Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with another Anthology of Horror episode. I think
Speaker 1: we're into the Halloween hangover part of the year. Is
Speaker 1: that right? This is actually gonna be airing in November, now,
Speaker 1: that's right. We're recording this the week of Halloween. We
Speaker 1: wanted to keep recording Halloween content the week of Halloween,
Speaker 1: which means Halloween last an extra week in our publication schedule.
Speaker 1: This is indeed going to be Anthology of Horror Volume six,
Speaker 1: or we might say it's volume six six six, because
Speaker 1: we're going to be considering some infernal subject matter in
Speaker 1: this one. Do you know that due to textual variants
Speaker 1: in the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, there is
Speaker 1: some debate about whether the original number was six six
Speaker 1: six or six one six. They apparently both work as
Speaker 1: a cipher for the name of Caesar Nero. Well, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: but you got it at six one six, not nearly
Speaker 1: as a sinister it doesn't have the that doesn't have
Speaker 1: the cinematic qualities you know, it doesn't have all that,
Speaker 1: although the it's not backed up by by our b
Speaker 1: cinema and our horror fiction. Though it does look a
Speaker 1: little bit ominous with the two six is kind of
Speaker 1: closing in on the one. I don't know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: could see it working, but but I think you're right
Speaker 1: that the three sixes work better. Now, if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with the anthology of horror episodes that we put
Speaker 1: out around Halloween, Uh, this is basically what the gimme
Speaker 1: it consists of. We pick we each pick some some
Speaker 1: particular episodes from either sci fi horror TV anthology shows
Speaker 1: or anthology films. You know this This is stuff like
Speaker 1: on TV, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Dark Side,
Speaker 1: Black Mirror, et cetera. And then in the cinematic tradition, um,
Speaker 1: it's stuff like Tales from the Dark Side the movie
Speaker 1: or Stephen King's Cat's Eye. That sort of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: movies that contain generally like three or more mini segments,
Speaker 1: each one a self contained story with some sort of
Speaker 1: narrative structure holding it all together. Did we actually do
Speaker 1: Stephen King's Cat's Eye in the previous year. I don't
Speaker 1: think we did. I was tempted to this year because
Speaker 1: they have that Quitters Inc. Episode, you know, where James
Speaker 1: Woods learns to quit smoking by having his family tormented
Speaker 1: by maniacs. It's it's like a smoking cession clinic run
Speaker 1: by the mob, and yeah, they terrorize you. But like
Speaker 1: anything that James Woods is in, James Woods is the
Speaker 1: scariest part. Yeah, it's a um, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: that film really holds up. I mainly when I think
Speaker 1: back on that film, I mainly remember the bit with
Speaker 1: the little girl and the little troll and the and
Speaker 1: the giant bedroom set they had to construct to make
Speaker 1: it possible. Because one of the cool things is I
Speaker 1: got to to to meet a guy who worked on
Speaker 1: that production way, Yeah, and he had some some photos
Speaker 1: from the set of this giant dad because once they
Speaker 1: built it, they had to build a giant bed so
Speaker 1: they could have somebody in that troll suit walk around
Speaker 1: on it, and so there are pictures of the cast
Speaker 1: members on the bed, you know, posing with it. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it was it was a lot of fun. I
Speaker 1: think it is the most the most fun aspect of
Speaker 1: that particular film certainly the most memorable. Yeah. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it. The basic premises that there's like
Speaker 1: a kindall sized troll that comes out of the wall
Speaker 1: at night and it's attempting to suck a little girl's
Speaker 1: life spirit out, but her cat must protect her, and
Speaker 1: so the cat is actually the hero of the story,
Speaker 1: maybe much like one of the films we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about a little bit later. Yeah, yeah, definitely the
Speaker 1: cat Cat's Eye does tie into something we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss here in a little bit. But before we get
Speaker 1: to the infernal world of cats, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to consider the infernal world of a demonic bargains. So Joe,
Speaker 1: set up your selection for Anthology of Horror volume six. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I've established a precedent, at least in one
Speaker 1: of the previous years, maybe in both that I've always
Speaker 1: got to talk about a Treehouse of Horror because I
Speaker 1: love the Simpsons the Treehouse of Horror episodes or maybe
Speaker 1: my favorites of all time, and today I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about the devil in Homer Simpson. This is one
Speaker 1: of the all time great Treehouse of Horror segments. It
Speaker 1: is I think from season four from tree House of
Speaker 1: Horror three. Uh yeah, that this This always throws me
Speaker 1: off anytime I'm trying to keep my Treehouse is straight,
Speaker 1: because each one has a different number that's one off
Speaker 1: from the the the season year. So I lose track
Speaker 1: if i'm if I'm looking for four, Am I talking
Speaker 1: about season four? Am I talking about Treehouse four? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's like centuries, right, how like the first century does
Speaker 1: not start with the number one, and the second century
Speaker 1: starts with the number one. Yeah, it's easier to just
Speaker 1: start watching Treehouse of Horror episodes and just stop when
Speaker 1: you can't really take it anymore. But okay, So the
Speaker 1: premise of the Devil in Homer Simpson is that Homer
Speaker 1: Simpson is trapped at work and his boring job at
Speaker 1: the Nuclear Power Plan. I think he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: the safety inspector, and he is fiercely covetous of a snack.
Speaker 1: He really wants a donut, but Lenny and Carl ate
Speaker 1: all the other donuts or somebody ate them, and then
Speaker 1: Homer goes looking for his emergency backup. Donut opens up
Speaker 1: like a book that he's cut out the inside inside
Speaker 1: of it. I think it's the the operation manual for
Speaker 1: his nuclear safety equipment and uh. He finds that, in fact,
Speaker 1: the donut that is supposed to be in there is missing,
Speaker 1: and instead there's a note that says like, dear Homer,
Speaker 1: iou one donut. Uh. And he's you know, like damn it,
Speaker 1: he's always one step ahead of me. Uh. So he
Speaker 1: announces to no one in particular that he would sell
Speaker 1: his soul for a donut. And of course when you're
Speaker 1: talking to nobody in particular, there is somebody listening, and
Speaker 1: it's the Devil. So Satan appears in the form of
Speaker 1: Ned Flanders with goat legs and a pitchfork in a
Speaker 1: cool red jacket, and he makes a deal with Homer.
Speaker 1: The Devil will supply Homer with a donut and Homer
Speaker 1: will render his soul. Now, briefly, Homer believes that he's
Speaker 1: outsmart at the devil because he realizes he can eat
Speaker 1: all but the last bite of the doughnut and still
Speaker 1: keep his soul. But then, unfortunately, sometime later, Homer is
Speaker 1: maybe sort of sleepwalking or at least is hungry for
Speaker 1: a midnight snack, and he disregards the notes all over
Speaker 1: the leftover donut bite in the fridge that say things
Speaker 1: like Dad's soul donut do not eat, and he eats it,
Speaker 1: and then when he does, Flanders appears to claim his prize.
Speaker 1: But then Marge intervenes and she says, you know, Homer
Speaker 1: should receive a fair trial. So in the meantime, Homer
Speaker 1: gets sent to hell for a day where the demons
Speaker 1: attempt to ironically torture him by force feeding him thousands
Speaker 1: of donuts, but Homer doesn't really seem to be bothered
Speaker 1: by this, and in the end Homer wins the trial
Speaker 1: Merchant of Venice style on a technicality when Marge cleverly
Speaker 1: proves that he had in fact already handed over possession
Speaker 1: of his soul to somebody else to her, so the
Speaker 1: soul was not really his to sell in the first place,
Speaker 1: so it was it was a no go deal to
Speaker 1: begin with. But then in the end, the devil gets
Speaker 1: his revenge and he turns Homer's head into a giant donut,
Speaker 1: which Homer will of course forever be picking at and
Speaker 1: and snacking on. Yeah, you get the idea that that
Speaker 1: he's still pretty doomed because he's it's like the next
Speaker 1: day or something, you know, and he's already picking at
Speaker 1: his his donut hit. Yes, it's the same kind of
Speaker 1: bad thinking that led them to keep the original piece
Speaker 1: of Homer's soul donut in the fridge instead of just
Speaker 1: like throwing it out or destroying it or something. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is a wonderful episode. One one of these
Speaker 1: episodes I've watched more times than I can remember. I
Speaker 1: watched it this year, in fact, as we introduced our
Speaker 1: son to the Simpsons tree House of Horror horror episodes.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite parts of this that is that
Speaker 1: when we get to the actual trial, of course, Lionel
Speaker 1: Huts briefly serves as the Simpsons defensivetorne any during the proceedings,
Speaker 1: before I believe he runs away like he he quite
Speaker 1: The great thing about Lionel Huts is that he always
Speaker 1: has uh like enormous overconfidence that he can do these things,
Speaker 1: but like but has so incapable of of performing. But
Speaker 1: then he he In this episode, he realizes it has
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom and like escapes through the window.
Speaker 1: He's the quintessential American character, just endless confidence, no competence
Speaker 1: and in the end runs away. Right. There's also a
Speaker 1: great moment where he's just combing his hair with a
Speaker 1: fork as he walks into frame. Yeah. So obviously this
Speaker 1: is a great opportunity to talk about deals with the devil,
Speaker 1: because I think deals with the devil are interesting in
Speaker 1: in multiple domains, one from a sort of history of
Speaker 1: religions point of view and another from a psychological point
Speaker 1: of view. And one of the things I'd like to
Speaker 1: start by talking about is that while the contract with
Speaker 1: the devil, the deal with Satan may seem like a
Speaker 1: perversion of the religious impulse, I would argue that actually
Speaker 1: the more personalized and asymmetrical relationship between God and the
Speaker 1: believer in the modern Abrahamic religions is really the qualitative
Speaker 1: outlier from a historical perspective, for a huge amount of
Speaker 1: religion throughout all of history, the relationship between the believer
Speaker 1: and the gods has been seen as significantly more practical
Speaker 1: and contractual. You know, from this God, I want this
Speaker 1: particular blessing or favor, and in return I offer this
Speaker 1: ritual or this sacrifice. Uh So, for example, an ancient
Speaker 1: Roman religion, there is actually a term for this. It's
Speaker 1: dot deaths, meaning I give that you might give back,
Speaker 1: So I will sacrifice a goat at your shrine or
Speaker 1: I will do whatever ritual. I will burn incense for you,
Speaker 1: and in return you will give me a good harvest,
Speaker 1: or you will heal my sick child, etcetera. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and this also, like it's an easy, easy parallel, well
Speaker 1: to say, ap pledging your loyalty to some sort of
Speaker 1: tribal lord exactly. I mean, this is one of the
Speaker 1: ways in which the farther you go back in religion,
Speaker 1: the more religious relationships seem to mirror political practical types
Speaker 1: of relationships than than a lot of the big religions
Speaker 1: due today. So in a way, the deal with the devil,
Speaker 1: I would say, is not a myth archetype that needed
Speaker 1: to be invented out of whole cloth by Christian storytellers. Instead,
Speaker 1: it just took an extremely ancient, extremely common way of
Speaker 1: practicing religion and put a nefarious, infernal gloss on it. Like,
Speaker 1: the part that remains unchanged is that there's devotee and
Speaker 1: they ask for some kind of supernatural deliverance or aid.
