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Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode discusses death by suicide. If you're suffering

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Speaker 1: emotional distress or having suicidal thoughts. Support is available, for example,

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Speaker 1: from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Raymond Chandler and

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Speaker 1: novels and then Humphrey Bogart movies. It often begins with

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Speaker 1: a telephone call. Strange to say in real life it

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Speaker 1: often begins yet way too Those are the words of

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Speaker 1: William Dear. He's going to take us on an adventure

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Speaker 1: that's full of thrills, surprises and terrors. William Dear is

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Speaker 1: one of the most famous private detectives in the world. Dashing, mustachioed,

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Speaker 1: sporting a vast gold ring. He's a star with his

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Speaker 1: own private play, and this telephone call in August nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy nine was going to get him started on one

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Speaker 1: of his most infamous cases. On the other end of

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Speaker 1: the telephone was a surgeon from the same part of

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Speaker 1: North Texas as William Dear. The two men had met

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Speaker 1: a few times. My nephew has disappeared. He was taking

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Speaker 1: a summer course at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

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Speaker 1: What had happened and he didn't just run off he's

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Speaker 1: not that kind of cute. He loves school. In fact,

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Speaker 1: he's considered to be a genius. The boy James Dallas

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Speaker 1: Egbert the Third or Dallas, was just sixteen years old.

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Speaker 1: He graduated from high school at thirteen, entered college at fourteen.

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Speaker 1: I'm telling you, Dear, he's not the type to just

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Speaker 1: go on the road. Well maybe and maybe not. Young

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Speaker 1: Dallas had been missing for eight days already. William Dear

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Speaker 1: called Dallas's parents, mister Jeers and God, I'm so desperate

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Speaker 1: about my son. I don't know if he's committed suicide

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Speaker 1: and is lying in some ditch or what. Maybe he's

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Speaker 1: been kidnapped. Deer's team was soon packing for the trip

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Speaker 1: to East Lansing, Michigan. There was an expert pilot at

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Speaker 1: a sniper Vietnam vette. They assembled telephoto lenses, bugging devices,

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Speaker 1: tracking systems, and spy cameras. Deer himself was running through

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Speaker 1: the possibilities. Most of them were mundane. One of them

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Speaker 1: would prove to be truly fantastical. I'm Tim Harford, and

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Speaker 1: you're listening to cautionary tales. The simplest explanation of Dallas's

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Speaker 1: disappearance was that the young man had killed himself. That

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Speaker 1: was William Deer's instinct. It was also Anna Egbert's. According

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Speaker 1: to Deer's account, she blamed herself. Dallas called him me

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Speaker 1: on August twelfth. He was so happy because he got

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Speaker 1: a three point five and a computer science course. I

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Speaker 1: told him it should have been a four point. Though

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Speaker 1: Deer's team started asking questions around the university. What they

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Speaker 1: discovered deepened the fear that this was a case of suicide.

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Speaker 1: Dallas was depressed, but Deer also asked what did Dallas

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Speaker 1: like to do with his spare time. His classmates said

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Speaker 1: that he liked computers. At the time, computers were rare

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Speaker 1: and mysterious, and Dallas did some other mysterious things too.

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Speaker 1: But then so did William Dear. For example, when he

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Speaker 1: received an anonymous tip that Dallas used to risk a

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Speaker 1: kind of thrill seeking dare lying down on the railroad

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Speaker 1: tracks and letting the trains pass over him, Deer decided

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Speaker 1: that he really needed to put himself in Dallas's position. Literally,

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Speaker 1: I laid down on railroad ties and tried to imagine

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Speaker 1: myself as Dallas. Was this how Dallas felt. His colleague

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Speaker 1: screamed a warning the oncoming train had a cattle catcher.

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Speaker 1: William Dear scrambled off the tracks just in time. No,

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Speaker 1: couldn't have been a train. If Dallas had been hit

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Speaker 1: by a train, surely his body would have been found

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Speaker 1: soon enough. It did seem likely that Dallas was dead.

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Speaker 1: But if he was dead, where was the body? William

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Speaker 1: Deer couldn't rid himself of the suspicion that there was

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Speaker 1: something rather different behind Dallas's disappearance, something fantastically strange. A game,

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Speaker 1: a game that reportedly hundreds of students were playing in dark,

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Speaker 1: humid tunnels beneath the campus, a game called Dungeons and Dragons. Now,

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Speaker 1: William Dear didn't know what Dungeons and Dragons was. Neither

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Speaker 1: did Dallas's friends. I don't know how to play it,

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Speaker 1: but I do know that you can't play if you're

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Speaker 1: a dumbass. But what kind of game is it? William

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Speaker 1: Deer received phone calls, There were rumors. He tried to

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Speaker 1: piece together clues. It was difficult to understand. You might

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Speaker 1: find this bafflement odd. Dungeons and Dragons is pretty mainstream

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Speaker 1: these days. You might well have played a game yourself.

