining it and then

876
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: you're like, well, you just need to see it. I

877
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:18,399
Speaker 1: get a terrible job.

878
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 2: But this leads to what I thought was actually a

879
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:24,320
Speaker 2: somewhat poignant comment that seems as much about the nature

880
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 2: of stories as it does about the process of transmission

881
00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 2: between readers and rewriters. In this type of experiment, Bartlett says, quote,

882
00:49:32,520 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 2: nobody seeing a single reproduction could predict the remarkable effect

883
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:41,399
Speaker 2: which the cumulative loss of small, outstanding detail may have.

884
00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 2: Yet the effect is continuous from version to version, following

885
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:49,640
Speaker 2: constant drifts of change from beginning to end. And I

886
00:49:49,680 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 2: don't know. That kind of broke my heart a little

887
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:57,799
Speaker 2: bit thinking about how it elucidates the imperceptible but very

888
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 2: real ways that a single like word, choice, or detail

889
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 2: actually strongly affects how everything from a story to a

890
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 2: newspaper article is perceived. It's kind of one of the

891
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:12,759
Speaker 2: tragic things about writing is that, like, you make a

892
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:15,839
Speaker 2: little change here and a little change there, and each

893
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:18,840
Speaker 2: of them you could argue is insignificant in itself, but

894
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 2: it actually does change the effect of the piece overall.

895
00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 1: True, true, yeah, yeah, And then of course over time

896
00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: that it's like outside of that, even if you have

897
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: this story and nobody's changed it, it's sealed so it

898
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:36,280
Speaker 1: can continue to live on, like the languages and experiences

899
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:40,799
Speaker 1: around that story are going to change, and ultimately you

900
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:43,359
Speaker 1: have this thing that then nobody can relate to without

901
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:46,800
Speaker 1: a dictionary or a whole bunch of notes. Though, I

902
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 1: guess if it's a really good one, if it's a

903
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:51,480
Speaker 1: really good story, like it's sticking around because something in

904
00:50:51,520 --> 00:50:54,600
Speaker 1: there is still speaking, something in there is still alive

905
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 1: and hasn't died away with changes in language and traditions

906
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 1: and and so forth.

907
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 2: Now, one thing Bartlett points out here on this detail

908
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 2: about the stripping of individualizing characteristics. He says this is

909
00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 2: likely a limitation of his experiments, because again, this is

910
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:16,280
Speaker 2: not a perfect reproduction of the way story is spread

911
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:18,120
Speaker 2: by word of mouth in the real world. This is

912
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 2: a sort of approximation of it with some differences. And

913
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:25,440
Speaker 2: one different thing he says is that in the experimental setting,

914
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 2: where you're reading a text somebody else wrote and then

915
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 2: trying to reproduce it in writing from memory, there's very

916
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:35,120
Speaker 2: little incentive to elaborate in other words, to breathe new

917
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 2: individual characteristics into the text when you retell it. So Bartlett,

918
00:51:39,960 --> 00:51:42,719
Speaker 2: I think implies that in the real world you would

919
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 2: probably still have this shearing off of individual characteristics from

920
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:50,280
Speaker 2: the original story, but people along the chain would also

921
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:54,280
Speaker 2: be more likely to end up adding new individual characteristics

922
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 2: back in. So some of the original soul of the

923
00:51:57,560 --> 00:51:59,719
Speaker 2: piece of writing or the story might be lost. But

924
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 2: also so each teller breathes new soul in based on

925
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:07,759
Speaker 2: audience demand and what they think would be interesting, entertaining

926
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 2: relevant to the listener, and so forth.

927
00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and again Yeah. Speaks to the importance of

928
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: dedicated and successful storytellers throughout human history. It's not just

929
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:21,720
Speaker 1: that you need people that can keep this chain going

930
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:25,160
Speaker 1: and can keep spicing it up as other spies are lost.

931
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,479
Speaker 2: Okay. The fourth trend he notices abbreviations. In short, all

932
00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:32,439
Speaker 2: genres of serial reproduction tend to become more and more

933
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 2: abbreviated over time. Some of the serial reproductions he includes

934
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:38,840
Speaker 2: start off taking up more than half the page, and

935
00:52:38,880 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 2: by the tent threproduction they are just three lines. It

936
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:46,040
Speaker 2: gets massively paired down. In my judgment, just looking at

937
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:48,759
Speaker 2: the examples. This seems to be especially the case with

938
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:53,200
Speaker 2: more abstract writing as opposed to concrete narratives, Like it

939
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:56,919
Speaker 2: seems like the folk tales get pared down less than say,

940
00:52:56,960 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 2: the writing about evolutionary theory or or thoughts about travel.