Speaker 1: But now instead of sacrificing a cow to Minerva to
Speaker 1: get what you want, you have to pay some kind
Speaker 1: of ultimate price, some unreasonable price, like your eternal soul
Speaker 1: or your child or something, and you it not to
Speaker 1: some god of a particular domain, but to the anti God,
Speaker 1: the figure of evil incarnate. So clearly the Simpsons segment
Speaker 1: here is drawing on the Christian tradition of the deal
Speaker 1: with the Devil. But I would say that that is
Speaker 1: not a an archetype that originates with Christianity. It's more
Speaker 1: a sort of reimagining of traditional religion with a very
Speaker 1: negative spin on it. Yeah, I mean it kind of
Speaker 1: breaks too, of applying a satanic paint job to to
Speaker 1: pre Christian religious traditions as well, exactly. But since this
Speaker 1: episode is dealing with the Christian tradition of the deal
Speaker 1: with the Devil, I also want to look at the
Speaker 1: history of how that idea developed. So in the Christian tradition,
Speaker 1: the oldest story of an attempted deal with the devil
Speaker 1: that I'm aware of actually takes place in the Bible.
Speaker 1: It's in the Gospels in the New Testament. So after
Speaker 1: Jesus's baptism, he goes out into the wilderness to fast
Speaker 1: for forty days and forty nights, and during that time,
Speaker 1: the devil appears to him and offers him temptations, and
Speaker 1: the temptations culminate in this passage in the Gospel of
Speaker 1: Matthew that goes as fall as This is in chapter four,
Speaker 1: Versus eight to nine. Quote again, the devil took him
Speaker 1: up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all
Speaker 1: the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he
Speaker 1: said to him, all these things I will give you
Speaker 1: if you will fall down and worship me. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: Jesus refuses this temptation. He says, well, I'm only going
Speaker 1: to worship the Lord as commanded in the scripture. But
Speaker 1: the suggestion of the architecture is there, if he had
Speaker 1: taken the devil up on his bargain, he would have
Speaker 1: surrendered something extremely important. It's not made clear exactly what
Speaker 1: that is, but he would have sort of sort of
Speaker 1: like surrendered righteousness or surrendered godhood or something like that,
Speaker 1: and in return he would be granted, you know, this
Speaker 1: great earthly power. Yeah, I guess the way the way
Speaker 1: I've I've often seen it presented. What it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Jesus on this mission to save the world, and the
Speaker 1: devil says, hey, but what if you didn't save the world.
Speaker 1: What if I set you up all nice and uh,
Speaker 1: and and fancy here, and then you could just kind
Speaker 1: of like rule the world. That'd be pretty good too, right,
Speaker 1: Why don't we do that? Then everybody's happy? Yes, And
Speaker 1: so there might be a question like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: why would the devil be offering the world to Jesus,
Speaker 1: Like wouldn't Jesus have more domain over the world anyway
Speaker 1: that he's the ruler of the kingdom of the air though,
Speaker 1: That's right. Yes, this gets into some interesting stuff about
Speaker 1: apocalypticism that I want to talk about in just a minute.
Speaker 1: Uh So to follow more about the Christian tradition of
Speaker 1: the deal with the Devil, I was looking at an
Speaker 1: entry in the Dictionary of Biblical Tradition and English Literature
Speaker 1: edited by David Lyle Jeffrey, and there's a good entry
Speaker 1: on the tradition of packs with the Devil by Camille
Speaker 1: or Labossi are So. Regarding the temptation of Jesus in
Speaker 1: the Wilderness, Lebassi air points out that the primary appeals
Speaker 1: in this story are to pride, which is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: Like in one of the temptations, Satan asks Jesus to
Speaker 1: bow down and worship him, but in the others he
Speaker 1: simply Jesus to make a vulgar display of his own power.
Speaker 1: He says, Okay, you've been fasting for forty days. If
Speaker 1: you're so hungry, why don't you turn these stones into bread.
Speaker 1: And there's a very interesting passage in the Gospel of
Speaker 1: Mark that that ties into the idea of deals with
Speaker 1: the devil as well. Now, the Gospel of Mark is
Speaker 1: the earliest of the four Gospels in the New Testament.
Speaker 1: It probably represents the earliest stages of a lot of
Speaker 1: these stories about jesus life. And in this story, Jesus
Speaker 1: has been performing miracles, he's healing the sick, he's exercising demons.
Speaker 1: He gathers the twelve Disciples to follow him, and then
Speaker 1: in chapter three, verse twenty two, he gets a challenge
Speaker 1: from the religious scholars. The religious scholars come up to
Speaker 1: him and it says they came down from Jerusalem and
Speaker 1: they said, quote, he hath beel's abub and by the
Speaker 1: prince of devils, casteth he out devils. So they're saying, look,
Speaker 1: I know how he's casting out devils. He's made a
Speaker 1: deal with with like the head demon, the chief devil,
Speaker 1: and he's using that demon power to cast out these
Speaker 1: devils so he can win win over you peasants here. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting because so earlier this year I
Speaker 1: had the biblical historian Bart Erman on the podcast to
Speaker 1: talk about where the Christian concepts of heaven and Hell
Speaker 1: came from and how they developed over time. And if
Speaker 1: you haven't checked that episode out, I recommended. I thought
Speaker 1: Bart was a really fantastic guest. But one of the
Speaker 1: historical trends that he talks about in a lot of
Speaker 1: his work, and he discusses in that episode as well,
Speaker 1: is the development of what's known as apocalyptic theology in
Speaker 1: Judaism in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christianity. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's a little bit complicated, but I'll try to
Speaker 1: do the brief simplified version, and it goes like this.
Speaker 1: For many centuries, the Jewish prophetic tradition had attributed misfortunes
Speaker 1: of the Jewish people to punishment for their sins. So
Speaker 1: it would be like, oh, you were conquered by the
Speaker 1: Babylonians and your crops were eaten by the locust. That
Speaker 1: is because God is punishing you for your wickedness. But eventually,
Speaker 1: over time, I'm sort of the manifest unfairness of this
Speaker 1: theology became untenable for many Jews, like, how does it
Speaker 1: make sense that my three year old child is being
Speaker 1: punished for the sins of our king? And so a
Speaker 1: new theology arose within the Jewish religion to explain suffering,
Speaker 1: and that was that suffering was not punishment for sins,
Speaker 1: but it was the result of the faithful children of
Speaker 1: Israel being persecuted and victimized by forces of darkness. The
Speaker 1: idea is that there are evil rulers and evil powers
Speaker 1: who have made deals with the Devil, who have gone
Speaker 1: into cooperation with a powerful evil being who is opposed
Speaker 1: to God, and this is the Devil, and God will
Speaker 1: eventually destroy the Devil and destroy these evil rulers who
Speaker 1: are in league with him, and will right all wrongs.
Speaker 1: But until then we're stuck under the boot of these
Speaker 1: wicked temporal powers who are allied with and empowered by Satan.
Speaker 1: It's essentially kind of a dystopian um attempt for religion, yes,
Speaker 1: very much so, but with the idea that eventually everything
Speaker 1: would be fixed, that ultimately God is sovereign, ultimately good
Speaker 1: will win over evil. But now we're stuck in this
Speaker 1: bad middle period where we're suffering under the arrangements made
Speaker 1: with the evil forces. It's the Matrix kind of, yes,
Speaker 1: though it would develop into even more Matrix e directions
Speaker 1: with the advent of Gnosticism, which is one of the
Speaker 1: most fun things if you actually go back and watch
Speaker 1: the Matrix after learning about Gnostic theology, there are huge
Speaker 1: overlaps there that are that are very fun to mess
Speaker 1: around with. Yeah, I'm looking forward. I'm not sure when
Speaker 1: will be the right time, but I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: rewatching all those films because it's been a long time
Speaker 1: and I know they've got the Matrix four in the works. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel more excited about that than I should be. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that there's a lot of room
Speaker 1: to explore. I'm I'm interested to see what they put together.
Speaker 1: But anyway, to come back to these ancient theological def elements.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I think is interesting about the development
Speaker 1: of apocalyptic theology is the idea of wicked people being
Speaker 1: empowered by a pact with Satan or demons. That could
Speaker 1: sort of be viewed as a logical inversion of the
Speaker 1: belief that the Jewish people were protected by what they
Speaker 1: called a covenant with the God of Israel. A covenant
Speaker 1: is essentially a contract that they would worship him exclusively,
Speaker 1: scorning all other gods, and he would protect them as
Speaker 1: a people. But anyway, given the popularity of this type
Speaker 1: of apocalyptic thinking around the first century CE, I think
Speaker 1: it makes sense that the author of the Gospel might
Speaker 1: have a story like this here, where Jesus's enemies who
Speaker 1: don't understand him would accuse him of somehow being empowered
Speaker 1: through a packed with demonic forces, like maybe they, in
Speaker 1: the author's view here, misunderstand Jesus as one of these
Speaker 1: evil princes, one of these evil powers, who has been
Speaker 1: allied against the good people. It's almost like they're accusing
Speaker 1: them selling out, Yes, exactly. Uh. And Labassier points out
Speaker 1: that many early Christian Church fathers, such as Justin Martyr
Speaker 1: and Origin, they allege that people who possess powers like divination,
Speaker 1: so the power to acquire otherwise hidden knowledge or to
Speaker 1: predict the future, that people who have these powers acquire
Speaker 1: them through arrangements with the devil. Especially influential in this
Speaker 1: respect is the writing of St. Augustine in his theological
Speaker 1: work on Christian doctrine. He claimed that people who have
Speaker 1: apparent magical powers, such as divination or prognostication, they gain
Speaker 1: these powers through consultations, pacts and contracts with demons. And
Speaker 1: there's a passage in St. Augustine that's quoted as an
Speaker 1: authority on the subject of all through the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: and is repeated in in canon law and the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: But in the Middle Ages it's when the stories about
Speaker 1: these kinds of pacts get get more developed. So the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages saw a proliferate shtion of folk tales about
Speaker 1: pacts with the devil, especially concerning deals between the devil
Speaker 1: and a powerful or learned man. So one example is
Speaker 1: the story of Saint Cyprian, who Labossierre says, is a
Speaker 1: quote megas philosophists, or you know, like a magician philosopher,
Speaker 1: a man of great arcane learning, uh quote, who strikes
Speaker 1: a bargain with the devil to learn the secrets of
Speaker 1: the universe. But he he gets turned around. He responds
Speaker 1: to the appeals of a virtuous woman uh named Justina
Speaker 1: or Juliana, and he repents of his wicked pact, so
Speaker 1: he gets out of it. And even more well known
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages is the story of the Afulus
Speaker 1: of a Donna, and I thought this was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. So the Awfulis was a cleric who is
Speaker 1: said to have lived in the sixth century in Asia Minor.
Speaker 1: This would be in uh Silicia and modern day Turkey,
Speaker 1: so that's like the southern part of modern day Turkey.
Speaker 1: And the story goes that Theophilist is an archdeacon of
Speaker 1: a donna. He's like, he's a high up guy in
Speaker 1: the church, but he's a very humble and righteous man,
Speaker 1: and he is elected to become a new bishop in
Speaker 1: a donna, but out of humility, he turns down the position.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh no, no, I am not worthy. So
Speaker 1: a different guy gets elected bishop instead. But then, in
Speaker 1: a cruel twist of fate, the new bishop is swayed
Speaker 1: by some false rumors about theophilists character and he kicks
Speaker 1: the Awfulis out of his archdeaconship, and the Afulist is mad.