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Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy nine. In nineteen seventy nine, Dungeons

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Speaker 1: and Dragons was pretty much unknown. Dallas's disappearance was going

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Speaker 1: to change all that. As William Dear explained in his

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Speaker 1: subsequent book titled The Dungeon Master, he wanted to get

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Speaker 1: into those mysterious tunnels to search for Dallas's body in

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Speaker 1: order to pressure Michigan State University into giving access to

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Speaker 1: a celebrity detective from Texas. Deer frequently spoke to the

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Speaker 1: press about his Dungeons and Dragons hypothesis. The newspapers lapped

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Speaker 1: it up. Tunnels are searched for missing student, reported The

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Speaker 1: New York Times, explaining that Dallas might have become lost

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Speaker 1: in the tunnels, which carry heat to campus buildings, while

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Speaker 1: playing an elaborate version of a bizarre, intellectual game called

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Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. If you've noticed there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: vague talk about this game, how it's intellectual and bizarre

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Speaker 1: and you can't play if you're a dumbass, but no specifics,

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Speaker 1: You're right. Dungeons and Dragons was a blank canvas onto

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Speaker 1: which parents, media critics, and celebrity detectives could project any

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Speaker 1: anxiety in the informational vacuum rumors grew. Apparently people wore costumes.

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Speaker 1: Apparently a dungeon master would lead quests around the tunnels.

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Speaker 1: In the scalding heat and the darkness and the stench.

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Speaker 1: You'd have to put your hand into crevices and there

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Speaker 1: might be rotting calfs liver in there, or spaghetti to

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Speaker 1: represent an orc's brain, or in my treasure. Apparently there

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Speaker 1: were more than one hundred dungeons in the East Lansing area.

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Speaker 1: And if you don't know what that means, don't worry.

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Speaker 1: William Deer didn't either, but he had a theory. Whatever

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Speaker 1: this strange game was, whether it involved dungeons or rotten liver,

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Speaker 1: or all sorts of other things that William Dear didn't understand,

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Speaker 1: it might have something to do with Dallas's disappearance. And

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Speaker 1: since William Deer was an investigator, heck he was going

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Speaker 1: to investigate. He called a hobby store, got the contact

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Speaker 1: details of one of these so called dungeon masters and

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Speaker 1: offered him fifty bucks to drop everything and initiate Deer

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Speaker 1: in the Mysteries of Dungeons and Dragons sixty bucks if

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Speaker 1: it was good. Back in nineteen seventy nine, that was

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Speaker 1: a lot of money. I didn't know what to expect

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Speaker 1: from my dungeon master. Would he show up in a

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Speaker 1: Merland castle with a funny pointed cap. I knew he

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Speaker 1: would have complete control over the circumstances of the fantasy

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Speaker 1: adventure on which I was about to embark when the

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Speaker 1: young man knocked on the door. He and his friend

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Speaker 1: were both wearing jeans, sweaters and sneakers, and rather than

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Speaker 1: leading deer into the tunnels to mine for Calf's liver,

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Speaker 1: he pulled out a pencil and paper, some books, and

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Speaker 1: some dice. The adventure was about to begin. Cautionary tails

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Speaker 1: will be back in a moment. William Dear didn't wear

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Speaker 1: a pointy hat. He didn't have to dip his hand

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Speaker 1: into dark crevices in the tunnels under Michigan State University.

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Speaker 1: He just got into character, pretending to be a wizard

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Speaker 1: named Tor who was accompanied by a sneak thief named Dan.

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Speaker 1: Nor did Dear visit any tunnels. He just sat at

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Speaker 1: a table describing what Tor was doing in his vivid

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Speaker 1: imagination tour, and Dan got into various scrapes around a

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Speaker 1: medieval town, scrambling through an escape tunnel pursued by some guards,

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Speaker 1: being attacked by giant rats, being taken prisoner by orcs,

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Speaker 1: and finally triumphing thanks to a combination of bluff and cunning.

