Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says got your jolt
Speaker 1: from my electrode. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm Lauren voc Obama,
Speaker 1: and our usual host John from Strickland is not with
Speaker 1: us today. He is on vacation, but we have joining
Speaker 1: us again for part two a special guest, co host,
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. Say hi Robert. Hey, Yeah, great to still
Speaker 1: be here, and I guess I'll continue to be here
Speaker 1: until we finished talking about monsters. Wonder do you want
Speaker 1: to briefly introduce yourself again? Oh yeah, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: missed miss b introduction on the last episode. I am
Speaker 1: a co host of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast and I blog It's Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. And we also do some videos here and there, um,
Speaker 1: including the monster Science series that goes up on the
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works YouTube page and uh and on stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. And that's all about
Speaker 1: unnatural creatures, monsters, the natural world of biology and science
Speaker 1: and where those two kind of crossover and what we
Speaker 1: can learn by comparing them. Yeah, it's furthermore stars, Mr
Speaker 1: or doctor. I'm sorry Anton Jessup, who is who is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite humans who has ever in the
Speaker 1: respect dumped a lot of blood on me. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that happened, and you know, and of course you helped
Speaker 1: out with the most recent season if yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: far you have to kind of look closely to see
Speaker 1: the artifacts, but you are are resident oh VHS specter.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so so if you want to see me
Speaker 1: being creepy in the background of some videos, then ah,
Speaker 1: then I mean, that's not the only reason you should
Speaker 1: watch them. They're they're very excellent in their own rights.
Speaker 1: As long as they watch them, I don't care if
Speaker 1: you go there for that sole reason. Keep it on
Speaker 1: you even, Alright, So I'm gonna be frank and admit
Speaker 1: that we initially just planned to do one podcast with
Speaker 1: Robert about the future of Monster but we got to
Speaker 1: talking about monsters and realized we had way too much
Speaker 1: to say about them. Yeah. Yeah, we have like ten
Speaker 1: pages of notes here. Um, so we so we got
Speaker 1: through about half of it last time. Um. And during
Speaker 1: that last podcast, we covered what monsters are and what
Speaker 1: they mean in our culture, and and a little bit
Speaker 1: of the history of how we have I mean, not
Speaker 1: the three of us sitting here, but humans in general
Speaker 1: have explored their their fears and anxieties through monsters throughout
Speaker 1: the ages. Right, So today we're actually going to speculate
Speaker 1: a little bit about what the monsters of the future are,
Speaker 1: what is going to terrify our our future generations. But
Speaker 1: I think first we should do it just a real
Speaker 1: quick refresher on what we talked about last time. And
Speaker 1: I'd say the driving point of our last episode was
Speaker 1: that monsters are not arbitrary, and they don't exist in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. There are product of culture and especially of
Speaker 1: social change and anxiety and of technology. Would you all
Speaker 1: say this, right? Oh? Indeed? I mean they're symbolically powerful entities,
Speaker 1: even if even if one is just creating a monster
Speaker 1: on the fly for the World's Chiefest Tara film. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, with little or no philosophical intent, you're still
Speaker 1: playing on traditions of monsters, monsters that have built up
Speaker 1: in our in our varying cultures over the over thousands
Speaker 1: of years, in folklore and myth and in in fiction,
Speaker 1: and uh, and here we are today still making them
Speaker 1: up over and over again. Yeah. And so last time
Speaker 1: we talked about the seven theses about the meaning of
Speaker 1: monsters from the English professor Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and what
Speaker 1: were some of the more important to those. I think
Speaker 1: one of them was the idea of the mixing of categories.
Speaker 1: That a monster very often occurs at a boundary of classification.
Speaker 1: It's a confusion or mixing of different classes that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be together. And you see that all the time and monsters.
Speaker 1: So you see the beast man, you know it's half
Speaker 1: animal half human, or you see the living dead that
Speaker 1: crosses the boundary of life and death, or you see
Speaker 1: the human machine, uh, and all kinds of strange creatures
Speaker 1: like this. We also mentioned the xenomorph. It seems part biological,
Speaker 1: part mechanical. Y. It's like what orange Julius, right, is
Speaker 1: it orange juice or is it milk? I know how
Speaker 1: to treat orange juice. I know how to treat milk.
Speaker 1: But that's unholy combination of the two throws me for
Speaker 1: a loop. Together it is monster, right. And so because
Speaker 1: we can't apply our usual categorical system of treatment to
Speaker 1: these things, we don't know how to deal with them,
Speaker 1: and they're frightening. One of the other things was that
Speaker 1: the monster polices the borders of the possible. It's sort
Speaker 1: of guards the boundaries right right. It is both a
Speaker 1: transgressor it it's doing things that that we cannot do
Speaker 1: as polite members of society. And it's furthermore punishing human transgressors.
Speaker 1: It's saying stay on the path, like like, don't go
Speaker 1: out into the woods, don't feed something after midnight, you know.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it could be any kind of violation. It
Speaker 1: could punish too much intellectual curiosity or physically going to
Speaker 1: a place you're not supposed to go, crossing taboos, anything
Speaker 1: like that. Very often, like ritual taboos. You know, you
Speaker 1: do the wrong ritual and oh, here finds demon. One
Speaker 1: of the other thess is that very often the monster
Speaker 1: sort of represents the other, that it's difference embodied, and
Speaker 1: that this can play a metaphorical relationship with others in society,
Speaker 1: both the treatment of the other and the fear of
Speaker 1: being the other. And then finally, I would say an
Speaker 1: important one is that the monster has something to do
Speaker 1: with desire. It's not just scary, but it's also attractive
Speaker 1: because it's associated with the forbidden and the not allowed
Speaker 1: that's probably the same thing as forbidden. Huh, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a good rephrase. I like that idea as an
Speaker 1: alternate harm movie title because I think the forbidden has
Speaker 1: been taken, but the not allowed zone. Yeah, well, because
Speaker 1: it's associated with that, it's also associated as with I
Speaker 1: think we say said less time, the no no pleasures,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And so there's a there's a desire associated
Speaker 1: with the monster, and it's sort of a desire to
Speaker 1: be the monster. Yeah, I mean, you see the I
Speaker 1: was just thinking, you know, about the outsider monsters that
Speaker 1: often kind of make you know, kind of make weapons
Speaker 1: out of their their imperfections in their flaws. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, I'm the things that make me feel
Speaker 1: weak and beat up and and outside of society, and
Speaker 1: the monster becomes an elevation and uh, you know. So
Speaker 1: so they're they're desirable characters from from a number of
Speaker 1: different ways. Their freedom or there. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times it is about freedom, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: And I think that especially starting with things like like
Speaker 1: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and and getting into all of
Speaker 1: the the youth culture monster television shows that are happening
Speaker 1: right now. There's there's a whole lot of these monsters
Speaker 1: being very sexy and in not a forbidden way, but
Speaker 1: in a like like superpower kind of way. There's a
Speaker 1: power in in having that freedom, right absolutely, Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: And so one of the last things we talked about
Speaker 1: in the last episode was we just looked a little
Speaker 1: bit at the history of monster trends, and so we
Speaker 1: looked at Frankenstein perhaps being a reaction to enlightenment science
Speaker 1: and philosophy of fear that we were going too far
Speaker 1: with intellectual curiosity and experimentation. Maybe Lovecraft representing a response
Speaker 1: to new science in the early twentieth century, to relativity,
Speaker 1: to UH, to of course the First World War, and
Speaker 1: to quantum theory. We looked at the atomic age, where
Speaker 1: we had all these giant mutated bugs and stuff that
Speaker 1: are a reaction very much obviously to nuclear testing and
Speaker 1: the power of the atom, the social upheavals of the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies and how they manifested in horror and
Speaker 1: then finally this kind of e horror phase UH that
Speaker 1: it's a direct response to the new technologies that were
Speaker 1: coming that we have been coming out in this our
Speaker 1: internet age, right, the angry ghost is in the telephone.