Speaker 1: He does not like this, so he's like, I've been wronged.
Speaker 1: I've got to get revenge. And in a quest for revenge,
Speaker 1: he seeks out the aid of a sorcerer sometimes described
Speaker 1: as a necromancer, and this guy helps the Awfulist right
Speaker 1: out of contract with the devil in his own blood.
Speaker 1: The devil will give the awfulst the bishopric of a Donna,
Speaker 1: and in return, the Afulist will renounce Christ, renounce the
Speaker 1: Virgin Mary, and hand over his soul to Satan. And
Speaker 1: the deal goes through and he becomes the bishop. The
Speaker 1: devil delivers his half of the bargain, but then Theophilist
Speaker 1: gets cold feet. It's like, oh no, I really screwed up.
Speaker 1: So he gets scared he's going to go to hell
Speaker 1: and he ends up fasting for a couple of periods,
Speaker 1: like a total of seventy days. He prays to the
Speaker 1: Virgin Mary to get him out of the contract, and
Speaker 1: at first she appears to him and just really choose
Speaker 1: him out. She's like, you have been an extremely naughty bishop.
Speaker 1: You are that was very bad of you to do.
Speaker 1: But eventually she relents and she grants him absolution. So
Speaker 1: you think everything solved now, but the devil does not
Speaker 1: give up. The next morning, Theophilist wakes up with the
Speaker 1: contract that he had written in his blood lying on
Speaker 1: his chest, and I guess that's a sign that the
Speaker 1: devil is still trying to hold him to account. So
Speaker 1: next what the apulist does is inspired by the Virgin Mary.
Speaker 1: He takes the contract to the bishop who had originally
Speaker 1: removed him from the archdeaconship, and he confesses everything, and
Speaker 1: the bishop burns the contract, which frees the awful list
Speaker 1: of soul from this infernal bargain. And the awfullest is
Speaker 1: so relieved to have his soul back that he dies
Speaker 1: of joy on the spot. And I think this story
Speaker 1: brings up a couple of features that will appear again
Speaker 1: and again in stories about deals with the devil. I
Speaker 1: think it's very interesting that you see these features repeated
Speaker 1: so often. One is that you can get out of
Speaker 1: a deal with the devil. You make the deal, you
Speaker 1: get what you want, but then upon repenting, you can
Speaker 1: sort of avoid the contract, so to speak. And then
Speaker 1: the second feature that appears again and again is that,
Speaker 1: uh is that you can you can get out of
Speaker 1: it with the intercession or intervention of a virtuous woman.
Speaker 1: What I love about this is that you know, though
Speaker 1: though fantastic and supernatural and its elements, it's basically a
Speaker 1: critique of short term versus long term thinking. You know,
Speaker 1: because it's it's often about like somebody like in this case,
Speaker 1: and I want revenge now, I'm not going to think
Speaker 1: about what happens later with my eternal soul. But but
Speaker 1: also just like my life past the point of getting
Speaker 1: my vengeance. Uh. And likewise with Homer, like he's not
Speaker 1: thinking about the long term, he's thinking about that immediate reward.
Speaker 1: He's he's failing the ultimate Marshmallow test. You know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about those exact themes. It's the it's
Speaker 1: the prioritization of the temporal. And in a way, there's
Speaker 1: this idea that people, uh make decisions without thinking them through.
Speaker 1: They make the decision on the basis of their appetites
Speaker 1: or their lusts or their emotions. Uh, and then once
Speaker 1: they have time to think about it, they repent of
Speaker 1: the decision they have made. And often, weirdly enough, I mean,
Speaker 1: this doesn't happen in every case. Like we'll get to
Speaker 1: Dr Faustus in a bit, and then Marlow's Dr Faustus.
Speaker 1: He does not get out of the deal, he just
Speaker 1: gets claimed by the devil. But in a lot of
Speaker 1: these deals, eventually, once you think it through and you say,
Speaker 1: oh no, I really screwed up. Somebody good. Usually a
Speaker 1: virtuous and clever woman will intervene on your behalf and
Speaker 1: you'll get out of it. I mean to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: We see that in Dante's Inferno, right, I mean, Beatrice
Speaker 1: is is kind of this this guiding light that is
Speaker 1: that is there to to sort of pull like a
Speaker 1: tractor beam, to pull Dante up through Inferno and uh
Speaker 1: and Purgatory up towards his paradise. It's very interesting than
Speaker 1: in a lot of these stories, the character who makes
Speaker 1: the deal with the devil is tempted by pride. And
Speaker 1: in the Divine Comedy it's made explicit that Dante's main
Speaker 1: sin is pride. That's the sin that he really has
Speaker 1: to be absolved of when he goes through purgatory, and
Speaker 1: it's the main sin that Beatrice is helping purge him of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite things about the Divine
Speaker 1: Comedy actually is all the passages where he's like, having
Speaker 1: been cleansed of the sin of pride. I will now
Speaker 1: go back to Earth having written the greatest poem of
Speaker 1: all time, and will copens everybody that they should do
Speaker 1: you know, that they should follow the path of righteousness,
Speaker 1: because I've written the best poem ever written, right, I
Speaker 1: mean he did, he did really write his finger there,
Speaker 1: I mean, but but but yes, I don't think. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can make a strong case for
Speaker 1: the pride being completely purge from Dante. But anyway, So
Speaker 1: from here, Labassier goes on to mention a number of
Speaker 1: other stories and pacts with the devil that were popular
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. For example,
Speaker 1: the Anglo Norman poem, which is apparently satirical, that takes
Speaker 1: the form of a full legal document resigning the soul
Speaker 1: of the signatory to the devil in exchange for the
Speaker 1: freedom to live in hedonic pleasure, hoarding wealth and exploiting
Speaker 1: the poor. And I gotta say, is a brief like
Speaker 1: moralistic theological note, one thing I can sometimes appre I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there are extreme limitations to the insights of medieval
Speaker 1: moral philosophy. But one thing I appreciate, going back and
Speaker 1: reading a lot of these rebukes of immorality from the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, is one thing that a thing that gets
Speaker 1: singled out again and again is abusing the poor. Now
Speaker 1: there are more kinds of packs with the devil. In
Speaker 1: chauce Er in the Friar's Tale, in the canon Yeoman's Tale. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that people who seek pacts with the
Speaker 1: devil are often lusting after wealth or especially secret knowledge.
Speaker 1: The ultimate secrets of alchemy seem to be a real
Speaker 1: draw for people to get into these uh, these bad
Speaker 1: deals like to chase after the philosopher's stone is to
Speaker 1: make an enemy of God. And these themes really come
Speaker 1: through in the Renaissance in perhaps the most famous literary
Speaker 1: character who makes a deal with the devil who which
Speaker 1: is Dr Faustus. We've talked about the faust legend on
Speaker 1: the show before. This is a story with many lives,
Speaker 1: many new sets of clothes over the ages, so we
Speaker 1: won't rehash all of that here, but it is yet
Speaker 1: another tale of a person who seeks great power and
Speaker 1: knowledge and then uh kind of squanders it and uh
Speaker 1: and and of course seeks it through a deal with
Speaker 1: the devil and is ultimately claimed. There is a fair
Speaker 1: amount of lust in there too. Yes. Lobossi Are also
Speaker 1: points out an interesting parallel that I might not have
Speaker 1: thought of otherwise. But it's Shakespeare's The Murder Shin of
Speaker 1: Venice between Antonio and Shylock, and because of the anti
Speaker 1: Semitic assumptions of the play, the Jewish money lender Shylock
Speaker 1: has portrayed very much as a devil figure toying with
Speaker 1: Antonio's fate uh and is. As is so often the
Speaker 1: case in these tales, Antonio is saved by the intercession
Speaker 1: of a virtuous woman, Portia, who wins his case by
Speaker 1: finding a technical loophole in the wording of the contract,
Speaker 1: much like Marge does in The Devil and Homer Simpson.
Speaker 1: As for the title of the Simpsons, segment is of
Speaker 1: course adapted from the title of the short story by
Speaker 1: Stephen Vincent Benet, The Devil and Daniel Webster, in which
Speaker 1: a New England farmer sells his soul to the Devil,
Speaker 1: then hires the famous lawyer and orator Daniel Webster to
Speaker 1: represent him in a trial to get it back, and
Speaker 1: Webster's speech to the jury of the damned souls is
Speaker 1: so eloquent that they find for the defendant, even though
Speaker 1: there's no evidence on his behalf, which is pretty good.
Speaker 1: You know. As much as we love courtroom dramas in
Speaker 1: and especially in this country, and as much as we
Speaker 1: love um, you know, the horrifying and the satanic? Why
Speaker 1: have we not? Maybe we have and I'm not aware
Speaker 1: of it. We need a law and Order, um Infernal Unit,
Speaker 1: or you know, we need Daniel Webster lawn Order mash
Speaker 1: up where not just like one episode, but every episode
Speaker 1: deals with some sort of satanic bargain. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: half joking, but I also now that I'm thinking about it, like,
Speaker 1: I think this has legs. I think this could be
Speaker 1: a series. I'd watch it The Perry Mason of the Afterlife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite courtroom drama? Do you have one? Are you?
Speaker 1: And my cousin Vinny Guy? I mean no, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, what are some of the great I mean
Speaker 1: you have to go with like to Kill a Mockingbird?
Speaker 1: Right or something like that. Um. Yeah, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of anything. I don't know. I don't know a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff in between. Like I feel like
Speaker 1: it for for me to get into a courtroom drama,
Speaker 1: it needs to be it needs to be really good.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, I can't. I can't think of one that's
Speaker 1: amusingly crappy. Yeah, maybe a Few good Men. Like a
Speaker 1: Few good Men is like entertaining but extremely hokey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it does have that classic moment that's been
Speaker 1: a Leaftland lampoon so many times. Um, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know my favorite really, Seriously, my favorite courtroom scenes are
Speaker 1: all from episodes of The Simpsons or Futurama. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank thank Alright, we're back. You know, I was thinking
Speaker 1: there's another type of picture of a deal with the devil,
Speaker 1: which is the idea of deal with the devil as compliment,
Speaker 1: like the idea that an artist or a musician or
Speaker 1: somebody is so talented, uh, that their their genius or
Speaker 1: their talent must have come from a deal with the devil,
Speaker 1: Like this was said of the great Delta Blues musician
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson. But of course it was something that actual
Speaker 1: like the Romantic poets often said about themselves. The English
Speaker 1: Romantic poets Blake and Shelley characterized as literary genius and
Speaker 1: poetic energy as a diabolical pact. Yeah. This is interesting too,
Speaker 1: because I think it is reflected in a lot of
Speaker 1: celebrity worship culture today. But it's perhaps a way on
Speaker 1: one level, like a way of trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of of extreme success, you know, you sort of have
Speaker 1: to tell yourself, well, yeah, they're highly successful at what
Speaker 1: they do and or they're highly talented, but at what cost?
