Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And boy, we got a treat for
Speaker 1: you today. We are joined by our friend and our
Speaker 1: former producer on this very show, Alex Williams. Say Hi, Alex,
Speaker 1: reformed producer. What's going on? Man? Oh, you know, just
Speaker 1: hanging out? What's what's up with you? Well? You know
Speaker 1: we're we're just having a bonus episode in your honor.
Speaker 1: That's what's going on here. Jeez. Thanks. Right before we
Speaker 1: got going, we were sitting around talking about Riddick movies
Speaker 1: for how long, I don't know. It was a while.
Speaker 1: I was mostly listening because I hadn't seen the movie
Speaker 1: in question, or any of the Riddeck movies. No, you're
Speaker 1: here for a reason today, Alex, to tell us about it.
Speaker 1: Oh uh, because of Ephemeral. I have a podcast called Ephemeral.
Speaker 1: It's really good, folks, Yes it is. It's it's very
Speaker 1: very exciting podcast because it's it's really unlike any podcast
Speaker 1: I've listened to before, um in terms of its subject matter,
Speaker 1: but also in terms of just like the high production
Speaker 1: qualities that you bring to it. Oh, thank you. You
Speaker 1: guys did a very nice time when you did. You
Speaker 1: did the trailer, you put the trailer out in your
Speaker 1: feed I think when it first came out, and you
Speaker 1: did very nice endorsement then too about the audio quality,
Speaker 1: which I thought was very sweet, So thank you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that the outer quality is wonderful. But but
Speaker 1: more but more important though, is the topic of dealing
Speaker 1: with these ephemeral bits of media. Can you just you know,
Speaker 1: speak to everybody who might not be familiar with the show,
Speaker 1: they haven't checked it out, or maybe they didn't catch
Speaker 1: the trailer drop. What are we talking about when we're
Speaker 1: talking about the way that um Sarah Wasserman is the
Speaker 1: Material Culture Studies uh A professor of Material Culture Studies
Speaker 1: at the University of Delaware. The way that she sort
Speaker 1: of differentiates what ephemera from other kinds of you know,
Speaker 1: disposable things, junk trash, is that if Emira takes some
Speaker 1: kind of curation, someone has to do some active saving
Speaker 1: for it to to continue to exist, something like Winnebago Man.
Speaker 1: Are familiar with Winnebago Man, of course, Well, I listened
Speaker 1: to your episode where you deal with Winnebego Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the guy who is there outtakes of him trying
Speaker 1: to record a TV commercial for Winnebagos. Is it a
Speaker 1: dealership or a new model or something. I think it's
Speaker 1: a dealer's ship. It's like the eighties VHS. The guy's
Speaker 1: name is Jack Rebney and he's just getting so frustrated
Speaker 1: on this day's shoes, complaining about how hot it is,
Speaker 1: and he's just swearing continuously, just f this s than everything.
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess he really piste off the crew
Speaker 1: because they cut together this video of him, you know,
Speaker 1: all of the worst moments, I guess in this sort
Speaker 1: of compilation. Now, this is way twenty years before plus
Speaker 1: twenty six maybe years before YouTube. Uh, and this compilation
Speaker 1: video survived all this time, you know, just you know,
Speaker 1: would just get you know, Oh you you might like
Speaker 1: this thing, so I dubb it for you on VHS.
Speaker 1: Robert might like it, so you dubb it for him
Speaker 1: on VHS. It even aired on public television. This is
Speaker 1: show cold. I guess was bleeped. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to find the copy of it that aired.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe that's the version that we have on
Speaker 1: YouTube now. Um there's a show called The Show with
Speaker 1: No Name out of in Austin, Texas that aired just
Speaker 1: weird clips like things that are someone on savory sometimes
Speaker 1: like James James Brown being arrested. Things like that when
Speaker 1: James Brown he was doing a talk show and he
Speaker 1: was uh he drugs or something. He seemed to be
Speaker 1: in an altered state. Things like that that you know,
Speaker 1: we're all there's tons and tons of him on YouTube now.
Speaker 1: I think we've we've talked before about everything is terrible?
Speaker 1: Is is a show on you What's it's a YouTube
Speaker 1: channel and it goes beyond YouTube. But they do a
Speaker 1: lot of this where it's it's clips from films and
Speaker 1: like old like like weird Christian VHS tapes and either
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that would just otherwise just be
Speaker 1: completely we just fall through the cracks of history. But
Speaker 1: you know, they keep it alive so that weekend, you know,
Speaker 1: find pleasure in it and laugh at it. Why is
Speaker 1: it that instructional training videos makes such fertile like ephemeral media.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just making a supposition, but I think
Speaker 1: maybe because they're made sort of for such a narrow
Speaker 1: audience and often with such little money. Uh, I can
Speaker 1: just go onto archive dot org. There's or there's a
Speaker 1: great site called the A V Geeks that just curate
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, old industrials and educational films and
Speaker 1: p s A S. I can just get lost on
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole of that stuff. It's so so bad
Speaker 1: and so good well because I guess like if you
Speaker 1: no skill goes into it, or like just a very
Speaker 1: small amount of skill like that in and of itself
Speaker 1: can be amusing. But then you have an instructional video
Speaker 1: like the famous shake Hands with Danger, which has fantastic
Speaker 1: and just almost the borderline offensive. Um, you know, graphic
Speaker 1: special effects for industrial injuries taking place, and you know
Speaker 1: it's out of keeping with the very amateur aspects of
Speaker 1: the rest of the production. Oh, it's like the the
Speaker 1: old high school chemistry lab safety videos that everybody loves
Speaker 1: so much, which just would they had the special effects
Speaker 1: for like shoving the broken glass speaker into your hand.
Speaker 1: And so I think, yeah, all of that in at
Speaker 1: least this particular definition. It's like those things all would
Speaker 1: very easily because they you know, maybe because of the
Speaker 1: narrow audience or because of maybe a bunch of different
Speaker 1: reasons would not stand the test of time unless someone
Speaker 1: only because somebody said, hey, this is different, this is
Speaker 1: this is for some reason worth saving. Right, Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: that's interesting to think about, Like what are the evolutionary
Speaker 1: traits in media that allow certain pieces of media to
Speaker 1: survive whereas most other pieces of ephemeral media from their
Speaker 1: time fade away. It seems like a very strong, uh
Speaker 1: criterion of selection is like ironic comedic value. But it can't.
Speaker 1: But it can't be just that, right, There are other
Speaker 1: things that cause a piece of you know, what you
Speaker 1: would have thought would be ephemeral media to get saved, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like what are There's some things I know
Speaker 1: you've talked about where you you uh you talked about
Speaker 1: like old home recordings that aren't particularly funny or anything.
Speaker 1: They just have a kind of soothing sonic quality to
Speaker 1: them that you can't stop listening to. Am I right
Speaker 1: about that? Sometimes they certainly are funny, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I have really um, the very first couple of
Speaker 1: minutes of the pilot episode of this that I pitched
Speaker 1: it with, and that is the first epis just called
Speaker 1: pilot in the in the feed. Uh is it's about
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixteen seconds. I think of just a
Speaker 1: family recording that we don't know any of the people.