Speaker 1: It's going to get you through the wires. The wires
Speaker 1: will not save you. Okay, But now we want to
Speaker 1: make the shift and talk about what we think the
Speaker 1: future of monsters really will be. What what is the
Speaker 1: scariest thing to the next generation in thirty or fifty years.
Speaker 1: What will the horror movies be about? And I think
Speaker 1: the place we got to start, because it's the most
Speaker 1: obvious one is robots and artificial intelligence. Yes, definitely, artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: whether that's embodied in a robot body or separate in
Speaker 1: some kind of machine the cloud. Yea, indeed, I mean
Speaker 1: there are are technological children, right, and and so like
Speaker 1: like actual children, they're they're terrifying because there there are
Speaker 1: future We've put a certain amount into them, uh you know,
Speaker 1: either either via nurture or nature. And then it's the
Speaker 1: same way with with technology basically, and uh yeah, so
Speaker 1: you can't help it. Have a have a bit of
Speaker 1: apprehension about where it's going, right, And one of Gerome's
Speaker 1: thesis is actually one of the ones we didn't just mentioned,
Speaker 1: was the idea that monsters are very much our offspring.
Speaker 1: There there are children, and much like our real children,
Speaker 1: they sort of look back at us and ask why
Speaker 1: they were created. They want to know. They want us
Speaker 1: to give them a purpose and a lot We don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have anything good to tell them sometimes, and so
Speaker 1: this makes a lot of sense to me, is the
Speaker 1: future of monsters. But I do want to raise a
Speaker 1: strange objection that I think we can maybe rectify, which
Speaker 1: is that robots killer robots, no matter how menacing they are,
Speaker 1: aren't all that immediately scary to me for some reason.
Speaker 1: So we've seen it a million times. Science fiction is
Speaker 1: full of dangerous and threatening artificial intelligence. You've got how
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, you've got sky Ned and the
Speaker 1: Terminator series. You've got the big machine complex in the Matrix.
Speaker 1: I guess it would be the Matrix. Uh, none of
Speaker 1: this really frightens me, and so I want to make
Speaker 1: a kind of distinction, And if you all want to
Speaker 1: offer alternative terminology, please do. I this is probably not
Speaker 1: the best way to phrase it, but I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to explain an idea. There's a difference between a merely
Speaker 1: conceivable monster and a plausible monster. So a conceivable monster
Speaker 1: is basically any monster. Any monster you can picture in
Speaker 1: place in a scenario, and and the evil artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: would fit this, So it could be a terminator, could
Speaker 1: be whatever. But by contrast, a plausible monster is not
Speaker 1: necessarily one I find scientifically or physically plausible, but it
Speaker 1: feels relevant to my life, so it actually scares me.
Speaker 1: It follows me home from the theater. I might be
Speaker 1: alone in my house at night and worry about this monster.
Speaker 1: And one of the strange things is it almost sometimes
Speaker 1: seems inversely related to the amount of plausibility of the monster.
Speaker 1: For example, I don't personally believe in ghosts. I don't
Speaker 1: think they exist, but ghosts are a very plausible monster
Speaker 1: to me in my house at night, Yeah, there might
Speaker 1: be a ghost there. I find terminators, at least in theory,
Speaker 1: quite possible, as you could build a cybernetic creature that's
Speaker 1: designed to kill. That idea doesn't really frighten me that much,
Speaker 1: and I wonder why that is. Well, and this is
Speaker 1: this will probably just be as much as a sort
Speaker 1: of ambiguous way of looking at it, But it it
Speaker 1: kind of comes down to to the question, um, is
Speaker 1: there room in the shadows for this particular monster? You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of and not the necessarily the actual optical shadows,
Speaker 1: but you know it is there is there enough mystery
Speaker 1: in your life or in the world to accommodate, uh,
Speaker 1: that creature at least at two in the morning, or
Speaker 1: at least on that dark street or when you're walking
Speaker 1: through the woods, and it's it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: nail down exactly you know which ones fit into that category?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, No. I do think that this fear
Speaker 1: of of yours, and I think it's a pretty common
Speaker 1: way of looking at different categories of horror movies goes
Speaker 1: back to the fear of the unknown, which is one
Speaker 1: of those very basic ones, um, because you can understand
Speaker 1: basically how a terminator would be put together and how
Speaker 1: a sufficient advanced artificial intelligence could totally go like a
Speaker 1: global hannibal lector on all of us, because you know,
Speaker 1: we all have those days, so we get it. Um.
Speaker 1: But but ghosts are are are that unknown factor, that
Speaker 1: that thing that is in the shadows, especially if you
Speaker 1: don't believe in them, because they're just completely inexplicable. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting. I like that you'll both brought up the
Speaker 1: shadows because that might be part of it. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if as we move further down the road towards
Speaker 1: cybernetics and towards artificial intelligence and really powerful, adaptable, all
Speaker 1: purpose robotics, that's something like that actually would become scarier,
Speaker 1: not just because it's more pervasive, but because there are
Speaker 1: places in the shadows where it could plausibly hide. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you imagine a world in which there is tons
Speaker 1: of private research into artificial intelligence and robotics, you don't
Speaker 1: know what that weird lab down the street is ting. Sure? Sure,
Speaker 1: And as that kind of technology becomes more ubiquitous, I mean,
Speaker 1: not that's not already bordering unubiquity given the I mean,
Speaker 1: how many of us have cell phones in our pockets
Speaker 1: or or fitness trackers on our risks or etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean how many electronic devices do you own in
Speaker 1: your home right now? Can you even count them? Um?
Speaker 1: And when they're all speaking to each other, maybe that
Speaker 1: will become or you know, like the more advance that
Speaker 1: they've become, perhaps it will become more shadowy. The less
Speaker 1: that the average consumer is able to understand about those objects. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean at some point where we find ourselves in
Speaker 1: our kitchen with our robotic kitchen robot. And it's not
Speaker 1: so much the fear of the killer robot, but maybe
Speaker 1: the fear of what if this killer robot catches some
Speaker 1: sort of killer virus off of the ubiquitous Internet, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, the mystery becomes the inner psyche of
Speaker 1: the robot. As the robot's mind becomes more and more
Speaker 1: complex and difficult for us to understand, it becomes more
Speaker 1: and more like an animal, like a human, like a
Speaker 1: monster that might have strange motivations that you can't grapple.