Speaker 1: And and you can sort of comfort yourself by saying,
Speaker 1: I didn't pay that cost. I may not have a
Speaker 1: number one album out there, but I also didn't sell
Speaker 1: my soul to the devil. Uh, And you can feel
Speaker 1: a little better about it. And then it's also sort
Speaker 1: of in a way, it's kind of a twisted version
Speaker 1: of instead of saying, well, you know, um, you know
Speaker 1: this this celebrity that deep down there a person too,
Speaker 1: and they're full of insecurities like I am. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're concerned about the future, etcetera. Instead of humanizing you,
Speaker 1: you kind of go in a different direction and say, well, yes,
Speaker 1: but they're going to hell because they made a soul
Speaker 1: a soul ex change with the devil. Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think it's very weird, very twisted up. No, I
Speaker 1: think that's really good. I think you're exactly right. In
Speaker 1: the same way that it feels good to watch a
Speaker 1: really rich person be miserable, uh, at least feels good
Speaker 1: to think about somebody who has talents and successes that
Speaker 1: you're jealous of. You're like, well, they must yeah, they
Speaker 1: must have done something bad to get that. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: lost something in the bargain. I guess it does. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: You can certainly compare it to some of the stats
Speaker 1: about say, lottery winners. Right where a sentence, there's there's
Speaker 1: a strong argument to say that that is a deal
Speaker 1: made with the devil. You get this enormous uh you know, reward,
Speaker 1: this this enormous cash prize, but statistically it brings a
Speaker 1: lot of chaos into your life. Is that true? Though?
Speaker 1: I've heard people say that, But I think I feel
Speaker 1: like I've looked into that before and it turns out
Speaker 1: that might not be as true as is sometimes alleged.
Speaker 1: It certainly would make us feel better for it to
Speaker 1: be true. Yeah, that's the thing. It needs to be
Speaker 1: true for the ingest this of the universe to make sense. Um.
Speaker 1: But then again with the lottery thing, for example, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think one of the great things about that is
Speaker 1: we're always each and every one of us, you know,
Speaker 1: we're the first ones to say to ourselves, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you win the lottery's gonna bring a lot of
Speaker 1: casts in your life. But I think I can handle it.
Speaker 1: You know, we always think we're the exception. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, man, I can't any time I want, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like making a deal with the devil or picking up
Speaker 1: a monkey's paw. That's bad news. But I think I
Speaker 1: might be able to make it work. I think I could.
Speaker 1: I could. I could word my demand in just the
Speaker 1: right way that the Devil's going to be totally cool
Speaker 1: with it. I wouldn't eat the hole doughnut. I would
Speaker 1: leave that last bite and not forget about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or I would know how to phrase the monkeys Paul
Speaker 1: questions so that it didn't come back on me. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, going back to the Simpsons episode with the
Speaker 1: monkeys paw, you know, you have that that wonderful segment
Speaker 1: where Maggie gets ahold of it and and I think
Speaker 1: is the only person who uses it, and it's in
Speaker 1: a way it's like she's a child. So she makes
Speaker 1: a purer wish, you know, for just a new pacifier,
Speaker 1: which is immediately brought to her, and it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like there's any kind of come up in so there
Speaker 1: any dark uh, you know, darker ramifications that come from
Speaker 1: having made that wish of the poll, unlike all the
Speaker 1: other monkey pot wishes. Well, I think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: in the Monkeys Pall it is a technical reading of
Speaker 1: the words of the wish that come back to bite you.
Speaker 1: But in many of these stories about the deal with
Speaker 1: the devil, such as in the Devil in Homer Simpson,
Speaker 1: it is a technical reading of the language of the
Speaker 1: agreement that actually gets you out of trouble, you know,
Speaker 1: trading on a loophole to escape punishment. They seem to
Speaker 1: come from the anxieties of like a literate and legalistic culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea of the law itself as this domain with
Speaker 1: enough ambiguity in it that a skilled lawyer or sorcerer,
Speaker 1: you know, they're basically the same thing. Depending on how
Speaker 1: you look at it, we'll be able to pry you
Speaker 1: out of it. Arcane books containing formulations of language that
Speaker 1: have the power to make things happen in the world
Speaker 1: that you can't understand that the lawyer is very much
Speaker 1: a sorcerer. Now, I wanted to talk about the psychology
Speaker 1: of selling your soul, and I was trying to find
Speaker 1: some good psychology studies about people selling their souls. I
Speaker 1: didn't really turn up a lot that are directly on target,
Speaker 1: but some that uh, some that are sort of on
Speaker 1: point but not as robust as I had hoped, and
Speaker 1: then other things that sort of glance off of it
Speaker 1: in interesting ways. So the first thing I found was
Speaker 1: an anecdote in a twelve book called The Righteous Mind
Speaker 1: by the American social psychologist Jonathan Height. And this book
Speaker 1: is about the psychological foundations of moral values and how
Speaker 1: these values feed into big systems like social groups and
Speaker 1: politics and stuff. And the story in the book about
Speaker 1: selling souls comes up in the middle of a passage
Speaker 1: about a phenomenon that Height calls moral dumbfounding. And this
Speaker 1: is something that you've probably encountered before. You've seen other
Speaker 1: people do it, you've done it yourself. It's where somebody
Speaker 1: makes a very strong moral judgment about something you say
Speaker 1: you know that's just wrong, and then if you are
Speaker 1: asked to explain why it's wrong, you get the mental
Speaker 1: blue screen of death. You just search around, frustrated for
Speaker 1: an explanation, a reason behind your moral pronouncement. Maybe you'll
Speaker 1: end up saying something but it doesn't make a lot
Speaker 1: of sense, or you just can't think of anything at all,
Speaker 1: and yet you remain convinced of your original opinion. From
Speaker 1: another context, it's phrased as a dogmatic insistence on a
Speaker 1: moral judgment for which no good reasons can be given,
Speaker 1: and so example. There are all kinds of examples of
Speaker 1: this that are offered, a lot of them are read
Speaker 1: to people as very distasteful for obvious reasons. One is,
Speaker 1: would it be wrong to dip a sterilized cockroach into
Speaker 1: somebody's drink? So if I if I just got a cockroach,
Speaker 1: I put it through an autoclave, so I know it's
Speaker 1: absolutely sterile, could not possibly make you sick? Would it
Speaker 1: be wrong for me to dip that cock roach in
Speaker 1: a glass of water and then give you the glass
Speaker 1: of water to drink and not tell you, Yes, that
Speaker 1: would be wrong. I feel like that would be wrong too,
Speaker 1: But it's hard to explain, a like, to come up
Speaker 1: with an explanation for the reason that would be wrong.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, it can't possibly hurt them, but it
Speaker 1: just feels really wrong. It feels like a betrayal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, I see what you're you're getting. It is
Speaker 1: tricky to try and like make an argument like you
Speaker 1: end up having to sort of go further out on
Speaker 1: a ledge than you think you're going to. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to say things like, well if you would
Speaker 1: do that, like what else are you doing to my drink?
Speaker 1: What what you know? What else? Does what else do
Speaker 1: to say about our relationship that you would do this?
Speaker 1: And I'm not necessarily saying that you couldn't give a
Speaker 1: good reason, but it's like for a lot of people
Speaker 1: would be difficult to express one. And I want to
Speaker 1: come back to the difference there in a bit um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would be a health code violation, yes, regardless,
Speaker 1: Well I don't know if it would it be if
Speaker 1: it was sterilized. It seems like you need special language
Speaker 1: in the health code to address I have. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: hear from health inspectors out there who listen to the show,
Speaker 1: But I'm guessing you can't get by by sterilizing your
Speaker 1: cockroaches before exposing them. I mean, but then again, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, as we get more into the
Speaker 1: you know, the consumption of insects. Are there are there
Speaker 1: food grade cockroaches you could use? I don't know, But
Speaker 1: how would that be any different than just being sterilized like.
Speaker 1: It seems like the implication at least is that questions
Speaker 1: like this play on just sort of like ick based
Speaker 1: intuitions we have about what's acceptable and what's not that
Speaker 1: we find hard to give justifications for based on things
Speaker 1: like utilitarian concerns about harm. Instead, it's just these things
Speaker 1: about like that just feels wrong. I guess I'm gonna
Speaker 1: come back and say I would be okay with you
Speaker 1: doing this thing with the cockroach, provided it was it
Speaker 1: was like a food grade cockroach, which I don't think
Speaker 1: actually exists that even if we're another food grade insect
Speaker 1: then possibly, But then again, I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: vegetarian drink anymore if you've put a dead bugging and
Speaker 1: intentionally all very good concerns. Uh yeah. So so I
Speaker 1: want to explain my thinking about this in a bit,
Speaker 1: but at first I just want to talk about the experiments.
Speaker 1: So Height in this section is discussing evidence that our
Speaker 1: moral decisions are generally not actually rational. So he's sort
Speaker 1: of making the case that when we have when we
Speaker 1: make moral judgments, most of the time, we're not reasoning
Speaker 1: to arrive at them. Instead, they're deontological intuitions we just
Speaker 1: feel our moral decisions first, and then afterwards we use
Speaker 1: our rational minds to kind of come up with post
Speaker 1: talk justifications for why we felt the way we did.
Speaker 1: And so some evidence of this he discusses would include
Speaker 1: the claim that adding cognitive load does not change people's
Speaker 1: moral judgments. So if you give people mental work to
Speaker 1: do while they're making moral judgments, their moral judgments don't
Speaker 1: appear to change. Or giving giving people more time to
Speaker 1: think about their answers to moral questions doesn't really seem
Speaker 1: to change them. And in the example of selling souls,
Speaker 1: Height is talking about a scenario where a graduate student
Speaker 1: of his was was offering students two dollars if they
Speaker 1: would sign a piece of paper that said I hereby
Speaker 1: sell my soul after my death for the sum of
Speaker 1: two dollars. And then there was also fine print that
Speaker 1: said this form is part of a psychology experiment. It
Speaker 1: is not a legal document and not binding in any way.
Speaker 1: And the students were told that if they signed the document,
Speaker 1: they were free to rip it up and consider it
Speaker 1: void the moment after they signed it, and they would
Speaker 1: still get their two dollars, and majorities of students refused,
Speaker 1: even many students who explicitly said they were atheists and
Speaker 1: didn't believe in souls, they still didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: And so the point here is that there's something about
Speaker 1: there's something that we're using to make decisions apart from
Speaker 1: just reasoning about who it would harm. At least that's
Speaker 1: the case they're making. Two dollars does seem like low bowing,
Speaker 1: like even in the like, even even into this scenario,
Speaker 1: I think I would I would turn it down. I
Speaker 1: think I would too. You just I mean, part of
Speaker 1: it's probably you know, growing up attending you know, a
Speaker 1: church where you're with the reality of of of demons
Speaker 1: is kind of part of the background, and then being
Speaker 1: and then absorbing all of this, uh uh, that this
Speaker 1: fantasy as well, probably even seeing tree House of Horror
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, uh, you end up having
Speaker 1: all this in your background, and it kind of creates
Speaker 1: a sense of wrongness to engage in this, or at
Speaker 1: least there's a risk factor there that should not be
Speaker 1: trifled with for a mere two dollars. Well that's so
Speaker 1: on one hand, yeah, you could argue, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: is just some sort of deontological hangover from from previous
Speaker 1: beliefs you would have. But to come back on things,
Speaker 1: I think there are arguments against the post talk rationalization
Speaker 1: theory of moral dumbfounding, Like the fact that somebody can't
Speaker 1: artic kullate good reasons why something should be wrong doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that there are not in fact good reasons.
