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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 2: And you are joining us for Grimoire of Horror, Volume 3.

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Speaker 2: If you're wondering what this is, well, over the years

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Speaker 2: here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, We get into

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Speaker 2: the Halloween spirit, of course. We tend to devote an

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Speaker 2: entire month to all sorts of Halloween-y content. And for

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Speaker 2: a while now, we've done Halloween episodes that kind of

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Speaker 2: pick from assorted tales of one sort or another and

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Speaker 2: sort of sift through them and find things that are

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Speaker 2: interesting to talk about, be it scientific or purely cultural,

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Speaker 2: or maybe it's just about what the story is and

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Speaker 2: what it's saying. And so at one point, we did

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Speaker 2: a series of episodes based on different creepypastas Then Joe

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Speaker 2: and I turned to doing TV horror anthology episodes for

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Speaker 2: a number of years. And then we started a new tradition,

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Speaker 2: one that sticks to shorter horror works, horror short stories,

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Speaker 2: but also gets us back into the written word. Because

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Speaker 2: I know a lot of our listeners from the old

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Speaker 2: days missed the summer reading episodes that we did. We

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Speaker 2: haven't done those in a number of years. So this

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Speaker 2: seems like a sort of meet you halfway sort of thing.

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Speaker 2: We're going to talk about some spooky tales, but in

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Speaker 2: doing so, we're going to talk about written fiction and,

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Speaker 2: you know, feel free to go out and read them

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Speaker 2: and then come back. Treat it like a little book club.

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Speaker 2: And then if you have different thoughts about the stories

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Speaker 2: or additional thoughts about the stories, write in and we'll

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Speaker 2: chat about that in future episodes of Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind Listener Mail.

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Speaker 1: You know, doing horror short stories on Halloween still can

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Speaker 1: feel like summer reading because it is quite often still

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Speaker 1: hot on Halloween these days. Yeah, absolutely.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, depending on where you are in the

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Speaker 2: world and if you're certainly in the American South, yeah,

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Speaker 2: it can still feel like summer. It is summer as

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Speaker 2: far as the the skin temperature goes. Now, I do

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Speaker 2: want to add a quick note regarding last year's episode.

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Speaker 2: Last year's episode, which is actually going to rerun this weekend,

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Speaker 2: my pick for that one was Harlan Ellison's I Have

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Speaker 2: No Mouth and I Must Scream, a rather dark story

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Speaker 2: about humanity conquered by AI. It's just as, if not

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Speaker 2: more dark this year than last year, if you read

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Speaker 2: it or hear us talk about it. And I want

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Speaker 2: to briefly recommend another story as a chaser for that one.

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Speaker 2: 1909's The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. I listened to

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Speaker 2: the new audiobook version of this performed by actress Carey

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Speaker 2: Mulligan on a road trip several months back. And this

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Speaker 2: is a story about humanity breaking free from AI. It

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Speaker 2: feels very contemporary. It does not feel like a nearly

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Speaker 2: 100-year-old work. And in fact, the other people in the

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Speaker 2: car with me, uh, were not familiar with the story

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Speaker 2: and did not realize until it was all over. And

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Speaker 2: I told them that, oh yeah, this was written in 1909.

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Speaker 2: This was written in a pre-computer age.

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Speaker 1: Now I haven't read that one, but I think it's

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Speaker 1: come up at least in passing on the show before

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Speaker 1: is the premise basically that humankind becomes overly dependent on

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Speaker 1: machines and even thinking machines. And that leads to some

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Speaker 1: kind of collapse. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: It deals with the collapse and the emergence. And, uh, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's rather good. And I really like this particular audiobook

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Speaker 2: treatment of it as well. So if you're into audiobooks,

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Speaker 2: look for it wherever you get your audiobooks.

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Speaker 1: The downsides of over-dependence on AI are something I'm thinking

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Speaker 1: about more and more every day. Not just all of

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Speaker 1: the standard externalities that people talk about with the AI industry,

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Speaker 1: but really thinking about what it's doing to us to

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Speaker 1: have a tool this powerful and this easily accessed that

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Speaker 1: can basically be your brain for you. It's a little

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Speaker 1: more troubling the more I witness.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely agree. So I do recommend that story. And

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Speaker 2: if you're not interested in any of that sort of

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Speaker 2: thing at all, well, we've got good news for you

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Speaker 2: because neither story that we picked this year has anything

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Speaker 2: to do with artificial intelligence.

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Speaker 1: Yes.

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Speaker 2: And so I think we have a couple of nice stories.

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Speaker 2: As is often the case, we select these stories independently.

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Speaker 2: You go out and you select one. I go out

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Speaker 2: and select one. We don't really compare notes until we've

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Speaker 2: made our picks. But there's always something about the two

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Speaker 2: that lines up. And this year, the accidental theme seems

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Speaker 2: to be curious short horror stories by authors not known

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Speaker 2: for being horror writers. Yep.

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Speaker 1: Yep. Both of these stories feel like they're not from...

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Speaker 1: primarily horror authors, and they feel like an experiment of sorts.

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Speaker 1: But I think in both cases, a very enjoyable and

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Speaker 1: successful one. Absolutely.

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Speaker 2: Well, which one should we do first?

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Speaker 1: Either way. Cool.

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Speaker 2: Well, mine's up first in the notes, so I guess

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Speaker 2: I can just roll into that one. Okay. My selection

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Speaker 2: for this year is Jorge Luis Borges' 1975 short story,

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Speaker 2: There Are More Things.

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Speaker 1: That comes from the Shakespeare quote.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. This is from the Hamlet quote, there are

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Speaker 2: more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt

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Speaker 2: of in your philosophy. But here it's abbreviated and I

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Speaker 2: feel has a nice ominous weight to it. There are

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Speaker 2: more things as opposed to putting the stress on the more.

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Speaker 1: Oh, and I just now made this connection, but I

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Speaker 1: like how it attaches to something that happens at the

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Speaker 1: climax of the story where the hero sees not a monster,

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Speaker 1: but sees its things. That's true.

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Speaker 2: That's another nice connection. So in talking about Jorge Luis Borges, we're,

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Speaker 2: of course, talking about the legendary Argentine fabulist who lived

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Speaker 2: 1899 through 1987. He's come up many times in the

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Speaker 2: show before because in his various fictions, he explores a

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Speaker 2: number of areas of interest here on Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind. So infinities, dreams, books and libraries, mazes and labyrinths,

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Speaker 2: tigers and knives. And then they're generally just really good

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Speaker 2: little stories. Often, very often, they feel like experiments. And

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Speaker 2: many of his stories do contain elements that you might

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Speaker 2: see in a horror story. You know, existential dread, haunted blades,

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Speaker 2: the rending of reality in one way or another. But

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Speaker 2: it would be a huge stretch to really describe any

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Speaker 2: of them as horror stories. Generally, I think of them

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Speaker 2: as little clockwork curiosities. You know, you pick one up.

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Speaker 2: you take a look at it, you set it down,

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Speaker 2: then you pick it up again, hold it in the

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Speaker 2: light a different way. And you're like, oh, now I

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Speaker 2: see this detail on it. But yeah, they're very much

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Speaker 2: kind of like little creative academic experiments. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: A lot of Borges stories feel more like a narrativized

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Speaker 1: thought experiment than the way we usually think of stories.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Not in every case, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: his stories don't go super deep on characterization or plot.

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Speaker 1: They are more about exploring a singular strange idea. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And that's certainly present in this story as well. But

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Speaker 2: this one is, if you were going to classify any

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Speaker 2: Borges story as a horror story, it would have to

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Speaker 2: be this one. It would have to be There Are

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Speaker 2: More Things. This story is dedicated, quote, to the memory

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Speaker 2: of H.P.

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Speaker 1: Lovecraft.

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Speaker 2: So yes, it is Borges writing a work of intentionally

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Speaker 2: Lovecraftian fiction. Lovecraft, of course, lived 1890 through 1937, and

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Speaker 2: this is a much later story. You'll find this one

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Speaker 2: in the Collected Fictions, published by Penguin and translated into

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Speaker 2: English by Andrew Hurley. I have a copy of it

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Speaker 2: right here. There's a matching book of his poetry as well.

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Speaker 2: But you will also find this story in its original collection,

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Speaker 2: 1975's The Book of Sand, That translation, which you'll still

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Speaker 2: find out there floating around in digital and physical forms,

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Speaker 2: is by Norman Thomas DiGiovanni. The title tale in that,

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Speaker 2: The Book of Sand, is also pretty tremendous. Now, I

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Speaker 2: want to stress, though, if you've never read a Borges

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Speaker 2: story before, I don't necessarily think this should be the

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Speaker 2: first one. I'm not saying it's bad or anything, but

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Speaker 2: there are stories like The Circular Ruins or The Library

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Speaker 2: of Babel that are just so awesome and are just

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Speaker 2: pure Borges that I would highly suggest seeking those out first.

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Speaker 2: And again, most of his stories are pretty short. So very,

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Speaker 2: very small time commitment to any of them, at least,

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Speaker 2: you know, talking about the first time you read them.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, this is a great, this is still a

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Speaker 2: great story. But it is kind of interesting how if

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Speaker 2: you read the afterward to the 1975 collection, The Book

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Speaker 2: of Sand, Borges himself is kind of dismissive of there

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Speaker 2: are more things. He basically says, look, I was always

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Speaker 2: more of a Poe fan anyway, but it was kind

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Speaker 2: of inevitable that I would write a Lovecraftian story at

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Speaker 2: some point. And then he writes, quote, at last I

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Speaker 2: gave in. The lamentable result is titled, There Are More Things.

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Speaker 1: Well, he's being hard on himself there. Again, I don't

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Speaker 1: think it's lamentable, but I can see why he might

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Speaker 1: say it's inevitable that he ends up in Lovecraft territory again.

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Speaker 1: there is a shared interest in infinities, in the witnessing

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Speaker 1: of incomprehensible things. From the same types of phenomena that

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Speaker 1: Lovecraft draws pure terror, Borges usually draws wonder and amazement

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Speaker 1: and some degree of fright also.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point. And yeah,

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Speaker 2: I think Borges in general tended to be highly critical

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Speaker 2: of his.

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Speaker 1: Of his own work.

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Speaker 2: You know, he would he would often say things that

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Speaker 2: were like, oh, well, you know, I only see the

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Speaker 2: flaws when I look back at them, you know, and

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Speaker 2: and that's the way he would tend to play it.

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Speaker 2: But but yeah, I did. I did find, I think,

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Speaker 2: a 78 interview article. in which he mentions that he

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Speaker 2: liked Lovecraft's stories, though enjoyed the plots more than the style.

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Speaker 2: And so, yeah, the style here is definitely, you definitely

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Speaker 2: identify it as a Borges story as you're reading it. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: I feel the same way about Lovecraft's writing. Like when

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Speaker 2: you're reading Lovecraft, you know it's Lovecraft, or you know

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Speaker 2: it's somebody pretending to be Lovecraft.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and though you can see the Lovecraftian shape of

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Speaker 1: what he's trying to do here, it is very much Borges'

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Speaker 1: own style, especially in that it has understated humor in it.

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Speaker 1: There's more of a sense of irony than we usually

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Speaker 1: get in Lovecraft. I mean, I think Lovecraft did write

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Speaker 1: some humorous stories, but not usually.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm blanking on remembering a single example of his humor,

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Speaker 2: though it may be in there somewhere. I tend to

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Speaker 2: think of some of his contemporaries as having a little

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Speaker 2: bit more of a sense of humor, like Clark Ashton Smith.

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Speaker 1: But there's definitely humor in this story.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.

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Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.

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Speaker 2: All right, well, let's go ahead and get into the

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Speaker 2: plot on this one. So we're going to have some

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Speaker 2: spoilers here. So if you want to experience this story

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Speaker 2: raw and unspoiled, now's the time to pause, go out,

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Speaker 2: find a copy, read it. It's like six pages long,

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Speaker 2: so it won't take you long. You can literally just

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Speaker 2: pause everything and come back.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm going to give a similar warning before my

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Speaker 1: segment later.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. All right. So the story here concerns an unnamed

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Speaker 2: Argentinian academic. who, as he's completing his studies at the

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Speaker 2: University of Texas in Austin, receives word that his uncle

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Speaker 2: Edwin Arnett has died back home in Argentina. And already

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Speaker 2: early in the story, we do get this nice little

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Speaker 2: passage here where the narrator says, quote, I felt what

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Speaker 2: we always feel when someone dies, the sad awareness now

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Speaker 2: futile of how little it would have cost us to

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Speaker 2: have been more loving. One forgets that one is a

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Speaker 2: dead man conversing with dead men. So I really like that.

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Speaker 2: It dips a little bit into the essence of grief

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Speaker 2: as well as into the contemplation of time, which is

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Speaker 2: going to come up again later on in the tale.

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Speaker 1: I like also how this statement blends some sentimental tenderness

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Speaker 1: with a kind of fatalistic irony. It's a little bit

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Speaker 1: embracing and a little bit casting off as well. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: So the narrator reflects a little bit on the nature

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Speaker 2: of Uncle Arnett. It doesn't sound like they were super close,

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Speaker 2: but he had spent some time with him when he

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Speaker 2: was younger, visiting him in this kind of suburb of

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Speaker 2: Buenos Aires known as Tordera, which Borges describes as being

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Speaker 2: kind of like a lonely, boring place. I have no

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Speaker 2: idea what it is actually like in reality, especially today,

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Speaker 2: but that seems to be his basic read on it.

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Speaker 1: He describes it as being a place sort of between

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Speaker 1: the city and the wilderness, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So that it's a place that's reasonably close to Buenos Aires,

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Speaker 1: but that, you know, he describes the swampland and the

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Speaker 1: forest and the mountains around. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And that seemed to be the big attraction for Uncle Arnett.

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Speaker 2: Red House is situated like on this hill overlooking some swamplands.

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Speaker 2: And so he was able to find a great deal

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Speaker 2: of solitude in this place. Yeah. And the narrator reflects

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Speaker 2: fondly on Uncle Arnett's various interests in philosophy, particularly immaterialism,

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Speaker 2: his interest in theology, and in the works of British

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Speaker 2: mathematician Charles Howard Hinton, who lived 1853 through 1907, concerning

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Speaker 2: the fourth dimension. Hinton comes up in a few different

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Speaker 2: Borges stories and also in H.P. Lovecraft's own The Shadow

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Speaker 2: Out of Time from 1935. This is the guy who

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Speaker 2: coined the term tesseract for a four-dimensional hypercube.