Speaker 1: And there's an Uncle Jack and there's a little girl
Speaker 1: named Gail, and uh does it talk about shoes? Do
Speaker 1: you remember that show Uncle Jack your shoes? There's a
Speaker 1: little boy named Brian and there it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: so unique because there, I mean, it was an actual
Speaker 1: moment in time, right, it was an actual people gather
Speaker 1: around a living room or a kitchen or something, not
Speaker 1: from a movie or anything. No, no, no, it's just
Speaker 1: a it's it's it was a real to real that
Speaker 1: this um, this collector named Bob Purse, who just for
Speaker 1: you know, his own personal interest and to share them
Speaker 1: with other people, goes to giant antique sales and you know,
Speaker 1: a femork also all kinds and buys anything that's like
Speaker 1: unlabeled or is you know, has an interesting description on it,
Speaker 1: or it's just interesting. And someone looks old real to
Speaker 1: real tape specifically other things too acetates Home record at
Speaker 1: seventy eight of all kinds of odds and ends, but
Speaker 1: specifically real and really to tape is what he's zeroed
Speaker 1: in on um and so this real, real tape probably
Speaker 1: from the sixties, AH, thought to be recorded around when
Speaker 1: that Illinois I guess, or yeah, when Neck Illinois I
Speaker 1: think is right because it's because of I guess of
Speaker 1: where he bought it. Ah. That's this yes, specific moment
Speaker 1: where the uncle Jack has brought over his tape recorder
Speaker 1: to this family and the kids are going trying to
Speaker 1: get kids to say there, you know, say words on it,
Speaker 1: you know, tell them about the school that goes to
Speaker 1: and the friends they have, and the little girls shy
Speaker 1: at first, but then she opens up a little bit
Speaker 1: and then the little kid, Brian, they're trying to get
Speaker 1: him to kind of say some of his first words,
Speaker 1: but he, of course won't because kids never do when
Speaker 1: you try to put the microphone in their face and
Speaker 1: now perform and starts shooting on the tape recorder. And
Speaker 1: it's just a little tiny tape that's not all that
Speaker 1: different than lots of other, you know, tapes, but it
Speaker 1: is like this one family, it's this real moment that
Speaker 1: we just have of Ye. I think I think part
Speaker 1: of the appeal of that that cliff is just how
Speaker 1: how how honest it feels like you just there's no
Speaker 1: doubting that this is a you know, an echo from
Speaker 1: from the past, from this actual family moment. And and
Speaker 1: then at the same time it is it is kind
Speaker 1: of haunting, like in a good way, like that that
Speaker 1: kind of like you know, nostalgic haunting feeling that we
Speaker 1: get when we listen to something that is either an
Speaker 1: an actual fragment of media history or if something or
Speaker 1: if we have something like say, you know, instantly think
Speaker 1: of the music say Boards of Canada, that that are
Speaker 1: able to channel that level of sonic nostalgia and have
Speaker 1: the same effect on us. It's this isolated bubble of
Speaker 1: unself conscious joy that is infectious because it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like a performance, which is funny because I guess it
Speaker 1: is a performance. I mean, the very thing is that
Speaker 1: they had the tape recorder running, But it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like the kind of performance were used to, the kind
Speaker 1: of like a professional performance. We were not the intended audience, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it was the family was the intended audience.
Speaker 1: And uh and and here it has escaped it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a voyager probe, right, like leaving the
Speaker 1: solar system and being picked up by some other force.
Speaker 1: There's certainly magic and it I mean and I hear
Speaker 1: that in all kinds. I mean, the the last episode
Speaker 1: that we did of the season's the ten parts seasons
Speaker 1: all out now, uh, the last episodes called taped over,
Speaker 1: and we play family recordings from my family, my wife's family,
Speaker 1: my best friends family and uh our producer and producer
Speaker 1: and an ephemeral uh Matt Frederick who you know from
Speaker 1: stuff I don't want you to know and other things. UM,
Speaker 1: really fascinating take. He has a his grandfather recorded his mom,
Speaker 1: Matt's mom and and Matt's uncle on a dick to
Speaker 1: belt in which is incredibly early to have a home
Speaker 1: recording from because recording technology was just mostly in professional settings,
Speaker 1: you know, until really the sixties, when real to reel
Speaker 1: became much you know, cheaper, and people could afford to
Speaker 1: get them in their homes. Um, and it's the same,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, that's grandfather trying to get first words
Speaker 1: from his mom. And mom of course like doesn't want
Speaker 1: to play along because she's a baby and she's not
Speaker 1: gonna perform just because you put a microphone in front
Speaker 1: of her, starts crying, starts batting, the microphone around. I
Speaker 1: this last weekend, I was with my my nieces and
Speaker 1: nephews from Phoenix. They were over here and I was
Speaker 1: visiting with them, and I had this old tape recorder
Speaker 1: from the eighties and I was showing them how to
Speaker 1: use it. And instantly there, you know, I can sometimes
Speaker 1: not get them to look away from a screen, you know,
Speaker 1: and they just they have a different childhood than we had.
Speaker 1: But instantly, yes, they say, you know something in the
Speaker 1: tape recorder, the shots they don't want to perform. I
Speaker 1: let them hit the buttons, rewind it back. See the
Speaker 1: tape has been hit play and they hear themselves say
Speaker 1: you know, hi, I'm Brooks Savit or whatever. And they're
Speaker 1: mesmerized and they don't want to they don't want to
Speaker 1: put it down. You know. It's like, you have to
Speaker 1: be careful this, this is an old thing from the eighties.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to give it a little
Speaker 1: bit of a more grace than you know, maybe your
Speaker 1: iPad that's, you know, got this fancy case on it.
Speaker 1: But I I think that there is I think there
Speaker 1: is real magic and something like that. And so I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's intrinsic in the analog media itself,
Speaker 1: or if I'm just nostalgic for it, or if it's
Speaker 1: some kind of combination of those things. But there is
Speaker 1: there's something there that cuts across. I guess that's what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say. Now, you had a pre existing
Speaker 1: interest in all of this, of course, I wonder is
Speaker 1: there is there a particular piece of of of ephemera
Speaker 1: that kind of you know, inspired you to put together
Speaker 1: the show? And then is there an example of a
Speaker 1: piece of a femor that you discovered in putting the
Speaker 1: show together that really struck a chord with you? Lots um?
Speaker 1: But that that first tape that show Uncle Jack your shoes,
Speaker 1: those hundred and sixteen seconds were there what the show
Speaker 1: is built around? The whole show? Uh? You know, our
Speaker 1: producer Tristan McNeil and I were at a bar after
Speaker 1: work one day pitching ideas back and forth because we
Speaker 1: knew we wanted to do something, and Uh, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I know this this tape in this collector Bob purse,
Speaker 1: and there's something there and so it was kind of
Speaker 1: trying to put my finger on that I might still
Speaker 1: be working on that part of it, and then your
Speaker 1: other question is something you discovered like some bit of
Speaker 1: a him or that emerged that that that you it
Speaker 1: was new to you during the production of the series.