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Speaker 1: All this took place in the Theater of the Mind,

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Speaker 1: with the dungeon master simply describing what they saw and

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Speaker 1: with the aid of a few dice rolls, whether their

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Speaker 1: schemes succeeded or failed. In fact, the game wasn't nearly

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Speaker 1: as odd as all the rumors suggested. Yes, the stuff

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Speaker 1: about wizards and orcs is a bit strange, but then

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Speaker 1: Star Wars, with its Jedy nights and dark powers and

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Speaker 1: the mysterious Force, had just been a smash hit. The

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Speaker 1: animated film of The Lord of the Rings had just

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Speaker 1: been released, too. Nothing's more culturally mainstream than wizards and

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Speaker 1: heroes dice pencils sitting around a table playing Let's Pretend

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Speaker 1: was all very tame, But William Dear had fun. In fact,

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Speaker 1: he worried that this game of the imagination might just

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Speaker 1: be too much fun. Maybe for a troubled mind it

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Speaker 1: could be dangerous. Dallas might actually have begun to live

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Speaker 1: the game, not just to play it. Dungeons and Dragons

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Speaker 1: could have absorbed him so much that his mind had

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Speaker 1: slipped through the fragile barrier. But in reality and fantasy,

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Speaker 1: if there is a time and a place that the

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Speaker 1: fragile barrier between reality and fantasy first broke down, perhaps

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Speaker 1: it was Saint Paul, Minnesota in nineteen sixty nine. Behind

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Speaker 1: this breakdown was a young physics graduate named David Wesley.

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Speaker 1: Wesley was a founder of the Twin Cities Military Miniatures Group,

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Speaker 1: a wargaming club. Wargames are more realistic descendants of chess,

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Speaker 1: allowing players to re enact battles from history with model

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Speaker 1: soldiers on a realistic miniature battlefield. Robert Lewis Stevenson, the

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Speaker 1: author of Treasure Island, was a war gamer, so was HG. Wells.

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Speaker 1: Wargames can be used for serious military training. David Westley,

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Speaker 1: who was in the Army Reserves himself, was interested in

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Speaker 1: these training exercises, where making decisions over a tabletop battlefield

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Speaker 1: might prepare a young officer for the real thing over

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Speaker 1: in Vietnam. To be useful, a training war game couldn't

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Speaker 1: be restricted to a limited set of moves as in chess.

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Speaker 1: Players should be able to dream up all sorts of tricks,

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Speaker 1: and tactics, which meant the game needed a referee to

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Speaker 1: use his or her judgment when a player tried something unusual.

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Speaker 1: The game of war was open ended and unpredictable, just

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Speaker 1: like war itself. In a war game set in eighteen

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Speaker 1: o six in the fictional Prussian town of Braunstein, David

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Speaker 1: Wesley took this open endedness to the next level. As

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Speaker 1: with a normal war game, he put players in charge

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Speaker 1: of Napoleon's French army and the Prussian resistance, but then

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Speaker 1: he assigned rather more unusual roles. One player, for example,

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Speaker 1: was given the role of the chancellor of Braunstein's university.

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Speaker 1: What could he do well anything. He didn't command any troops,

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Speaker 1: but he could rally the students and urge them to

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Speaker 1: join the resistance. Or he could challenge another player to

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Speaker 1: a duel, perhaps over the affections of a lady. Another

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Speaker 1: player's character started in jail. Any of these players could

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Speaker 1: attempt anything Wesley, as referee, had to improvise. The experimental

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Speaker 1: game was a chaotic series of whispered conferences between the

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Speaker 1: players and Wesley, the referee. It took ages, and the

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Speaker 1: French and the Prussians never even fired a shot not

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Speaker 1: so much a war game as a phony war game.

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Speaker 1: Wesley felt like it had been a flop. Then the

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Speaker 1: players told him they loved it. One of those players

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Speaker 1: was Dave Arnisson, who seized Westley's idea with both hands

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Speaker 1: in a follow up game set in a Banana Republic.

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Speaker 1: Arnson started as a student revolutionary, but managed to convince

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Speaker 1: the other players he was working for the CIA. He

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Speaker 1: ran things around them, not by rolling dice or pushing

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Speaker 1: pieces around the map, but by acting the part and

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Speaker 1: bluffing his way to success. What Wesley and Arnison and

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Speaker 1: the group had invented together was a strange combination of

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Speaker 1: a classical war game, a military training exercise, and an

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Speaker 1: improvised acting class. It came to be known as a

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Speaker 1: role playing game, the first commercial role playing game, designed

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Speaker 1: in part by Dave Arnison. Could have been about Napoleonic

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Speaker 1: battles or pretending to be in the CIA, but it wasn't.

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Speaker 1: It was about heroes and wizards exploring the tunnels beneath

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Speaker 1: the medieval castle. It was called you guessed it, Dungeons

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Speaker 1: and Dragons, And it was dungeons and dragons that William

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Speaker 1: Deer Feared had driven Dallas Egbert into some kind of

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Speaker 1: delusional state, but he imagined he was a wizard. So

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Speaker 1: does the barrier between reality and fan I see breakdown

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Speaker 1: in a role playing game? Well, maybe a bit, But

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Speaker 1: the same is true for novels or movies. I don't

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Speaker 1: watch horror movies. I don't like the way they scare me.