941
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:04,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get it down to a tight ten.

942
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:07,800
Speaker 2: Now here's something I found really interesting in this little section.

943
00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 2: Many people will probably have noticed how stories can seem

944
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,959
Speaker 2: to become more exaggerated when they spread by word of mouth.

945
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:18,520
Speaker 2: This is the classic, you know, oh what's in there?

946
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 2: Like a there's like a musical where this happens or something.

947
00:53:21,600 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 1: You know.

948
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 2: It starts off as one story, and then as it

949
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:27,360
Speaker 2: goes through the rumors, you know, goes each each step

950
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:31,080
Speaker 2: down the rumor chain, the claim gets more and more grandiose.

951
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:33,640
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what wasn't there an old satura, not even

952
00:53:33,640 --> 00:53:35,280
Speaker 1: an old Saturday Night Live, But there was a Saturday

953
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:37,600
Speaker 1: Night Live sketch about this with tall tales about some

954
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:40,640
Speaker 1: coworker or somebody that's someone knew, and they just keep

955
00:53:40,640 --> 00:53:43,960
Speaker 1: getting more and more outlandish, this kind of escalation.

956
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 2: So this is usually chalked up to a desire to

957
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:50,680
Speaker 2: make the story more impressive and exciting, to the audience

958
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 2: by each person telling it. That obviously is a very

959
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:58,880
Speaker 2: real factor. But contrary to this mechanism, Bartlett notices another

960
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:02,839
Speaker 2: way that exactly duration can creep in over successive retellings.

961
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 2: He says, quote, when a generality is expressed with saving clauses,

962
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:11,719
Speaker 2: the saving clauses tend to disappear, even if the generality

963
00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:15,839
Speaker 2: is retained. And that really clicked for me. I was like, oh,

964
00:54:15,920 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 2: I bet that is true. Yeah, So your story might

965
00:54:19,680 --> 00:54:23,240
Speaker 2: start by saying the psychic mutant crabs were so powerful

966
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,959
Speaker 2: that nothing could stop them except maybe dynamite or Clint

967
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:31,200
Speaker 2: Eastwood in a jet fighter. Okay, next time, the psychic

968
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:34,319
Speaker 2: mutant crabs were so powerful that nothing could stop them.

969
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 2: So it keeps the generality and it forgets to add

970
00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 2: in the exceptions offered. And then the next time it's

971
00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:45,239
Speaker 2: the mutant crabs literally could not be stopped no matter what.

972
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 2: It's just rephrasing the generality, but in a way that

973
00:54:48,560 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 2: makes it sound more definitive.

974
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 1: H Well, I mean that makes it sound like everything

975
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:58,720
Speaker 1: creeps toward cosmic horror, horror, and or something to that effect.

976
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:01,600
Speaker 2: So sometimes the general reality itself might be lost, but

977
00:55:01,760 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 2: it might be preserved, while the nuance to it or

978
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 2: the exceptions to it that they just fall away. Okay,

979
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 2: two more things the trends in changes from these experiments.

980
00:55:11,680 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 2: One is what Bartlett called the rationalization process. Something that

981
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:21,040
Speaker 2: was common when people repeated folk tales, especially from cultures

982
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:24,600
Speaker 2: that they weren't as familiar with, was the introduction of

983
00:55:24,640 --> 00:55:29,799
Speaker 2: explanatory rationalizations for events described that didn't make sense to them.

984
00:55:29,840 --> 00:55:32,880
Speaker 2: And again that didn't make sense to them as a reader,

985
00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 2: might have made perfect sense to a person who would

986
00:55:36,719 --> 00:55:38,920
Speaker 2: have been more familiar with this folk tale and familiar

987
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:40,360
Speaker 2: with the cultural context.

988
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:43,160
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Makes me think back to our example earlier,

989
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,240
Speaker 1: the changing of my relatives' won't know what has happened

990
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:48,200
Speaker 1: to me, which is a statement it feels like it

991
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 1: might connect to a different culture's idea of the importance

992
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:56,320
Speaker 1: of our ancestors or something, and he gets transformed into ah,

993
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:59,080
Speaker 1: my mom is old and I have to look after exactly.