Speaker 1: What remind to be of a line in uh in
Speaker 1: William Gibson's Neuromancer, where he uh, he makes the comparison
Speaker 1: and one of the characters, of course makes a deal
Speaker 1: essentially with a really powerful AI and uh and it's
Speaker 1: of somebody comments that that essentially it's a deal with
Speaker 1: the devil, and it's something that that was impossible for
Speaker 1: for centuries and centuries. It was purely a human creation,
Speaker 1: but then eventually technology came around and made it possible,
Speaker 1: uh in reality. So I'm not sure how that where
Speaker 1: that lays into it, because you can still, of course
Speaker 1: be afraid of the of the devil in the night
Speaker 1: you can be afraid of the ghost. Uh, that's just
Speaker 1: outside of the shadow of your night light. But then
Speaker 1: the idea of reaching a point technologically where we can
Speaker 1: manifest those things in reality, Yeah, yeah, I can very
Speaker 1: plausibly see that becoming the new the new ghost, and
Speaker 1: also consciousness is is certainly mysterious. So definitely, and that
Speaker 1: ties into the next point I want to make about
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, which is that this could relate to another
Speaker 1: one of Cohen's theses. We talked about the idea that
Speaker 1: sometimes the monster is a thing that is persecuted or
Speaker 1: oppressed and looks back on us in judgment. And so
Speaker 1: I want to bring up something we've talked about on
Speaker 1: this podcast before, which is the idea of artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: becoming sentient. I think we'll always be haunted by this question, right,
Speaker 1: if you design something that seems to be intelligent according
Speaker 1: to the the idea lingering behind the Turing test, you know,
Speaker 1: Alan Turing's original question, should you basically have to assume
Speaker 1: that this thing actually is sentient, that it possesses a
Speaker 1: subjective experience, that it's something is happening inside the mind
Speaker 1: of this computer you've created that's not just external it's
Speaker 1: not just coming out to you. It's not just behavior.
Speaker 1: There's such a thing as what it's like to be
Speaker 1: this computer and you are now enslaving it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It raises the question that once we have this fabulous
Speaker 1: internet of things, like is my toaster really happy making toast?
Speaker 1: Should I force it into toastitude? Well, I mean, we
Speaker 1: have such a problem understanding human consciousness. So I mean
Speaker 1: the mind body problem comes basically down to the situation
Speaker 1: that you you look at the organic brain and you say,
Speaker 1: all right, and I see how I see how it
Speaker 1: works and see what's going on there, more or less.
Speaker 1: And then you have the mind and you can look
Speaker 1: at the mind and say, all right, I can sort
Speaker 1: of see what's going on there. But then when you
Speaker 1: try and compare the two, you say, well, this doesn't
Speaker 1: match up with this. This does not seem like it's
Speaker 1: not one to one, right, it's not a one to
Speaker 1: one match. So if we can't even identify that that
Speaker 1: connection with our own mind and brain, then what chance
Speaker 1: do we have in looking at circuitry in the future
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, well, that's consciousness right there. Because we
Speaker 1: can't even really point to our own heads and say
Speaker 1: that right, it's really hard. I mean, if you can't
Speaker 1: find a piece of tissue in the brain, then you
Speaker 1: could you realize is magic. Then what says a computer
Speaker 1: can't accomplish that same subjective experience? It it's a little terrifying.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no, no one, no one wants to
Speaker 1: be that guy. So yeah, and and uh and it
Speaker 1: is interesting in the in the way that it's you know,
Speaker 1: it turns the camera back on ourselves too. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like the fear of the other kind of becomes
Speaker 1: the fear of of ourselves. Um one robot human conflict
Speaker 1: that that I always think about in the in these situations.
Speaker 1: Uh comes around to the book Doom, of course, where
Speaker 1: you have in the backstory the whole um Butalerrian Jijihad,
Speaker 1: where humans and machines had this you know, this big conflict.
Speaker 1: And and I've read that that Frank Herbert's original thinking
Speaker 1: along these lines was less this physical conflict between man
Speaker 1: and machine, between humans and thinking machines, but but more
Speaker 1: about what what does it do when we depend upon
Speaker 1: all this technology, we depend on thinking machine, how does
Speaker 1: it change the human experience? Do we end up thinking
Speaker 1: more like machines? Um, which certainly gets into the whole.
Speaker 1: One of the key areas in the in in computers
Speaker 1: and in human computer interaction is is you know, the
Speaker 1: continual struggle to well, let's let's try and make make
Speaker 1: it a situation where the machines are more human like
Speaker 1: and I don't have to become more machine like to
Speaker 1: use them. Yeah, let's actually talk about that, the concept
Speaker 1: of of cybernetics and and those those actual combinations and
Speaker 1: the horrific idea of of losing your humanity by being
Speaker 1: by by willfully becoming part machine. Right. Well, there's the
Speaker 1: very simple version of this, which is that you imagine
Speaker 1: that we have cybernetics that increase our physical capabilities. That's
Speaker 1: sort of you know, the brute force version. You have exoskeleton,
Speaker 1: you have a robot arm. I'd take a robot arm.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, right, yeah, I think we did a
Speaker 1: poll on the podcast before Robert off your arm to
Speaker 1: get a stronger robot arm. I have to cut one
Speaker 1: off to get a robot and just had a third
Speaker 1: robot arm. No, you have to cut off your armor.
Speaker 1: You can get a stronger robot arm. I'd have to
Speaker 1: see a demo for really the younger me would say yes,
Speaker 1: because it was very obsessed with robotic arms when I
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, because you'd see that scene
Speaker 1: in terminators trying out in front of near But right,
Speaker 1: but that's the simple version that we just don't think
Speaker 1: about all that deeply. Okay, it's just augmenting physical capability
Speaker 1: is sure, that's one thing cybernetics could do. But it
Speaker 1: increasingly looks like cybernetics are going to have to involve
Speaker 1: direct connections with the brain, which is now widely accepted
Speaker 1: to be the seat of the self. As we were
Speaker 1: just talking about in the in the last point. So
Speaker 1: we've discussed on the podcast before how brain computer interfaces
Speaker 1: allow all kinds of crazy stuff. We talked about how
Speaker 1: monkeys can control computer cursors with their brains and I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've read about this rather, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so they don't need to use their hands at all.
Speaker 1: They can just look at a computer screen with the
Speaker 1: wire going into their head and move the cursor around.
Speaker 1: The same thing has been done with allowing people suffering
Speaker 1: from quadruplegia to be able to move a robot arm
Speaker 1: to feed themselves with a brain implant. There was actually
Speaker 1: just something I read about the other day. It was
Speaker 1: published in Science Translational Medicine by sellers Ryan and Hawser,
Speaker 1: and then reported in New Scientists and that they described
Speaker 1: how just the other day, a non invasive brain computer
Speaker 1: interface allowed a sixty eight year old man with locked
Speaker 1: in syndrome. So that means he's aware, but he can't
Speaker 1: use any of his muscles, uh, following a brain stem
Speaker 1: stroke to spell out written messages to family members with
Speaker 1: brain activity alone. So communicating through computers using only your brain.