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Speaker 1: I cried uncontrollably at the end of Cinema Paradiso. Did

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Speaker 1: the barrier between reality and fantasy break down at that moment?

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Speaker 1: I suppose it did, But there's nothing shameful or dangerous

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Speaker 1: about that. And yet there was something different about these

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Speaker 1: role playing games, something that drove America into a state

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Speaker 1: of moral panic. Maybe it was the fact that, as

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Speaker 1: I suppose I've just demonstrated, they are quite hard to describe.

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Speaker 1: But for many people it must have been the context

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Speaker 1: in which they first heard of the game Dungeons and Dragons.

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Speaker 1: Isn't that the game that poor kid was playing when

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Speaker 1: he died? Newspapers such as The New York Times and

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Speaker 1: the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner try to get their

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Speaker 1: heads around what the game actually was and how people

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Speaker 1: played it. Words such as cult and bizarre were often used,

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Speaker 1: but the publicity fueled demand. The game briefly appears in Et,

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Speaker 1: which was released in nineteen eighty two, and at the

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Speaker 1: same time but less favorably, in Mazes and Monsters, a

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Speaker 1: TV movie inspired by the giddy media reports about Dallas

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Speaker 1: Egbert's disappearance. Tom Hanks and his friends get caught up

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Speaker 1: in a deadly game of fantasy until they take it

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Speaker 1: too far. In Mazes and Monsters, a young Tom Hanks

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Speaker 1: plays a teenager who completely loses his grip on reality

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Speaker 1: while playing the game. This is only a game. Mazes

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Speaker 1: and Monsters seventy three, UZTV, seventeen. The other thing that

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Speaker 1: happened in nineteen eighty two was that a young man

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Speaker 1: named Irving Pulling killed himself. His mother, Patricia Pulling, was

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Speaker 1: convinced that Dungeons and Dragons was involved. Indeed, she sued

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Speaker 1: Irving's school principle, claiming that Irving's suicide was a response

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Speaker 1: to having a curse put on his character. Patricia Pulling

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Speaker 1: even appeared on sixty Minutes. The creators of Dungeons and

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Speaker 1: Dragons complained that sixty Minutes had misrepresented two other teenage

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Speaker 1: suicides as being connected to the game, Despite letters from

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Speaker 1: the bereaved mothers saying otherwise. In her grief, Patricia Pulling

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Speaker 1: described Dungeons and Dragons as a fantasy role playing game

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Speaker 1: which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex, perversion, homosexuality, prostitution,

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Speaker 1: satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demons, summoning, necromantics, divination,

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Speaker 1: and other teachings. Now, a role playing game can describe

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Speaker 1: all sorts of activities, just like a novel or a movie.

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Speaker 1: But Harry Potter uses witchcraft, and not many people lose

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Speaker 1: sleep over Harry Potter. On the other hand, people seemed

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Speaker 1: willing to believe anything about this mysterious game. There are

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Speaker 1: sixes involved in the pieces of the game, explained one

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Speaker 1: religious critic of Dungeons and Dragons. The number of the

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Speaker 1: beast and all that. But I think he was referring

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Speaker 1: to dice. But it wasn't just the hardline evangelicals who

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Speaker 1: worried about Dungeons and Dragons. In nineteen eighty four, a

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Speaker 1: baffled police chief blamed a teenage suicide on the game.

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Speaker 1: My understanding is that once you reach a certain point

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Speaker 1: where you are the master, your only way out is death.

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00:20:03,930 --> 00:20:07,090
Speaker 1: This claim is analogous to saying that once you become

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Speaker 1: a tennis umpire, only way to quit is to kill yourself.

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Speaker 1: It makes no sense, but if you know nothing at

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Speaker 1: all about the game, you don't realize that it makes

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Speaker 1: no sense. In nineteen eighty eight, Tippa Goore, then wife

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Speaker 1: of Algore, claimed that Dungeons and Dragons had been linked

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Speaker 1: to nearly fifty teenage suicides and homicides, but there are

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Speaker 1: thousands of teenage suicides each year, tens of thousands over

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Speaker 1: the course of the nineteen eighties. As a whole, Dungeons

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Speaker 1: and Dragons was becoming a popular game. Of course, some

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Speaker 1: of those suicide victims would have played the game, just

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Speaker 1: as others would have listened to heavy metal law been vegetarians.

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Speaker 1: But people who should have known better took role playing

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Speaker 1: games all too seriously. In nineteen ninety, the US Secret

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Speaker 1: Service took the panic to the next level. They raided

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Speaker 1: the headquarters of one role playing games publisher and confiscated

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Speaker 1: their compute. The Secret Service had become convinced that a

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Speaker 1: role playing game about futuristic cyborgs and Hackers was in

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Speaker 1: fact a practical guide for computer crime. This was beyond odd.