Speaker 1: It's been so much new to me. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the most interesting UH has been learning about the Dumont
Speaker 1: Television network, so at the very beginning of television when
Speaker 1: it kind of gets out of his experimental phase and
Speaker 1: goes commercial, which is basically like right at the end
Speaker 1: of World War two. Um, there's four networks, just for
Speaker 1: four networks and you know that get little affiliates all
Speaker 1: over the country and three them are still around ABC, NBC, CBS,
Speaker 1: and the fourth was Dumont, and Dumont was just maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit more low budget. It was kind of
Speaker 1: punk rock and just wacky stuff. I mean, early TV
Speaker 1: was really wacky because it was all live and they
Speaker 1: were shows and stuff. There were some puppet shows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were you know, figuring out a lot of the things.
Speaker 1: And some of the things that got figured out on
Speaker 1: Dumont are are you know, translate to today. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were the first network to do daytime television because radio.
Speaker 1: Those are the three companies were all radio companies. ABC, NBC, CBS.
Speaker 1: All radio companies had big daytime radio soap operas and
Speaker 1: they didn't really want to cut into that business that
Speaker 1: had been paying their bills for a long time. But
Speaker 1: Dumont was the first network that went into that daytime
Speaker 1: broadcast because like, we don't have any income coming in there,
Speaker 1: and we're ready to take our color patterns down off
Speaker 1: the screen and put something on. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: they had a show called Okay Mother, a show for moms,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, certainly couched in the gender attitudes
Speaker 1: of the time. UM that was you know, pretty similar
Speaker 1: to something that you would see like the Today's Show
Speaker 1: or something now live studio audience playing you know, games,
Speaker 1: giving away prizes, bringing on guests and sort of just
Speaker 1: light goofy energy to it. Um. So, you know, to
Speaker 1: to wrap up the two months, I meant, they were
Speaker 1: on the there for just a decade, something like twenty
Speaker 1: thousand broadcasts or hours of broadcast and I think three
Speaker 1: d or so individual episodes have survived, mostly held by
Speaker 1: like individual collectors like maybe someone who's you know relative
Speaker 1: worked at Dumont, or you know, the National Archives, uh,
Speaker 1: the Museum of televi and of Radio maybe has a
Speaker 1: few of them, and most of it's just gone. It's
Speaker 1: just gone because it was there was no there real
Speaker 1: there was no recording then, and it wasn't even meant
Speaker 1: to last forever. The only way that they could record
Speaker 1: it was doing something making a kinescope, which is you
Speaker 1: take a film camera and you film the screen that's
Speaker 1: playing the television. And the only reason they would do
Speaker 1: that is so they could take that film, candle this
Speaker 1: film cans and send it to you know, their California
Speaker 1: affiliate or something that wasn't connected to the Coaxio cable.
Speaker 1: And even those they wouldn't really save because there was
Speaker 1: no reruns back then, right, there was no intention to
Speaker 1: reuse that. So it's just that active curation someone saying,
Speaker 1: you know, either by choice or by accident, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hold onto this that we get to see any
Speaker 1: of it, and kind of dip our toes into that
Speaker 1: that moment of history. Well you also get a sense,
Speaker 1: I mean, no wonder if you'd think, like, did the
Speaker 1: creators not even think of it really as a an
Speaker 1: artistic product, I mean something that they would want to
Speaker 1: be remembered. It was something more like to fill time.
Speaker 1: I think there's a mix, and I think, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the inherent things in television. Probably
Speaker 1: there's certainly were um artists and very creative people. I
Speaker 1: mean Jackie Gleeson got his break on Dumont for instance,
Speaker 1: a fascinating shows that they did, a show that was
Speaker 1: all it was called The Plain Clothes Men and all
Speaker 1: told from the perspective of a detective like from his eyes, yeah,
Speaker 1: town live single camera shot, yeah, and you see his
Speaker 1: hands and it's you know, zoom in on a bullet
Speaker 1: hole on the wall, or hold a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and take a magnifying glass and pull out of single
Speaker 1: line what and that's all lives. They'd have to stage
Speaker 1: all of that out in advance so that they could
Speaker 1: know where to go and win. Well, it was all
Speaker 1: live to a point, so almost all of it was live,
Speaker 1: but then they would play out sometimes they would the
Speaker 1: way to a sequence that actually what edited. It was
Speaker 1: an early example of putting editing on television because editing
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing on early television. But yeah, primarily that
Speaker 1: show was all told live. And there's one episode left
Speaker 1: and it doesn't circulate. It's in the uh Museum of
Speaker 1: Television radio. I'm hoping to make my way up there
Speaker 1: at some point and see it. I've just seen a
Speaker 1: little clip of it. You know. I think back just
Speaker 1: on the television from like my childhood and especially junior high.
Speaker 1: You know where you're you're videotaping a lot of television,
Speaker 1: and I remember like painstakingly removing commercials. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: other times just you know, you were you were recording
Speaker 1: a movie you have, you went to bed or something,
Speaker 1: so you just let the commercials, you know, take place,
Speaker 1: and inevitably, I think like taped over and or loss
Speaker 1: or destroyed all those tapes and and and now I
Speaker 1: would I would love to just be able to like
Speaker 1: sit down and watch say an episode of Mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand from the nineties with all the commercials,
Speaker 1: just so I could experience that again. Uh, the bumpers
Speaker 1: on stuff like the Sci Fi Channel, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like that's those little details are are some of the
Speaker 1: things you grow the most most doubt and nostalgic for.
Speaker 1: You know, I watched the first time I ever watched
Speaker 1: Star Trek. The Next Generation was my My dad was
Speaker 1: a is and I think I inherit a lot of
Speaker 1: this from him a archivist, you know, tape at all,
Speaker 1: label at all. Yeah, you know, uh, and he still
Speaker 1: has a closet full of VHS types that are just
Speaker 1: sort of degrading there because I mean, uh, the the
Speaker 1: experience you describe with like cutting out the commercials is
Speaker 1: something that I don't think you're younger listeners probably will
Speaker 1: relate to it all because it's just such a it's
Speaker 1: such a relic of the past. But that was an
Speaker 1: important thing then, because it was this feeling like not
Speaker 1: only am I taping uh the like the television edited
Speaker 1: version of Aliens, but but I am going to preserve
Speaker 1: it forever, and so the cut has to be flawless. Wait,
Speaker 1: so did you think do you do the thing where
Speaker 1: you stopped recording while it was recording when the commercial
Speaker 1: came on? You thought, positive, recording while the commercial was
Speaker 1: on and then unposit When I remember, I was so
Speaker 1: proud of myself that I had put together on one tape.
Speaker 1: So since it was on one tape, it must have
Speaker 1: been in the terrible low quality extended play mode on
Speaker 1: the tapes. But I got the entire Star Wars trilogy
Speaker 1: with all the commercials removed from from one time when
Speaker 1: it aired on T N T or something like that,
Speaker 1: and uh and I was like, this is that I
Speaker 1: have done such good work here and I wore that
Speaker 1: tape out. Oh God, that that's another thing, just the
Speaker 1: wearing out of the tape, like the quality. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite films still one of my favorite films, but
Speaker 1: one of my favorite films growing up was was Jim
Speaker 1: Hinson's Labyrinth and our copy we watched it so many
Speaker 1: times that it it was like damaged and we had
Speaker 1: to get repaired. I I didn't even know how that
Speaker 1: was the thing, but we took the tape, somebody repaired it,
Speaker 1: and it just sound warped forever. But now when I
Speaker 1: watched like a Labyrinth off of streaming service or something,
Speaker 1: or off of DVD, it's just not the same because
Speaker 1: it's not warped and weird. Like the audio quality I
Speaker 1: grew used to uh so in in the effemeray that
Speaker 1: you've looked at in the show, like how much is
Speaker 1: the decay and how much is it about the the
Speaker 1: errors in the quality? Oh? I mean yeah, I'm an
Speaker 1: audio I'm an audio file. I'm a total audio gig.