Speaker 1: It's possible that a lot of our moral reasoning might
Speaker 1: actually be reasoning and not just deontic dogma, but it's
Speaker 1: reasoning on a subconscious level that we find hard to
Speaker 1: put into words. There are all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: people do for good reasons that you could explain in theory,
Speaker 1: but people can't figure out the right way to put
Speaker 1: it into words. So one example of this would be
Speaker 1: on utilitarian grounds, why can't a hospital just say, like,
Speaker 1: murder one innocent patient who's there for a yearly physical
Speaker 1: and then harvest their healthy organs to save the lives of, like,
Speaker 1: you know, ten other people who urgently need organ transplants.
Speaker 1: I feel like if you think that that kind of
Speaker 1: statement is a defeater for utilitarian reasoning, uh that that
Speaker 1: represents a sort of shallow interpretation of utilitarianism. Like imagine
Speaker 1: if something like that were to actually happen. The con
Speaker 1: sequences of it would be that it would totally undermine
Speaker 1: the stability of the society and of medicine in a
Speaker 1: way that would make everyone paranoid and unable to trust
Speaker 1: doctors or feel safe. So it's like, the consequences of
Speaker 1: something like that actually happening in reality would be hugely
Speaker 1: destructive in a utilitarian sense, even though in the moment
Speaker 1: you have saved a number of lives. And so I
Speaker 1: think there could be similar things going on with these
Speaker 1: examples about like say, a contract to get two dollars
Speaker 1: for selling your soul. I feel like I have a
Speaker 1: kind of idiosyncratic view on this, probably with regards to
Speaker 1: selling souls, because I would say, you know, personally, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a provisional materialist, like I believe that the
Speaker 1: mind is dependent on the functioning of the physical brain.
Speaker 1: I don't see any evidence for the existence of an
Speaker 1: immaterial soul or mind that exists without the body. And
Speaker 1: yet at the same time, I think the soul is
Speaker 1: kind of a meaningful and even indispensable concept, and I
Speaker 1: think it really means something to sell your soul, not
Speaker 1: in a supernatural sense, but in the sense that there
Speaker 1: are things we can do that represent a surrender of
Speaker 1: rights and claims to the deepest part of our own integrity.
Speaker 1: And in English, the word soul still captures that thing,
Speaker 1: that deep part of our integrity, probably better than any
Speaker 1: other word does, even though it does come with a
Speaker 1: lot of supernatural baggage. And thus I think signing a
Speaker 1: piece of paper in agreement to sell your soul could
Speaker 1: be a thing you would want to resist doing, even
Speaker 1: though you don't believe in a supernatural soul. Like on
Speaker 1: the physicalist or naturalist view of the world, the brain
Speaker 1: operates strongly on the basis of habit, and doing something
Speaker 1: one time always prepares you to do a similar thing
Speaker 1: more easily in the future. And so I think I
Speaker 1: would worry that selling my soul, even in a purely
Speaker 1: symbolic sense, would kind of wound myself image in a
Speaker 1: way that would perhaps make me less protective of my
Speaker 1: integrity in the future. I feel like to come back
Speaker 1: to anchoring. It's also insulting to to offer two dollars
Speaker 1: for someone's soul, because and then you're gonna turn him down,
Speaker 1: like you've already established that that is where you're going
Speaker 1: to begin the bidding. Yes, so even even if I
Speaker 1: come back and and I'm gonna gonna say something like, well,
Speaker 1: at least not for me a hundred dollars, like that
Speaker 1: doesn't say I still probably wouldn't do it for a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. But but now I'm already thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Because he started at two dollars. I think you were
Speaker 1: actually very much onto something about that number. There. There
Speaker 1: there's a way in which the two dollars makes it
Speaker 1: even worse, because again, even if you don't believe in
Speaker 1: any sort of supernatural immaterial soul, the deal would represent
Speaker 1: a kind of symbolic low ball valuing of yourself. You're
Speaker 1: just saying like, I'm not worth very much, and that
Speaker 1: hurts you to say, even in a symbolic way where
Speaker 1: you can tear up the contract afterwards. Then to come
Speaker 1: back on the other side, though, I did find a
Speaker 1: study that seemed, at least at least on its surface value,
Speaker 1: to sort of line up with the idea of of
Speaker 1: valuing souls and things like that at a at a
Speaker 1: dog matter or deontological level rather than a moral reasoning lele.
Speaker 1: And this was an fMRI I cognition study, which, of
Speaker 1: course we've learned to always be somewhat careful about not
Speaker 1: rely too much on just one or two studies like
Speaker 1: this about a subject, but look for some corroboration. But
Speaker 1: this study was in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Speaker 1: b Biological Sciences in twelve by Gregory S. Burns, Emily Bell, C.
Speaker 1: Monica Capra, Michael J. Preetula, Sarah Moore, Brittany Anderson, Jeremy
Speaker 1: gin j Son Scott A trend and the short version
Speaker 1: of this is that the the authors of the study
Speaker 1: put people in f MRI machines and then offered them
Speaker 1: sums of money that would actually be paid out, so
Speaker 1: people would get real money in exchange for symbolically making
Speaker 1: statements that were about sort of sacred type values, deeply
Speaker 1: held personal values, but making statements that disagreed with their
Speaker 1: actual positions. And people were very resistant to doing this
Speaker 1: in some cases for understandable reasons. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of them along the lines of things we've just been
Speaker 1: talking about. And they found that quote. Using fMRI I
Speaker 1: we found that values that people refuse to sell sacred
Speaker 1: values were associated with increased activity in the left tempo
Speaker 1: parietal junction in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex regions previously associated with
Speaker 1: semantic rule retrieval. This suggests that sacred values affect behavior
Speaker 1: through retrieval and processing of deontic rules, and not through
Speaker 1: utilitarian evaluation of costs and benefits. So I think this finding,
Speaker 1: to the extent that is valid, would tend to line
Speaker 1: up more with the idea that when ideas about a
Speaker 1: sacred substance are concerned the idea of like surrendering something
Speaker 1: that is a deeply held value to yourself, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to just use the part of your brain where
Speaker 1: you intuitively automatically check the rules in your knowledge, versus
Speaker 1: the part of your brain that you use to sort
Speaker 1: of think through the pros and cons of things. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I guess to wrap up this section, would you sell
Speaker 1: your soul for a donut? Know? What would you sell
Speaker 1: your soul for? What kind of pastry would it have
Speaker 1: to be? It has to be a pastry? I mean,
Speaker 1: what about a really good queen of mom? I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, if if my my souls being sold either way,
Speaker 1: like it's a must sell situation and I have to
Speaker 1: pick a pastry, I mean I'm gonna go with something big,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna go with like a big moon cake. Um,
Speaker 1: one that's about the size of a like a dinner
Speaker 1: table or something, you know, some sort of record setting pastry.
Speaker 1: Oh what about one of those like Guinness book parking
Speaker 1: lot sized pizzas? How about that? Now? Nothing that big
Speaker 1: any anytime there's a food that that looks like you
Speaker 1: had to use like shovels or and or buckets to
Speaker 1: bake it or prepare it, I'm just I'm not really
Speaker 1: fill you with confidence. Yeah, it needs the food needs
Speaker 1: to have been made with actual culinary instruments and tools
Speaker 1: and not things from the hardware store. Now is that
Speaker 1: a conclusion that you reasoned your way to or is
Speaker 1: that a deontological judgment? It's the ladder, but I'd agree
Speaker 1: with you. I think it's based on watching videos of
Speaker 1: the of some of these records setting baking or cooking projects,
Speaker 1: you know, really dirty. Yeah, get being turned off by
Speaker 1: the idea of somebody using something that even if it's
Speaker 1: pristine and it's been sterilized, like you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: use a shovel to stir a chili, you know that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. This is really funny. This comes exactly
Speaker 1: back to the cockroach thing. So would you dip a
Speaker 1: sterilized cockroach in your apple juice and drink it? You know, No,
Speaker 1: you'd feel like that's ikey somehow, even though it's sterilized.
Speaker 1: I've worked in restaurants before, and there are moments in
Speaker 1: a restaurant because you have to create huge portions of
Speaker 1: things that you'll be mixing up a sauce or a
Speaker 1: soup or something in buckets or even in a garbage
Speaker 1: can or something like that, and it's just like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you can't feed that to people. It is clean, they
Speaker 1: clean it, but it just doesn't seem right. I agree,
Speaker 1: I would. I would prefer not to know about that
Speaker 1: with my my my favorite restaurants. Don't go in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Then all right, we're gonna take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back and we're all right. Well that
Speaker 1: that selection was definitely infernal, but I think in in
Speaker 1: a in a in a way, our next selection is
Speaker 1: also pretty infernal. So uh, you know, generally, speaking with
Speaker 1: with horror anthology films, you have kind of a smartist
Speaker 1: board of horror that's presented. In some cases the filmmakers
Speaker 1: clearly just cobbled together some some short horror films with
Speaker 1: a shaky framing narrative or a creepy host. Otherwise, the
Speaker 1: theme might be the author themselves. Uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: might be okay, these are three stories from Stephen King,
Speaker 1: or these are three stories from Richard Matheson. Other times,
Speaker 1: it's more of a cultural or regional themes, such as
Speaker 1: say the film Three Extremes, which features East Asian horror tales.
Speaker 1: And then there is the Uncanny, from which is I
Speaker 1: feel like it's pretty singular. I think it might be
Speaker 1: one of a kind because it is. It's certainly unlike
Speaker 1: any other horror anthology film that I've watched or I
Speaker 1: am aware of, because the framing narrative and all three
Speaker 1: segments are devoted entirely to murderous house cats. It's true,
Speaker 1: and and I've watched the whole thing. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: eighty eight minutes of feline cinematic terror. It's wall to
Speaker 1: wall cat sounds, cat based jump scares, creepy music combined
Speaker 1: with cat close ups, and some otherwise very talented actors
Speaker 1: reacting to cat to cats scares, and of course cats
Speaker 1: jumping out and slashing them to Jesus out of people.
Speaker 1: A lot of times with real cats that are clear.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of cats in this film,
Speaker 1: probably more cats in scenes in this film than I've
Speaker 1: ever seen, uh in a movie before. Though I would
Speaker 1: say also lots of cats in close up. And I
Speaker 1: think these close ups were filmed separately than the rest
Speaker 1: of the movies, So they just got lots of close
Speaker 1: ups of cats meowing, hissing, swatting at things, and then
Speaker 1: cut those in with the drama that was going on,
Speaker 1: which did still involve some cats, which I'm sure was
Speaker 1: a nightmare. Yeah, this is this production was clearly a nightmare. Um.
Speaker 1: The result is is I will say it's it's very watchable.
Speaker 1: It's a film in the tradition of the the Amicist productions.
Speaker 1: It has Peter Cushing in, it has Donald Pleasant some
Speaker 1: other actors of note. Um, it's it's very well made. UM.