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Speaker 1: You know, I don't know that much about Hinton, so

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Speaker 1: I don't know how generally valid his work is considered

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Speaker 1: to be. But the way it's presented in the story,

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Speaker 1: it's as if the narrator is talking about Uncle Arnett's

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Speaker 1: interest in cranks that he liked that he likes pursuing

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Speaker 1: and understanding theologies and philosophies that are not necessarily there

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Speaker 1: to be agreed with or to be understood as correct

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Speaker 1: descriptions of the world, but he just wants to get

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Speaker 1: into some kind of esoteric system and figure out what

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Speaker 1: it's about.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I think he's described as himself being an agnostic. Um, but,

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Speaker 2: but yeah, he's very interested in theologies. Yeah. Um, So

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Speaker 2: he would share these various ideas with his young nephew. And, oh,

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Speaker 2: he also kept a big sheepdog named Samuel Johnson. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: That'll become important later on as well. So our narrator here,

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Speaker 2: he returns to Argentina in 1921. And Red House, by

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Speaker 2: this point, the home of the late Uncle Arnett, has

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Speaker 2: been auctioned off. It's been auctioned off to a foreigner

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Speaker 2: by the name of Max Pretorius. Hmm.

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Speaker 1: Dr. Septimus Pretorius?

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Speaker 2: Exactly. I was looking into this a little bit. There

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Speaker 2: may be some other connection in, like, deeper Borges lore,

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Speaker 2: but it does seem to be, at least in part,

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Speaker 2: a nod to Bride of Frankenstein.

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Speaker 1: Amazing.

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Speaker 2: So Pretorius, this mysterious Max Pretorius, proceeds to have everything

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Speaker 2: in the house just thrown out. So, like, the books,

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Speaker 2: you know, I think the furniture as well, just everything

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Speaker 2: must go. And then he also... goes to the house's architect,

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Speaker 2: a close friend of the late Uncle Arnett by the

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Speaker 2: name of Alexander Muir. And he requests, quote, certain changes

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Speaker 2: to the house. And Muir just flatly refuses. We'll find

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Speaker 2: out later. It's just like terribly insulted by these ideas

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Speaker 2: that are brought to him and says, no, absolutely not.

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Speaker 2: I won't do it. And so Pretorius has to turn

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Speaker 2: to a firm from Buenos Aires to do the changes.

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Speaker 2: And then local carpenters flatly refuse to do the work.

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Speaker 2: So outside laborers are brought in to take care of

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Speaker 2: that as well. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So wants to make some changes to the house and

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Speaker 1: the first line of recruits find them highly objectionable. Yes.

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Speaker 2: And so Borges writes, and this and all the quotes

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Speaker 2: that I'm sharing are from the Hurley translation. He writes, quote,

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Speaker 2: and it was by night that the new resident of

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Speaker 2: Red House took up his habitation. The windows were never

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Speaker 2: opened anymore. But through the darkness one could make out

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Speaker 2: cracks of light. One morning the milkman came upon the

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Speaker 2: body of a sheepdog, decapitated and mutilated on the walk.

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Speaker 2: That winter the Norfolk pines were cut down. No one

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Speaker 2: ever saw Pretorius again. He apparently left the country soon after.

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Speaker 1: So he comes in, he has the house changed in

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Speaker 1: secretive ways. We don't know what he changed exactly, but

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Speaker 1: something was done inside it. Then he leaves, but there's

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Speaker 1: a new resident there. Right. And dogs are losing their heads.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. He seems to have viciously mutilated a dog

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Speaker 2: as well. And I think that, well, this is something

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Speaker 2: I think that becomes apparent in subsequent rereadings, but it's

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Speaker 2: like the changes that he made inside the house are

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Speaker 2: tantamount to mutilating a dog, like in terms of what

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Speaker 2: has been changed. So the narrator is disturbed by everything

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Speaker 2: he's heard about this, but He's also very curious. And, Joe,

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Speaker 2: I know you really love this aspect of the character.

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Speaker 2: Do you want to talk a little bit about the

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Speaker 2: other curiosities in his life that leading up to this moment?

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Speaker 1: Oh, sure. Well, actually, I was thinking about this in

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Speaker 1: the context of differences between Lovecraft's approach to this sort

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Speaker 1: of story and Borges'. And one of these differences is

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Speaker 1: in the characterization of the narrator or protagonist. So, Listeners

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Speaker 1: probably know that I am always a fan of a weird,

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Speaker 1: obsessive narrator, especially when they don't seem to understand how

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Speaker 1: unusual they are. This is one of my favorite things

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Speaker 1: about Moby Dick by Herbert Melville. It's the indirect characterization

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Speaker 1: of Ishmael through what he chooses to observe and things

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Speaker 1: he talks about and focuses on. And it's not that

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Speaker 1: Ishmael and Moby Dick is insane or irrational or anything.

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Speaker 1: but that he just doesn't seem to be aware of

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Speaker 1: exactly how weird he is and doesn't realize the extent

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Speaker 1: to which he is just constantly on one, as they say.

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Speaker 1: And this story is kind of like that, too, in

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Speaker 1: a more compact way. The narrator has this understated way

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Speaker 1: of revealing his own eccentricities, and that's one of my

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Speaker 1: favorite things about it. So there's a passage where He says,

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Speaker 1: I know that I'm notorious for my curiosity, which has

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Speaker 1: variously led me into marriage with a woman utterly unlike myself,

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Speaker 1: solely that I might discover who she was and what

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Speaker 1: she was really like, into trying laudanum with no appreciable result,

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Speaker 1: into an exploration of transfinite numbers, and into the terrifying

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Speaker 1: adventure whose story I am about to tell. So that's

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Speaker 1: how he says he became interested in this matter. But

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Speaker 1: the choice of those three details, the marriage to somebody

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Speaker 1: who he's not compatible with just out of curiosity, trying laudanum,

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Speaker 1: which he says didn't do anything for him.

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Speaker 2: What?

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Speaker 1: Like, is his body chemistry unusual? And then transfinite numbers.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And it sounds like the third is the most

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Speaker 2: troubling in his past. Like, yeah, and then I got

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Speaker 2: into theoretical mathematics and woof. I got it a little

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Speaker 2: over my head there. Not so much the hard drugs

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Speaker 2: and the marrying somebody out of like academic curiosity. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So Rob, you can correct me if I'm wrong here,

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Speaker 1: because I think you've read more Lovecraft than I have,

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Speaker 1: but I think this is not typical of Lovecraft's investigator

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Speaker 1: style protagonists, which this would be an example in the

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Speaker 1: Borges story too, right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: That's my memory that Lovecraftian narrators, main characters, they tend

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Speaker 2: to be presented as highly rational, made irrational eventually by

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Speaker 2: some level of exposure to the unseen world or the

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Speaker 2: true horrible nature of reality. There may be something curious

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Speaker 2: in their backstory, but if they are presented like pre-horror,

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Speaker 2: they are generally presented as like the most rational man

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Speaker 2: you could hope to meet. Right.

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Speaker 1: They're not eccentric weirdos to begin with, at least certainly

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Speaker 1: not in the stories I'm thinking of, like Call of

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Speaker 1: Cthulhu or Mountains of Madness. There, I think of the

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Speaker 1: protagonists as kind of thinly characterized, but just straightforward intellectuals,

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Speaker 1: people who display, people who are skeptical observers that can,

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Speaker 1: by being kind of uninteresting skeptical observers, can lend credibility

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Speaker 1: to the amazing things they witness.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's spot on. There may be a

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Speaker 2: few exceptions to that rule where there's some sort of

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Speaker 2: big twist. But by and large, that's true. Whereas Borges, yeah,

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Speaker 2: he's typically the sort of writer who will do a

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Speaker 2: whole story about a guy who is obsessed with something

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Speaker 2: generally to the degree of like monomaniacal obsession, just all

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Speaker 2: consuming obsession. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so that's one thing I really like about the

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Speaker 1: story is that it's not dwelt upon much, but the

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Speaker 1: narrator is himself quite strange before any of the supernatural

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Speaker 1: weirdness kicks in. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And so now he's hooked, though. He has to know

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Speaker 2: more about what's happening with Red House and whatever lives there.

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Speaker 2: So he seeks out that architect, that friend of his

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Speaker 2: late uncle, Alexander Muir. And Muir tells him, yeah, this

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Speaker 2: whole deal is real disturbing. He mentions that Pretorius had

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Speaker 2: wanted him to tear down the house and construct an

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Speaker 2: abomination in its place. But then he can't get a

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Speaker 2: lot more out of him. So the narrator then heads

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Speaker 2: out onto the street here in this house. this small

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Speaker 2: suburban town. He runs into an old friend, and this

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Speaker 2: friend is also spooked by the house. I think his

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Speaker 2: horse is spooked by the house. And then he has

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Speaker 2: a strange dream about a minotaur sleeping within a stone labyrinth. Quote,

398
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Speaker 2: but dreaming of what or of whom? He then ventures

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Speaker 2: out to the town of Glue to chat with a

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Speaker 2: carpenter who worked, one of the outside laborers brought in

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Speaker 2: to work on the renovations inside of Red House. And

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Speaker 2: this guy describes it just as outrageous work. He only

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Speaker 2: did it for the money and then he'd never set

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Speaker 2: foot in Red House again.

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Speaker 1: One interesting difference that the narrator highlights between the original

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Speaker 1: architect who refused to do the renovations and this guy

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Speaker 1: who came in to make the new furniture and do

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Speaker 1: the renovations is sort of how. I don't know, scrutinizing.

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Speaker 1: They were like the original guy is portrayed as, as

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Speaker 1: a real, like strict guy. You know, he's very strict

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Speaker 1: in his theology. He has theological objections to like building

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Speaker 1: a church. Uh, like he's a certain type of Protestant

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Speaker 1: and he refuses to work on a Catholic church. And

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Speaker 1: so he's like got rigid standards, uh, about what he believes.

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Speaker 1: And so from his point of view, the work on

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Speaker 1: the new house is implied to be sacrilegious in some way,

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Speaker 1: but they never get into details about why. Whereas this

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Speaker 1: other guy, the new architect or carpenter they go to,

419
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Speaker 1: just seems like he doesn't pay a lot of attention

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Speaker 1: to things. At one point he looks at the narrator's

421
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Speaker 1: card and he gets interested in saying the words PhD

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00:24:03,180 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: after his name as if maybe he doesn't know what

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Speaker 1: that means. But then the narrator also says that he

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Speaker 1: thinks this guy mistook him for a lawyer, which is

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Speaker 1: why he was so quick to hand over documents and

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Speaker 1: papers about the work he had done. So it seems

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Speaker 1: like the second guy is just like, I didn't see anything.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I don't. It doesn't matter to me. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: But he seemed to agree that it was outrageous.

431
00:24:26,550 --> 00:24:27,209
Speaker 1: There was something.

432
00:24:27,350 --> 00:24:32,690
Speaker 2: This was not normal. So our narrator continues to keep

433
00:24:32,859 --> 00:24:35,500
Speaker 2: finding the Red House on his walks. So he's still

434
00:24:35,540 --> 00:24:37,780
Speaker 2: hanging out in the general vicinity of the Red House

435
00:24:38,780 --> 00:24:40,679
Speaker 2: and he'll he'll just be on a walk and then

436
00:24:40,700 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 2: he'll see it. He's just he's drawn to it. all

437
00:24:44,220 --> 00:24:47,520
Speaker 2: the while contemplating the mysteries of time. Quote, that infinite

438
00:24:47,580 --> 00:24:52,520
Speaker 2: web of yesterday, today, the future, forever, never. And then,

439
00:24:52,540 --> 00:24:56,439
Speaker 2: it's in the summer, a summer storm sweeps in on

440
00:24:56,500 --> 00:24:59,740
Speaker 2: one of his walks, and seeking shelter, he finds himself

441
00:25:00,180 --> 00:25:03,220
Speaker 2: once more right next to Red House. And so he

442
00:25:03,310 --> 00:25:07,050
Speaker 2: ventures through the gate, which is unlocked, through the door,

443
00:25:07,130 --> 00:25:11,429
Speaker 2: which has been blown open. And inside, the narrator discovers

444
00:25:11,990 --> 00:25:17,270
Speaker 2: a largely empty but rather alien habitat, one that reminds

445
00:25:17,310 --> 00:25:20,510
Speaker 2: me a little bit of the liminal spaces in the

446
00:25:20,510 --> 00:25:26,379
Speaker 2: 2026 movie Back Rooms, that sort of vibe. And it's

447
00:25:26,780 --> 00:25:29,820
Speaker 2: the last six paragraphs of the whole story where the

448
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:33,639
Speaker 2: narrator experiences the house. And I'm going to resist the

449
00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 2: strong urge to just read those six paragraphs. Instead, I'm

450
00:25:38,740 --> 00:25:41,460
Speaker 2: just going to summarize some of the things that he sees.

451
00:25:43,210 --> 00:25:46,449
Speaker 2: So first of all, pitiless white light. I think this

452
00:25:46,490 --> 00:25:48,290
Speaker 2: is the main thing that made me think of back rooms.

453
00:25:48,330 --> 00:25:52,770
Speaker 2: Just pitiless white light. There's no atmospheric lighting, no use

454
00:25:52,810 --> 00:25:54,830
Speaker 2: of lamps. It's like everything is just bright.

455
00:25:55,430 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 1: Overhead fluorescence. Yeah. He doesn't say that, but that's the

456
00:25:59,060 --> 00:25:59,659
Speaker 1: feeling you get.

457
00:25:59,700 --> 00:26:04,379
Speaker 2: That's the feeling, yeah. Also large ruinous rooms. So that

458
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:07,220
Speaker 2: makes me think that like whole walls have been removed

459
00:26:07,300 --> 00:26:10,220
Speaker 2: and like the entire first floor is just like open space.

460
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, like almost like it doesn't need to be nice

461
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:16,869
Speaker 1: inside the house anymore. Now it's just a space to

462
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:18,290
Speaker 1: contain some things.

463
00:26:18,510 --> 00:26:21,770
Speaker 2: Yeah. And those things, that's where it gets even more interesting.

464
00:26:22,730 --> 00:26:27,310
Speaker 2: He describes scattered pieces of furniture, but pieces, he almost

465
00:26:28,050 --> 00:26:31,350
Speaker 2: hesitates to call them furniture. He can't comprehend them because

466
00:26:31,770 --> 00:26:35,070
Speaker 2: they were clearly not designed for human bodies and not

467
00:26:35,170 --> 00:26:38,590
Speaker 2: knowing what the bodies are like that they are designed for.