Speaker 1: I mean specifically for like low five stuff, I've always
Speaker 1: collected old toy tape recorders and stuff like that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the artifacts, that stuff is a gold mine for a
Speaker 1: sound designer. I mean, just if you can find cracks
Speaker 1: and records and skips and things and warps and sounds
Speaker 1: dumping and leaping, and I love all that stuff. This
Speaker 1: comes back to something that we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show a good bit before, like when we talk about say,
Speaker 1: historical sites of interest, you know, like an ancient temple
Speaker 1: or something like that that is deteriorating due to the
Speaker 1: elements or all that, Like, um, should you restore things
Speaker 1: like that? Or or if you know, the modern world
Speaker 1: has come to know an ancient temple in its partially
Speaker 1: deteriorated and dilapidated state, should you just allow it to
Speaker 1: continue deteriorating or should you try to freeze it as
Speaker 1: it was at a certain point in time and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: all the deterioration up to this point will allow, but
Speaker 1: deterioration after that we want to prevent or I can't
Speaker 1: remember if we I said allowing to deteriorate or restoring,
Speaker 1: but it seems like in any case, you're no matter
Speaker 1: which choice you make, you're like exerting your will on
Speaker 1: on on on the form it takes. And the same
Speaker 1: thing happens with media totally. Like I mean, media changes
Speaker 1: over time, It collects artifacts, it collects changes, it collects glitches. Um,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, well, one thing I wonder I guess
Speaker 1: is are we losing that quality in the digital world.
Speaker 1: M hmm, it's sorry, terrible tangent. There's just no, there's
Speaker 1: just a lot there, uh, losing in the digital world.
Speaker 1: I mean the safe answer is yes, because we're losing
Speaker 1: most things in the well No, I just mean, like
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there's like a huge thing where like, um,
Speaker 1: there there's so much great ephemeira from the ancient world.
Speaker 1: You know that like a huge part of how we
Speaker 1: know about the past is from like capturing bits of
Speaker 1: ephemera and interesting things, like you know, when you get
Speaker 1: a copy of an ancient manuscript that's a thousand years old,
Speaker 1: you might not even know what the original text in
Speaker 1: the manuscript was because it's got things written in the
Speaker 1: margins on it, and you don't know if that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be part of the text that was the Perpendicularly
Speaker 1: over the other talents, we have an older episode of
Speaker 1: stuffable in mind about that, yeah, and and so like
Speaker 1: and and they didn't realize at the time that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever mong in, you know, Prague or wherever it. Like,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that his copy of this thing would
Speaker 1: be the only copy, would be the only one that
Speaker 1: future generations have, and so like they wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to tell if the notes in the margins were supposed
Speaker 1: to be part of the text or his own thoughts
Speaker 1: about the text or whatever. And uh, and like you
Speaker 1: never know, really, you never know if like the copy
Speaker 1: that you're holding of something is going to end up
Speaker 1: being the copy of reference for future generations, or if
Speaker 1: it's just going to fade and be destroyed like most
Speaker 1: other things are. The digital world that seems kind of
Speaker 1: different because like copies are made at scale, perfectly all
Speaker 1: over the place, And I wonder if we're kind of
Speaker 1: losing some of that magic because of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's twofold at least, right. Uh, there is
Speaker 1: a way in which something physical analog is much more concrete.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can the lifespan of it. You can say,
Speaker 1: oh my, I can see the yellowing pages of this book,
Speaker 1: but I can still flip through them, as opposed to
Speaker 1: like if a zero in a one get flipped in
Speaker 1: the binary code, that thing's gone. Uh you know, if
Speaker 1: it's uploaded in some cloud service that gets hacked, it's gone. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there's a way in which analog things I hate
Speaker 1: to say permanent, because I don't think anything is permanent, particularly,
Speaker 1: I think everything has transience at a different scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's how you start feeling if you look at
Speaker 1: it too much, at least me. Um. But there's a
Speaker 1: way that that material thing feels a lot like it
Speaker 1: has more launchevy to me than the digital thing, which
Speaker 1: is maybe contrary to the way that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I saw it before that it's easiest to see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll tell you one of the one of
Speaker 1: the great things about more and more things being digitized,
Speaker 1: because not everything is digitized, far from it, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: But like this show where we do I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've never counted, but like a hundred and fifty cues
Speaker 1: an episode of different sound bites and pieces of weird
Speaker 1: old movies and little audio clips and all things small
Speaker 1: over the place would not it would be next to impossible,
Speaker 1: were very very difficult in um an analog time where
Speaker 1: I'm like, I have wax cylinders in there, all kinds
Speaker 1: of all kinds of media that you know, imagine the
Speaker 1: library that we'd have to have here in the I
Speaker 1: heard offices for us to pull something like this off,
Speaker 1: but I can you know, it can just be you know,
Speaker 1: a dude sitting at his desk going archive dot org
Speaker 1: and uh, you know various other places. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty amazing. I'd love to, you know.
Speaker 1: I was just when we're saying, oh, the monk didn't
Speaker 1: know that this would be the one copy. I was thinking,
Speaker 1: what if Joe's perfect copy of the Star Wars trilogy
Speaker 1: was the one copy that we had then? No, I
Speaker 1: think about that kind of thing sometimes, but I mean
Speaker 1: I think that would be unlikely. Now there's so many
Speaker 1: digital copies and they're all over the place. But yeah,
Speaker 1: your copy to YouTube, Okay, I mean maybe doing you know,
Speaker 1: because well you know, another great example to go to
Speaker 1: go even to Star Wars is And this combines with
Speaker 1: the thing you were talking about, like a femeral TV
Speaker 1: broadcast when you watch the Star Wars Holiday special. I
Speaker 1: assume you've seen it. I have, Yeah, I have thanks,
Speaker 1: Thanks Dad. The Star Wars Holiday Special is that you know,
Speaker 1: Star Wars is the biggest movie in the world, and
Speaker 1: you know it's the biggest media sensation ever. And then
Speaker 1: they're like, well, let's do a TV special. But the
Speaker 1: TV special is just phoned in and you almost get
Speaker 1: the sense that it's well, not the animated The animated
Speaker 1: short that introduced a Bubba fet to the world is fabulous,
Speaker 1: like this French animation style. You're right about that, but
Speaker 1: I mean, like the main part of it, like the
Speaker 1: actors are staring at the floor, they're just waiting for
Speaker 1: any basically a Star Wars theme variety show exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's great fun to watch now for all these
Speaker 1: great ephemeral qualities and to see the old commercials and
Speaker 1: all that. But that's one of the great things. Like
Speaker 1: even the version you get through riff tracks is it
Speaker 1: can it retains the commercials, that's part. And but they
Speaker 1: have to specify which one because like there weren't many
Speaker 1: recordings of it available. They never officially distributed it, Like
Speaker 1: you know, Lucasfilm wasn't like here come by the Star
Speaker 1: Wars Holiday Special. You had to get it from a
Speaker 1: copy made from some version that somebody taped off of
Speaker 1: TV and like Minnesota or somewhere, and uh and I
Speaker 1: think there were a few versions in circulation, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if those people thought that like their version
Speaker 1: they were taping off of TV with the local commercials
Speaker 1: they were seeing, would be like the would be the
Speaker 1: version that ends up being you know, on riff tracks
Speaker 1: that you know, decades later people all around the world
Speaker 1: would be watching and laughing at I was gonna say
Speaker 1: that with Star Trek the Next Generation, the way that
Speaker 1: I first saw it was all taped from Michigan television,
Speaker 1: whatever Michigan station it was running on, and every ad
Speaker 1: break they had the newscast, the local Detroit newscast every time,
Speaker 1: so I would you know, hear whatever was going on
Speaker 1: in Detroit in the eighties every time they would cut
Speaker 1: to commercial. So I guess, yeah, I I've definitely developed
Speaker 1: a love for that early on. That's in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars Holiday special to where they've got the throws like
Speaker 1: teasing the later local news things. What do they keep saying,
Speaker 1: like fighting the frizzies at eleven. I don't remember that part.