994
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:02,239
Speaker 2: I think that is one of the change toward what

995
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:06,560
Speaker 2: the reader would view as a rationalization. So, just as

996
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 2: one more example in these experiments, one of these experiments

997
00:56:09,600 --> 00:56:13,200
Speaker 2: has a folk story that is reportedly from the Congo

998
00:56:13,760 --> 00:56:15,920
Speaker 2: about a boy who wants to hide from his father,

999
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 2: so he transforms himself into a kernel of a peanut,

1000
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:23,000
Speaker 2: which is subsequently eaten by a fowl, which is eaten

1001
00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:25,320
Speaker 2: by a bush cat, which is eaten by a dog,

1002
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:27,680
Speaker 2: which is eaten by a python. And then at the

1003
00:56:27,719 --> 00:56:30,719
Speaker 2: end of the story, the father finds the python caught

1004
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:33,280
Speaker 2: in his fish trap. He opens it up, finds the dog,

1005
00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:35,800
Speaker 2: opens the dog. He goes down the line of animals

1006
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:38,920
Speaker 2: until he finds the boy disguised as a peanut. Opens

1007
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 2: up the nut, and there's the boy. Now. In the

1008
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:45,720
Speaker 2: original text used for this experiment, there is no explicitly

1009
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 2: given reason why the boy wanted to hide. It just

1010
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,720
Speaker 2: says a son said to his father, I will hide

1011
00:56:52,760 --> 00:56:55,040
Speaker 2: and you will not be able to find me. And

1012
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:58,319
Speaker 2: so Bartlett reproduces all of the stages of transmission in

1013
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 2: one of these experiments with this folk, and by the

1014
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:04,479
Speaker 2: thirteenth transmission, the story begins by saying that the boy

1015
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:08,280
Speaker 2: is trying to hide because he is afraid of his father,

1016
00:57:08,840 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 2: a rationalization that was not there to begin with, and

1017
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:14,600
Speaker 2: in fact violates what I took to be the implied

1018
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:18,520
Speaker 2: playfulness of the original first line that the boy wants

1019
00:57:18,600 --> 00:57:20,640
Speaker 2: to hide from his father because oh, and the story

1020
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:22,720
Speaker 2: is called a boy who tried to outwit his father.

1021
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:27,920
Speaker 1: We simply didn't think that the boy's hiding was earned

1022
00:57:27,960 --> 00:57:31,840
Speaker 1: in the text. We needed a stronger rationalization for him hiding.

1023
00:57:32,520 --> 00:57:36,560
Speaker 2: So by the seventeenth transmission there was a further rationalization.

1024
00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 2: A boy who had been up to some mischief wanted

1025
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 2: to hide from his father, whose anger he feared. So

1026
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 2: he wants to hide because he's afraid of his father,

1027
00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:51,680
Speaker 2: because he had committed some mischief. And it's interesting also

1028
00:57:51,760 --> 00:57:55,440
Speaker 2: that I think these rationalizing details are also the sorts

1029
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 2: of non concrete mental phenomena that would be liable to

1030
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:01,280
Speaker 2: be stripped out by subsequent retellings. So these things could

1031
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:04,160
Speaker 2: probably kind of wash in and then wash out again.

1032
00:58:04,840 --> 00:58:07,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you can just imagine the various judgment

1033
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 1: calls that are being made here subconsciously, you know, like,

1034
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:12,520
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea that the father is the

1035
00:58:12,600 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 1: antagonist here. Let's make the what if the boy were

1036
00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:21,400
Speaker 1: a little rowdy and he's bringing mischief into the scenario.

1037
00:58:21,560 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: Let's go in that direction.

1038
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:26,760
Speaker 2: Interesting paradox. While many subjects have an urge to add

1039
00:58:26,800 --> 00:58:30,920
Speaker 2: what they obviously believe to be rationalizing details to a story.

1040
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:34,480
Speaker 2: When a character's actions don't make sense to them, or

1041
00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:37,760
Speaker 2: when the connection between two described events is unclear to them.

1042
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:41,439
Speaker 2: People tend to do exactly the opposite with quote descriptive

1043
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:46,320
Speaker 2: and argumentative passages, which, over subsequent retellings, tend to, in

1044
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 2: Bartlett's words, degenerate into a few apparently disconnected sentences. And

1045
00:58:52,640 --> 00:58:55,720
Speaker 2: that is definitely true of like the attempts to reproduce

1046
00:58:55,800 --> 00:59:00,240
Speaker 2: like the argument about biology or something. Yeah so in

1047
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:02,760
Speaker 2: the end, Bartlett says, you know, at least in his

1048
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:07,800
Speaker 2: experiments with these types of transmission, it should be emphasized

1049
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:11,360
Speaker 2: that while accurate transmission is not impossible, it is clearly