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Speaker 1: The game included rules for hacking computers by plugging your

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Speaker 1: brain directly into the net and uploading your consciousness. It

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Speaker 1: is a technique that seems unlikely to bear fruit for

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Speaker 1: any aspiring hacker. The US Secret Service were unmoved right

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Speaker 1: up to the point at which they were successfully sued.

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Speaker 1: Remind me who exactly is confused about the boundary between

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Speaker 1: reality and fantasy. From the Vantini point of today, it's

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Speaker 1: easy to laugh, but perhaps we shouldn't feel quite so smug.

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Speaker 1: Back in February twenty nineteen, parents were anxiously warning each

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Speaker 1: other about a new threat to their children. Please read

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Speaker 1: this is real. There is this thing called Momo that's

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Speaker 1: instructing kids to kill themselves. Inform everyone you can. That

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00:22:21,450 --> 00:22:25,890
Speaker 1: tweet received tens of thousands of retweets, as did other

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Speaker 1: similar warnings, but as with the Dungeons and Dragons panic,

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Speaker 1: the details were a bit vague. There was an unsettling

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Speaker 1: picture of a creepy puppet. One claim was that somehow

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Speaker 1: this puppet Momo, would use WhatsApp messages to deliver its

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Speaker 1: deadly instructions. Another was that children's television programs had been hacked,

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Speaker 1: although what exactly that meant wasn't clear. Schools sent out

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Speaker 1: messages of warning, so did some police forces, so did newspapers,

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Speaker 1: even the BBC. In each case, the evidence that there

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Speaker 1: was a problem was simply that others were reporting that

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Speaker 1: there was a problem, and you can't be too careful,

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Speaker 1: except that schools even gathered children together to warn them

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Speaker 1: about Momo, which was predictably, absolutely terrifying for the children.

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Speaker 1: You can see where this is going. There is no

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Speaker 1: Momo puppet that creepy images from a Tokyo art gallery's

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Speaker 1: exhibition about ghosts. There were no hacked television programs. There

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Speaker 1: have been no credible reports of any Momo related suicides.

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Speaker 1: I'm tempted to add there is no Momo challenge, but

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Speaker 1: that wouldn't be quite right. The Momo challenge is very real,

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Speaker 1: but it exists not as a deadly game shared among children,

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Speaker 1: but as a panicky myth shared among their parents. What

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Speaker 1: we're really talking about here is the anxiety of parents

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Speaker 1: who don't really understand what their kids are into, and

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Speaker 1: they feel bad about it. That's just as true today

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Speaker 1: as it was a generation when the panic was not

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00:24:11,010 --> 00:24:21,090
Speaker 1: about WhatsApp but about wizards. Cautionary tales will return shortly.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, the cultural critic Neil Postman published

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Speaker 1: an influential book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he

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Speaker 1: lamented the effect of television on the intellectual, cultural, and

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Speaker 1: political life of the United States. Adapting an idea from

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Speaker 1: his teacher Marshall McLuhan, Postman argued that the medium is

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Speaker 1: the metaphor that any communications medium, from the spoken word

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Speaker 1: to the written word to primetime TV, subtly influenced the

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Speaker 1: kind of ideas that could be communicated. Fifty years ago,

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Speaker 1: movies and TV favored good looks and strong, simple stories,

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Speaker 1: and a former Cowboy actor, Ronald Reagan, was the perfect

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Speaker 1: fit for the time. It's easy to read Postman as

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Speaker 1: a profit of inevitable cultural decline, with each new medium

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Speaker 1: stupider than the last. But decline is not inevitable. Consider

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Speaker 1: how TV drama has been changed by the availability first

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Speaker 1: of affordable box sets and then on demand streaming. TV

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Speaker 1: producers would have to assume that people would miss episodes

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Speaker 1: and so would make simple, predictable episodic comedies and soap operas.

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Speaker 1: Now writers and directors can reasonably expect that people will

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Speaker 1: catch up on any episodes they missed, or even binge

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Speaker 1: watch an entire season in a weekend. The result longer,

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Speaker 1: more complex story arcs and characters who grow over time.

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Speaker 1: This isn't the result of some sudden cultural hunger for

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Speaker 1: more sophisticated storytelling. A subtle difference to the medium also

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00:26:04,690 --> 00:26:09,210
Speaker 1: changes the metaphor. Movies invite us to value beauty and

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Speaker 1: classic story arcs. Streaming TV drama valorizes complex plots and

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Speaker 1: character development, and reality TV thrives on attention seeking and treachery.