Speaker 1: This is a thing about like bad hair days or
Speaker 1: something they're gonna have an expert. Come on, well, you know,
Speaker 1: let's let's bring it back to h to ephemeral. Though
Speaker 1: you have a you have brought a clip with us. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's almost like this is the Tonight show and you're
Speaker 1: our guest, and so would you like to set up
Speaker 1: this clip for our listeners? Sure? So. This is um
Speaker 1: Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at the University
Speaker 1: of Delaware. I introduced her earlier, Sarah Wasserman. She's basically
Speaker 1: I think of her as the ephemer teacher. She's writing
Speaker 1: a book called The Death of Things. It's all about
Speaker 1: a phemera. You know, I don't. I don't want to
Speaker 1: oversimplify her thesis, but the idea of it is that
Speaker 1: telling stories about if ema and telling stories that involve
Speaker 1: if phemera does more than just showing you a phemera.
Speaker 1: It helps fill in the gaps and do more work
Speaker 1: to transport you back to that place or time or
Speaker 1: whatever thing that you know is lost now. So she
Speaker 1: in her book, I think she writes about like They're
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby. She references that in here and uh and
Speaker 1: a book like El Doctors, World's Fair Books, that piece
Speaker 1: of fiction specifically, she's writing about fiction coming from an
Speaker 1: English perspective. Um, how works of fiction can use if
Speaker 1: ema and intertwine them into their stories. Uh two, help
Speaker 1: transport you in time and space. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: enough of a setup. Let's listen, Phemera. I think are
Speaker 1: especially moving because they seem to have their own life cycle.
Speaker 1: They're made, they're born, they enter circulation, they live, and
Speaker 1: then they die. We think of things. We think of
Speaker 1: matter as being the opposite of mortal. We think of
Speaker 1: it as being enduring. We think of it as being
Speaker 1: stable and inert. And ephemia have this kind of time scale,
Speaker 1: this temporal dimension that makes them seem mortal like us.
Speaker 1: I think that's part of the reason that authors find
Speaker 1: them meaningful. They can become proxy stand ins for humans
Speaker 1: or nations or communities. To make that more concrete, take
Speaker 1: an example, New York World's Fair was actually built on
Speaker 1: the Valley of Ashes, as Fitzgerald calls it. In the
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby five million dollar one land, they transform what
Speaker 1: is basically a dump into this bright, shining, gleaming future
Speaker 1: city and everyone goes, I mean really everyone in a
Speaker 1: way that we can't comprehend today. Everyone goes from Barana,
Speaker 1: come Countment, visiting by every mode of travel, every means
Speaker 1: of transportation. They arrived to view the marvels of the
Speaker 1: greatest ex position in history. You go and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the world of tomorrow, this is the world
Speaker 1: as it could be. There are all kinds of problems
Speaker 1: with the vision that gets staged. I mean racial problems,
Speaker 1: nationalistic problems, colonial issues, all sorts of things, but in
Speaker 1: that particular instance, people knew that it wouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: The fair was a temporary installation, like a carnival set
Speaker 1: up in Queens. It was open for two seasons from
Speaker 1: April to October, and closed permanently as most of the
Speaker 1: participating countries sank into another World war. That experience, knowing
Speaker 1: that it's going to be gone feels exhilarating but melancholic
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, and so the souvenir craze,
Speaker 1: you know, the souvenir boom is huge around that fair
Speaker 1: because people want to take something with them so that
Speaker 1: when the air is gone, when they're no longer there,
Speaker 1: but also the buildings are gone, they have something to
Speaker 1: remember it by. The Paris here and the trialon were
Speaker 1: the two iconic buildings and they get sort of put
Speaker 1: on everything rises above all else, and the circling helocline
Speaker 1: that leads even the Paris. There's exhibits. Democracy is the
Speaker 1: pathway to the future. One of my favorite super years
Speaker 1: is after you came out of Futurama, which was General
Speaker 1: Motors Vision and sort of model city of the future,
Speaker 1: you would get a little button that says I have
Speaker 1: seen the future. Sensational is the Futurama that projects you
Speaker 1: into nineteen six the Highways and a Rizon show. You
Speaker 1: know that you have this item, this object that's going
Speaker 1: to commemorate this event. It almost feels like it's shoring
Speaker 1: up against that feeling of mortality. Susan Stewart talks about
Speaker 1: the souvenir as an object that you need when an
Speaker 1: event is no longer repeatable. So if you go to
Speaker 1: your arian and Grande con or, you want the ticket
Speaker 1: stuff because you're probably not going to go to another
Speaker 1: Ariana Grande show where you're certainly not going to go
Speaker 1: to the one in Philadelphia, and so you need an
Speaker 1: object because it's not repeatable. Many ephemera are doing that work.
Speaker 1: There are kind of saying I was there, I saw
Speaker 1: this thing. It's gone now, but I save it, and
Speaker 1: that allows me to project myself into the future, to
Speaker 1: project myself into the past, to stave off that encounter
Speaker 1: with death that might be implicitly happening. Listen to the
Speaker 1: rest of this episode and the full first season of
Speaker 1: Ephemeral Now. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to podcasts, and learn more at Ephemeral
Speaker 1: dot Show. All right, well, wow, this is fresh on
Speaker 1: everybody's mind. Can you just just tell listeners where they
Speaker 1: can find if if fhemeral and uh and also what
Speaker 1: the homepages It's Ephemeral dot Show. If you don't spell ephemeral,
Speaker 1: just google it. It's easy to find. I had someone
Speaker 1: write me a review that was five stars, but the
Speaker 1: told me they could not spell it their heady google it.