468
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,750
Speaker 2: these things lack any meaning to him. A quote, in

469
00:26:42,869 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 2: order truly to see a thing, one must first understand it.

470
00:26:47,390 --> 00:26:49,880
Speaker 1: I like this part. He kind of goes on a tangent,

471
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: but he talks about how, you know, the passenger on

472
00:26:53,340 --> 00:26:56,420
Speaker 1: the ship does not really see the rigging on the ship.

473
00:26:56,550 --> 00:26:59,689
Speaker 1: Only the crew does. You know, the passenger might be

474
00:26:59,770 --> 00:27:02,190
Speaker 1: able to see it with their eyes, but they don't

475
00:27:02,310 --> 00:27:05,460
Speaker 1: see it in a way that that has meaning or recognition.

476
00:27:05,980 --> 00:27:08,160
Speaker 1: And in the same way, he could see what these

477
00:27:08,420 --> 00:27:10,180
Speaker 1: he could see that these objects were there, but he

478
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:13,020
Speaker 1: couldn't really see them because he couldn't understand what they

479
00:27:13,060 --> 00:27:14,140
Speaker 1: were for. Yeah.

480
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:18,449
Speaker 2: So instead, these forms just inspire horror and revulsion. He

481
00:27:18,490 --> 00:27:21,590
Speaker 2: finds a ladder and he's he's relieved to find a

482
00:27:21,630 --> 00:27:24,590
Speaker 2: ladder because it's a weird ladder like the it's like

483
00:27:24,730 --> 00:27:28,630
Speaker 2: it's iron. It's the spacing between the rungs is weird

484
00:27:28,650 --> 00:27:31,869
Speaker 2: and But at least it's identifiable as a ladder and

485
00:27:31,910 --> 00:27:34,190
Speaker 2: he knows how to use it. So he climbs up

486
00:27:34,250 --> 00:27:37,590
Speaker 2: to the next floor of Red House. And here he

487
00:27:37,670 --> 00:27:42,980
Speaker 2: observes more troubling objects, more alien furniture, including this one, quote,

488
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:47,379
Speaker 2: a long U-shaped piece of furniture like an operating table,

489
00:27:47,859 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 2: very high with circular openings at the extremes. It occurred

490
00:27:52,020 --> 00:27:54,310
Speaker 2: to me that this might be the bed used by

491
00:27:54,369 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 2: the resident of the house whose monstrous anatomy is was

492
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:01,619
Speaker 2: revealed obliquely by this object in much the way the

493
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:05,330
Speaker 2: anatomy of an animal or a God may be known

494
00:28:05,410 --> 00:28:06,889
Speaker 2: by the shadow it casts.

495
00:28:09,050 --> 00:28:12,150
Speaker 1: So is this a tube? It's a, it's a, because

496
00:28:12,170 --> 00:28:15,210
Speaker 1: it says it has circular openings at the extremes. Do you,

497
00:28:15,290 --> 00:28:17,229
Speaker 1: are you picturing an enclosed tube?

498
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 2: Ooh, maybe that is more what he meant. Um, my

499
00:28:21,020 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 2: reading and perhaps misreading was, I imagined it being kind

500
00:28:24,100 --> 00:28:28,770
Speaker 2: of flat, but having, um, these two apertures at either end,

501
00:28:28,830 --> 00:28:30,669
Speaker 2: kind of like what you put your face through on

502
00:28:30,770 --> 00:28:31,850
Speaker 2: a massage table.

503
00:28:32,330 --> 00:28:33,389
Speaker 1: Okay. That makes sense.

504
00:28:33,770 --> 00:28:36,189
Speaker 2: But, um, but yeah, it could be, it could be

505
00:28:36,619 --> 00:28:40,260
Speaker 2: supposed to, maybe I'm supposed to be imagining a tube instead. Uh,

506
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,580
Speaker 2: I could see either, either possibility being troubling because again,

507
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 2: you try and imagine like what kind of body is

508
00:28:47,060 --> 00:28:49,420
Speaker 2: going to interact with this in any way. If it's

509
00:28:49,460 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 2: a bed, if it's a bath, whatever it is, like

510
00:28:52,830 --> 00:28:53,970
Speaker 2: what is it supposed to do?

511
00:28:54,510 --> 00:28:54,710
Speaker 1: Yeah.

512
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 2: And we'll come back to this, but he says that

513
00:28:57,160 --> 00:29:02,110
Speaker 2: it reminds him of Lucan's description of something called the Amphisbina,

514
00:29:02,690 --> 00:29:07,810
Speaker 2: a mythological creature. And we'll get back to what this

515
00:29:07,850 --> 00:29:08,630
Speaker 2: means here in a bit.

516
00:29:09,580 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: Basically a snake with heads on both sides.

517
00:29:11,820 --> 00:29:13,660
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a snake that also has a head on

518
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:18,440
Speaker 2: its tail. Not to say that the creature is that,

519
00:29:18,700 --> 00:29:21,370
Speaker 2: but that's the closest thing. The only thing that even

520
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 2: makes any sense is a nonsense animal out of... like

521
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:30,830
Speaker 2: medieval heraldry and the myths of antiquity. There's also a

522
00:29:30,870 --> 00:29:33,150
Speaker 2: line where he says, I also recall a V of

523
00:29:33,290 --> 00:29:37,930
Speaker 2: mirrors that faded into the shadows above. Again, that kind

524
00:29:37,970 --> 00:29:40,350
Speaker 2: of leaves the reader to sort of try and piece

525
00:29:40,370 --> 00:29:44,370
Speaker 2: together what that could possibly look like or mean. But

526
00:29:44,390 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 2: then we get to some really great cosmic horror. So

527
00:29:47,390 --> 00:29:50,740
Speaker 2: he says, what must the inhabitant of this house be like?

528
00:29:51,340 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 2: What must it be seeking here on this planet, which

529
00:29:54,620 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 2: must have been no less horrible to it than to us?

530
00:29:57,980 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 2: From what secret regions of astronomy of time, from what

531
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 2: ancient and now incalculable twilight had it reached this South

532
00:30:05,530 --> 00:30:08,250
Speaker 2: American suburb and this precise night?

533
00:30:09,030 --> 00:30:10,210
Speaker 1: Why us? Why here?

534
00:30:10,430 --> 00:30:13,950
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I like the idea, like this kind of

535
00:30:14,070 --> 00:30:18,620
Speaker 2: offhand comment that, like, we find this world troubling. Like,

536
00:30:18,660 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 2: how troubling is it to an outsider, you know? And

537
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:23,100
Speaker 2: then why is it, and that implies, why is it

538
00:30:23,140 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 2: suffering to be here?

539
00:30:25,530 --> 00:30:25,990
Speaker 1: I like that.

540
00:30:26,050 --> 00:30:29,050
Speaker 2: There's a lot, just some sparse lines here, but you

541
00:30:29,070 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 2: can really read into them. And so he's just lost

542
00:30:33,630 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 2: in contemplation of this strange place. And then suddenly the

543
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 2: rain stops outside. He realizes that it's 2 a.m., which

544
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:43,460
Speaker 2: there are different ways of looking at that. Either he's

545
00:30:43,580 --> 00:30:46,100
Speaker 2: lost all sense of time in here, time is weird

546
00:30:46,140 --> 00:30:49,580
Speaker 2: in here, or he was taking a walk at like

547
00:30:49,580 --> 00:30:52,450
Speaker 2: 1.30 a.m. or something, which kind of goes back to

548
00:30:52,530 --> 00:30:56,150
Speaker 2: his weirdness you know, pre-encounter. So it could be any

549
00:30:56,170 --> 00:30:57,370
Speaker 2: of those things. Yeah.

550
00:30:57,910 --> 00:31:03,610
Speaker 1: But his weirdness and specifically his curiosity pre-existing this encounter

551
00:31:03,650 --> 00:31:06,050
Speaker 1: will come into play at the very last lines. Yes.

552
00:31:06,530 --> 00:31:09,530
Speaker 2: The last lines are, quote, my feet were just touching.

553
00:31:09,630 --> 00:31:11,550
Speaker 2: So he decides to come down the ladder to the

554
00:31:11,690 --> 00:31:14,910
Speaker 2: lower floor. He says, my feet were just touching the

555
00:31:14,990 --> 00:31:18,190
Speaker 2: next to last rung when I heard something coming up

556
00:31:18,250 --> 00:31:24,060
Speaker 2: the ramp, something heavy and slow and plural. curiosity got

557
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 2: the better of fear and i did not close my eyes.

558
00:31:28,100 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: So again a lovecraftian element there that the real horror

559
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 1: is witnessing is glimpsing the the true nature of the

560
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: thing that that you can't understand.

561
00:31:37,100 --> 00:31:40,070
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah and i really i really like the detail

562
00:31:40,150 --> 00:31:43,930
Speaker 2: here that we we never get a description of it

563
00:31:43,970 --> 00:31:47,410
Speaker 2: there's no additional reveal there's no like a lot of

564
00:31:47,650 --> 00:31:50,550
Speaker 2: the sort of trope i find in stories like this

565
00:31:50,590 --> 00:31:53,270
Speaker 2: by Lovecraft or people who are writing Lovecraftian horror is

566
00:31:53,330 --> 00:31:55,770
Speaker 2: that there will be a brief description, like it was

567
00:31:55,810 --> 00:31:58,410
Speaker 2: something like an X, but with a Y, you know?

568
00:31:58,510 --> 00:32:01,710
Speaker 2: So you'll have like at least two conflicting ideas to

569
00:32:01,750 --> 00:32:05,330
Speaker 2: sort of slam together in your head to create an obscure,

570
00:32:05,410 --> 00:32:07,709
Speaker 2: monstrous image, which is a great, I mean, still, it's

571
00:32:07,730 --> 00:32:10,490
Speaker 2: a great tactic. I think it can be used rather well,

572
00:32:10,540 --> 00:32:13,460
Speaker 2: but Borges doesn't go in that direction. Like he's already

573
00:32:13,900 --> 00:32:16,340
Speaker 2: established that you cannot truly see a thing if you

574
00:32:16,380 --> 00:32:19,330
Speaker 2: do not understand it. And so in a way, it

575
00:32:19,850 --> 00:32:23,860
Speaker 2: would be a letdown to have any further illustration or

576
00:32:23,890 --> 00:32:25,740
Speaker 2: description of what this thing is.

577
00:32:26,500 --> 00:32:31,740
Speaker 1: Yeah. We can only imagine based on seeing its things. Yeah. Yeah.

578
00:32:32,900 --> 00:32:36,980
Speaker 2: And I'll note that in this translation I'm referring to,

579
00:32:37,050 --> 00:32:40,230
Speaker 2: it's described as heavy and slow and plural. But the

580
00:32:40,270 --> 00:32:45,270
Speaker 2: other translation, the 75 translation, says something slow and oppressive

581
00:32:45,430 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 2: and twofold. Hmm. So I like both. Either way you

582
00:32:49,820 --> 00:32:54,700
Speaker 2: slice it, there's some nice horror there. And anyway, that's

583
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:56,620
Speaker 2: the end of the story, though. Yeah, you never get

584
00:32:56,820 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 2: to see it. You just know that he's too curious.

585
00:33:02,340 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 2: And so his curiosity overpowers his fear, and he does

586
00:33:05,980 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 2: not close his eyes in the presence of this thing

587
00:33:08,300 --> 00:33:10,340
Speaker 2: that is slouching towards him. And we have no idea

588
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:15,300
Speaker 2: what happens next. Generally in these stories, it's madness. Madness

589
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,590
Speaker 2: or worse. Uh, but, uh, but that's all we get

590
00:33:18,630 --> 00:33:20,170
Speaker 2: from the story. And it's, I think it's a fitting end.

591
00:33:20,970 --> 00:33:23,890
Speaker 1: You notice the connection also with, uh, that when he

592
00:33:23,930 --> 00:33:26,710
Speaker 1: was a child in this house with his uncle, they

593
00:33:26,730 --> 00:33:32,100
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time, uh, dealing with strange philosophies and, uh,

594
00:33:32,460 --> 00:33:36,980
Speaker 1: trying to understand incomprehensible geometry and doing these like geometry

595
00:33:37,020 --> 00:33:40,710
Speaker 1: experiments with cubes and triangles to try to see this

596
00:33:40,790 --> 00:33:44,030
Speaker 1: dimension that, uh, that is not readily apparent to the eyes.

597
00:33:44,490 --> 00:33:46,670
Speaker 1: And then finally, when he does come back to the house,

598
00:33:46,930 --> 00:33:50,100
Speaker 1: what does he encounter yet again? Incomprehensible geometry.

599
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:54,100
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So knowing what we know about these sorts

600
00:33:54,140 --> 00:33:57,180
Speaker 2: of stories, I guess we can basically surmise that Uncle

601
00:33:57,240 --> 00:34:00,200
Speaker 2: Arnett's interest in the fourth dimension caused some sort of

602
00:34:00,270 --> 00:34:03,390
Speaker 2: anomaly in the Red House, something that may have contributed

603
00:34:03,450 --> 00:34:07,110
Speaker 2: to his early death by aneurysm and led a true

604
00:34:07,210 --> 00:34:10,410
Speaker 2: foreigner then to acquire the house and see it customized.

605
00:34:11,060 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 2: And either the mysterious Max Pretorius was the human disguise

606
00:34:15,060 --> 00:34:17,780
Speaker 2: of this alien being or a familiar of some sort

607
00:34:17,820 --> 00:34:21,330
Speaker 2: working on his behalf. But now the occupant of Red

608
00:34:21,370 --> 00:34:24,469
Speaker 2: House is an alien being of some sort from some

609
00:34:24,530 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 2: time or place working some unknown end on the planet. And,

610
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 2: of course, any kind of face-to-face confrontation with that can

611
00:34:32,140 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 2: only result in madness or worse, right? Yeah. Now, I

612
00:34:36,180 --> 00:34:40,390
Speaker 2: want to come back to this idea that it reminds

613
00:34:40,430 --> 00:34:45,009
Speaker 2: the narrator of Lucan's description of the Amphisbina, which again,

614
00:34:45,050 --> 00:34:47,150
Speaker 2: like we said, is kind of a two-headed snake that

615
00:34:47,190 --> 00:34:50,729
Speaker 2: pops up in the writings of antiquity, including Pliny the Elder.

616
00:34:51,450 --> 00:34:55,510
Speaker 2: Pliny says that it has two mouths, quote, as though

617
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:57,980
Speaker 2: one mouth were too little for the discharge of all

618
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:02,819
Speaker 2: its venom. A little bit of Pliny humor there, I think.