Speaker 1: And I think this is only going to continue and
Speaker 1: get more efficient and more deeply involved biologically. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and it's and it's so wonderful for for people who
Speaker 1: do have a traumatic brain injury or or traumatic bodily injury,
Speaker 1: or who who otherwise need this kind of technology in
Speaker 1: order to have a a quote unquote normal life. Oh
Speaker 1: certainly right. I'm mentioning that in the in the context
Speaker 1: of a monster podcast. I don't want to demonize technology, though,
Speaker 1: absolutely super welcome news. Yeah, yeah, that is rad extremely red.
Speaker 1: But what happens when brain computer interfaces or b c
Speaker 1: i s get so good that healthy people want to
Speaker 1: use them to browse the internet to communicate with domestic
Speaker 1: robots to play video games. I mean, you can, we
Speaker 1: can we assume that this will be done. Could self
Speaker 1: modification in the coming cybernetics era lead to a resurgence
Speaker 1: I thought about in the body horror genre, the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff we saw from Cronenberg, like the fly Videodrome,
Speaker 1: the brood, where the threat is not so much that
Speaker 1: there's an external predator coming to get you, but there's
Speaker 1: a loss of your sense of autonomy, a loss of
Speaker 1: the sense of self, transformation of the self into this
Speaker 1: non human and otherwise unrecognizable abomination. Yeah, you see this
Speaker 1: externalization of the self, and then you begin to wonder, well,
Speaker 1: where do where do where do I actually end? And
Speaker 1: where does it begin? And we we already see shades
Speaker 1: of that as our as our memory ends up sort
Speaker 1: of offloading some of its capabilities. You know, we we
Speaker 1: no longer really need to know how to spell even
Speaker 1: normal words in our everyday usage, because the machine is
Speaker 1: taking care of that. You know, in the same way
Speaker 1: that if you you're you're in a even a short
Speaker 1: term relationship, but let's say a long term relationship, and
Speaker 1: there are things that your spouse remembers or your your
Speaker 1: partner remembers that you don't, and you end up so compartmentalizing.
Speaker 1: It's actually the same kind of mental process going on there,
Speaker 1: all right. Sure it's going like, oh, Judy, I don't
Speaker 1: remember you tell this story exactly kind of thing. It's
Speaker 1: a very good point. We we even planned for that,
Speaker 1: don't we. I Mean, I feel like there are just
Speaker 1: some types of information I don't even try to remember
Speaker 1: because I know my wife Rachel will remember them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's and everything else is just a key stroke away.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a wonder we'd bother to remember anything.
Speaker 1: And so so Yeah, even though the the the smartphone
Speaker 1: in our pocket isn't actually connected to our body, I mean,
Speaker 1: it becomes such a part of us. It becomes a
Speaker 1: part of our our working memory. Even so, cybernetics, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I see very good potential for that in the
Speaker 1: Monsters of the Future. It's it's that crossover again, the
Speaker 1: mixing of categories what's machine what's human that already terrifies
Speaker 1: people now that it's not even necessarily imminent for the
Speaker 1: average person. I mean, when when it is a common thing,
Speaker 1: who knows how scary this will be? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and we're all fundamentally cybernetic organisms. I mean, and I'm
Speaker 1: not necessarily talking about the fact that we have a a
Speaker 1: lot of us wear glasses or we have, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of medical implant or what have you. But
Speaker 1: I mean, just done a very basic level when when
Speaker 1: when primitive humans picked up stick or a bone club,
Speaker 1: it updates their body scheme and in their mind that
Speaker 1: bone club is becoming a part of their body, becoming
Speaker 1: a part of their arm. And so I mean, you
Speaker 1: can make an argument that that's the earliest cyborg and
Speaker 1: we've been cybers for a very long time, and anything
Speaker 1: else we do digitally is just icing on the cake. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the same way that that you
Speaker 1: feel a personal territory to your car when you're driving
Speaker 1: it like it it becomes an extension of your body,
Speaker 1: and when someone moves too close to it, you get
Speaker 1: a little bit me about it. This is something I
Speaker 1: was thinking about. Not to go on a huge tangent,
Speaker 1: but I did a blog post on this because I
Speaker 1: was thinking about it in terms of gun ownership. Because
Speaker 1: of obviously gun ownership big controversial issue, especially here in
Speaker 1: the States, people get very possessive of their their firearms,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of anxiety along along the ideas
Speaker 1: of rights to have them and the the you know,
Speaker 1: the the bugbear of them being taken away. And I wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're when one is using that, when
Speaker 1: one is comfortable with that weapon, they're updating into their
Speaker 1: body scheme. It's becoming a part of themselves. So does
Speaker 1: it become a type of dismemberment for that to be
Speaker 1: taken away from them anyway? And also, I mean speaking
Speaker 1: of Cronenberg and like video drome, So we've been talking
Speaker 1: about about the brain, and I think that that's another
Speaker 1: really terrific example of of of how horror might go
Speaker 1: in the future through through the study of neuroscience. We
Speaker 1: haven't seen a lot of neur are scientific monsters out
Speaker 1: there yet, but but I think it has huge potential. Right,
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about technology, mostly how technology affects
Speaker 1: the brain, but what about the research that's going to
Speaker 1: continue to be conducted in pure neuroscience itself, just learning
Speaker 1: more about the relationship between the mind and the brain.
Speaker 1: Is that a cause for horror? Is there a monster
Speaker 1: somewhere in there? We're talking earlier about about shadows and monsters.
Speaker 1: Is there room in the shadows for for for this
Speaker 1: particular brand of monster. And certainly there's plenty of room
Speaker 1: in the shadows when it comes to human consciousness and
Speaker 1: our mental processes. And and you know, the more we learn,
Speaker 1: the more it seems as if our mind is just there,
Speaker 1: just the the shallow, sunlit waters of a bunch of
Speaker 1: deeper body. And there's plenty of darkness there with the
Speaker 1: where there's there's cognition going on that we don't really
Speaker 1: have access to. And then you start dissecting that apart,
Speaker 1: and you get into a whole discussion of free will.
Speaker 1: Are we actually choosing anything or we just sort of,
Speaker 1: uh have this We're in this self delusion that we're
Speaker 1: making all these choices for ourselves. Are we just these
Speaker 1: these chemical computers that are running out programs. Well, I
Speaker 1: think people are already terrified of this idea, or I
Speaker 1: don't know if terrified is the right word, but there
Speaker 1: at least many people are repulsed by the idea of determinism.
Speaker 1: If you hear this brought up in a philosophical conversation,
Speaker 1: some people find they seem to find it repugnant. They
Speaker 1: can't deal with it. Do you know, what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean even myself. I I've certainly covered
Speaker 1: it enough and and read enough about it to where
Speaker 1: on a on a level, I pretty much agree with it.
Speaker 1: I say, yeah, I'm I don't really think we have
Speaker 1: a lot of free will in our lives. I think
Speaker 1: we're obeying our programming, we're obeying their environmental stimuli. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, that doesn't match up
Speaker 1: all that well with my experience of the reality. And
Speaker 1: then I have to sort of fall back in into
Speaker 1: just thinking about it and the way the way we
Speaker 1: all do that. I'm making these choices and I'm deciding
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do with this hour of free time,
Speaker 1: even though it's pretty much already been written, right. I
Speaker 1: guess we can't get into a whole debate about determinism,
Speaker 1: compatible is um, and libertarian free will on this podcast,
Speaker 1: but uh, yeah, it's certainly a serious question and one
Speaker 1: that neuroscience I think does have something to say about.