Speaker 1: And I it's it's interesting. I'd forgotten about this film
Speaker 1: and then I when I was researching it and kind
Speaker 1: of rediscovered it, I realized that I had in fact
Speaker 1: seen the first segment, and the first segment is the
Speaker 1: one that I rewatched for this episode. I think I
Speaker 1: caught it on A and E back when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, or when I was in junior high and
Speaker 1: I remember being creeped out at the time, and it
Speaker 1: it is still effectively creepy. It is a it is
Speaker 1: essentially an animals attack film. Yes, but with cats. It's
Speaker 1: Jaws with cats. Yeah, it's the birds but instead cats. Oh,
Speaker 1: the birds is a better comparison because there's not just
Speaker 1: one cat. There are many many cats. By the way,
Speaker 1: this came out in ninety seven. Again, uh, that is
Speaker 1: the same year that Stephen King published a short story
Speaker 1: about a killer cat, The Cat from Hell. Uh, came
Speaker 1: out in the magazine Cavalier, and this would later be
Speaker 1: adapted into the in the excellent horror anthology film Tales
Speaker 1: from the Dark Side the Movie with Buster Point Exter
Speaker 1: and William Hickey. Um, it's it's terrible, but but good.
Speaker 1: I really want to spoil the ending of that segment,
Speaker 1: but I won't. Yeah, it's a it's pretty it's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Uh you know. Actually, Tales on the Dark Side of
Speaker 1: the Movie is definitely worth checking out. Not so much
Speaker 1: for this for for this one for the Cat from Hell,
Speaker 1: but it has a wonderful gargoyle story that I think
Speaker 1: I've mentioned before that is essentially a retelling of a
Speaker 1: of a Japanese ghost story about the frost made. Yes,
Speaker 1: the first segment I believe is the Mummy one that's
Speaker 1: just star studded. It's got lots of one's well known
Speaker 1: actors and it doesn't have like Christian Slater and Steve
Speaker 1: Bushimmy and people. Christian Slater's definitely in it. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that Mummy tale, very loosely based on Sir Arthur Conan
Speaker 1: Doyle's work is is pretty terrific in that I find
Speaker 1: that it would be one of the few, certainly, yeah,
Speaker 1: really one of the few Mummy tales where they do
Speaker 1: a good job of making the Mummy scary. Uh As
Speaker 1: I recall, like the Mummy at one point, like Star
Speaker 1: it stalks up on somebody and removes their brain through
Speaker 1: their nostril with like a coat hanger um, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a nice touch, you know, alluding to it
Speaker 1: to the practices of mummification that the ancient Egyptians employed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of my other favorite Mummy movies actually is the
Speaker 1: one that I've got the poster of right next to
Speaker 1: me right now. Lamelodicion de feron the nineteen British Mummy
Speaker 1: if it I think it's hammer. If it's not hammer,
Speaker 1: it's very hammer adjacent. Via the cast. It's got Peter Cushing,
Speaker 1: it's got Christopher Lee, it's it's it's fantastic, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of Peter Cushing, let me let me go and
Speaker 1: roll out there. The framing narrative for the uncanny Peter Cushing,
Speaker 1: who again it always a class act, always elevates anything
Speaker 1: he's part of. In this he plays a nervous author
Speaker 1: named Wilburg Ray who has a new manuscript about cats,
Speaker 1: about how they're actually evil supernatural creatures. They're the devil
Speaker 1: in disguise. They're out to get us and cooshing places
Speaker 1: very well, convincingly, coming off as extremely jumpy and sleep
Speaker 1: deprived due to the lingering threat of feline assassination. It
Speaker 1: has all the he has all the air and seriousness
Speaker 1: of a character in a spy movie, you know who's
Speaker 1: like a defect or pursued by shadowy figures through the streets,
Speaker 1: though in instead of being like weird looking agents and
Speaker 1: trench coats, it's cats. It's stray cats and house cats
Speaker 1: that are that are stalking him at every turn. It's
Speaker 1: what are the thirty nine steps and they're they're all cats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, I will say this movie makes one grievous
Speaker 1: error with respect to Peter Cushing, which is that he
Speaker 1: has a scraggly beard in it. And Peter Cushing should
Speaker 1: always be clean shaven. He does not need facial Having
Speaker 1: facial hair on Peter Cushing is like having Michael Myer's
Speaker 1: wheeled and knife. But it's in a sheath, is just
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't really capture what you're using Peter
Speaker 1: Cushing for. Yeah, So those face angles, they should be naked.
Speaker 1: So that's the basic setup. He comes he comes to
Speaker 1: his publisher's house apartment to talk about this this manuscript,
Speaker 1: and of course the publisher has a cat which is
Speaker 1: creeping at him out even more, and he proceeds to
Speaker 1: talk about three different cases that are discussed in his book.
Speaker 1: Each one is a segment about murderous cats. Um. The
Speaker 1: only one that I rewatched for this episode is the
Speaker 1: first one, which is terrific. It takes place in London
Speaker 1: in nineve and in this one, we have a wealthy
Speaker 1: old woman who decides to leave her a state to
Speaker 1: her mini pet cats, who are sadly mistreated by the
Speaker 1: maid turns out the maid is in league with the
Speaker 1: old woman's nephew, who's uh, he's kind of a scoundrel
Speaker 1: and you know, squandering his money. He's he's he's a
Speaker 1: bad dude, and he was set to inherit everything before
Speaker 1: this new will was put in place. Well, the maid
Speaker 1: catches wind of this new plan. She hears the old
Speaker 1: woman talking to her attorney about it, so she tells
Speaker 1: the nephew, and the nephew tasks her then with stealing
Speaker 1: the new will because it's it's assumed that the old
Speaker 1: lady is not going to live that long and we
Speaker 1: can just get this new will out of the picture.
Speaker 1: Then you know, the nephew will get all the money,
Speaker 1: everything will be fine, and they'll like run off into
Speaker 1: the sunset together. Right, So what does she do? She
Speaker 1: decides to steal the will. So what she does is
Speaker 1: she sneaks into the old woman's room at night, goes
Speaker 1: to the safe, opens it up, gets the will out.
Speaker 1: But then the old woman awakens, uh and so, and
Speaker 1: surrounded by her many cats, accuses the maid. Well, the
Speaker 1: maid says, well, I've got to go with plan B now,
Speaker 1: and she smothers the old woman there in front of
Speaker 1: her many cats. And the cats are immediately upset, you know,
Speaker 1: they realize, whoa, we've overstepped your boundaries, you've killed this
Speaker 1: old woman. And when the maid goes to pick up
Speaker 1: the last will and testament on the floor, a cat,
Speaker 1: a cat pop comes out and scratches her hand, and
Speaker 1: she shrieks and draws back and she's bleeding at the hand.
Speaker 1: She reaches out for it again. Cats wipes her hand
Speaker 1: again and and and it's great because it's clearly like
Speaker 1: a like a puppet of a cat's hand scratching her
Speaker 1: um uh cats pomp uh and uh. And from there
Speaker 1: it just becomes a full blown assault. You know, cats
Speaker 1: are leaping out at her, they're they're they're they're assaulting,
Speaker 1: or they're they're chasing her around the house. She ends
Speaker 1: up barricading herself in the larder and for some reason,
Speaker 1: like she's in there long enough that she's forced to
Speaker 1: eat what I what I think is supposed to be
Speaker 1: cat food on bread in order to survive. There just
Speaker 1: jars and jars of these earthenware jars of wet cat
Speaker 1: food covered with like cloth and twine. Yeah. Wait, just
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. Because like, why are you spreading that on
Speaker 1: the biscuit. Just eat the biscuits if you're starving because
Speaker 1: you're barricaded in her room by cats, Like, just eat
Speaker 1: all the biscuits up first, and then you can think
Speaker 1: of like she's she's playing a weird long game of
Speaker 1: forcing herself to eat cat food. Yeah, there's a bread box.
Speaker 1: She like gets out the bread box, and it's funny
Speaker 1: because when she gets it out, you think she's gonna
Speaker 1: do something with the bread box, like climb up on
Speaker 1: it to get out the window or something. But no,
Speaker 1: she just gets bread out and then and then spreads
Speaker 1: cat food on it. Now, so she hangs out in
Speaker 1: there for a while, presumably like days, I don't know. Finally,
Speaker 1: she's listening at the door. Seems like things have calmed down,
Speaker 1: so she creeps out with a knife, goes back up
Speaker 1: the stairs and tries once more to grab the will,
Speaker 1: but the cats disarmor. She runs away. I think she
Speaker 1: falls down the stairs. Uh, But before she does, she
Speaker 1: sees that the cats have of course begun to eat
Speaker 1: the old woman who is dead in the bed. Finally,
Speaker 1: the police break down the door. The lawyer and the
Speaker 1: nephew show up. Uh. They're you know, horrified when they
Speaker 1: find the body of the maid. But the nephew, he's
Speaker 1: only got one thing on his mind, so he runs upstairs,
Speaker 1: goes into the bedroom where the old woman has been
Speaker 1: munched down by the cats. Uh, and he sees the
Speaker 1: will on the floor. He goes to get it, cat
Speaker 1: jumps onto his neck, rips his jugular open, and he dies.
Speaker 1: We also find that once they go up there, they
Speaker 1: discover the cats have also eaten the whole made They've
Speaker 1: just stripped her flesh like piranhas, and and it apparently
Speaker 1: has happened in a matter of seconds. Yeah, so it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's terrific. You know that these cats
Speaker 1: are not only are they they they sinister and murderous,
Speaker 1: but they also understand that they have a legal claim
Speaker 1: to this house and the woman's estate, and they are
Speaker 1: willing to to to murder to protect it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: something I wasn't sure about. It. It does suggest that
Speaker 1: the cats understand the legal ramifications of what's going on,
Speaker 1: And I guess this ties in with the framing narrative,
Speaker 1: which is Peter Cushing's idea that that cats secretly understand
Speaker 1: everything and run the world, and that they're listening. Now
Speaker 1: you you watch the other segments that are they stand
Speaker 1: out at all, like like I felt like I hadn't
Speaker 1: I've had enough, you know, like my eyes would be
Speaker 1: bigger than my stomach if I if I kept going.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a I'd say the movie is very
Speaker 1: front loaded on the cats, because the first segment is
Speaker 1: just cats, cats, cats, and the next two segments are
Speaker 1: about cats, but they're not constantly tons of cats hissing
Speaker 1: and screeching and me owing. There there's a little bit
Speaker 1: more with the human characters. The second segment has Charles
Speaker 1: Bronson's daughter in it, and she plays like a girl
Speaker 1: who uh gets taken into a new home and is
Speaker 1: mistreated by the like the daughter who already lives there
Speaker 1: and is and is she's very mean. She's like the
Speaker 1: mean daughter in in Jack Frost, and the mean daughter
Speaker 1: eventually gets punished by by Charles Bronson's daughter when she
Speaker 1: does a satanic ritual that like shrinks the mean girl
Speaker 1: down to the size of a mouse and then is
Speaker 1: tormented by the cat. But ultimately she gets stepped on
Speaker 1: by a human, not by by a cat, and then Uh.
Speaker 1: That scene at that segment also has a scene where
Speaker 1: the mean daughter is tormenting the main character with a
Speaker 1: remote control airplane. But while she's like supposedly controlling the airplane,
Speaker 1: you can actually see part of the airplane just poking
Speaker 1: into the frame, so it's just sitting right there in
Speaker 1: front of her. The third segment has Donald Pleasants and uh,
Speaker 1: and I think I was texting you about this in
Speaker 1: my phone auto corrected his name to Donald Pleasure, which
Speaker 1: is about right, because he is a pleasure. In this segment,
Speaker 1: he's wearing a red wig, so he's ginger Donald Pleasance.