619
00:35:03,380 --> 00:35:03,580
Speaker 1: Yeah.

620
00:35:04,500 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 2: But it's a snake with a head on its tail.

621
00:35:06,760 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 2: Its eyes glow like coal. Borges includes a write-up of

622
00:35:10,580 --> 00:35:15,210
Speaker 2: this creature in the Book of Imaginary Beings, his bestiary.

623
00:35:16,010 --> 00:35:22,110
Speaker 2: And the name means that which goes in two directions.

624
00:35:22,730 --> 00:35:24,650
Speaker 2: And it's often discussed as kind of a paradox, an

625
00:35:24,690 --> 00:35:27,280
Speaker 2: impossible animal. And I think that's part of the attraction here,

626
00:35:27,340 --> 00:35:30,140
Speaker 2: that it is kind of like a tesseract. It is

627
00:35:30,219 --> 00:35:34,259
Speaker 2: like a thing that can't actually exist inside. in our

628
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:35,500
Speaker 2: perceived reality.

629
00:35:36,100 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, because anatomically, how would that animal work? Well, does

630
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 1: it eat from both sides? Where does the digestive system go?

631
00:35:42,910 --> 00:35:46,710
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is the sense of it? But so Lucan,

632
00:35:46,850 --> 00:35:50,850
Speaker 2: who he's referencing here, first century CE Roman poet, who

633
00:35:50,910 --> 00:35:53,170
Speaker 2: wrote of this creature as one of the many different

634
00:35:53,230 --> 00:35:56,910
Speaker 2: desert animals encountered by Cato's army in the Libyan desert.

635
00:35:57,780 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 2: And so he listed among other dangerous creatures saying, Amphisbina,

636
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:05,009
Speaker 2: it's two heads facing each other. So kind of like,

637
00:36:05,370 --> 00:36:08,830
Speaker 2: also kind of like the snake of Thulsa Doom, right?

638
00:36:08,950 --> 00:36:09,990
Speaker 2: With the two snakes.

639
00:36:10,910 --> 00:36:11,610
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.

640
00:36:11,630 --> 00:36:14,450
Speaker 2: Yeah. I hadn't thought about to know. But Pliny also

641
00:36:14,489 --> 00:36:18,690
Speaker 2: wrote about its curative features, writing, quote, for feverish chills,

642
00:36:19,330 --> 00:36:22,860
Speaker 2: what is this, zisander or zikander?

643
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:24,380
Speaker 1: Zikander. Zikander.

644
00:36:24,860 --> 00:36:28,340
Speaker 2: Gives as a remedy a dead serpent, this Amphisvena, worn

645
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 2: as an amulet or even its skin. Nay, he says

646
00:36:31,580 --> 00:36:33,870
Speaker 2: that if it is fastened to a tree, that is

647
00:36:33,910 --> 00:36:37,109
Speaker 2: being felled, the fellers feel no cold and do their

648
00:36:37,150 --> 00:36:41,290
Speaker 2: business more easily. So much does this alone of serpents

649
00:36:41,370 --> 00:36:43,910
Speaker 2: stand up to the cold, being the first of all

650
00:36:43,989 --> 00:36:47,100
Speaker 2: serpents to make its appearance, even before the cry of

651
00:36:47,140 --> 00:36:50,020
Speaker 2: the cuckoo. So, curative properties.

652
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:50,980
Speaker 1: Okay.

653
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:54,780
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of note, there's a genus of legless lizards,

654
00:36:55,300 --> 00:37:00,710
Speaker 2: legless ground lizards that are known as Amphispina, which, you know,

655
00:37:00,730 --> 00:37:03,460
Speaker 2: the name derives from the myth. And then this creature

656
00:37:03,500 --> 00:37:06,310
Speaker 2: also pops up in everything from Dungeons and Dragons to

657
00:37:06,330 --> 00:37:09,870
Speaker 2: the Witcher novels and also is like regional Polish heraldry.

658
00:37:10,930 --> 00:37:15,990
Speaker 2: So it's established out there. And also, yes, it's sometimes

659
00:37:16,030 --> 00:37:20,860
Speaker 2: like an idea of something impossible that we're trying to imagine.

660
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:24,000
Speaker 1: But as you said earlier, it's only a point of

661
00:37:24,100 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 1: comparison for the narrator. And the story does not seem

662
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:30,350
Speaker 1: to be trying to say, ah, we've discovered the source

663
00:37:30,390 --> 00:37:33,609
Speaker 1: of the Amphispina legend. Here is the creature they were

664
00:37:33,650 --> 00:37:34,410
Speaker 1: talking about.

665
00:37:35,030 --> 00:37:37,730
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So again, that's one of the things

666
00:37:37,790 --> 00:37:39,860
Speaker 2: I really love about the story is that there's nothing

667
00:37:39,890 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 2: spelled out about exactly what it is. We can't possibly

668
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 2: even comprehend it. And I was looking around and I

669
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:50,540
Speaker 2: was pleasantly surprised to see that this creature has not

670
00:37:50,620 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 2: been like fully canonized within, say, the monster manuals of

671
00:37:55,700 --> 00:38:00,800
Speaker 2: the of the Arkham Horror and Call of Cthulhu role-playing games.

672
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,989
Speaker 2: And they're generally pretty quick, I've found, to canonize and

673
00:38:05,010 --> 00:38:08,330
Speaker 2: sort of spell out the properties and include illustrations of

674
00:38:08,370 --> 00:38:12,890
Speaker 2: just about anything in Lovecraftian fiction or adjacent mythos fiction

675
00:38:12,989 --> 00:38:17,469
Speaker 2: or even things in folklore and mythology. But either intentionally

676
00:38:17,530 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 2: or by happenstance, they've left this one alone. And I

677
00:38:20,739 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 2: think they should. How do you create the stats for

678
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:24,620
Speaker 2: something like this?

679
00:38:24,660 --> 00:38:25,020
Speaker 1: You can't.

680
00:38:25,060 --> 00:38:25,339
Speaker 2: You shouldn't.

681
00:38:26,110 --> 00:38:31,290
Speaker 1: You could only fight its furniture. Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

682
00:38:31,330 --> 00:38:31,650
Speaker 2: I don't know.

683
00:38:31,670 --> 00:38:33,549
Speaker 1: I'm, I'm hung up on the fact that what he

684
00:38:33,630 --> 00:38:37,100
Speaker 1: sees is its furniture. Is there another story like that?

685
00:38:37,540 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: That's the scary thing is all the stuff that's in

686
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:43,779
Speaker 1: its house and who knows what it's used for.

687
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:45,940
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't think of another one off the top

688
00:38:45,980 --> 00:38:48,140
Speaker 2: of my head. And in a way only Borges would

689
00:38:48,180 --> 00:38:52,250
Speaker 2: write a cosmic horror story about alien furniture, but it

690
00:38:52,290 --> 00:38:55,069
Speaker 2: works perfectly. Like it, It cheapens it to say that

691
00:38:55,550 --> 00:38:58,130
Speaker 2: it is a story about alien furniture, but it is.

692
00:38:58,270 --> 00:38:59,770
Speaker 2: It is a story about alien furniture.

693
00:38:59,790 --> 00:39:00,549
Speaker 1: I like it.

694
00:39:00,550 --> 00:39:01,270
Speaker 2: The best possible.

695
00:39:03,250 --> 00:39:04,850
Speaker 1: Well, good choice, Rob. I like this one.

696
00:39:05,130 --> 00:39:05,550
Speaker 2: Oh, thanks.

697
00:39:05,610 --> 00:39:05,820
Speaker 1: Yeah.

698
00:39:06,030 --> 00:39:08,820
Speaker 2: Yeah, highly recommend it. If you haven't read it and

699
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:11,219
Speaker 2: you just listened to us discuss it all, well, don't worry.

700
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:24,780
Speaker 2: You can still enjoy all six pages of it. All right, Joe,

701
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:26,460
Speaker 2: let's go on to the next selection. What do you

702
00:39:26,500 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 2: have for us?

703
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:30,810
Speaker 1: Okay, the story I picked for today is called The

704
00:39:30,969 --> 00:39:36,020
Speaker 1: Wife's Story by Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in the

705
00:39:36,020 --> 00:39:40,800
Speaker 1: 1982 short story collection, The Compass Rose, it is truly

706
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 1: short and a very brisk read. It's only about three

707
00:39:43,620 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 1: or four pages, and the narrative is not dense. So

708
00:39:46,700 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the story is not dense. This is

709
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:52,340
Speaker 1: one that is really worth reading without having anything spoiled,

710
00:39:52,380 --> 00:39:54,100
Speaker 1: and we are going to spoil it. We're going to

711
00:39:54,140 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 1: talk about the whole thing. So if you're able, my

712
00:39:57,020 --> 00:39:59,950
Speaker 1: recommendation would be to pause the podcast right here, go

713
00:40:00,010 --> 00:40:01,950
Speaker 1: find a copy of the story and read it, and

714
00:40:01,969 --> 00:40:05,690
Speaker 1: then come back. So we're about to move into spoiler territory.

715
00:40:05,750 --> 00:40:07,330
Speaker 1: Please consider yourself warned.

716
00:40:08,250 --> 00:40:11,170
Speaker 2: I absolutely agree, by the way, about how good this

717
00:40:11,190 --> 00:40:13,569
Speaker 2: story is if you know nothing about it. I went

718
00:40:13,610 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 2: into it completely blind. You had urged me not to

719
00:40:16,739 --> 00:40:19,390
Speaker 2: read anything about it ahead of time. And it is

720
00:40:19,450 --> 00:40:22,259
Speaker 2: highly rewarding. And it, like a Borges story, I feel

721
00:40:22,300 --> 00:40:24,430
Speaker 2: it is like a curio. You know, you hold it up,

722
00:40:24,560 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 2: you look at it, and then after you've experienced it

723
00:40:26,660 --> 00:40:28,180
Speaker 2: the first time, well, then you've got to experience it

724
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 2: another time because you know so many different things about it. Totally.

725
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:34,350
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed looking back on this one a second

726
00:40:34,410 --> 00:40:39,190
Speaker 1: time after having experienced it the first. So Ursula Le

727
00:40:39,230 --> 00:40:42,310
Speaker 1: Guin is not a name that comes up usually when

728
00:40:42,330 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 1: people think about the horror genre. Most of her work

729
00:40:45,410 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: is considered science fiction or fantasy. So examples of her

730
00:40:49,620 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 1: science fiction work would be the books in the Hainish cycle,

731
00:40:52,700 --> 00:40:56,020
Speaker 1: like The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. She

732
00:40:56,060 --> 00:40:59,279
Speaker 1: also wrote fantasy, like the books in the Earthsea series.

733
00:41:00,070 --> 00:41:02,450
Speaker 1: Le Guin is just a great author, lots of different

734
00:41:02,850 --> 00:41:08,810
Speaker 1: stuff to explore. Very, very thoughtful, careful writer who explored

735
00:41:09,010 --> 00:41:12,549
Speaker 1: both the, I like that she explored both the intellectual

736
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:17,009
Speaker 1: and the emotional sides of her worlds very thoroughly. So

737
00:41:17,150 --> 00:41:20,950
Speaker 1: the books I mentioned deal with plenty of horrifying scenarios,

738
00:41:21,010 --> 00:41:22,770
Speaker 1: but I don't think anybody would make the case that

739
00:41:22,810 --> 00:41:26,770
Speaker 1: they are horror. The story I picked for today is,

740
00:41:26,890 --> 00:41:30,970
Speaker 1: I think, one of the only published examples of Le

741
00:41:30,989 --> 00:41:34,860
Speaker 1: Guin experimenting with horror. In this case, with a simple,

742
00:41:34,980 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: but in my opinion, wonderful variation on the werewolf transformation tale.

743
00:41:41,090 --> 00:41:44,490
Speaker 1: None of the characters in the wife story are given names.

744
00:41:44,630 --> 00:41:48,370
Speaker 1: All of the identifiers are relational. So the characters are

745
00:41:48,390 --> 00:41:53,790
Speaker 1: the wife, the husband, the sister, the child. And based

746
00:41:53,870 --> 00:41:56,610
Speaker 1: on the title and the first line, we can infer

747
00:41:56,690 --> 00:42:00,549
Speaker 1: that the narrator is the wife. The story is written

748
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:04,580
Speaker 1: in a very plain style. It's voiced. It's not just

749
00:42:04,739 --> 00:42:09,509
Speaker 1: a disembodied narrator. It's first person, strongly voiced narrator. in

750
00:42:09,530 --> 00:42:12,850
Speaker 1: a kind of casual spoken vernacular that sounds to me

751
00:42:13,350 --> 00:42:17,810
Speaker 1: like a rural Southern American English dialect, maybe Appalachian.

752
00:42:17,830 --> 00:42:19,850
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the kind of vibe I got from.

753
00:42:19,710 --> 00:42:22,450
Speaker 1: It as well. So, Rob, are you ready if I

754
00:42:22,489 --> 00:42:23,190
Speaker 1: get right into it?

755
00:42:23,230 --> 00:42:23,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.

756
00:42:24,250 --> 00:42:25,989
Speaker 1: I'm going to read the opening lines to give you

757
00:42:26,030 --> 00:42:29,509
Speaker 1: a flavor for how the narrator speaks. So the wife says,

758
00:42:29,820 --> 00:42:32,799
Speaker 1: He was a good husband, a good father. I don't

759
00:42:32,860 --> 00:42:36,320
Speaker 1: understand it. I don't believe in it. I don't believe

760
00:42:36,340 --> 00:42:39,490
Speaker 1: that it happened. I saw it happen, but it isn't true.

761
00:42:40,130 --> 00:42:43,330
Speaker 1: It can't be. He was always gentle. If you'd have

762
00:42:43,370 --> 00:42:45,980
Speaker 1: seen him playing with the children, anybody who saw him

763
00:42:46,020 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: with the children would have known that there wasn't any

764
00:42:48,620 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: bad in him, not one mean bone. So from here,

765
00:42:53,300 --> 00:42:56,930
Speaker 1: she goes on to introduce the character of the husband

766
00:42:57,230 --> 00:43:00,110
Speaker 1: and she tells the story of how she and the

767
00:43:00,170 --> 00:43:03,319
Speaker 1: husband fell in love. The wife says that she first

768
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: met him when he was living with his mother in

769
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:09,650
Speaker 1: a place called Spring Lake. And she first took notice

770
00:43:09,730 --> 00:43:12,290
Speaker 1: of him because of how good he was with his family, actually.