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Speaker 1: So then, what is the underlying metaphor of a role

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00:26:23,930 --> 00:26:29,690
Speaker 1: playing game? The game's demand imagination. They're collaborative. You can't

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00:26:29,730 --> 00:26:34,690
Speaker 1: really play by yourself. They're active, rather than passive. If

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00:26:34,730 --> 00:26:38,810
Speaker 1: you sit back and watch, nothing happens. You need to create,

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Speaker 1: not just observe the creativity of others. A collaborative, imaginative,

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00:26:44,290 --> 00:26:48,090
Speaker 1: and actively creative pastime doesn't sound so bad to me.

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Speaker 1: After all, we're constantly being told of the importance of creativity,

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Speaker 1: the creative class, the creative economy, or simply the need

347
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Speaker 1: for every child to be creative in school. And yet,

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00:27:01,890 --> 00:27:06,330
Speaker 1: and we actually see some creativity. We can't quite comprehend

349
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Speaker 1: what we're looking at. Back in nineteen seventy nine, Dungeons

350
00:27:12,930 --> 00:27:16,210
Speaker 1: and Dragons seemed to be a bit too creative for

351
00:27:16,330 --> 00:27:20,330
Speaker 1: William Dear and the journalists and commentators who were intrigued

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00:27:20,370 --> 00:27:24,450
Speaker 1: by his theory. The story became bigger than Dallas Egbert himself,

353
00:27:25,010 --> 00:27:28,530
Speaker 1: and the question of what happened to Dallas was forgotten.

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Speaker 1: Mazes and monsters, For example, the movie in which Tom Hanks,

355
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Speaker 1: his character becomes utterly delusional, stabbing someone, hallucinating monsters and

356
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Speaker 1: trying to leap from the top of the World Trade Center. Robbie,

357
00:27:42,730 --> 00:27:45,210
Speaker 1: what are you doing? I'm going to fly is often

358
00:27:45,250 --> 00:27:49,130
Speaker 1: thought to be loosely based on Dallas's disappearance. Don't you

359
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Speaker 1: want to mind here? Jadwigat I remember, Let's just say

360
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Speaker 1: that in this case, the fantasy and the reality were

361
00:27:59,250 --> 00:28:04,650
Speaker 1: a very long way apart. Reading William Deer's breathless book

362
00:28:04,930 --> 00:28:08,090
Speaker 1: The Dungeon Master, it's easy to be carried away with

363
00:28:08,170 --> 00:28:11,490
Speaker 1: the tales of chits and steakouts and lying down in

364
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Speaker 1: front of trains. But when you have time to stop

365
00:28:14,690 --> 00:28:18,730
Speaker 1: and read carefully, the story becomes a lot more mundane.

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Speaker 1: When I first heard about the steam tunnels beneath Michigan

367
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Speaker 1: State University, I imagine students exploring inside huge steam filled pipes.

368
00:28:30,330 --> 00:28:33,650
Speaker 1: But when I looked up steam tunnels on Wikipedia, I

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00:28:33,730 --> 00:28:38,090
Speaker 1: was redirected to an entry on utility corridors, which is

370
00:28:38,130 --> 00:28:42,650
Speaker 1: a rather more prosaic name. The corridors contain hot pipes,

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Speaker 1: but nobody gets inside the pipes themselves. William Dear describes

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Speaker 1: the tunnels as stinking, hellish, and deadly. Lieutenant Bill Wardell

373
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Speaker 1: of the MSU Campus Police told The Washington Post they're

374
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Speaker 1: hot and dirty, but not as bad as he portrays them.

375
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Speaker 1: Utility corridors have existed in various universities since the nineteen twenties,

376
00:29:05,290 --> 00:29:08,330
Speaker 1: and students have been messing around in them long before

377
00:29:08,410 --> 00:29:13,170
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons existed. A team of men, including William Deer,

378
00:29:13,650 --> 00:29:18,610
Speaker 1: explored the tunnels thoroughly. Dallas wasn't down there, but he

379
00:29:18,690 --> 00:29:21,850
Speaker 1: had been missing for weeks, and it was increasingly hard

380
00:29:21,890 --> 00:29:25,130
Speaker 1: to see what rolling dice around a gaming table had

381
00:29:25,170 --> 00:29:30,730
Speaker 1: to do with that. Dallas Egbert's parents seemed to publicly

382
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Speaker 1: accept William Deer's media friendly theory about a Dungeons and

383
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Speaker 1: Dragon's game gone wrong, but Deer's investigations brought more straightforward

384
00:29:39,770 --> 00:29:44,330
Speaker 1: possibilities to light. Dallas had a drug habit, so perhaps

385
00:29:44,330 --> 00:29:47,650
Speaker 1: a drug deal had gone awry, and Dallas was also