Speaker 1: It's there. I think there's some people who are skeptical
Speaker 1: that neuroscience can offer anything on this question, but I
Speaker 1: think it certainly can, especially if you find seats of
Speaker 1: consciousness and decision making in the brain. We've talked on
Speaker 1: this podcast before. Not to keep referring to previous podcasts
Speaker 1: all the time, but we definitely have about uh, like
Speaker 1: recent recent research that made it look like, Oh, I
Speaker 1: wonder if the clostrum is the part of the brain
Speaker 1: that actually combines the various phenomena to create the sensation
Speaker 1: of consciousness. You're saying, there's a monster in the classroom. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so. But the other question I would ask is
Speaker 1: that that definitely is a deeply scary idea that I
Speaker 1: think will resonate with people as this science becomes more
Speaker 1: and more popular and we get popular reporting on it.
Speaker 1: But what does the monster actually look like? What form
Speaker 1: does it to a? Well, you know, another another side
Speaker 1: to think about in terms of this is also a
Speaker 1: memory and the fallibility of memory false memories. Um. When
Speaker 1: you really start getting into that area, it gets a
Speaker 1: little scary because you start looking at your life and
Speaker 1: you're saying, well, my life is made out of these memories,
Speaker 1: and how many of them are real? And when you
Speaker 1: start realizing that every time you reach back into the
Speaker 1: archives and you draw out that memory, you're actually changing it.
Speaker 1: M One one recent example that comes to mind on.
Speaker 1: This is the movie Oculus. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys have seen it. I have not, But I was
Speaker 1: just going to bring up the fact that I think
Speaker 1: that some of the recent return to Mirror and Doublegang
Speaker 1: or Horror might have something to do with the advances
Speaker 1: that we've been making a neuroscience because it's about ourselves
Speaker 1: and who we are. And Oculus, besides of being just
Speaker 1: a bleak our film, I thought it was. I thought
Speaker 1: it was well executed, and it does some interesting things
Speaker 1: where it plays with memory, with these two characters memory
Speaker 1: of a traumatic event and uh and and I thought
Speaker 1: it it dabbled in that in an effective way. So
Speaker 1: in a in a way, even though it's dealing with
Speaker 1: a very old trope of the of the haunted Mirror, Uh,
Speaker 1: it kind of is getting into a neuro scientific zone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to check it out. I will add
Speaker 1: that to my list of all of the movies that
Speaker 1: I apparently need to go see now. Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: how about just straight up post apocalyptic dystopia the breakdown
Speaker 1: of society. This is something that's really on people's minds.
Speaker 1: I noticed that there's so much common reporting about like
Speaker 1: about like are we at the end of this era
Speaker 1: of like like are we going the way of the
Speaker 1: Romans kind of stuff or even down just like at
Speaker 1: the at the vox populi level YouTube comments, we make
Speaker 1: videos about the future. We make videos about the future
Speaker 1: and put them up on YouTube, and tons of comments
Speaker 1: are about you know, just the coming dystopia, the end
Speaker 1: of the world, the apocalypse. People. This is popular. People
Speaker 1: are thinking about this idea a lot. What happens when
Speaker 1: society collapses because of you know, politics or technology or
Speaker 1: social change, whatever it is. Yeah, and and there's so
Speaker 1: much there's so much popular media about zombies right now.
Speaker 1: Like I I think that Robert and I we've had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a conversation and just around the
Speaker 1: office before about how kind of tired we get of zombies.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I am right there with you. I discovered Dawn
Speaker 1: of the Dead when I was I think in my
Speaker 1: senior year of high school, and I went through a
Speaker 1: brief phase where I was like, zombie movies, this is
Speaker 1: the best thing ever. And then I got so sick
Speaker 1: of them I couldn't stand it anymore. Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get kind of used to the taste, and then
Speaker 1: you start trying different spiced versions of it to try
Speaker 1: and stick with that diet. But eventually you kind of realized,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think maybe I'm done with zombies.
Speaker 1: I'd like to pause it that I would I never
Speaker 1: want to think about spiced zombies again. Um it is
Speaker 1: it is. It is decorative gourd season you guys, it's
Speaker 1: pumping spice zombies. Sorry, okay please, Uh well, anyway, one
Speaker 1: thing I think I'd like to tie the post apocalyptic
Speaker 1: zombie genre into is Cohen's thesis about desire about how
Speaker 1: this is so it's sort of scary. It's not a
Speaker 1: situation you'd actually want to be in. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you hear this a lot in the popular
Speaker 1: talk about zombies. People want that experience of blowing a
Speaker 1: zombie's head off with a shotgun. Oh sure, I mean
Speaker 1: it's being it's the experience of being able to destroy
Speaker 1: human body with no consequences. And I'm sure I just
Speaker 1: sounded like a terrible murderer right now and I said that,
Speaker 1: But but they're certainly amongst my friends anecdotally. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: almost a fetish fetishization of that kind of post apocalyptic environment.
Speaker 1: We spend so many casual conversations talking about our roles
Speaker 1: in the post apocalypse and like how we would get
Speaker 1: out of the city and and you know what kind
Speaker 1: of weapons we would use and and you know that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. It's huge and of course we do
Speaker 1: all die there. I would be first. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm useless in a post apocalypse. I'm a writer, like what,
Speaker 1: But you know it's uh, I totally agree, though, it
Speaker 1: is something we desire and uh and and even that
Speaker 1: that physical violence, it's against the zombie we desire because
Speaker 1: it's a it's a situation where we've we've simplified reality
Speaker 1: into a vision where there's a definite right and a
Speaker 1: definite wrong. There's dead and there's removed the moral ambiguity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or there's living in there's undead. I guess. So they're
Speaker 1: the zombies and there us. They are bad, we are good.
Speaker 1: If we see one of those, we can use direct
Speaker 1: lethal violence against them and solve the problem. And because
Speaker 1: we live these lives where very little is black and white,
Speaker 1: everything's grey, and and you know that the problems on
Speaker 1: the news are not so easily solved that as a
Speaker 1: situation of what point a gun at the zombie's head
Speaker 1: and then the case is closed. So we desire that
Speaker 1: kind of simplicity. Um. I've heard it argued that the
Speaker 1: zombie Horde comet is also almost kind of a flow state,
Speaker 1: kind of a fantasy, because the zombies are easily dispatched
Speaker 1: one by one and it's just a matter of getting
Speaker 1: in the flow of dealing with it. It's like a
Speaker 1: checklist that never ends, but we can definitely check things
Speaker 1: off that list. It's it's it's that immediate reward kind
Speaker 1: of thing, right, It's the it's the achievement unlocked right right.