771
00:43:12,489 --> 00:43:17,430
Speaker 1: He was friendly, even-tempered, good to his mother. And evidence

772
00:43:17,510 --> 00:43:20,859
Speaker 1: of his even temper comes in an early encounter where

773
00:43:20,890 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: she says one day she's out walking in the woods

774
00:43:23,700 --> 00:43:26,279
Speaker 1: and she crosses paths with him while he's coming back

775
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 1: from a hunting trip, which had been a total bust,

776
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:31,609
Speaker 1: no game at all. But he doesn't seem the least

777
00:43:31,670 --> 00:43:34,950
Speaker 1: bit bothered about it. Quote, he was just larking along,

778
00:43:35,070 --> 00:43:37,770
Speaker 1: enjoying the morning air. That's one of the things I

779
00:43:37,870 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: first loved about him. He didn't take things hard. He

780
00:43:41,140 --> 00:43:43,820
Speaker 1: didn't grouch and whine when things didn't go his way.

781
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: So she describes the husband as she gets to know him.

782
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,989
Speaker 1: He's a hard worker. He's handsome and fine looking, admired

783
00:43:51,030 --> 00:43:55,380
Speaker 1: by everybody with a beautiful singing voice. And the narrator

784
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: says that she was living with her sister at the

785
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 1: time that she first met him. But he started coming

786
00:44:02,260 --> 00:44:05,620
Speaker 1: over every day, and her sister eventually moved out to

787
00:44:05,660 --> 00:44:08,340
Speaker 1: give them some space. But the narrator and her sister,

788
00:44:08,460 --> 00:44:11,100
Speaker 1: she says, would always be close. And this will come

789
00:44:11,140 --> 00:44:15,510
Speaker 1: back later. She becomes a little more lyrical remembering the

790
00:44:15,550 --> 00:44:19,090
Speaker 1: husband's singing voice when he would lead the choir at

791
00:44:19,130 --> 00:44:21,910
Speaker 1: local lodge meeting nights. She says, quote, it brings the

792
00:44:22,010 --> 00:44:25,060
Speaker 1: shivers on me now to think of it. And she

793
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:28,620
Speaker 1: describes being able, in some instances, to hear the choir

794
00:44:28,700 --> 00:44:32,220
Speaker 1: singing together even on nights when she would stay home. Quote,

795
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,480
Speaker 1: the singing coming up through the trees there and the moonlight,

796
00:44:35,719 --> 00:44:39,049
Speaker 1: summer nights, the full moon shining. I'll never hear anything

797
00:44:39,090 --> 00:44:41,850
Speaker 1: so beautiful. I'll never know a joy like that again.

798
00:44:41,870 --> 00:44:46,450
Speaker 1: So we've talked on the show before about how werewolf

799
00:44:46,489 --> 00:44:51,030
Speaker 1: stories have a tendency to be tragic in nature, often

800
00:44:51,070 --> 00:44:53,910
Speaker 1: have a kind of tragedy or melancholy about them. And

801
00:44:53,930 --> 00:44:57,110
Speaker 1: I like that That melancholy comes through in the narration

802
00:44:57,190 --> 00:45:01,629
Speaker 1: here before we even get to anything about a transformation.

803
00:45:01,690 --> 00:45:03,970
Speaker 2: Yeah, before we even know we're reading a werewolf story.

804
00:45:04,969 --> 00:45:07,670
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll never know a joy like that again. But

805
00:45:07,710 --> 00:45:10,430
Speaker 1: she says they fall in love, they become husband and wife,

806
00:45:10,469 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: and they have children. But over time, the wife describes

807
00:45:14,219 --> 00:45:17,859
Speaker 1: how she is crestfallen when things begin to turn strange.

808
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 1: The husband starts going out of the house by himself

809
00:45:21,780 --> 00:45:25,930
Speaker 1: when everybody else is asleep. or unexpectedly leaving by himself

810
00:45:26,050 --> 00:45:29,890
Speaker 1: on hunting trips in the woods. But the wife says, quote,

811
00:45:29,989 --> 00:45:32,670
Speaker 1: he was so good and responsible, it was no call

812
00:45:32,690 --> 00:45:35,270
Speaker 1: of mine to go asking why and where and all

813
00:45:35,310 --> 00:45:39,660
Speaker 1: like that. So, you know, he's turning strange. He's not

814
00:45:39,700 --> 00:45:43,380
Speaker 1: exactly like he was when they first met, but also

815
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:45,759
Speaker 1: he's still so good in some ways that she can't

816
00:45:45,820 --> 00:45:50,180
Speaker 1: bring herself to really bother him about it. And then

817
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:53,450
Speaker 1: she says, after these trips... She says he always comes

818
00:45:53,530 --> 00:45:56,430
Speaker 1: back worn out and bad tempered, which is so unlike

819
00:45:56,489 --> 00:45:58,370
Speaker 1: him the rest of the time. And she doesn't want

820
00:45:58,390 --> 00:46:02,150
Speaker 1: to ask him what happened. But she starts to worry, quote,

821
00:46:02,290 --> 00:46:04,509
Speaker 1: not so much that he went, but that he come

822
00:46:04,550 --> 00:46:09,029
Speaker 1: back so tired and strange. Even he smelled strange. It

823
00:46:09,070 --> 00:46:12,580
Speaker 1: made my hair stand up on end. In these instances,

824
00:46:12,660 --> 00:46:14,799
Speaker 1: the husband says he doesn't know what the smell is,

825
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:17,100
Speaker 1: doesn't know what she's talking about. But then later the

826
00:46:17,140 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: wife catches him secretly running off to bathe himself when

827
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: he thinks she isn't looking. So he's like washing himself

828
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: over and over again. There's also a part early on

829
00:46:28,340 --> 00:46:31,589
Speaker 1: where she mentions that she thinks whatever was wrong with

830
00:46:31,650 --> 00:46:34,250
Speaker 1: the husband was something in his blood, something that he

831
00:46:34,290 --> 00:46:37,310
Speaker 1: got from his father. Because she says his father was

832
00:46:37,350 --> 00:46:39,770
Speaker 1: from another place. He didn't have any kin around where

833
00:46:39,810 --> 00:46:43,330
Speaker 1: they lived. And there was always talk about the father,

834
00:46:43,390 --> 00:46:45,890
Speaker 1: about how something went off in him when there was

835
00:46:45,930 --> 00:46:48,850
Speaker 1: a change in the moon. The wife says she doesn't

836
00:46:48,890 --> 00:46:51,770
Speaker 1: know what happened to the husband's father, that he went

837
00:46:51,810 --> 00:46:56,029
Speaker 1: away somewhere, maybe back where he came from. Eventually, we

838
00:46:56,210 --> 00:46:59,300
Speaker 1: reach the part of the story where the catastrophe arrives,

839
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:02,880
Speaker 1: what the wife calls the awful thing. It comes one

840
00:47:02,940 --> 00:47:06,060
Speaker 1: night when the husband is home and their youngest child,

841
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:09,770
Speaker 1: with no warning, begins acting afraid of the father, who

842
00:47:09,810 --> 00:47:12,130
Speaker 1: again was always so gentle and good with the kids.

843
00:47:12,730 --> 00:47:17,219
Speaker 1: The youngest child hides behind her mother and cries, saying

844
00:47:17,260 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: of the father, make it go away, make it go away,

845
00:47:20,900 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: referring to the father as it instead of him. And

846
00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:27,050
Speaker 1: they try to figure out what's wrong. The wife asks

847
00:47:27,180 --> 00:47:30,009
Speaker 1: the child what's gotten into her. The husband says, guess

848
00:47:30,030 --> 00:47:33,910
Speaker 1: she just waked up dreaming. So the husband stays away

849
00:47:33,969 --> 00:47:35,810
Speaker 1: the rest of the day after that, like he does

850
00:47:35,850 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: sometimes when he goes out. leaving the wife alone with

851
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:43,359
Speaker 1: the children. But sometime later, she's sleeping, and she wakes

852
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:46,620
Speaker 1: up when she hears stirring in the passage. She gets

853
00:47:46,739 --> 00:47:50,509
Speaker 1: up and goes to investigate, and finds her husband outside,

854
00:47:50,770 --> 00:47:53,290
Speaker 1: standing in the tall grass by the entrance to their home,

855
00:47:53,910 --> 00:47:57,310
Speaker 1: looking like something is wrong with his head hanging. Then

856
00:47:57,430 --> 00:48:01,300
Speaker 1: she describes with terror that his body begins to change.

857
00:48:01,780 --> 00:48:05,580
Speaker 1: His feet grow long, they're stretching, and then they begin

858
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:08,489
Speaker 1: smoothing over. And here I just have to read from

859
00:48:08,530 --> 00:48:11,870
Speaker 1: the story. Le Guin writes, quote, The hair begun to

860
00:48:11,930 --> 00:48:14,730
Speaker 1: come away all over his body. It was like his

861
00:48:14,790 --> 00:48:18,450
Speaker 1: hair fried away in the sunlight and was gone. He

862
00:48:18,489 --> 00:48:22,529
Speaker 1: was white all over then, like a worm skin. Then

863
00:48:22,590 --> 00:48:26,330
Speaker 1: she describes his face changing while he looks right at her. Quote,

864
00:48:26,820 --> 00:48:30,780
Speaker 1: The mouth flat and wide and the teeth grinning flat

865
00:48:31,100 --> 00:48:34,280
Speaker 1: and dull and the nose just a knob of flesh

866
00:48:34,340 --> 00:48:38,160
Speaker 1: with nostril holes and the ears gone and the eyes

867
00:48:38,219 --> 00:48:42,510
Speaker 1: gone blue, blue with white rims around the blue, staring

868
00:48:42,570 --> 00:48:46,170
Speaker 1: at me out of that flat, soft, white face. He

869
00:48:46,290 --> 00:48:50,710
Speaker 1: stood up then on two legs. So, the big twist

870
00:48:50,750 --> 00:48:54,310
Speaker 1: in the story comes, the husband is a werewolf, but

871
00:48:54,350 --> 00:48:59,290
Speaker 1: the normal parameters of the story are reversed. All along,

872
00:48:59,530 --> 00:49:03,850
Speaker 1: the characters you've been reading about have been wolves. The

873
00:49:03,910 --> 00:49:07,299
Speaker 1: husband is who has a curse in his blood, has changed.

874
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,800
Speaker 1: He's changed, it says, under the chilling glare of the sun.

875
00:49:10,820 --> 00:49:14,810
Speaker 1: And what he's changed into is a human being. So

876
00:49:14,870 --> 00:49:19,210
Speaker 1: now her good, beloved husband stands before her no longer

877
00:49:19,230 --> 00:49:24,540
Speaker 1: this handsome, loving wolf, but a tall, pale, hairless man

878
00:49:24,739 --> 00:49:28,440
Speaker 1: thing walking on two legs. If you can read the

879
00:49:28,460 --> 00:49:31,660
Speaker 1: story unspoiled, I think it is a tremendous twist.

880
00:49:32,100 --> 00:49:35,140
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Not just in the nature of the twist, but

881
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:39,440
Speaker 2: just in the reading experience. Yeah. Having visualized everything up

882
00:49:39,460 --> 00:49:43,460
Speaker 2: to this point and then experiencing the change. And so

883
00:49:43,540 --> 00:49:47,140
Speaker 2: just as the character is transforming, your understanding of the

884
00:49:47,219 --> 00:49:51,819
Speaker 2: story is transforming. Um, it's quite unique. Like I was

885
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 2: thinking just how, if this was not like written so

886
00:49:55,680 --> 00:50:01,710
Speaker 2: superbly and handled so smoothly, uh, this would feel so gimmicky. Like, like,

887
00:50:01,790 --> 00:50:03,750
Speaker 2: and it would, I was trying to think, could this

888
00:50:03,969 --> 00:50:07,210
Speaker 2: ever work as, um, like in a visual medium, like

889
00:50:07,330 --> 00:50:07,529
Speaker 2: in a film?

890
00:50:07,550 --> 00:50:08,680
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah.

891
00:50:08,739 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 2: I mean, it, if it did, you would have to,

892
00:50:10,860 --> 00:50:12,779
Speaker 2: it would be something completely different. You could tell the

893
00:50:12,820 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 2: basic story, but you'd have to tell it in a

894
00:50:14,660 --> 00:50:17,820
Speaker 2: totally different way. Uh, this is something that just works

895
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:20,870
Speaker 2: so perfectly the way that it is put together as a,

896
00:50:20,940 --> 00:50:22,890
Speaker 2: as a, as a work of written fiction.

897
00:50:23,530 --> 00:50:28,029
Speaker 1: It, it's amazing that the story manages to pass as

898
00:50:28,110 --> 00:50:32,370
Speaker 1: being about humans until you realize the inversion. Like, once

899
00:50:32,430 --> 00:50:34,970
Speaker 1: you look back on the earlier details or read the

900
00:50:35,010 --> 00:50:38,880
Speaker 1: story again, it makes perfect sense thinking about the characters

901
00:50:39,020 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: as wolves. Like, nothing that is said apart from sort

902
00:50:43,020 --> 00:50:46,680
Speaker 1: of the imbuing of the wolves with sentience and the

903
00:50:46,719 --> 00:50:49,100
Speaker 1: ability to communicate, which, you know, is often done in

904
00:50:49,340 --> 00:50:54,719
Speaker 1: stories with animals. There's nothing otherwise that would violate the

905
00:50:54,780 --> 00:50:58,589
Speaker 1: reality understanding of them being wolves. And if you think

906
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:01,930
Speaker 1: about trying to write this way, it's really difficult to

907
00:51:02,030 --> 00:51:04,270
Speaker 1: tell a story like this in a way that's not

908
00:51:04,469 --> 00:51:07,670
Speaker 1: overly conspicuous. I think it helps that the story is

909
00:51:07,730 --> 00:51:12,180
Speaker 1: very short, but I still think it's a really interesting feat.