Speaker 1: But I appreciated that. I appreciate that they did that
Speaker 1: extra work. But it's not it's not too hard, you know,
Speaker 1: to to to find and you know, it's on all
Speaker 1: the social media things. Podcasts available anywhere. You can do
Speaker 1: it on the I Heart radio app or Apple or
Speaker 1: Stitcher or what everything. If you go to the website,
Speaker 1: there's like, you know, some images and some links and
Speaker 1: a little bit more information, but yeah, easy to find.
Speaker 1: All the episodes are out now and uh and our
Speaker 1: our future episodes planned. You have some ideas kicking around,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go ahead and say, yes, we're in
Speaker 1: work works on the second season right now, so we're
Speaker 1: technically off season right now. We've already released one bonus episode,
Speaker 1: which is the full length interview with our lovely producer
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick about that old family recording, and lots lots
Speaker 1: of other things in between now and then and second
Speaker 1: season and hopefully not all that long. It took us
Speaker 1: about eighteen months to do the first season, but we
Speaker 1: had a lot to figure out and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff going on. So hopefully not quite
Speaker 1: that long, but it could be, well, I hope not.
Speaker 1: It's it's a really fantastic show. What I've heard of
Speaker 1: it I absolutely adore and I can't wait to finish listening. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Joe. Yeah, I mean it's really it's it's
Speaker 1: a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of
Speaker 1: podcasts out there. I mean, I mean, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's it's there's a disturbing world we're
Speaker 1: living in, and there are a lot of shows that that,
Speaker 1: by necessity and sometimes very bravely deal with the disturbing
Speaker 1: aspects of of our reality. Uh, but did your show
Speaker 1: has a you know, it's it's such a more comforting
Speaker 1: feel to it, you know, I can I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm settling into like a nice warm glass of
Speaker 1: milk when I listened to That's not all rainbows. I
Speaker 1: mean there's some there's some darker aspects of human history
Speaker 1: and there too, Yeah, but hopefully yeah there. You know,
Speaker 1: it's you can listen to it with your kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like it's not it's not you know, dirty or anything.
Speaker 1: I listened to the first episode with my son in
Speaker 1: the car and uh, and he was digging it to
Speaker 1: you know, because he can. He's identifying with all this
Speaker 1: is a family. I'm listening to a family. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: talk about shoes. That Shoes tape is definitely a hot
Speaker 1: cup of tea. It's a good one, man. I love
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. Before we close things out or even
Speaker 1: consider closing things out, though, let's talk about William Castle
Speaker 1: because because Joe, we're talking about this a little before
Speaker 1: the podcast. But Joe and I did an episode about
Speaker 1: the Tingler Love the Tangler and yeah, and and so
Speaker 1: I'm just happy to have somebody in here who is
Speaker 1: a fan of the film. My parents instilled in me
Speaker 1: a real love for just creature feature B movies. Uh
Speaker 1: and you know, specifically like the work of the Wonderful
Speaker 1: Ed Wood, but all kinds of other things and the
Speaker 1: original Mystery Science three thousands or Mr. Science Theater three
Speaker 1: thousand and all things like that. So, yeah, Tangler, what
Speaker 1: Vincent Price, Yeah you have Vincent Price? Uh? Directed by
Speaker 1: William Castle and just a yeah, just a really wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful film in its own right, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: just has such a weird premise and then the gimmick,
Speaker 1: the William Castle gimmick of the vibrating uh uh theater
Speaker 1: seats I would have loved to have. I don't think
Speaker 1: i've you know, short of something like three D I
Speaker 1: don't know that I've ever really been to him movie
Speaker 1: a theatrical release that had a gimmick as part of it. Ye, Pokemon,
Speaker 1: they gave away cards. I went into the Pokemon movie
Speaker 1: when that came out. There's certainly some giveaway things that
Speaker 1: I went to specifically as a kid, you know, But
Speaker 1: that's not like something where you know, there's a a
Speaker 1: four D element or you know, some sort of thing
Speaker 1: that happened in the theater. Yeah, I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever gotten to experience that with a theatrical release. What
Speaker 1: was it that the Scream films postulated was that the
Speaker 1: new gimmick in movie theaters would be releasing an actual
Speaker 1: murderer into the movie theater. It's a horror movie. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many things we could have done
Speaker 1: with different films, Like take Titanic. They could have missed
Speaker 1: the audience with salt water during the final scenes, like
Speaker 1: nice cold saltwater. That would have been interesting. Now I
Speaker 1: have seen Rocky Horror here in Atlanta at the Plaza,
Speaker 1: and they do you know, they're saying, yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun shenanigans that take place, and that's
Speaker 1: pretty great. I mean, that's that in it. I have
Speaker 1: I love Rocky are and for a number of reasons,
Speaker 1: and and I'm I'm perfectly happy to watch it again
Speaker 1: and again just straight up without any theatrical shenanigans. But
Speaker 1: like that is kind of like the pre mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand, riffing tradition right there, and uh and
Speaker 1: it continues to be like this, this cool kind of
Speaker 1: this is kind of like counterculture experience for the movie
Speaker 1: going experience that people can partake of, especially like younger
Speaker 1: of people. So yeah, I'm glad that Atlanta as a
Speaker 1: place where one can still find that. I do think
Speaker 1: folks like William Castle, Yeah, I think he was aware
Speaker 1: of the sort of you know, the crowd that he
Speaker 1: was going for the sort of work he was doing.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, I feel exuberants from him and
Speaker 1: some of the in in the way that he works,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're we are pushing a medium forward,
Speaker 1: like we're trying weird things, you know, and in the effort,
Speaker 1: in the effort of like you know, driving ticket sales. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing I will say about The Tingler is that
Speaker 1: it is um it is not a dull movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is fun and full of energy. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was somebody who remembered that movies are supposed to be fun.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people making movies that. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: not all movies are supposed to be fun. Some movies
Speaker 1: are very serious, so they ask challenging questions and all that.
Speaker 1: But I see trails all the time for movies that
Speaker 1: just do not look fun and exactly like you know,
Speaker 1: monster movies. Generally, monster movies are supposed to be fun.
Speaker 1: Uh And and he remembered that. I think he was
Speaker 1: aware of that, even you know, even schlocky or directors
Speaker 1: Roger Corman, I think was aware that monster movies are
Speaker 1: supposed to be fun primarily. Uh. So, you know, he
Speaker 1: could make Attack of the Crab Monsters and it's like
Speaker 1: sixty two minutes long or whatever, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a brisk pace and it's got some googly eyed creatures
Speaker 1: and it doesn't get bogged down and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, bad depressing, bad feelings like so many horror
Speaker 1: movies do these days. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm seriously being turned off horror. I think I'm it's
Speaker 1: like every I keep seeing trailers for things and I'm
Speaker 1: just like that just doesn't Maybe it's just me, but
Speaker 1: what about Mandy Mandy? Mandy? I enjoyed even though it's
Speaker 1: a revenge film, and revenge films aren't really my my
Speaker 1: my like my go to franchise, but it was so funny.