1050
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 2: not the norm, especially for many kinds of information and

1051
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:18,000
Speaker 2: for most of the verbal information tested. The degree of

1052
00:59:18,080 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 2: change across several generations of honest attempts at faithful transmission

1053
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 2: is radical, even shocking. Bartlett writes, quote epithets are changed

1054
00:59:27,160 --> 00:59:31,400
Speaker 2: into their opposites, Incidents and events are transposed, names and

1055
00:59:31,480 --> 00:59:35,960
Speaker 2: numbers rarely survive intact for more than a few reproductions, opinions,

1056
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 2: and conclusions are reversed. Nearly every possible variation seems as

1057
00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:43,800
Speaker 2: if it can take place even in a relatively short series.

1058
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 2: At the same time, the subjects may be very well

1059
00:59:47,320 --> 00:59:50,400
Speaker 2: satisfied with their efforts, believing themselves to have passed on

1060
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:53,920
Speaker 2: all important features with little or no change, and merely

1061
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:57,919
Speaker 2: perhaps to have omitted unessential matters, you know. He also

1062
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:02,400
Speaker 2: says that people are probably being more careful to reproduce

1063
01:00:02,640 --> 01:00:06,960
Speaker 2: as accurately as possible in this university experiment setting than

1064
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:09,120
Speaker 2: they would be if they were just you know, living

1065
01:00:09,160 --> 01:00:12,120
Speaker 2: their lives, repeating something they read in the newspaper or

1066
01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 2: heard from a friend, where there's less expectation of scrutiny

1067
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 2: of their efforts for accuracy, and more incentive to alter

1068
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 2: a story to make it more entertaining, more impressive, more

1069
01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 2: illustrative of a point one wants to get across, or

1070
01:00:26,680 --> 01:00:27,440
Speaker 2: whatever else.

1071
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, thinking of your audience, for example, you know, retelling

1072
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 1: the story to a loved one, you know, what kind

1073
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:39,200
Speaker 1: of changes might you be making in order to make

1074
01:00:39,240 --> 01:00:41,680
Speaker 1: sure they enjoy it the most. This is something we'll

1075
01:00:41,680 --> 01:00:43,600
Speaker 1: get into more in the next episode as well.

1076
01:00:44,160 --> 01:00:46,800
Speaker 2: So finally, Bartlett says, quote, it looks as if what

1077
01:00:47,080 --> 01:00:49,960
Speaker 2: is said to be reproduced is far more generally than

1078
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:54,360
Speaker 2: is commonly admitted. Really a construction serving to justify whatever

1079
01:00:54,480 --> 01:00:58,240
Speaker 2: impression may have been left by the original. It is

1080
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:03,800
Speaker 2: this impression rarely find with much exactitude, which most readily persists.

1081
01:01:05,320 --> 01:01:07,920
Speaker 2: So I think that's a very interesting starting point. But

1082
01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:11,160
Speaker 2: there's obviously a lot more to say about this subject

1083
01:01:11,160 --> 01:01:16,640
Speaker 2: about serial reproduction of different forms, transmission chains, and the

1084
01:01:16,680 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 2: telephone games. So we will be continuing to look at

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01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:21,920
Speaker 2: this at at least one more part in this series.

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01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll go on beyond that. But yeah, I found

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01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:26,320
Speaker 2: this fascinating.

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01:01:26,600 --> 01:01:31,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, again it gets It bleeds into so many

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01:01:31,280 --> 01:01:34,560
Speaker 1: aspects of our culture, and it's going to be interesting

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01:01:34,600 --> 01:01:38,400
Speaker 1: to also take into account technological changes when we continue

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01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 1: to discuss this in the next episode. All Right, we'll

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01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:43,080
Speaker 1: close it out here, but just a reminder to everyone

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01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:45,680
Speaker 1: that stuff. Topop Your Mind is primarily a science podcast

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01:01:45,720 --> 01:01:48,520
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we

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01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 1: do listener mail. On Wednesdays we do a short form

1096
01:01:50,880 --> 01:01:54,040
Speaker 1: Monster Factor Artifact episode, and then on Fridays we set

1097
01:01:54,040 --> 01:01:56,760
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird

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01:01:56,760 --> 01:01:58,600
Speaker 1: film on Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 2: Huge things. As always, to our audio producer JJ Posway.

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Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

1101
01:02:03,920 --> 01:02:06,360
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:08,400
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:19,560
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.

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01:02:19,640 --> 01:02:22,560
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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01:02:22,640 --> 01:02:25,439
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:41,880
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.