386
00:29:47,690 --> 00:29:51,770
Speaker 1: a member of the campus organization for gay students. William

387
00:29:51,810 --> 00:29:55,890
Speaker 1: Deer mused about how what he called the gays might

388
00:29:56,010 --> 00:30:01,290
Speaker 1: somehow have been involved in Dallas's disappearance. More likely, Dallas's

389
00:30:01,290 --> 00:30:05,690
Speaker 1: sexuality simply compounded his risk of self harm. Even today,

390
00:30:05,730 --> 00:30:10,170
Speaker 1: in our more enlightened times, gay teenagers are substantially greater

391
00:30:10,290 --> 00:30:15,050
Speaker 1: risk of suicide. But William Deer made the dungeons and

392
00:30:15,170 --> 00:30:21,930
Speaker 1: dragons theory seem so compelling. The case ended as it began,

393
00:30:22,450 --> 00:30:27,450
Speaker 1: with a phone call, mister Dear, this is Dallas, and

394
00:30:27,530 --> 00:30:41,090
Speaker 1: then Dallas burst into tears. Soon enough, he was reunited

395
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Speaker 1: with his parents, and William Dear was fending off a

396
00:30:44,050 --> 00:30:49,170
Speaker 1: pack of newshounds desperate for the scoop. It was simple enough.

397
00:30:50,330 --> 00:30:54,130
Speaker 1: Dallas had indeed been severely depressed, and he had indeed

398
00:30:54,170 --> 00:30:59,170
Speaker 1: tried to kill himself. Fortunately it not succeeded, but he

399
00:30:59,210 --> 00:31:02,730
Speaker 1: had run away When he called William Deer. It was

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00:31:02,850 --> 00:31:06,010
Speaker 1: from all the way down in Louisiana, leading Deer and

401
00:31:06,170 --> 00:31:10,090
Speaker 1: his crew of elite operatives to fly over his private plane.

402
00:31:10,690 --> 00:31:13,890
Speaker 1: They affect what Deer describes as the tense rescue, but

403
00:31:14,050 --> 00:31:17,570
Speaker 1: which on a second reading, is simply two grown men

404
00:31:17,770 --> 00:31:20,610
Speaker 1: knocking on the door of a rented room to find

405
00:31:20,650 --> 00:31:26,130
Speaker 1: a tearful teenage boy ready to go home. Later, Dallas

406
00:31:26,170 --> 00:31:30,410
Speaker 1: told Deer the story over a hamburger. Apparently he did

407
00:31:30,450 --> 00:31:33,050
Speaker 1: like to hang out in the steam tunnels. I could

408
00:31:33,050 --> 00:31:35,650
Speaker 1: go down there and nobody would bother me. And he

409
00:31:35,730 --> 00:31:40,250
Speaker 1: also enjoyed playing dungeons and dragons. When I played a character,

410
00:31:40,490 --> 00:31:43,170
Speaker 1: I was that character. I didn't bring along all my

411
00:31:43,210 --> 00:31:46,210
Speaker 1: personal problems with me. It's a terrific way to escape.

412
00:31:47,490 --> 00:31:50,130
Speaker 1: And while the media clung onto the tale of a

413
00:31:50,170 --> 00:31:52,890
Speaker 1: boy who had been lost to a world of mazes

414
00:31:52,890 --> 00:31:57,810
Speaker 1: and monsters, and evangelical campaigners warned of satanic rituals and

415
00:31:58,010 --> 00:32:02,010
Speaker 1: Tippa Goore feared an epidemic of D and D related suicide,

416
00:32:02,770 --> 00:32:09,410
Speaker 1: the truth was simpler and harder to bear. Dallas disappeared

417
00:32:09,810 --> 00:32:13,370
Speaker 1: because he ran away. He ran away because he was

418
00:32:13,410 --> 00:32:19,850
Speaker 1: suicidely unhappy. Some young people are. And I'm sorry to

419
00:32:19,850 --> 00:32:23,730
Speaker 1: tell you that Dallas did not recover from his depression.

420
00:32:24,330 --> 00:32:27,450
Speaker 1: He took his own life a year later, but the

421
00:32:27,570 --> 00:32:32,090
Speaker 1: narrative had moved on. An isolated and depressed young man

422
00:32:32,690 --> 00:32:41,010
Speaker 1: had been largely forgotten. I have a confession to make.

423
00:32:42,770 --> 00:32:46,050
Speaker 1: I too, am a role player. I can't imagine you're

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Speaker 1: terribly shocked, but I love these games. To me, there

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00:32:52,250 --> 00:32:55,330
Speaker 1: is important to creative outlet as writing my books or

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00:32:55,370 --> 00:32:58,970
Speaker 1: this podcast, and not everyone gets to publish a book

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00:32:59,090 --> 00:33:02,770
Speaker 1: or present a podcast with respected actors and its own composer.