910
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:14,399
Speaker 1: After the first time I read it, I looked back

911
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 1: in the first half and noticed a lot of clues

912
00:51:16,580 --> 00:51:19,900
Speaker 1: that That would later make more sense with the inversion,

913
00:51:19,980 --> 00:51:22,560
Speaker 1: like all of the references to hunting trips, the husband's

914
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:25,180
Speaker 1: always going on hunting trips. Of course, when you first

915
00:51:25,239 --> 00:51:27,000
Speaker 1: read it, you imagine a man going out in the

916
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 1: woods with a gun, but they also make perfect sense

917
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:33,140
Speaker 1: with the family being wolves. You know, they never, the

918
00:51:33,820 --> 00:51:36,290
Speaker 1: narration never talks about them living in a house, but

919
00:51:36,330 --> 00:51:38,870
Speaker 1: does talk about them like going inside and outside and

920
00:51:38,890 --> 00:51:42,319
Speaker 1: that's going into their den and coming out of their den. Uh,

921
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:44,420
Speaker 1: you know, they like going on walks in the woods,

922
00:51:44,500 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 1: which humans do as well, but it has a different

923
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:47,739
Speaker 1: meaning now.

924
00:51:49,620 --> 00:51:49,880
Speaker 2: Yes.

925
00:51:49,980 --> 00:51:53,219
Speaker 1: The singing, the singing, uh, the, the howling at the moon,

926
00:51:53,260 --> 00:51:55,739
Speaker 1: of course, singing at lodge meetings that takes on a

927
00:51:55,760 --> 00:51:59,379
Speaker 1: different meaning than you originally thought. Um, and there's this

928
00:51:59,420 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: kind of elemental storytelling, like the lack of proper names,

929
00:52:03,340 --> 00:52:07,960
Speaker 1: the lack of physical descriptions, except of environmental things like

930
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:11,480
Speaker 1: the woods or the moon. There's a general lack of

931
00:52:11,660 --> 00:52:14,720
Speaker 1: texture that would make clear that the characters are living

932
00:52:14,780 --> 00:52:17,460
Speaker 1: in a wolf's den instead of a house. And I

933
00:52:17,500 --> 00:52:21,620
Speaker 1: think it's pretty interesting that Le Guin is able to tell, again,

934
00:52:21,640 --> 00:52:25,860
Speaker 1: a very short, but tell an emotionally compelling story within

935
00:52:25,930 --> 00:52:27,670
Speaker 1: these constraints up to this point.

936
00:52:28,030 --> 00:52:33,250
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because it's kind of like a tightrope walk

937
00:52:33,770 --> 00:52:36,830
Speaker 2: to put this together. I don't really know enough about

938
00:52:36,870 --> 00:52:41,299
Speaker 2: the author's process, but I'm easily imagining multiple drafts to

939
00:52:41,340 --> 00:52:43,839
Speaker 2: get to this point where everything is balanced just so.

940
00:52:44,910 --> 00:52:47,890
Speaker 1: So the story does not end there. The wife sees

941
00:52:47,950 --> 00:52:52,630
Speaker 1: the husband transformed into this terrible man thing, the thing

942
00:52:52,750 --> 00:52:55,870
Speaker 1: walking on two legs. It's supposed to give you a

943
00:52:55,950 --> 00:53:00,090
Speaker 1: shiver when there's something so wrong about that, the walking

944
00:53:00,150 --> 00:53:04,090
Speaker 1: on two legs. And so the wife cries out in terror.

945
00:53:04,180 --> 00:53:07,000
Speaker 1: She wakes up the others, presumably the other wolves in

946
00:53:07,020 --> 00:53:11,170
Speaker 1: the pack. The man thing that had been the husband

947
00:53:11,450 --> 00:53:14,790
Speaker 1: launches into an attack on the wolf den. It shoves

948
00:53:14,870 --> 00:53:17,790
Speaker 1: its flat face into the opening of the den and

949
00:53:17,830 --> 00:53:20,950
Speaker 1: the children all begin to whimper and wail. And it

950
00:53:21,350 --> 00:53:24,250
Speaker 1: says that the man thing has no gun. You know,

951
00:53:24,489 --> 00:53:28,610
Speaker 1: there's awareness that sometimes the man thing would have a gun,

952
00:53:28,700 --> 00:53:31,580
Speaker 1: but this time it has no gun. And she describes

953
00:53:31,620 --> 00:53:35,780
Speaker 1: with dread as she watches it looking around outside the entrance,

954
00:53:35,900 --> 00:53:40,650
Speaker 1: realizing it is looking for a The man-thing finds a

955
00:53:40,710 --> 00:53:44,009
Speaker 1: heavy tree branch, which it picks up with its, quote,

956
00:53:44,180 --> 00:53:48,299
Speaker 1: long white foot. And then it attacks the den, jabbing

957
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 1: the branch down inside, trying to kill the wife and

958
00:53:51,300 --> 00:53:55,259
Speaker 1: the children. But then we see the wolf start to

959
00:53:55,300 --> 00:53:59,610
Speaker 1: show resilience. The wife describes how, quote, the mother anger

960
00:53:59,870 --> 00:54:03,150
Speaker 1: comes into her. And she snaps at the branch with

961
00:54:03,190 --> 00:54:07,330
Speaker 1: her jaws to defend her children. Then from outside the den,

962
00:54:07,450 --> 00:54:10,489
Speaker 1: she hears her sister come running. Her sister comes running, quote,

963
00:54:10,810 --> 00:54:13,509
Speaker 1: with her head low and her mane high and her

964
00:54:13,690 --> 00:54:17,220
Speaker 1: eyes yellow as the winter sun. So I love several

965
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 1: things here. First, like the heroic re-entrance of the sister

966
00:54:21,640 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 1: into the story is like a thrilling moment. But also

967
00:54:24,660 --> 00:54:29,580
Speaker 1: a very interesting use of this short phrase, the mother anger.

968
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:33,239
Speaker 1: I like that phrase because it can be read in

969
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: multiple ways. Like that could mean the anger that is

970
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: uniquely possessed by mothers, like the mother anger, the kind

971
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:43,140
Speaker 1: of anger that can only be summoned by a mother

972
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:46,839
Speaker 1: defending her children, or it could mean the anger that

973
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:49,719
Speaker 1: is a mother of some kind, like a sort of

974
00:54:49,739 --> 00:54:54,279
Speaker 1: emotion goddess, or this embodied force of anger that both

975
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:58,510
Speaker 1: maybe nurtures you and makes you ferocious. I like that

976
00:54:58,530 --> 00:55:00,770
Speaker 1: it can be read either way, and I think either

977
00:55:00,830 --> 00:55:02,089
Speaker 1: way works. Mm-hmm.

978
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:05,740
Speaker 2: And I love this detail of the grabbing of the branch.

979
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:10,180
Speaker 2: And this is just basic human behavior, our ability to

980
00:55:10,300 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 2: pick something up, update our body schema, use it as

981
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:15,740
Speaker 2: an extension of our body, use it as a tool,

982
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 2: and very likely a weapon. The idea that anything we

983
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:23,669
Speaker 2: touch can become a weapon and frequently does. That's just

984
00:55:24,090 --> 00:55:27,410
Speaker 2: the way we humans work. But of course, it's monstrous

985
00:55:27,450 --> 00:55:30,330
Speaker 2: to the wolf. And the wolf's view of this frames

986
00:55:30,450 --> 00:55:32,230
Speaker 2: it in a suitably monstrous fashion.

987
00:55:32,890 --> 00:55:35,089
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I have a whole section on that I want

988
00:55:35,110 --> 00:55:36,640
Speaker 1: to come back to in a few minutes because I

989
00:55:36,660 --> 00:55:40,100
Speaker 1: think that's one of the most interesting little horror moments

990
00:55:40,180 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 1: in the story. So we're racing to the conclusion now.

991
00:55:44,719 --> 00:55:47,469
Speaker 1: The man thing here raises its weapon to bash and

992
00:55:47,510 --> 00:55:50,130
Speaker 1: kill the sister as the sister wolf is coming in

993
00:55:50,710 --> 00:55:54,870
Speaker 1: to protect her family. But then the wife also attacks with, quote,

994
00:55:54,910 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 1: the mother anger kind of animating her body. And the

995
00:55:59,200 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 1: other wolves from the pack join in. They answer the

996
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:04,290
Speaker 1: wife's call. And we get this, again, kind of thrilling

997
00:56:04,370 --> 00:56:08,390
Speaker 1: moment of cooperation, like the pack coming together in the

998
00:56:08,430 --> 00:56:12,330
Speaker 1: face of this horrifying thing. And together they force the

999
00:56:12,370 --> 00:56:15,730
Speaker 1: man thing to retreat. And it breaks and runs on

1000
00:56:15,770 --> 00:56:18,799
Speaker 1: its two legs, quote, heading for the cleared fields and

1001
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:23,239
Speaker 1: plow lands down the mountainside. So where you might get

1002
00:56:23,260 --> 00:56:25,740
Speaker 1: a scene in a normal werewolf story of the werewolf

1003
00:56:25,840 --> 00:56:28,759
Speaker 1: cornered by the villagers with pitchforks and torches, and it

1004
00:56:28,820 --> 00:56:32,200
Speaker 1: runs for the woods. The man thing here cornered by

1005
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:35,020
Speaker 1: the wolf pack breaks and runs for the plow lands.

1006
00:56:35,260 --> 00:56:39,390
Speaker 1: It is running to this monster haunted wilderness from the

1007
00:56:39,430 --> 00:56:41,750
Speaker 1: wolf's perspective. Yeah. Yeah.

1008
00:56:41,770 --> 00:56:44,370
Speaker 2: Like kind of the anti wilderness, like this place of

1009
00:56:44,550 --> 00:56:48,509
Speaker 2: human desolation, uh, not the wild world, but, um, like

1010
00:56:48,590 --> 00:56:53,620
Speaker 2: a managed heavily managed world. That's the alien landscape that

1011
00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:54,299
Speaker 2: it calls home.

1012
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:57,660
Speaker 1: So the wife joins in the chase going after the

1013
00:56:57,680 --> 00:57:01,020
Speaker 1: man thing, though she says she's running last in the

1014
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:05,420
Speaker 1: group because as horrible as the man thing is, she

1015
00:57:05,520 --> 00:57:10,339
Speaker 1: still loves the husband. And if he's somewhere inside there,

1016
00:57:10,400 --> 00:57:13,220
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to shake that love. But by

1017
00:57:13,260 --> 00:57:16,230
Speaker 1: the time she catches up, the monster is already dead.

1018
00:57:16,350 --> 00:57:20,860
Speaker 1: Her sister's teeth are in its throat. And it's described

1019
00:57:20,910 --> 00:57:23,110
Speaker 1: as sort of a traumatic event for the whole pack.

1020
00:57:23,190 --> 00:57:26,030
Speaker 1: The young ones are still frightened and crying. They're looking

1021
00:57:26,050 --> 00:57:30,170
Speaker 1: for consolation from their parents. There is a horrible taste

1022
00:57:30,290 --> 00:57:33,270
Speaker 1: and smell coming from the man thing's blood. It describes

1023
00:57:33,330 --> 00:57:35,690
Speaker 1: the sister trying to get it off of her mouth,

1024
00:57:35,830 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: wiping all over. And only the wife approaches the dead

1025
00:57:40,260 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: man thing's body because somehow she's hoping to see the

1026
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:47,780
Speaker 1: husband again. She imagines that somehow now that it's dead,

1027
00:57:48,340 --> 00:57:51,940
Speaker 1: it might transform back into him. And she wants to

1028
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:54,480
Speaker 1: see her love again in his true form once more.

1029
00:57:54,500 --> 00:57:58,420
Speaker 1: And we know this often happens in other werewolf movies, right?

1030
00:57:58,460 --> 00:58:02,310
Speaker 1: It's often the monster transforms back into the person after

1031
00:58:02,350 --> 00:58:03,370
Speaker 1: it has been vanquished.

1032
00:58:03,450 --> 00:58:07,590
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an ancient tool of werewolf storytelling where the

1033
00:58:08,970 --> 00:58:12,430
Speaker 2: slain monster is now returned to its human form.

1034
00:58:13,650 --> 00:58:17,270
Speaker 1: But alas, it doesn't happen. Now, All it is is

1035
00:58:17,350 --> 00:58:21,550
Speaker 1: a dead, bloody, reeking man thing, and it will not

1036
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:24,120
Speaker 1: do her the kindness of letting her see her husband again.

1037
00:58:24,140 --> 00:58:27,880
Speaker 1: The closing line is, quote, We drew back and back

1038
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:30,940
Speaker 1: from it, and turned and ran back up into the hills,

1039
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:33,930
Speaker 1: back to the woods of the shadows and the twilight

1040
00:58:34,130 --> 00:58:35,070
Speaker 1: and the blessed dark.

1041
00:58:38,070 --> 00:58:40,750
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent story. And I love that last line, the

1042
00:58:40,790 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 2: blessed dark, too. The darkness is not a place of...

1043
00:58:44,450 --> 00:58:48,980
Speaker 2: Of horror, terror. It is the refuge one imagines. It's

1044
00:58:49,060 --> 00:58:52,140
Speaker 2: the illuminated world that the man-things live in.

1045
00:58:52,860 --> 00:58:55,540
Speaker 1: So even though this is an older story, I found

1046
00:58:55,580 --> 00:58:59,820
Speaker 1: this twist quite fresh and exciting. But I know it's

1047
00:58:59,860 --> 00:59:02,280
Speaker 1: not the only story that does this. I'm sure there

1048
00:59:02,300 --> 00:59:05,340
Speaker 1: are tons of reverse werewolves in fiction out there. I

1049
00:59:06,070 --> 00:59:08,510
Speaker 1: don't know if I've ever really come across them before,

1050
00:59:08,550 --> 00:59:09,310
Speaker 1: but I know they're there.

1051
00:59:10,010 --> 00:59:13,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they are a far rarer thing and

1052
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:16,600
Speaker 2: a thing that is more a product of more or

1053
00:59:16,620 --> 00:59:20,520
Speaker 2: less contemporary fiction, like a play on the classic werewolf.

1054
00:59:22,420 --> 00:59:24,860
Speaker 2: It is something that has always existed in Dungeons &

1055
00:59:24,860 --> 00:59:28,660
Speaker 2: Dragons since the 1970s, where it is called a wolfware.

1056
00:59:29,730 --> 00:59:32,750
Speaker 2: You're just flipping it, right? And they're also positioned as

1057
00:59:32,870 --> 00:59:36,570
Speaker 2: enemies of werewolves, as makes sense for a reverse werewolf.

1058
00:59:38,420 --> 00:59:40,480
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever encountered them or used them

1059
00:59:40,620 --> 00:59:44,900
Speaker 2: in a game or anything. There's also apparently one in

1060
00:59:44,940 --> 00:59:48,919
Speaker 2: Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel, Reaper Man, though that is not

1061
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:51,010
Speaker 2: one of the Discworld novels I've read, so I can't

1062
00:59:51,050 --> 00:59:52,790
Speaker 2: really speak to it. He also has, of course, normal

1063
00:59:53,410 --> 00:59:57,990
Speaker 2: traditional werewolf characters. One in particular that's pretty notable, but

1064
00:59:58,590 --> 01:00:02,030
Speaker 2: But also, yes, one wolf wear on top of that.