Speaker 1: The flow state is the it's a continuous challenge, so
Speaker 1: you're never bored, but it's something you can do exactly,
Speaker 1: you can get it done. So ye, zombie Apocalypse is
Speaker 1: kind of a flow state fantasy. And and also it's
Speaker 1: a chance and almost kind of a more honey sense,
Speaker 1: We're we get it. It's a chance to sort of
Speaker 1: reconnect or at least fantasize about reconnecting with older modes
Speaker 1: of life. You know, suddenly you're you're actually living for
Speaker 1: yourself out there. You're not depending on technology. You're picking
Speaker 1: food or growing food, or at least scavenging for food.
Speaker 1: You know, you're protecting the loved one closest to you
Speaker 1: from this this very cut and dry horror. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do think that the part of the popularity of
Speaker 1: zombie movies right now is also just a general like
Speaker 1: urbanization anxiety and that we're we're losing touch with those
Speaker 1: parts of ourselves as humans and losing touch with the nature,
Speaker 1: losing some of our individuality and freedom by being in
Speaker 1: these in these stifling urban environments, and also are just
Speaker 1: being kind of starting crammed into these inescapable and claustrophobic spaces.
Speaker 1: So do you guys think that we're that we're coming
Speaker 1: to an end of this fascination with zombies or do
Speaker 1: you think that we're we're just kind of riding the wave.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I thought we were kind of getting
Speaker 1: to the end of a few years back, and we
Speaker 1: keep going. So yeah, it's interesting because it's something that
Speaker 1: I feel like people people are beginning to tire of. Actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're catching on that this has been done
Speaker 1: a lot, But then again, it does continuously play on
Speaker 1: on these the zeitgeist right in ways that we I
Speaker 1: don't think we're done with this feeling yet. In culture,
Speaker 1: that there's there's something we're domesticated, there's some kind of violent,
Speaker 1: primal existence we'd like to get back to. We still
Speaker 1: do desire this flow state with our kind of uh
Speaker 1: stifling office jobs. Not not speaking about my own if
Speaker 1: my boss is listening, but you know the idea, and
Speaker 1: we're living in these urban spaces where there's so many
Speaker 1: people so close together in the same space. I can
Speaker 1: see this continuing too, to reach the feelings that are
Speaker 1: still very popular. I don't see going away. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like you know, we as we discussed, the monster comes
Speaker 1: out of culture, and as long as its culturally relevant,
Speaker 1: as long as there's something in the monster that fulfills
Speaker 1: our desires or helps us process our fears, we're going
Speaker 1: to keep coming back to it, even if we we
Speaker 1: don't like to admit. Wait, so, do you think it's
Speaker 1: actually going away or not? I guess not. It's gonna
Speaker 1: It's gonna be here. And you know, the good thing
Speaker 1: is that along the ride some people are going to
Speaker 1: do something interesting with it. People are going to spice
Speaker 1: those zombies and uh and make them a little more palatable. Well,
Speaker 1: I certainly don't mean to say there are no good
Speaker 1: recent zombie movies. I don't that entirely, but I'm still
Speaker 1: enjoying some some parts of the culture. Um. But another
Speaker 1: thing that actually think zombies tap into very deeply is
Speaker 1: our current anxiety around pandemic, which is certainly with with
Speaker 1: the recent Ebola outbreaks, very forefront in a lot of
Speaker 1: people's minds. Yeah, I think this is also very much
Speaker 1: related to urbanization, because you come into the office, if
Speaker 1: one person sick, ends up, half the office gets sick,
Speaker 1: or maybe everybody gets sick. We're all in close spaces
Speaker 1: and we're all sharing germs. This didn't this wasn't always
Speaker 1: the case, right, I mean, this is a fairly recent
Speaker 1: thing in human history that we're cramming so many people
Speaker 1: together in such tight spaces. Oh. Sure, Also there is
Speaker 1: you know, just just as we discover more about how
Speaker 1: our bodies work and kind of how fragile they are,
Speaker 1: and how many weird new diseases can kind of come
Speaker 1: out of nothing. Um and and be very serious, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that a lot of the recent
Speaker 1: interest in vampire horror kicking off in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: was very much due to the AIDS epidemic. Uh. Fun
Speaker 1: fact by the way. For instance, Sport Coppola was working
Speaker 1: on a documentary about AIDS at the same time that
Speaker 1: he was putting together his film bram Stoker's Dragula. That's interesting,
Speaker 1: especially considering that there are some strong arguments that brom
Speaker 1: Stoker himself uh wrote Dracula and was became so obsessed
Speaker 1: with the vampire motif because he himself may have been
Speaker 1: suffering from syphilis, and that you see a lot of
Speaker 1: shades of specially the third final level of syphilis in
Speaker 1: the Vampire. Yeah. Absolutely. I think you've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the link between syphilis and vampires, and that was
Speaker 1: really on syphilis for a while. It's a fascinating topic. Um,
Speaker 1: if you've been around me, I probably tried to convince
Speaker 1: you of it. But yeah, but this is another one
Speaker 1: I can definitely see extending into the future and creating
Speaker 1: the monsters of tomorrow. They might be tiny monsters. Germs.
Speaker 1: I mean something that's hard to hard to to place
Speaker 1: put your finger on, especially because it's especially frightening because
Speaker 1: a germ is mindless. It chases you and and and
Speaker 1: hunts you without knowing what it's doing, so there's nothing
Speaker 1: to demonize you can't really argue with it. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: also but there, but it's that that boundary point can
Speaker 1: also come into play because in order to get the germ,
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the whole things, especially with syphilis
Speaker 1: and in any sexually transmitted disease, is that there's kind
Speaker 1: of this moral zone to it because to acquire that
Speaker 1: that mindless and you know, non judging entity, you had
Speaker 1: to engage in activity that might be considered um morable,
Speaker 1: apprehensive others would judge. Yeah, it's that border patrol and exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh And and also someone wrote in here and I
Speaker 1: think it's a really terrific uh parallel the Fly and
Speaker 1: the thing um from the early nineties, late eighties, eighties
Speaker 1: issue Yah. Yeah, and that kind of of of body
Speaker 1: horror that was going on at the time that was
Speaker 1: very very much I think part of our anxiety about
Speaker 1: these diseases that we that we couldn't do a whole
Speaker 1: lot about. Oh yeah, I think definitely with Cronenberg's The Fly,
Speaker 1: I think that's a there's a there's a strong case
Speaker 1: to be made that there's a lot of AIDS anxiety
Speaker 1: tied up in that one. Definitely. How about technological connectivity,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is something that I cannot see going
Speaker 1: away now. There there are people talking about how we're
Speaker 1: going to get sick of Facebook and surveillance and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I don't buy it at all. I think
Speaker 1: we are headlong and we're not coming back. I think
Speaker 1: that the deeply connected, digitally enabled networking that we're experiencing now,
Speaker 1: we haven't even reached the peak yet, not not even close.
Speaker 1: I don't think yeah. I mean I fantasize about leaving
Speaker 1: it all behind sometimes, and then I remind myself rather quickly,
Speaker 1: oh well, I have I have to do it as
Speaker 1: part of my job, so there's no way I would
Speaker 1: have to leave this job and to leave that behind.
Speaker 1: And then I have. It's the way I connect with people.
Speaker 1: I know. It's just we're we've waited too far into
Speaker 1: that pool to really get out again. I think there's
Speaker 1: really no going back. I hate Facebook sometimes, but then
Speaker 1: I realized that without Facebook, I'd probably never talk to
Speaker 1: these dozen friends of mine who live in different cities.