Speaker 1: It was such a goofy movie. Yeah, and beautiful. I
Speaker 1: mean I love the I love Panos's style and the cinematography,
Speaker 1: love the music, and well, yeah, ultimately I love that
Speaker 1: almost as much as I love Beyond the Black Rainbow,
Speaker 1: which is I pulled up as one of my favorites
Speaker 1: or something like stranger things like that's a monster movie,
Speaker 1: that's or monster idea. I'm sure a movie. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but it's also exceedingly fun. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the the appeals of the It movie that
Speaker 1: came out the addiction of the first half of Stephen
Speaker 1: King's novel is that, yes, it was terrifying. You had
Speaker 1: all these terrifying penny Wise moments, and penny Wise was
Speaker 1: fabulously brought to it to life. But yet it found
Speaker 1: ways to have have fun with the children in in
Speaker 1: in the in the in the in the movie, like
Speaker 1: those characters were brought alive in such a you know,
Speaker 1: a believable way. There was a Spielbergie and emotionality to it. Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is the Child's Play thing out yet? Yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: just that's a tenpole one for me. Like I watched
Speaker 1: Child's Play over. I think probably on TV, like the
Speaker 1: TV edited broadcast, but I definitely saw all of those
Speaker 1: movies all the way, at least up to Bride of
Speaker 1: that's the one with Jennifer at Tilly. Did Brad Durro
Speaker 1: keep doing the voice? I don't think he's in the
Speaker 1: new one, but he was in like all the others.
Speaker 1: That would be My main thing is if Brad Dorrith's
Speaker 1: not in it, then what what's the point it's But
Speaker 1: it's the same folks that did the ITA, Yeah, the reboot? Okay,
Speaker 1: well then then I believe maybe I should give it
Speaker 1: a shot. I don't know. It's one of the like
Speaker 1: where I not all that in many things like reboots,
Speaker 1: I feel compelled to see like I have to. But
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, Child's plays one of those just like
Speaker 1: yeah whatever, Like I guess maybe because the first one
Speaker 1: wasn't like that amazing. Maybe it was that it's been
Speaker 1: a while so it's got the mom from Seventh Heaven
Speaker 1: on it. I think you're not wrong. The only thing
Speaker 1: that I feel also compelled to say about The Tingler
Speaker 1: before we wrap it up is a vincnent Price's ability
Speaker 1: to say ludicrous short lines with just poise and just
Speaker 1: really sell it, you know. Well, no, that's one of
Speaker 1: the best things about The Tingler actually, is the frequency
Speaker 1: with which characters say the words the Tingler, and so
Speaker 1: Vincent Price is just constantly saying things like, what do
Speaker 1: we know about the Tingler? And they're they're counting off
Speaker 1: their knowledge. They're like, we've discovered that there is a
Speaker 1: Tingler inside everyone. God. Yeah. One of the things that
Speaker 1: amazes me is that it just hasn't It hasn't been remade,
Speaker 1: and I've never read any discussion of anyone even adding
Speaker 1: to remake it or rebooted or what have you, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that the William Castle film immediately preceding it,
Speaker 1: The House on Haunted Hill, was of course remade, and
Speaker 1: I thought it really fun, uh Haunted House movie. And
Speaker 1: then the film immediately after it, Thirteen Ghosts, was also
Speaker 1: made into a film, which was maybe a little less solid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I saw the movie theater as well, and
Speaker 1: it was it was fun, you know, it was a
Speaker 1: fun monster movie. Really think that might have suffered from
Speaker 1: that sort of early MTV music video vibe too, But
Speaker 1: it's been a long time since they saw it. I
Speaker 1: remember Roger Ebert's review of the Thirteen Ghosts remake. Just commenting,
Speaker 1: he says opened with like, this is certainly one of
Speaker 1: the loudest films I've ever seen. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: had that. It had some jarring cinematography and it for sure,
Speaker 1: but it also had f Murray Abraham, so it all
Speaker 1: bounces out. Um Man. I could see a remake of
Speaker 1: The Tingler that could go either way. You could get
Speaker 1: it in the hand to somebody who's a real lover,
Speaker 1: who's got the joy and all that. It could also
Speaker 1: be a joyless c G I slog with computer animated worms.
Speaker 1: But I think if you like leaned into the more
Speaker 1: psychedelic aspects of the piece, I think you could make
Speaker 1: it work. Because, as we discussed in in our episode,
Speaker 1: like it is allegedly the earliest mention of L S
Speaker 1: D in a major motion picture. Uh and and I
Speaker 1: think that they're there are aspects of its really whackadoodle
Speaker 1: plot that that are that are reflected by that. Who
Speaker 1: could you recast for the Vincent Price role? Who? Um?
Speaker 1: What about Jeremy Irons? Richard Jenkins? Yeah, yeah, he's great
Speaker 1: and everything. Yeah, Yeah, Jenkins is solid. Um Ian McKellen
Speaker 1: he's probably too old at this death. I know he's done.
Speaker 1: I know, but this could be coming back, bringing it
Speaker 1: back around, you know, I I have. I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit tired of Johnny Depp. You know what he's great
Speaker 1: in is Edwood. Yes, he is fantastic in them. That
Speaker 1: was Johnny Depp and Tim Burton both in their in
Speaker 1: their period where they were just unstoppable. I thank something
Speaker 1: around that. What happened to those guys? I don't think
Speaker 1: I could watch a Tim Burton movie now. But like
Speaker 1: Edwood is one of the best movies ever made. I
Speaker 1: love it. It's it's I don't I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. That sort of seems to be the
Speaker 1: story you see over and over in media and more
Speaker 1: specifically in Hollywood. But yeah, those they do seem to
Speaker 1: have passed their prime. But I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: how old is Johnny Depp? He's like in his forties way,
Speaker 1: But but then again we're asking the questions like how
Speaker 1: could somebody lose their you know, creative zeal and or
Speaker 1: their actual soul in Hollywood. Hollywood is known for consuming
Speaker 1: these two quantities, sometimes they like at rapid speed, right
Speaker 1: from the very beginning to right from the very beginning
Speaker 1: of Hollywood. Yeah, yeah, Edwood never lost it. No, that's
Speaker 1: not true, Edwards, not true. He did kind of lose
Speaker 1: it and like he drank himself to death. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's that great like Bride of the Bride of the energy,
Speaker 1: Bright of the Monster has slashed Bright of the atom,
Speaker 1: right of the changed a couple of times, I think exactly.
Speaker 1: But that movie's got just fantastic. It's a rush, you know,
Speaker 1: it's got Lobo and it's got you know, the whipping
Speaker 1: and oh, it's a great great Bill Legos see and
Speaker 1: uh and even you know playing nine Bill Leghos. He
Speaker 1: wasn't really in it, but it was his last film.
Speaker 1: Well he's in a couple of shots, I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for one shot. Maybe it's it's a few. I just
Speaker 1: rewatched the whole movie, and it is it's a few.
Speaker 1: It's maybe three. But that's still got great energy. I
Speaker 1: think later on it would went on to he started
Speaker 1: making kind of like, yeah, there's a there's a sort
Speaker 1: of connection between um. One of the reasons that Tim
Speaker 1: Burton cited for wanting to do the Edward Edward movie
Speaker 1: was his relationship with Vincent Price because you know he's
Speaker 1: a big fan of Vincent Myra Scissor Hands as a kid.
Speaker 1: And uh, and then Vincent Price ended up working on
Speaker 1: like his first short, I think, and they worked together twice.