1065
01:00:02,610 --> 01:00:05,610
Speaker 2: So I do think that, yeah, this is something you

1066
01:00:05,650 --> 01:00:09,490
Speaker 2: tend to encounter outside of folklore. Though you do have,

1067
01:00:09,530 --> 01:00:12,919
Speaker 2: of course, lots of trends in general animism and mythology

1068
01:00:12,980 --> 01:00:16,620
Speaker 2: where you either have animals behaving as people or people

1069
01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 2: who are on some level former animals. But I think

1070
01:00:21,180 --> 01:00:23,680
Speaker 2: this idea, when we do encounter it, it is about

1071
01:00:23,820 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 2: reevaluating the message of older werewolf tales, turning them on

1072
01:00:27,220 --> 01:00:30,570
Speaker 2: their head. And, you know, saying, who is the real monster?

1073
01:00:31,290 --> 01:00:44,970
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. You know, as I was talking about things

1074
01:00:45,070 --> 01:00:49,070
Speaker 1: that make sense when you think about the main characters

1075
01:00:49,150 --> 01:00:51,470
Speaker 1: as wolves rather than humans, when you go back and

1076
01:00:51,490 --> 01:00:54,170
Speaker 1: read it a second time. Another thing that I think

1077
01:00:54,310 --> 01:00:58,430
Speaker 1: really works like this is the day-night inversion in the story.

1078
01:00:59,410 --> 01:01:03,120
Speaker 1: So this can kind of go past you without you

1079
01:01:03,160 --> 01:01:06,440
Speaker 1: even noticing it the first time you read. But so

1080
01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:09,740
Speaker 1: the narrator says, quote, always it happens in the dark

1081
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 1: of the moon when everybody's home and asleep. Something comes

1082
01:01:13,760 --> 01:01:15,560
Speaker 1: over the one that's got the curse in his blood,

1083
01:01:15,620 --> 01:01:18,220
Speaker 1: they say, and he gets up because he can't sleep

1084
01:01:18,490 --> 01:01:21,650
Speaker 1: and goes out into the glaring sun and goes off

1085
01:01:21,730 --> 01:01:25,530
Speaker 1: all alone. drawn to find those like him. This isn't

1086
01:01:25,710 --> 01:01:28,590
Speaker 1: the part where they're talking about like what, what explained it.

1087
01:01:28,650 --> 01:01:30,470
Speaker 1: And maybe it was something to do with the father

1088
01:01:30,490 --> 01:01:33,290
Speaker 1: or something he got from his father. Uh, but like

1089
01:01:33,310 --> 01:01:35,320
Speaker 1: I said, this can just go right by without you

1090
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:39,420
Speaker 1: even noticing that it's different than the normal werewolf lore

1091
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:42,380
Speaker 1: the first time. Uh, but it is inverting the day

1092
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 1: night cycle of the base human werewolf. So this werewolf

1093
01:01:45,660 --> 01:01:49,300
Speaker 1: goes home and is in his normal shape under the

1094
01:01:49,380 --> 01:01:52,230
Speaker 1: moon and but then goes out and turns into a

1095
01:01:52,290 --> 01:01:54,710
Speaker 1: man during the daytime when the rest of the family

1096
01:01:54,770 --> 01:01:59,210
Speaker 1: is asleep. This is somewhat based on thinking of wolves

1097
01:01:59,290 --> 01:02:03,540
Speaker 1: as nocturnal. I should note, you know, wolves are not

1098
01:02:03,660 --> 01:02:06,820
Speaker 1: actually strictly nocturnal. They have, I was reading about this,

1099
01:02:07,040 --> 01:02:10,280
Speaker 1: they have like flexible activity levels across the day and night,

1100
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:14,070
Speaker 1: and these can adjust based on environmental factors, might change

1101
01:02:14,130 --> 01:02:17,630
Speaker 1: seasonally or based on climate or prey availability, all kinds

1102
01:02:17,670 --> 01:02:21,090
Speaker 1: of things. But they often do hunt at night. But

1103
01:02:21,530 --> 01:02:23,610
Speaker 1: there's another side to this that I thought was interesting

1104
01:02:23,650 --> 01:02:27,590
Speaker 1: too in the story, which is repeated uses of the

1105
01:02:27,730 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 1: sun and the daylight as frightening environmental cues, the same

1106
01:02:32,740 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: way that the dark and the moonlight are typically used

1107
01:02:35,940 --> 01:02:40,260
Speaker 1: in horror stories. There are several examples of this in

1108
01:02:40,360 --> 01:02:42,950
Speaker 1: the story, but one is like when the wolves begin

1109
01:02:42,990 --> 01:02:46,610
Speaker 1: to fight back against the man thing, the narrator says, quote,

1110
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:49,580
Speaker 1: The others all were coming, answering my call, the whole

1111
01:02:49,620 --> 01:02:53,510
Speaker 1: pack gathering there in that blind glare and heat of

1112
01:02:53,570 --> 01:02:56,330
Speaker 1: the sun at noon. So it's like setting this up

1113
01:02:56,390 --> 01:03:00,270
Speaker 1: as if like the daytime heightens the dramatic intensity of

1114
01:03:00,310 --> 01:03:03,170
Speaker 1: the danger here. It's like fighting the vampire at midnight.

1115
01:03:03,230 --> 01:03:04,270
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

1116
01:03:04,290 --> 01:03:06,430
Speaker 1: I love it. Another thing I want to come back

1117
01:03:06,470 --> 01:03:08,970
Speaker 1: to is something you sort of raised earlier, which is

1118
01:03:09,050 --> 01:03:12,670
Speaker 1: the idea of this as a story in which the

1119
01:03:12,750 --> 01:03:17,070
Speaker 1: human being is the monster. This is not the only

1120
01:03:17,120 --> 01:03:19,610
Speaker 1: horror story like this. There are other stories that kind

1121
01:03:19,630 --> 01:03:22,730
Speaker 1: of drive at the conclusion that human beings are the

1122
01:03:22,790 --> 01:03:25,730
Speaker 1: ultimate monsters. But I think this story does it in

1123
01:03:25,770 --> 01:03:28,810
Speaker 1: a pretty unique way. And I'll explain what I mean.

1124
01:03:28,830 --> 01:03:32,990
Speaker 1: A lot of the man is the monster stories, I think,

1125
01:03:33,050 --> 01:03:38,450
Speaker 1: ultimately come down to just pessimistic assessments of human nature

1126
01:03:38,650 --> 01:03:41,870
Speaker 1: or of the human heart. So it's like, look how

1127
01:03:41,970 --> 01:03:46,440
Speaker 1: savage and cruel humans can be or. Look how great

1128
01:03:46,520 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: is the chasm between our lofty, sophisticated self-image and the

1129
01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:54,070
Speaker 1: grubby reality of how we behave when the chips are

1130
01:03:54,110 --> 01:03:57,530
Speaker 1: down or when nobody's looking. I think Frankenstein is a

1131
01:03:57,570 --> 01:04:01,770
Speaker 1: great example of both of these versions of the man-is-the-monster story.

1132
01:04:02,810 --> 01:04:06,830
Speaker 1: So you get both flavors. In Victor himself, we get

1133
01:04:06,870 --> 01:04:09,680
Speaker 1: the contrast between his hubris and his attempts to play

1134
01:04:09,720 --> 01:04:14,230
Speaker 1: at God Versus how he actually behaves in tough situations

1135
01:04:14,270 --> 01:04:18,300
Speaker 1: where he can be callous and cowardly and, you know,

1136
01:04:18,340 --> 01:04:21,100
Speaker 1: he can fail to do the right thing and take responsibility.

1137
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:24,000
Speaker 1: And then in the broader world of Frankenstein, we just

1138
01:04:24,020 --> 01:04:29,000
Speaker 1: see general cruelty and heartlessness. There's the reality that the

1139
01:04:29,060 --> 01:04:32,620
Speaker 1: creature only wants love, but because he is ugly, people

1140
01:04:32,660 --> 01:04:34,919
Speaker 1: will not give him that chance. And so they try

1141
01:04:34,960 --> 01:04:38,700
Speaker 1: to destroy him on sight. I think that's the more

1142
01:04:38,780 --> 01:04:42,460
Speaker 1: standard man is the monster story. The wife story is

1143
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:45,860
Speaker 1: very different take on, on the human being as the monster.

1144
01:04:46,300 --> 01:04:48,840
Speaker 1: It's one that takes the premise in a more primal

1145
01:04:48,940 --> 01:04:53,900
Speaker 1: and ecologically rooted direction and asks, it asks us to

1146
01:04:53,980 --> 01:04:57,920
Speaker 1: see what is terrifying about the human as an animal

1147
01:04:58,140 --> 01:05:02,240
Speaker 1: from another animal's point of view. So in a normal

1148
01:05:02,280 --> 01:05:05,570
Speaker 1: werewolf story, a familiar person who happens to be of

1149
01:05:05,610 --> 01:05:10,760
Speaker 1: the species Homo sapiens is, transforms into a frightening, dangerous animal.

1150
01:05:10,820 --> 01:05:14,280
Speaker 1: And you've got all of the biological markers of that terror,

1151
01:05:14,320 --> 01:05:18,080
Speaker 1: the sharp teeth, the claws, the, you know, the deadly jaws.

1152
01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:21,460
Speaker 1: The wife's story takes the same idea, but it flips

1153
01:05:21,560 --> 01:05:24,419
Speaker 1: it and it asks the reader to think from the

1154
01:05:24,540 --> 01:05:29,240
Speaker 1: wolf's point of view and to see the biological markers

1155
01:05:29,300 --> 01:05:32,390
Speaker 1: of horror in the human animal, that cunning brain, the

1156
01:05:32,490 --> 01:05:36,620
Speaker 1: grasping hands of of the bipedal primate standing up on

1157
01:05:36,700 --> 01:05:40,460
Speaker 1: two legs as horrifying the same way that we see

1158
01:05:40,500 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 1: the jaws and the teeth of the wolf. Because when

1159
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:46,550
Speaker 1: you think about it, the human is a terrifying animal.

1160
01:05:47,010 --> 01:05:49,870
Speaker 1: What if one were to suddenly appear inside your home

1161
01:05:49,930 --> 01:05:52,470
Speaker 1: and could like reach you and your pups while you sleep?

1162
01:05:54,050 --> 01:05:56,300
Speaker 1: And so you brought this up earlier, and I think

1163
01:05:56,340 --> 01:05:58,260
Speaker 1: this is a great point that the way that the

1164
01:05:58,340 --> 01:06:04,600
Speaker 1: human animal has this horrifying ability to further transform itself

1165
01:06:04,740 --> 01:06:08,860
Speaker 1: by picking up weapons. Like that moment right after the

1166
01:06:08,910 --> 01:06:13,350
Speaker 1: transformation when the wife watches the husband pick up the

1167
01:06:13,410 --> 01:06:16,690
Speaker 1: branch and attack the den. It just hit me how

1168
01:06:16,790 --> 01:06:19,890
Speaker 1: strange this is from the wolf's eyes. The wolf can

1169
01:06:20,030 --> 01:06:23,190
Speaker 1: fight and the wolf can bite, but it's always the

1170
01:06:23,230 --> 01:06:28,250
Speaker 1: same wolf. The man becomes ever more dangerous by changing

1171
01:06:28,310 --> 01:06:32,220
Speaker 1: itself by incorporating weapons and tools and You never know

1172
01:06:32,280 --> 01:06:35,709
Speaker 1: exactly what it can do by grasping something with those

1173
01:06:35,790 --> 01:06:37,050
Speaker 1: hands and using it.

1174
01:06:37,730 --> 01:06:41,950
Speaker 2: Yeah, because obviously a wolf cannot pick up, say, a

1175
01:06:41,990 --> 01:06:47,890
Speaker 2: pickaxe and swing it. There's some basic anatomy differences there.

1176
01:06:48,380 --> 01:06:54,180
Speaker 2: But also, does a wolf know what it's looking at?

1177
01:06:54,200 --> 01:06:57,620
Speaker 2: The wolf doesn't understand what's happening. And that would make

1178
01:06:57,640 --> 01:07:00,610
Speaker 2: it even more... It would be like watching somebody... commit

1179
01:07:00,630 --> 01:07:03,170
Speaker 2: an act of sorcery. And I think that's how it

1180
01:07:03,230 --> 01:07:04,030
Speaker 2: reads in the story.

1181
01:07:04,930 --> 01:07:07,780
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the exact same thing. So there's another,

1182
01:07:07,800 --> 01:07:11,340
Speaker 1: I guess I'll get into it now. So the other

1183
01:07:11,460 --> 01:07:15,500
Speaker 1: horrifying feature of the inversion here is the mind inversion

1184
01:07:15,520 --> 01:07:19,380
Speaker 1: you get in the wolf to man transformation. As we

1185
01:07:19,420 --> 01:07:21,600
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, you know, werewolf stories are often

1186
01:07:21,660 --> 01:07:25,630
Speaker 1: tragic in nature because the werewolf is a reluctant monster.

1187
01:07:25,770 --> 01:07:29,640
Speaker 1: Not always, but often it's The werewolf character is a

1188
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:32,880
Speaker 1: good and reasonable person. They don't want to be causing harm.

1189
01:07:33,660 --> 01:07:37,300
Speaker 1: The curse of the wolf transforms them, and then against

1190
01:07:37,440 --> 01:07:40,420
Speaker 1: their will, they are turned into a beast that is

1191
01:07:40,880 --> 01:07:44,870
Speaker 1: not only physically dangerous, but mentally beast-like. So it is

1192
01:07:45,030 --> 01:07:51,030
Speaker 1: vicious and unthinking. It doesn't retain the person's reason and

1193
01:07:51,090 --> 01:07:54,090
Speaker 1: gentleness and goodness. That has gone out of its mind.