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00:33:03,850 --> 00:33:08,050
Speaker 1: But anyone can be creative in a game. I learned

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00:33:08,050 --> 00:33:10,170
Speaker 1: to play in the middle of the Satanic Panic of

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00:33:10,170 --> 00:33:13,370
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. I remember having to have a long

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00:33:13,450 --> 00:33:16,370
Speaker 1: conversation with a senior teacher at my school who was

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00:33:16,490 --> 00:33:21,010
Speaker 1: concerned that the game might open me up to evil influences.

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00:33:21,050 --> 00:33:24,890
Speaker 1: To his credit, he listened and changed his mind. And

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00:33:25,010 --> 00:33:28,530
Speaker 1: I'm still playing games sometimes with the same people I

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00:33:28,530 --> 00:33:31,850
Speaker 1: went to school with, some of my oldest and closest friends.

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00:33:33,610 --> 00:33:37,290
Speaker 1: My hobby is a pastime that's as creative as drawing, writing,

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00:33:37,370 --> 00:33:40,850
Speaker 1: or drama, that's as collaborative as a team sport, that

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00:33:40,970 --> 00:33:45,130
Speaker 1: involves no drinks stronger than coffee, no mind altering chemicals

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00:33:45,170 --> 00:33:47,610
Speaker 1: more potent than whatever it is they used to flavor

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00:33:47,610 --> 00:33:52,490
Speaker 1: Derito's and alas no sex at all. The kids tell

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00:33:52,570 --> 00:33:57,010
Speaker 1: me that these days Dungeons and Dragons is cool. Maybe

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00:33:58,090 --> 00:34:01,730
Speaker 1: I'm just thankful that despite everything, the hobby has survived

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00:34:02,170 --> 00:34:08,410
Speaker 1: and flourished. William Dear has survived and flourished two penning

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00:34:08,450 --> 00:34:11,930
Speaker 1: works such as OJ Is Innocent and I Can Prove

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00:34:11,970 --> 00:34:17,170
Speaker 1: It and appearing in the TV documentary Alien Autopsy Fact

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00:34:17,570 --> 00:34:21,090
Speaker 1: or Fiction. He was interested in the entertainment business back

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00:34:21,090 --> 00:34:24,890
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties too. He had been urging Dallas

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00:34:24,890 --> 00:34:27,170
Speaker 1: and his family to work with him on a movie

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00:34:27,210 --> 00:34:31,890
Speaker 1: about the case, But as Dallas's mother Anna said, it

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00:34:31,930 --> 00:34:35,210
Speaker 1: was never all that exciting. He just got on a

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00:34:35,250 --> 00:34:39,370
Speaker 1: bus and went as far as his money would take him. Yet,

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00:34:39,850 --> 00:34:44,930
Speaker 1: when William Dear told the story, it was an unforgettable

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00:34:44,970 --> 00:34:56,850
Speaker 1: tale the fragile barrier between reality and fantasy. Indeed, the

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Speaker 1: key sources for this episode are of Dice and Men

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00:35:01,250 --> 00:35:05,970
Speaker 1: by David Ewalt and Playing at the World by John Peterson,

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00:35:06,570 --> 00:35:11,850
Speaker 1: and of course The Dungeon Master by William Dear. For

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00:35:11,930 --> 00:35:28,970
Speaker 1: a full list of references, see Tim Harford dot com.

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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.

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00:35:34,090 --> 00:35:38,530
Speaker 1: It's produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound

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00:35:38,530 --> 00:35:42,010
Speaker 1: design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise.

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00:35:42,730 --> 00:35:47,010
Speaker 1: Julia Barton edited the scripts. Starring in this series of

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00:35:47,090 --> 00:35:52,290
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales are Helena Bonham, Carter and Jeffrey Wright, alongside

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00:35:52,410 --> 00:35:59,770
Speaker 1: Nazar Alderazzi, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, Cobnor Holbrook Smith,

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00:36:00,330 --> 00:36:05,290
Speaker 1: Greg Lockett, Siam Unrowe, and Rufus Wright. The show also

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00:36:05,370 --> 00:36:08,290
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LaBelle,

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00:36:08,450 --> 00:36:14,530
Speaker 1: Jacob Wisburg, Hell of Fame, John Schnarz, Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler,

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00:36:14,890 --> 00:36:20,930
Speaker 1: Emily Rostock, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lakhan, and Maya Kanig. Cautionary

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00:36:20,970 --> 00:36:24,890
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like

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00:36:25,010 --> 00:36:28,570
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.