Speaker 1: And he plays this vain actor who murders his wife
Speaker 1: to try to get a beautiful, younger new wife. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he tries to. He's like he's hostile towards his
Speaker 1: dead wife's cat, but the cat gets revenge on him. Nice.
Speaker 1: I believe there's a there's an iron maiden in this one, right, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: there is an iron maiden, and uh, it's a prop
Speaker 1: iron maiden for use on a film set. But it
Speaker 1: turns out the spikes are actually metal and sharp, so
Speaker 1: that when he gets closed inside it, or when somebody
Speaker 1: gets closed inside it, it impales them. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a method actor, it's how you have to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a really good scene in the third segment where
Speaker 1: Donald Pleasants is demonstrating to a to a bad actress
Speaker 1: how to scream. People should just clip out that scene. Now.
Speaker 1: I want to include a word a word of warning
Speaker 1: about this film. So this is very much an animal's
Speaker 1: attack film from nine seven. Now, some of you might
Speaker 1: have more experience than others with animal attacks films, but
Speaker 1: certainly the older animal attacks film you're gonna run into
Speaker 1: some some questions about animal handling. Uh, And you certainly
Speaker 1: get that vibe with this pretiction with this production, especially
Speaker 1: in that first segment, which again just has so many cats. Um,
Speaker 1: it must have just been a nightmare to film, because
Speaker 1: I remember reading about the Cohen Brothers making inside Lewin
Speaker 1: Davis and about just how much trouble they had shooting
Speaker 1: one cat and getting one cat to do what they
Speaker 1: wanted to do. And in this segment of the nine
Speaker 1: twelve segment, they're just cats everywhere. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: awful to imagine. And I couldn't find anything concrete about
Speaker 1: cat mistreatment on the film. But um, imdbek has a
Speaker 1: has a bit in the Trivia claiming that cinematographer Harry
Speaker 1: Waxman threatened to quit when he found that the production
Speaker 1: was mistreating the cats. But it's not cited, so I
Speaker 1: don't know where he was saying that. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not particularly doubting it, I just don't have any evidence
Speaker 1: to back that up. Well, I gotta say, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that claim is true, And even if it
Speaker 1: is true, I thought it was phrased in an ambiguous way,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know if that meant his objection was
Speaker 1: to the production actually mistreating cats or to the fact
Speaker 1: that the movie was about the mistreatment of cats. Right,
Speaker 1: but but certainly just so many cats being used. Uh,
Speaker 1: it does raise a red flag because if you know cats,
Speaker 1: cats in general do not want to be a part
Speaker 1: of your stupid movie project. They aren't even interested in
Speaker 1: watching your stupid movies unless you have some good high
Speaker 1: deaf bird or road in action. Um, you know, about
Speaker 1: the most that they'll do is they'll they'll tolerate setting
Speaker 1: on you during a film if you if you don't
Speaker 1: laugh too much. So I would say, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're sensitive to this sort of thing. Just skip this
Speaker 1: one all the way. Um. A plus on top of
Speaker 1: all this, the fiction of the film involves conflict between
Speaker 1: humans and house cats. Um, so you know it's it's
Speaker 1: going to deal with the idea of like your your
Speaker 1: fur babies as vicious murderers and something that you would
Speaker 1: have to combat. Well. On the other side, though, I
Speaker 1: would say that the cats in essentially all three segments
Speaker 1: are to the extent that there is a protagonist, the
Speaker 1: cats are the protect agonists and the human character. It's
Speaker 1: like Tales from the Crypt The human protagonists are bad
Speaker 1: people who are getting punished for their antagonism towards cats,
Speaker 1: and the cats win. Yeah, it's I I feel like
Speaker 1: this is kind of a golden rule of evil cat
Speaker 1: um horror fiction, right The cats need to win, like
Speaker 1: the cats never losen. Yeah, I mean that's the case
Speaker 1: with the cat from hell. Um. I don't know if
Speaker 1: to have some listeners chime in on this one. I
Speaker 1: think if they can think of any examples where, uh,
Speaker 1: the evil cat doesn't win, I cannot think of one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it seems like a very ancient meme
Speaker 1: the cat came back. There is always the cats just
Speaker 1: always gonna win, all right. So I think we've established
Speaker 1: what this film is and what it's all about. It's
Speaker 1: time to start thinking deeply about it. So. Um, the
Speaker 1: first question that I think arises from all of this,
Speaker 1: especially that first segment when in which again cats clearly
Speaker 1: just straight up murder two people. Um, has a house
Speaker 1: at ever killed a human? Uh? And then I think
Speaker 1: this is a pretty interesting question to look into. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there have been a couple of articles at least
Speaker 1: that have have examined it. Mike Pearl that a solid
Speaker 1: article for Vice about five years ago on this topic,
Speaker 1: talking to some experts about not just the historical matters here,
Speaker 1: but also just the physical attack capabilities of cats and
Speaker 1: their jaws and their teeth. The consensus seems to be
Speaker 1: that that, okay, there are a few situations where cats
Speaker 1: have been linked to human deaths. For example, there are
Speaker 1: reports of cats accidentally smothering babies by laying on them,
Speaker 1: and this seems to have given rise to the you know,
Speaker 1: the long standing superstition that cats suck out of child's
Speaker 1: breath when they sleep. This, of course, was also part
Speaker 1: of the plot for Stephen King's Cat's Eye. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but of course The twist there is that the cat,
Speaker 1: the cat is is said to be the one sucking
Speaker 1: out her life essence, but really it's a troll and
Speaker 1: the cat is the bodyguard protecting her from the troll. Right,
Speaker 1: So so that's that's one area where you can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is an example where house cats have been linked
Speaker 1: to human deaths. Some people have also died from infections
Speaker 1: caused by cats, such as rabies, but no human in
Speaker 1: all of recorded history has ever been like straight up
Speaker 1: attacked and killed by a housecat. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem to have happened in a way
Speaker 1: that has been recorded and uh and has been made notable. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it basically comes back to the fact that cats,
Speaker 1: even a large housecat, simply doesn't have the bite strength
Speaker 1: to pull this off, unlike something like a domestic dog,
Speaker 1: which definitely does. I mean, even in the United States
Speaker 1: dogs kill thirty to fifty people a year now. Brian
Speaker 1: Palmer also wrote an article about this for Slate, and
Speaker 1: he he kicked off the article by pointing out that
Speaker 1: in UH, an Illinois man allegedly plotted to murder an
Speaker 1: attorney and frame the victims cat for the murder. So
Speaker 1: not an example of cats actually murdering somebody, but somebody
Speaker 1: thinking they could they could use that to cover their
Speaker 1: own track. That sounds very much like a segment that
Speaker 1: would be in the Uncanny. Yeah. Um. Now, Palmer points
Speaker 1: out that there have been cases where a human has
Speaker 1: reportedly had a had a scrape with a cat, gotten
Speaker 1: into a fight with a cat essentially and have to
Speaker 1: have you know, some degree of of medical intervention. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand ten, a postpartum cat in Idaho bit
Speaker 1: her owner thirty five times. Uh. There was a two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven case where a Cleveland man had to be
Speaker 1: air left lifted following a housecat attack. Uh. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a lot of details about either of those cases,
Speaker 1: by the way, Um, so some questions remain. But you know,
Speaker 1: really these two accounts don't give as much to go
Speaker 1: on for a variety of reasons. House cats may engage
Speaker 1: in in you know, in in play aggressive behavior or
Speaker 1: even more legitimate aggressive behavior. They may act out in defense. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is a threshold to how much of your nonsense
Speaker 1: that a cat is going to put up with a
Speaker 1: cat may scratch you, and a cat scratches, nothing to
Speaker 1: sneeze at, certainly, but almost certainly not gonna be lethal. Right.
Speaker 1: It seems like the main area where you see enhanced
Speaker 1: danger from cats from from house cats is is the
Speaker 1: area of a cat getting underfoot. So such as when
Speaker 1: you're carrying stuff in carrying in groceries, or you're doing
Speaker 1: something in the kitchen. I think about this a lot,
Speaker 1: like my cat is going to be the death of
Speaker 1: me because she's under my feet when I'm trying to
Speaker 1: move like a um, you know, boiling spaghetti around the
Speaker 1: kitchen or something. Yes. Uh, and dogs can do this too.
Speaker 1: In fact, sometimes I noticed there's like an ironic attraction.
Speaker 1: It seems like dogs and cats often want to get
Speaker 1: under your feet right when you're doing something precarious, probably
Speaker 1: because it like looks unusual if you've got like a
Speaker 1: big package in your arms or something. Yeah, or with
Speaker 1: a cat, it's like it's happening in the kitchen, it
Speaker 1: might be food for me. So uh So I looked
Speaker 1: at this up a little bit, and I found a
Speaker 1: two thousand nine report from the CDC that said that
Speaker 1: pet related falls involving both dogs and cats injure more
Speaker 1: than eighty six thousand people annually. Now, this entails a
Speaker 1: number of pet activities, ranging from taking a dog on
Speaker 1: a walk to stepping over a cat. Uh, and also
Speaker 1: involves like chasing or running from animals. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot that that is entailed there um this particular right
Speaker 1: up says quote most falls involving cats occurred at home
Speaker 1: eighty five point seven percent. Approximately eleven point seven percent
Speaker 1: of injuries occurred while persons were chasing cats. However, an
Speaker 1: activity was not specified. In sixty two point one percent
Speaker 1: of cases, the most frequent circumstances were falling or tripping
Speaker 1: over a cat. Twenty nine point two percent involved other
Speaker 1: or unknown circumstances. Now, how many of those cases where
Speaker 1: the cat caused to fall were due to someone trying
Speaker 1: to frame a cat for murder? I don't know half um.
Speaker 1: So the next question I have, of course, are our
Speaker 1: cats supernatural? Are they actually the spawn of Satan? Obviously,
Speaker 1: housecats are not the spawn of Satan. They're not magical,
Speaker 1: but of course they have. They have been long associated
Speaker 1: with magical and or diabolical ideas, and a lot of
Speaker 1: this seems to come from several different qualities that we
Speaker 1: observe in cats. Um. So for starters, cats haven't been
Speaker 1: domesticated as long as dogs and are by some estimates
Speaker 1: self domesticating. So there's this idea that the the cat
Speaker 1: retains a certain amount of power over itself that we
Speaker 1: might find suspicious or intimidating at times. Cats are obviously
Speaker 1: stealthy and uh and move around in ways that that
Speaker 1: we might have a difficulty, you know, detecting them, and
Speaker 1: they may play at hunting you especially, you know, a
Speaker 1: house cat may do this, but I've seen outdoor cats
Speaker 1: engage in this kind of behavior as well, which can
Speaker 1: be maybe a trifle unnerving. Cats are also frequently active
Speaker 1: at night, and their eyes have a reflective layer called
Speaker 1: the tapatum lucidum that magnifies incoming light and is the
Speaker 1: reason you'll see this reflective, sometimes greenish glint to their
Speaker 1: eyes at night, and it can certainly have a kind
Speaker 1: of fairy fire look to it. Yeah, they've got the
Speaker 1: same thing that like spiders have. Yeah. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think other things just to keep in mind is that,
Speaker 1: of course cats are just really weird. Um. They're they're
Speaker 1: kind of paranoid because they're in this weird space between
Speaker 1: prey and predator. Um. And I feel like they're just
Speaker 1: harder to read. Sometimes. I feel like you can you
Speaker 1: can kind of get to know a dog pretty well,
Speaker 1: but cats pose more mystery. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it's just personality differences in the species.