Speaker 1: And I mean, it keeps you connected, it really does, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: and you know there are some parts of it that
Speaker 1: are a little bit a horrible, but but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of it that is very dear to me, and
Speaker 1: that I would I would, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: I really am being enriched by seeing the photographs that
Speaker 1: they post and and and reading about how their kids
Speaker 1: are doing, or their dogs or you know whatever. It is.
Speaker 1: That it and it's great that all that social connection
Speaker 1: is his own via a soulless corporation. It is intent
Speaker 1: on making profits, right, but that occasionally turning your life
Speaker 1: into money. Yeah, yeah, and that and that occasionally does
Speaker 1: strange uh psychological studies on us. So but you can't really,
Speaker 1: you can't turn away from it because yeah, your your
Speaker 1: social connections are bound up in it. But if we
Speaker 1: accept the prediction that this trend continues, we're only going
Speaker 1: to get more and more connected via these digital channels.
Speaker 1: What does this mean for our anxieties as a culture
Speaker 1: and how does that turn into a monster or does it? Well?
Speaker 1: I think you know, monsters on Facebook, monsters on message boards.
Speaker 1: I mean it's easy because I mean, really, you encounter
Speaker 1: trolls already, and and you on one level, you know
Speaker 1: that that is an actual person. On the other side,
Speaker 1: on the same level you they're human. Well, I know,
Speaker 1: and that's that's where it gets kind of interesting. I
Speaker 1: wonder if that, if the trolls of the Internet, that
Speaker 1: the the impostures of the Internet, to what extent that
Speaker 1: becomes more and more of a thing. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm I missed there's a there's actually maybe there's an
Speaker 1: actual recent example of this in horror cinema that I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm forgetting about. But it seems like that's I
Speaker 1: feel like this could be part of the return to
Speaker 1: the to the slasher and serial killer genres that we've
Speaker 1: been seeing a little bit lately, because I feel like
Speaker 1: that that de humanizing, that that de humanized human is
Speaker 1: very much a part of of our lives every day.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's why you know, we all know
Speaker 1: not to read the comments, except for those of us
Speaker 1: for whom that's that's our job. But uh it we
Speaker 1: get lots of really lovely comments. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you guys specifically are upstanding ladies and gentlemen and et cetera,
Speaker 1: and uh and we love every single one of you.
Speaker 1: But there there are many other people on the Internet
Speaker 1: who are not that curious and kind. So yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: that thing I can't help. But wonder, as we you know,
Speaker 1: as we we sort of lose our one to one
Speaker 1: social connections, and we depend more and more on this
Speaker 1: on Facebook and the Internet in general to connect with people.
Speaker 1: Like maybe we end up having a more of a
Speaker 1: return to not only the slasher but like the straight
Speaker 1: up like Dario Argento hands strangling someone kind of slasher scenario,
Speaker 1: not as almost out of a desire to just be
Speaker 1: physically contact. Yeah. Yeah, well you mean as a as
Speaker 1: a result of the fact that we're carrying on so
Speaker 1: many of our relationships not in person, right, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: you might be the five people you're closest with, maybe
Speaker 1: you don't even see them on a regular basis. So
Speaker 1: maybe the sort of dark desire become well, at least
Speaker 1: when I die, let my murder hug me to death,
Speaker 1: you know, because then at least I'll go out of
Speaker 1: this world with some human contact. Yeah. I wonder if
Speaker 1: there could also be the exact opposite, where the horror
Speaker 1: is isolation. I mean people, people are terrified now to
Speaker 1: be away from email, to be away from Facebook. Not everyone,
Speaker 1: but this is a common fear. People report, I haven't
Speaker 1: checked my email in three hours. I have intense anxiety
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe that could even tie
Speaker 1: back into another thing which I'm started skipping around in
Speaker 1: our notes, but but space exploration. Uh. Certainly in the
Speaker 1: seventies ish there was there was a lot of that
Speaker 1: horror of being isolated literally in space on on a
Speaker 1: cold dark ship somewhere, even though space isn't cold, which
Speaker 1: we have discussed. Um. But uh uh, and so maybe
Speaker 1: maybe we'll see more of that. Yeah, Definitely, there's always
Speaker 1: room in the in the world of isolation for the monster,
Speaker 1: because that's the realm where your mind turns on itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the instant of hours. Ye. But speaking of of
Speaker 1: human contact, I think I think parenthood is a trope
Speaker 1: and horror cinema that we are certainly not done with. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there are several facets to this. Number one
Speaker 1: is going to be something more related to the cybernetics
Speaker 1: we already talked about, because I think we're seeing we've
Speaker 1: already seen, at least in America, I think, largely a
Speaker 1: medicalizing of birth, and it's become it's a hospital event.
Speaker 1: It's associated with health industry and technology and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And I think is technology intrudes more and more on
Speaker 1: on birth, that's something that really does make people uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because birth. I mean, it's one of the the most
Speaker 1: intensely emotional experiences that humans have. We feel very strongly
Speaker 1: about it. And now we've got things coming up, like
Speaker 1: what about the the idea of the artificial uterus. You
Speaker 1: can to allow a fetus to just date without putting
Speaker 1: it in a human body. Yeah. Actually, one of the
Speaker 1: only scenes, m one of the most visually arresting scenes
Speaker 1: for me in The Matrix was that scene where where
Speaker 1: Keanu Reeves is born in that goo bath and it's
Speaker 1: and it's and it's actually really quite horrific. Like, not
Speaker 1: a whole lot in that movie is very scary, but
Speaker 1: that that kind of stuck with me. True. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certainly a lot of room for for horror there.
Speaker 1: But but on the other hand, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: that we easily get used to. Like I can't help
Speaker 1: but think back to like Newsweek and Time covers about
Speaker 1: the test tube baby. The age of the test two
Speaker 1: baby is coming, and now we live in the age
Speaker 1: of the test tube baby, and it's generally not that
Speaker 1: big of a deal. I feel the same. It's going
Speaker 1: to be the same with with human cloning, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's still remains a bit of a bug bear,
Speaker 1: but as uh as we work out the kinks, as
Speaker 1: it becomes more of a reality, it becomes a reproductive
Speaker 1: choice than you know, we're going to realize. It's it's
Speaker 1: not you know, reaching into devoid and or anything. It's
Speaker 1: something ultimately grounded in biological reality. Yeah. Oh man, I've
Speaker 1: got another one. I can't believe I didn't put this
Speaker 1: in the notes, but genetic modification of humans, I mean,
Speaker 1: genetic engineering of humans is something that I think will
Speaker 1: be very much related to the birth horror, the scariness
Speaker 1: of what you're creating this child? You know, do you
Speaker 1: do you tamper with nature? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And maybe
Speaker 1: that's also part of what we were seeing in in
Speaker 1: like in Prometheus, with the abortion squid and um and
Speaker 1: and all of that kind of stuff. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, all of the alien movies are very much
Speaker 1: about birth and they've got a very feminine mystique kind
Speaker 1: of thing going on. But genetic modification, with just body
Speaker 1: modification in general, you get into that scenario at what
Speaker 1: point you go too far? At what point are you
Speaker 1: is it? Are you? Are you becoming less human or
Speaker 1: more human and both of course for their own shade
Speaker 1: of monsters. Uh. The idea of genetic modification also, I
Speaker 1: mean it touches several of Cohen's theses. Actually, So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the idea about policing the borders and the scientifically possible.