Speaker 1: I believe that a similar to the way. Similarly the
Speaker 1: relationship that ed Wood had with Belle LECOSI, what's so,
Speaker 1: what's the next one? What's the next one? That continuum,
Speaker 1: that's how you get to play Vincent Price. In The
Speaker 1: Young Filmmaker befriends tom Atkins. He's that like the elder
Speaker 1: statesman of Horror. Uh, tom Atkins gets a late career revival. Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe tom Atkins can play the the Vincent Price role
Speaker 1: in the Tingler remain he's more rough and tumble when
Speaker 1: he's not Vincent Price type. But you could recast the
Speaker 1: character could become more of a kind of like cores
Speaker 1: drinking kind of scientists, more of a roused dour in
Speaker 1: Rowsed Dour. It was a dowry and roused dowry in
Speaker 1: Hero Yes, Yeah, that would okay if it's yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: on board for that. As long as it gets remade,
Speaker 1: I'm on board. I hope that they vibrate the seats
Speaker 1: in the theaters. Oh yes, I hope that makes it
Speaker 1: come back. I want to see more gimmicks like that
Speaker 1: in the theater. I feel like they need to do it,
Speaker 1: that they want me to show up and go through
Speaker 1: all the whole rigmarole to come in and see the film.
Speaker 1: Why else would you? Yeah, well, we will have giant
Speaker 1: flat screens at home and everything on demand. Then again,
Speaker 1: I wonder maybe what we need are more intermissions or
Speaker 1: those specialized intermissions like William Castle used one of these
Speaker 1: where you're supposed to take an intermission right before the
Speaker 1: climax of the film to decide if you've got what
Speaker 1: it takes and if you don't, you can go and
Speaker 1: get a refund and leave. Or there was a werewolf film,
Speaker 1: the Werewolf Break. Yeah, we had the Werewolf Break where
Speaker 1: you had to decide who is the werewolf. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have a werewolf break so the entire audience can collectively
Speaker 1: discuss it and place bets on who's going to be
Speaker 1: the werewolf? Like, maybe we just need more of that.
Speaker 1: What movie was that? I think I watched it on
Speaker 1: your suggestion. It has a great cast in it. Um
Speaker 1: is it the one that takes place at like the
Speaker 1: mansion where all the people gather on like an island
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, is the name Charles Gray, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Who would go into play Minecroft Homes and play Blowfield. Oh?
Speaker 1: And also a young what's his name that played Dumbledore
Speaker 1: was in it. Richard Harris. No, not Richard here, the
Speaker 1: other one in the main Dumbledore Michael Gambon. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking. Yeah, I believe he's in it as well.
Speaker 1: We got a really far afield, didn't we know. I
Speaker 1: mean that's some pretty ephemeral stuff that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Their human life it is, man. Yeah, No, I mean
Speaker 1: that's that's a That's one of the things I think
Speaker 1: that makes it so special. I mean, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a great Matt puts it really really really nicely
Speaker 1: in that interview talking about you pull that tape recorder
Speaker 1: at the closet and you put the tape in and
Speaker 1: you hit play on it, and you hear the to
Speaker 1: the tape cassette starts spinning, and you hear a voice
Speaker 1: from the grave come, you know, and say hello to you.
Speaker 1: We just found in my family, we just found a
Speaker 1: tape recording of my my dad's dad passed away. When
Speaker 1: I was nine months old. I had never heard his
Speaker 1: voice until, uh, my aunt Jennifer found this tape forward
Speaker 1: the last for the season finale of the Ephemeral episode.
Speaker 1: She found it like two days before the episode came
Speaker 1: out and we cut it in and I had never
Speaker 1: heard my grandfather's voice before that starts. I was just
Speaker 1: like high folks, a ghost out of nowhere. So, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the fact that you know, these whatever they are
Speaker 1: tape cassettes, who are you know, weird old industrial films
Speaker 1: or all kinds of effemora you know, get saved for
Speaker 1: one reason another, Uh, it's I think it's about as
Speaker 1: close as you can get to real time travel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Are people sending you yet? Yes? Yeah, yeah. What's the
Speaker 1: best thing you've gotten? What's the best thing I've got?
Speaker 1: You know? Someone just wrote to me and told me
Speaker 1: that their parents both worked for the Dumont Network and
Speaker 1: that um at least one of them was hired by
Speaker 1: Alan B. Dumont, the founder of the company himself. So
Speaker 1: that was pretty cool. But I mean, it's all good.
Speaker 1: I like it all. A lot of people have told
Speaker 1: me amazing stories about you know, family tapes of theirs,
Speaker 1: who are you know, a firmer that was significant in
Speaker 1: their family. And I think the broader cultural stuff I
Speaker 1: think is is always good and is easy to make
Speaker 1: into big episodes. But I'm really fascinated by the sort
Speaker 1: of individual stories that people that are like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: made these kind of like goofy fake shows on tape cassette,
Speaker 1: like with my brother when I was a kid. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the stuff that's not professionally made, the stuff
Speaker 1: that's a little harder to get through and could maybe use,
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of editor to get through and
Speaker 1: and and help you know, bring it to life a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's that's the stuff that I get really
Speaker 1: really excited about. Okay, so it looks like we gotta
Speaker 1: wrap up there, but Alex, thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: us today. We are so excited about Ephemeral. What I've
Speaker 1: heard of it is so good and I mean that
Speaker 1: from the bottom of my heart. And I'm so excited
Speaker 1: for all you listeners out there to go subscribe to
Speaker 1: Ephemeral wherever you get your podcasts. And what else should
Speaker 1: they do is that it? Yeah, I mean, that's that's enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if if you feel so inclined
Speaker 1: writing one of those little reviews giving it some stars.
Speaker 1: That stuff actually really does make a big difference on
Speaker 1: our end. Are you know the powers A B see
Speaker 1: things like that and and like that and say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe you should do more of these. So if you
Speaker 1: feel so inclined, I've heard that they're good to binge.
Speaker 1: Uh I don't you know? You can benjam or not benjam.
Speaker 1: You can listen to them out of order. You could
Speaker 1: really do whatever you want. The trailer, I will say,
Speaker 1: makes kind of an eleventh episode. It's about eight minutes long,
Speaker 1: but it is sort of a stands on its own
Speaker 1: as an episode two. So uh yeah, they're all there.
Speaker 1: I would recommend playing these episodes on a speaker and
Speaker 1: recording them with a microphone into an eight track player
Speaker 1: and then leaving those tapes out in the world for
Speaker 1: people to find. We had some crazy ideas about different
Speaker 1: ways to do, like oh, we can make a self
Speaker 1: destructing tape of the demo and send it to an
Speaker 1: executive or something that sounds safe and sending a bomb. Okay,
Speaker 1: got all right? Well, yeah, definitely check it out. And
Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of stuff to blow your mind, heading over Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mother ship,
Speaker 1: that's what we'll find them all. And indeed, if you
Speaker 1: want to help out this show as well, if you
Speaker 1: want to help out Invention, the other show that Joe
Speaker 1: and I put together, just make sure that you rate
Speaker 1: interview those shows wherever and whenever you have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to do so. Huge thanks to our producers Seth Nicholas
Speaker 1: Johnson and Maya Cole. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other suggest topic for the future, just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact that's Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
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