Speaker 1: Dogs tend to be much more social. They're the kind
Speaker 1: of personality that, if they were a human, you describe
Speaker 1: as a person who's an open book. Uh. They're they're
Speaker 1: very outward about their emotions and all that. Cats read
Speaker 1: to humans as a loof reserved kind of playing defense.
Speaker 1: So we've read a lot into that over the years,
Speaker 1: um and and as and it's comes now subroad that
Speaker 1: you see cats featuring into various uh cultures and religions.
Speaker 1: We can identify a you know, wide variety of attitudes
Speaker 1: and superstitions towards cats, and they range from divine qualities
Speaker 1: as identified by the ancient Egyptians, uh, you know, to
Speaker 1: just admirable qualities as identified by the prophet Muhammad. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was said to have a loyal cat named Musa,
Speaker 1: and there were various traditions and legends that were swapped
Speaker 1: around associated with Musa. I recommend researching that. It's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting in India. UM. As described in uh
Speaker 1: Nanda Christiana's Excellent Sacred Animals of the India, the domestic
Speaker 1: cat is the vehicle of of Shash, the fertility goddess
Speaker 1: popular in parts of India. UM. So you know, you'll
Speaker 1: look at iconography of this particular goddess and you'll see
Speaker 1: that they're clearly writing, you know, kind of standing on
Speaker 1: a house cat. Interesting, however, or Christiana also writes that
Speaker 1: in parts of India, a cat crossing one's path is
Speaker 1: still considered inauspicious. Though, so there's still a certain amount
Speaker 1: of negative superstition wound up in cultural attitudes towards cats
Speaker 1: as well. But then, uh, there are a host of
Speaker 1: just superstitious cruelties involving cats. Um. In The Golden Bough,
Speaker 1: James Fraser wrote of French shepherd traditions that involve burning
Speaker 1: or roasting cats alive, and a bonfire is a way
Speaker 1: to protect the flock against sickness and witchcraft. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: just seems to obviously tie into the historical association between
Speaker 1: cats and witchcraft. Cats often seen as the familiars of witches,
Speaker 1: the familiar spirits. Yeah, either either they're working with the
Speaker 1: witches or they are themselves transformed witches. And so you
Speaker 1: see this android I customs that survived throughout Europe. Uh.
Speaker 1: He points out that other animals, such as snakes and
Speaker 1: foxes suffered the same fate due to the same so
Speaker 1: siations with alleged witches. The cats are not witches, folks,
Speaker 1: They're they're they're keeping your basement rat free. Come on,
Speaker 1: what more could you want if you're gonna If you're
Speaker 1: gonna air, I would say air on the side of
Speaker 1: believing your cat to be a tiny god, because they
Speaker 1: certainly believe they're tiny gods. Uh. There's no excuse for
Speaker 1: cruelty to cats, be at your cat or somebody else's cat,
Speaker 1: be at a domestic purely domestic house cat, or a
Speaker 1: feral cat. Now, the next question, I guess kind of
Speaker 1: the final question that the the uncanny makes me ponder,
Speaker 1: is this our cats vengeful? Can you know? Because these
Speaker 1: are all tales of like cats enacting revenge cats leading
Speaker 1: to the come uppance for villainous humans. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: really one that's that's interesting to think about because you
Speaker 1: actually hear about this a lot, if you know people
Speaker 1: with cats, if you yourself have cats, stories of cats
Speaker 1: allegedly lashing out against their humans or particular human perhaps
Speaker 1: peeing on something that they value or slashing something up
Speaker 1: in retaliation to something they don't like. I've seen behavior
Speaker 1: in cats that I've never seen in dogs, like a
Speaker 1: cat being angry at being bothered or something, and then
Speaker 1: not just reacting with the sort of defensive scratch, but
Speaker 1: like chasing you afterwards to to hiss and scratch. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: cats are weird. We have to we have to keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. I think a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of the A lot of this goes without saying. You
Speaker 1: know that that obviously when humans have pets, we anthropomorphize them.
Speaker 1: We have from anthropomorphies our dogs and our cats and
Speaker 1: any other animals we might have around the house, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, it's easy to for forget that they
Speaker 1: are different beings. You know, that they live in a
Speaker 1: different since world there. You know, they don't just have
Speaker 1: a small human brain inside that skull of theirs. Uh,
Speaker 1: And we've put them in strange conditions that they didn't
Speaker 1: really fully evolved to inhabit. On the other hand, we
Speaker 1: can't think of them as just completely you know, unemotional beings.
Speaker 1: I mean, so so the question becomes one of this. So,
Speaker 1: if a cat is capable of emotional states, is it
Speaker 1: capable of seeking revenge? Is it capable of being vengeful
Speaker 1: or spiteful? I mean, I think of revenge as as
Speaker 1: an evolved adaptation that's special in social groups when, like,
Speaker 1: you expect to be interacting with the same individuals again
Speaker 1: and again over time, and you need to behave in
Speaker 1: a way that that punishes them for behaviors across time,
Speaker 1: not just like discourages something in the moment, but but
Speaker 1: like continues to enforce the kind of behavior you want
Speaker 1: from others even after the behavior has stopped. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we're already in a strange position because we, as very
Speaker 1: social mammals are are trying to apply the same like
Speaker 1: social structure and uh and and behave realism on creatures
Speaker 1: that are far more solitary than we are. So I
Speaker 1: was looking around for for any you know of feedback
Speaker 1: on this, for any inside on this, and I ran
Speaker 1: across the cat coach, Maryland Krieger, who is a certified
Speaker 1: cat behavior consultant with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.
Speaker 1: And uh, they've they've written about this before. UM, And
Speaker 1: I was looking at a particular article on catster dot com,
Speaker 1: and they pointed out, quote cats always have legitimate reasons
Speaker 1: for their behaviors, holding grudges and deliberately being irritating are
Speaker 1: not among them. I guess it would depend on your definitions,
Speaker 1: though I would be skeptical of anyone saying that any
Speaker 1: organism always has legitimate reasons for its behaviors. I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes behaviors just kind of happen. Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: makes you ask a lot of questions about revenge. Is
Speaker 1: there a legitimate revenge? Like if it happens in a
Speaker 1: Shakespeare play, is that it's like, that's legitimate, Or it
Speaker 1: happens in a TV drama, it's legitimate, whereas real life
Speaker 1: revenge is rarely that simple. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it gets gets pretty mudy pretty quickly. I guess maybe
Speaker 1: the point here, which would seem pretty reasonable to me,
Speaker 1: is that, uh that it's it seems like a cat's
Speaker 1: time horizon for reacting to behavior is probably gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot shorter and probably going to be a lot
Speaker 1: more just like basically situationally utilitarian. Then uh then would
Speaker 1: be justified justified by a wrath of con style revenge plot. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's the big question. Our cats capable of
Speaker 1: plotting revenge? Um, that seems I think there's a strong
Speaker 1: case to say no. However, will a cat scratch you, uh,
Speaker 1: bite you, or hiss at you because you did something
Speaker 1: that they did not like like as an immediate response?
Speaker 1: I think the answer there obviously yes. If you don't
Speaker 1: believe me, uh you know, think think about the last
Speaker 1: time you try to touch your cat's belly and they
Speaker 1: weren't into it. They probably let you know, uh you
Speaker 1: know cats. Cats will generally be very um, if not vocal,
Speaker 1: then at least active about their preferences regarding their their
Speaker 1: belly fur. I remember cats cats I've known being very
Speaker 1: sensitive about their paws, Like you don't want to touch
Speaker 1: the pause, Yeah, those are their murder weapons. Don't disrespect them.
Speaker 1: It's like you cannot touch my sword. Yeah, unlets it
Speaker 1: draws your blood. The warrior's sword is sacred, so for
Speaker 1: a cat. Crager points out what frequently happens is that
Speaker 1: a cat does something in response to change in their
Speaker 1: immediate environment, and they're highly susceptible to change in their environment.
Speaker 1: A change in the household can induce stress and anxiety
Speaker 1: in the cat, and this can lead to medical problems
Speaker 1: like actual like legitimate medical problems such as urinary tract problems,
Speaker 1: bladder problems, etcetera, that may cause them to do things
Speaker 1: that can then be interpreted as acting out um, even
Speaker 1: things like so called spike ping. Uh you know where
Speaker 1: they're they're paying on, say your favorite pillow or something.
Speaker 1: It might be tied to a medical issue like some
Speaker 1: sort of bladder flare up, or it could be tied
Speaker 1: more to like a separation anxiety, which may cause them
Speaker 1: to urinate on their favorite person stuff in order to
Speaker 1: mingle their scent with that of the owner. So again,
Speaker 1: like that's the kind of thing where that's outside of
Speaker 1: the human um you know, our human emotional states for
Speaker 1: the most part, than the idea of mingling sense to
Speaker 1: feel with someone else's sense to feel better about them
Speaker 1: being away from you. But within a cat sense realm uh,
Speaker 1: that may make perfect sense, Like that is the perfect
Speaker 1: thing to do. That is the perfect comforting act. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then on the other side of it, like there
Speaker 1: are some analogies I think people can understand pretty well,
Speaker 1: Like it might be harder to behave correctly and uh,
Speaker 1: maintain mastery over all your bodily functions when you're very stressed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's difficult for us, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: difficult for other organisms as well. So I think it's
Speaker 1: worth keeping in mind that, you know, the cat world
Speaker 1: is different from the human world, even if we're sharing
Speaker 1: the same house. And I mean this applies to any animal.
Speaker 1: The dog world is different from the human world even
Speaker 1: though you you spend your lives together, you share the
Speaker 1: same space, but you don't see the world the same.
Speaker 1: All right. Uh. On that note, I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and close it out here. Um. As of
Speaker 1: October twenty twenty, I believe you can watch You can
Speaker 1: generally watch the Treehouse of Horror episodes on Disney Plus.
Speaker 1: I think that's where they're currently hosted. For streaming, The
Speaker 1: Uncanny was a little harder for me to get a
Speaker 1: hold of. I had to subscribe to some sort of
Speaker 1: some indie channel on Amazon Prime in order to streaming
Speaker 1: to stream it, but I don't know it's it's probably
Speaker 1: out on the YouTube or something as well. I found
Speaker 1: it on the tube of the Second Person, but you
Speaker 1: know that may change by the time you listen to
Speaker 1: this episode. Perhaps it's streaming in a more accessible place.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close the door
Speaker 1: on Anthology of Horror Volume six and hey, if you
Speaker 1: like these, if you want this tradition to continue next October,
Speaker 1: well you have a little less than a year to
Speaker 1: start pelting us with suggestions. What are your favorite episodes
Speaker 1: of various horror and sci fi UH anthology series that
Speaker 1: you would like us to consider, or your favorite segments
Speaker 1: from anthology films UH let us know we would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you find your podcasts and
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Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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