Speaker 1: There's also the idea of mixing of categories, because a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you're talking about creating transgenic organisms,
Speaker 1: you're talking about taking a gene and one organism and
Speaker 1: placing it in another. That's why you read these stories
Speaker 1: about how you had these tomatoes that were genetically modified
Speaker 1: to resist frost because they had a fish gene implanted
Speaker 1: tomatoes exactly. Yeah, people were extremely upset about this, and
Speaker 1: if you if you ask them, I remember there was
Speaker 1: some pole I read about where people thought that these
Speaker 1: tomatoes would taste fishing. They believed there was some kind
Speaker 1: of inherent essence of fishiness that would come along to
Speaker 1: the tomato with that isolated frost resistance gene. And so
Speaker 1: I wonder if the same kind of thing could happen
Speaker 1: if we we say, oh, there's a gene we can
Speaker 1: take from some other animal that will prevent perhaps some
Speaker 1: sort of birth defactor or health problem or something like that,
Speaker 1: if we put it in a human embryo, and so
Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and do that to be safe.
Speaker 1: Does that bring some kind of scary animal essence with it?
Speaker 1: Are you crossing the category line between human and be
Speaker 1: And kids are already terrifying as we know, so if
Speaker 1: we have these genetically modified kids, uh, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't mean to actually say that I'm terrified of that,
Speaker 1: but I think that could be something that catches on
Speaker 1: in the popular conscious, the creation of monster imaginations of monsters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the uh, the idea of genetically augmenting ourselves. That
Speaker 1: kind of gets back into the idea of cybernetics as well,
Speaker 1: because of our earlier ideas about about cyborgs that really
Speaker 1: had to do a space exploration and the possibility of
Speaker 1: changing the human body to uh to to better adapt
Speaker 1: to travel in space, exploration in space, and ultimately reaching
Speaker 1: other worlds. Because you know, we we we inevitably always
Speaker 1: come back around to the idea of, well, let's change
Speaker 1: space to to meet our biological needs. Let's change you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna take a bubble of our own
Speaker 1: atmosphere in our own world up there into the orbit,
Speaker 1: and if we get to another planet, we want to
Speaker 1: change that too, right, we want to terriform that into
Speaker 1: something different, something more earthlike. But the other side of
Speaker 1: the argument is why do we not change in yourselves? Why?
Speaker 1: And we figure out what works from a biological standpoint
Speaker 1: for space travel, and then we we adapt to meet that,
Speaker 1: and then when the age comes that we finally make
Speaker 1: it to other worlds. Maybe it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: terraforming and a little bit of the of the genetic
Speaker 1: augmentation and the cybernetic agmentation of the human form. We've
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about that in our episode about
Speaker 1: what the what what humans will look like in the future.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there was that controversial article, right, what was it?
Speaker 1: I think a couple of people they drew some pictures
Speaker 1: of what they guessed humans would look like in the future,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like like like a hundred years or
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand years, and and they got increasingly anime
Speaker 1: looking at these with these very large shiny eyes and
Speaker 1: giant foreheads. Yeah, but I think the reasoned that the
Speaker 1: reason that you would have huge eyes is to use
Speaker 1: less energy in places that are dark. If you just
Speaker 1: have larger pupils you can resolve images. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that we would specifically have genetically modified ourselves in order
Speaker 1: to do that. Um And but but I'm you know,
Speaker 1: as we spoke about in the in in that conversation,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if we will ever get over that
Speaker 1: bodily horror enough to want to do it. But but
Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely something that that people are going
Speaker 1: to be playing with in in Through Monsters. Okay, I
Speaker 1: got one more big one to ask about. What about
Speaker 1: the supernatural? Because most of what we've discussed about, and
Speaker 1: this is probably by virtue of trying to predict future
Speaker 1: monsters based on the trends coming and technology, So it
Speaker 1: might just be a function of our categories, but we
Speaker 1: have been focusing mostly on materialist kinds of monsters, robots, cybernetics, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Is the replace in the future for good old fashioned
Speaker 1: spirits and ghosts and wraiths and you know, these vengeful
Speaker 1: other worldly creatures. I would say there has to be,
Speaker 1: because there's still come trends of these kind of things today.
Speaker 1: For the past six or seven years, I'd say there
Speaker 1: has been a craze in the movies for demon possession
Speaker 1: and exorcism. Yeah, and I don't think this reflects largely
Speaker 1: an expanded belief in demon possession in the general population,
Speaker 1: but it does mean something. It reflects some kind of
Speaker 1: thing in the popular consciousness that's that's just represented by
Speaker 1: this demon possession. Well, I think that that with the
Speaker 1: possession tropes specifically, um, it's relating to a lot of
Speaker 1: the spiritual versus science anxieties that that are our global
Speaker 1: culture is going through right now. Yeah. I mean there's
Speaker 1: the idea popularized by by Karl Sagan that that science
Speaker 1: is a candle in the demon haunted world, you know,
Speaker 1: illuminating the darkness, and until science reaches the point where
Speaker 1: you have absolute illumination, which it's you know, arguably, it
Speaker 1: will never reach that point. Arguably, there are always going
Speaker 1: to be some shadows remaining, and therefore they're always going
Speaker 1: to be some spaces for the demons to haunt us,
Speaker 1: for the monsters to hanson, for the supernatural to to exist,
Speaker 1: at least as an idea. Yeah, I don't see the
Speaker 1: supernatural monster going away. I hope not. Because ghosts are
Speaker 1: my favorite. Yeah, mine too, I find them. Of all
Speaker 1: the monsters, I find regular old ghosts, the scariest. Oh,
Speaker 1: I find them the scariest, But I also find them
Speaker 1: the most um uh palatable uh not spiced but um
Speaker 1: zombie flesh Uh yeah, certainly, um but but but I'm
Speaker 1: also genuinely disturbed by a lot of um uh serial
Speaker 1: killer kind of like the hostile sort of genre. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm genuinely upset by it. I'm not horrified, I'm just
Speaker 1: grossed out. And and why did they make this? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like this is this is actually not fun to watch.
Speaker 1: Um so those tend to not even be monster movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just about sure Why we start time talking about
Speaker 1: torture movies? That's not in our arena? Now, if you
Speaker 1: have a monster in there somewhere, then you have my
Speaker 1: attention a little bit. But yeah, you know, we'll see
Speaker 1: how it all plays out. But yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: this has been such a fun to discussion. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much Robert for coming and joining us. We have
Speaker 1: really enjoyed having you. Yes, I enjoyed having you. Now
Speaker 1: you say it, Lauren, I enjoyed having you as well.
Speaker 1: Huzzah um um. If you have also enjoyed this discussion,
Speaker 1: let us know. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Google Plus. Our handle is generally f W Thinking,
Speaker 1: or you know, search the Googles for us, you'll find us. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can also email us at f W Thinking at
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