1194
01:07:54,490 --> 01:07:58,000
Speaker 1: Now it only has a predatory beast's mind. But this

1195
01:07:58,040 --> 01:08:00,740
Speaker 1: story does, I think, imply that we should imagine the

1196
01:08:00,800 --> 01:08:05,950
Speaker 1: transformation going the other way, not a transformation that removes

1197
01:08:06,050 --> 01:08:12,610
Speaker 1: the human intellect, but horrifyingly endows it. Now, there might

1198
01:08:12,650 --> 01:08:14,890
Speaker 1: be a kind of objection to thinking about the story

1199
01:08:14,930 --> 01:08:17,610
Speaker 1: this way, which is that the wolves in the story

1200
01:08:18,110 --> 01:08:23,690
Speaker 1: are not portrayed as purely animalistic. They're sentient wolves, and

1201
01:08:23,710 --> 01:08:27,389
Speaker 1: they have the ability to communicate complex ideas between each other.

1202
01:08:28,080 --> 01:08:30,519
Speaker 1: And they have complex emotional lives. They do have a

1203
01:08:30,540 --> 01:08:33,519
Speaker 1: kind of culture. So I think it's not a case

1204
01:08:33,580 --> 01:08:37,780
Speaker 1: of an unthinking beast that transforms into a thing with intellect.

1205
01:08:38,300 --> 01:08:40,730
Speaker 1: But I do think there's still the implication that with

1206
01:08:40,780 --> 01:08:46,550
Speaker 1: this transformation, the new primate brain that is in this

1207
01:08:46,750 --> 01:08:50,689
Speaker 1: monster has a kind of alien intelligence, a frightening one

1208
01:08:50,710 --> 01:08:54,809
Speaker 1: that can, yeah, use tools. So like to the sentient wolf,

1209
01:08:55,330 --> 01:08:59,950
Speaker 1: The human world must be this terrifying maze of unholy myths.

1210
01:09:00,990 --> 01:09:04,520
Speaker 1: We do all these strange rituals that the wolf can't understand,

1211
01:09:04,610 --> 01:09:07,620
Speaker 1: but it turns into death for the wolf. You know,

1212
01:09:07,720 --> 01:09:11,380
Speaker 1: all these things we manipulate and stuff, the stuff we do.

1213
01:09:11,400 --> 01:09:14,559
Speaker 1: It means that when the wolf meets us, it almost

1214
01:09:14,720 --> 01:09:18,400
Speaker 1: always ends in brutal violence for the wolf for reasons

1215
01:09:18,439 --> 01:09:19,879
Speaker 1: that the wolf cannot understand.

1216
01:09:20,320 --> 01:09:21,650
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good read.

1217
01:09:22,370 --> 01:09:24,210
Speaker 1: So it's very much like you were saying, that the

1218
01:09:24,270 --> 01:09:27,030
Speaker 1: tool using intellect of the human is like a type

1219
01:09:27,070 --> 01:09:30,790
Speaker 1: of magic. It's a terrible sorcery. One last thing I

1220
01:09:30,830 --> 01:09:33,870
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about as a theme in this story

1221
01:09:34,070 --> 01:09:38,020
Speaker 1: is the way that it messes with the common werewolf

1222
01:09:38,040 --> 01:09:42,180
Speaker 1: story themes of alienation and familiarity. So, you know, a

1223
01:09:42,200 --> 01:09:45,439
Speaker 1: lot of werewolf stories mess with alienation and the uncanny,

1224
01:09:45,479 --> 01:09:49,120
Speaker 1: like how something or someone that is familiar and comfortable

1225
01:09:49,189 --> 01:09:53,769
Speaker 1: and good becomes mysterious and frightening. It's this transformation of

1226
01:09:54,170 --> 01:09:57,670
Speaker 1: the good and the safe into the dangerous. And there

1227
01:09:57,710 --> 01:10:01,210
Speaker 1: are these moments in the story where you get that ambiguity,

1228
01:10:01,290 --> 01:10:04,760
Speaker 1: like when the wife senses something different about the husband.

1229
01:10:05,729 --> 01:10:10,060
Speaker 1: It's unsettling. Or that creepy moment where the child senses

1230
01:10:10,140 --> 01:10:13,880
Speaker 1: the fundamental alteration before anybody else does, where the child

1231
01:10:13,960 --> 01:10:17,340
Speaker 1: is saying, make it go away, calling the man thing

1232
01:10:17,600 --> 01:10:20,990
Speaker 1: it before even the narrator does. when it's still in

1233
01:10:21,010 --> 01:10:24,850
Speaker 1: the form of the wolf husband. But I think it's

1234
01:10:24,910 --> 01:10:28,010
Speaker 1: also interesting the way that the sister character plays into

1235
01:10:28,070 --> 01:10:32,400
Speaker 1: the familiarity themes. Ultimately, it is the wife's sister who

1236
01:10:32,450 --> 01:10:35,960
Speaker 1: kills the monster in the end. And remember, we're told

1237
01:10:36,280 --> 01:10:39,360
Speaker 1: early in the story, the wife says that she and

1238
01:10:39,380 --> 01:10:41,980
Speaker 1: her sister were always close and they lived together at

1239
01:10:42,040 --> 01:10:44,960
Speaker 1: the beginning. But when she got together with the husband,

1240
01:10:45,020 --> 01:10:47,370
Speaker 1: sister had to move out to make room for them.

1241
01:10:48,210 --> 01:10:52,080
Speaker 1: And I think it's raising concerns Common questions that it's

1242
01:10:52,120 --> 01:10:54,160
Speaker 1: a thing that's explored in horror in a lot of

1243
01:10:54,200 --> 01:10:57,420
Speaker 1: different ways, but it's a thing people wonder about. When

1244
01:10:57,439 --> 01:11:00,479
Speaker 1: you fall in love with someone, do you really know them?

1245
01:11:01,350 --> 01:11:04,050
Speaker 1: And do you really understand what they are? And how

1246
01:11:04,090 --> 01:11:07,710
Speaker 1: maybe love can make it feel like you know somebody

1247
01:11:07,850 --> 01:11:11,360
Speaker 1: better than you really do. They can come to you

1248
01:11:11,580 --> 01:11:16,370
Speaker 1: very quickly. feel very comfortable uh but there's always maybe

1249
01:11:16,410 --> 01:11:19,470
Speaker 1: some greater mystery like is part of this an illusion

1250
01:11:19,570 --> 01:11:24,089
Speaker 1: is this familiarity something i'm talking myself into just because

1251
01:11:24,140 --> 01:11:27,150
Speaker 1: of this feeling of love and the familiar can then

1252
01:11:27,220 --> 01:11:30,660
Speaker 1: later become strange again but in the end in the

1253
01:11:30,720 --> 01:11:33,040
Speaker 1: story the monster the man thing is killed by the

1254
01:11:33,100 --> 01:11:36,000
Speaker 1: sister and so there's this idea that you know in

1255
01:11:36,020 --> 01:11:39,340
Speaker 1: the sister that's where like the real trust can reside.

1256
01:11:38,800 --> 01:11:43,520
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah that's a good point as well Yeah, this is,

1257
01:11:44,040 --> 01:11:46,860
Speaker 2: like I say, this story is also like, in ways

1258
01:11:46,900 --> 01:11:50,990
Speaker 2: even more like a curio because your second experience reading

1259
01:11:51,030 --> 01:11:52,710
Speaker 2: it is going to be so different because you know

1260
01:11:52,770 --> 01:11:54,689
Speaker 2: what this twist is and you see all these little

1261
01:11:54,729 --> 01:11:58,140
Speaker 2: signs and you get to admire how it's, you know,

1262
01:11:58,150 --> 01:12:02,540
Speaker 2: it's almost like an anagram. You know, you can, you know,

1263
01:12:02,720 --> 01:12:06,600
Speaker 2: in the way that you can still read it both ways. Yeah,

1264
01:12:06,620 --> 01:12:09,060
Speaker 2: just very well done. And I think at the end

1265
01:12:09,080 --> 01:12:11,890
Speaker 2: of the day, too, It's just a really good werewolf

1266
01:12:11,930 --> 01:12:15,790
Speaker 2: story because one of the reasons I love werewolf stories

1267
01:12:15,830 --> 01:12:17,450
Speaker 2: of pretty much all kind is that it's one of

1268
01:12:17,490 --> 01:12:24,880
Speaker 2: those things where the thought-provoking aspects of the werewolf narrative

1269
01:12:25,380 --> 01:12:29,800
Speaker 2: are kind of baked in already. They're intrinsically a part

1270
01:12:29,820 --> 01:12:33,689
Speaker 2: of the concept. And therefore, a werewolf story told badly

1271
01:12:33,770 --> 01:12:37,030
Speaker 2: can still be very thought-provoking because it's the basic concept.

1272
01:12:37,550 --> 01:12:39,050
Speaker 2: has so much wrapped up in it. And then if

1273
01:12:39,090 --> 01:12:44,430
Speaker 2: it's told well with intelligence, even more so. But these

1274
01:12:44,550 --> 01:12:50,210
Speaker 2: stories are often about some sort of comparison with the wolf. Generally,

1275
01:12:50,250 --> 01:12:54,980
Speaker 2: the wolf is more savage. And what if one became

1276
01:12:55,020 --> 01:12:58,240
Speaker 2: more savage by becoming like a wolf or part wolf?

1277
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:01,480
Speaker 2: And then other times it's about other aspects perceived in

1278
01:13:01,500 --> 01:13:04,880
Speaker 2: the wolf, like the nobility, the wildness, the free nature

1279
01:13:04,920 --> 01:13:06,550
Speaker 2: of the wolf. That's more of the the sort of

1280
01:13:06,689 --> 01:13:11,250
Speaker 2: modern counter-trend that you see, where the werewolf is a

1281
01:13:11,370 --> 01:13:15,750
Speaker 2: noble being, the noble lichen. But because at the end

1282
01:13:15,770 --> 01:13:19,920
Speaker 2: of the day, this is something that was explored in

1283
01:13:20,120 --> 01:13:23,800
Speaker 2: Ogden's The Werewolf in the Ancient World, is that the

1284
01:13:23,840 --> 01:13:28,219
Speaker 2: wolf is something that has these sort of savage aspects

1285
01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:32,280
Speaker 2: that we see in it. But also, there are all

1286
01:13:32,320 --> 01:13:35,000
Speaker 2: these different hallmarks of humanity in the wolf.

1287
01:13:35,060 --> 01:13:35,540
Speaker 1: Like they are.

1288
01:13:36,030 --> 01:13:41,950
Speaker 2: Wolves are highly social. They're intelligent. They're cooperative. They engage

1289
01:13:42,450 --> 01:13:48,500
Speaker 2: in tactics when they're taking down prey. And then we

1290
01:13:48,560 --> 01:13:50,700
Speaker 2: often also have plenty of traditions where we hold the

1291
01:13:50,740 --> 01:13:55,220
Speaker 2: wolf up as a noble beast. And so our relationship

1292
01:13:55,240 --> 01:13:59,000
Speaker 2: with the wolf is generally more complex than we think

1293
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:01,340
Speaker 2: it is at first. And there's a lot of different

1294
01:14:01,380 --> 01:14:03,519
Speaker 2: ways that we can see ourselves in the wolf, both

1295
01:14:03,860 --> 01:14:06,430
Speaker 2: in positive and in negative ways. And I think all

1296
01:14:06,450 --> 01:14:10,070
Speaker 2: of that is still reflected here in the author's treatment

1297
01:14:10,130 --> 01:14:11,830
Speaker 2: of the wolf wear, if you will.

1298
01:14:12,810 --> 01:14:16,420
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the good comparisons between human beings and

1299
01:14:16,479 --> 01:14:21,040
Speaker 1: wolves are absolutely there in like the pleasures of this story,

1300
01:14:21,160 --> 01:14:24,320
Speaker 1: like the thrilling moments where the sister reappears and she

1301
01:14:24,360 --> 01:14:28,240
Speaker 1: attacks and then the whole community comes in. Those are

1302
01:14:28,270 --> 01:14:30,910
Speaker 1: the same types of moments in like a human movie

1303
01:14:30,990 --> 01:14:34,010
Speaker 1: or a human story where It's where you suddenly get

1304
01:14:34,070 --> 01:14:36,170
Speaker 1: chills or the character that you thought was out of

1305
01:14:36,229 --> 01:14:38,190
Speaker 1: the story comes back to save the day.

1306
01:14:38,250 --> 01:14:38,430
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1307
01:14:38,930 --> 01:14:41,610
Speaker 1: Uh, and, and here we get that too. So it's

1308
01:14:41,630 --> 01:14:44,310
Speaker 1: like that. It's showing that the, the, the sense of

1309
01:14:44,370 --> 01:14:48,800
Speaker 1: community and cooperation between the wolves is also the thing

1310
01:14:48,860 --> 01:14:51,420
Speaker 1: that is like the best in, in human love and

1311
01:14:51,460 --> 01:14:52,880
Speaker 1: relationships and storytelling.

1312
01:14:52,920 --> 01:14:55,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and to your point earlier, like when the

1313
01:14:55,060 --> 01:14:57,220
Speaker 2: wolves are doing this, yeah, the way that it's written

1314
01:14:57,320 --> 01:14:59,720
Speaker 2: and the way that the wolves think they're kind of,

1315
01:14:59,720 --> 01:15:02,479
Speaker 2: you know, it's written like a human. But they're not

1316
01:15:02,540 --> 01:15:05,840
Speaker 2: behaving like humans. They're behaving believably like wolves to the

1317
01:15:05,880 --> 01:15:09,480
Speaker 2: intended reader here. And that's, again, one of the ways

1318
01:15:09,500 --> 01:15:11,939
Speaker 2: that it works so perfectly. So you can go back

1319
01:15:11,979 --> 01:15:13,650
Speaker 2: and read it a second or third time, and you

1320
01:15:13,770 --> 01:15:16,830
Speaker 2: can force yourself to picture them as wolves the whole time.

1321
01:15:17,250 --> 01:15:19,930
Speaker 2: Though I still didn't find myself doing that when I

1322
01:15:19,950 --> 01:15:22,710
Speaker 2: gave it a subsequent reread. I still pictured them as

1323
01:15:22,750 --> 01:15:26,229
Speaker 2: these kind of people. And then it kind of shifted

1324
01:15:26,310 --> 01:15:30,190
Speaker 2: more to pure wolf later on. But I guess maybe

1325
01:15:30,210 --> 01:15:31,590
Speaker 2: now that I think of it, maybe I did kind

1326
01:15:31,630 --> 01:15:34,890
Speaker 2: of in my subsequent read, think of it, think of

1327
01:15:34,930 --> 01:15:37,830
Speaker 2: them kind of as half wolf, half people, like not

1328
01:15:38,010 --> 01:15:41,790
Speaker 2: actually thinking of them as wolf people, but knowing where

1329
01:15:41,830 --> 01:15:44,090
Speaker 2: the story was going to go, like it kind of

1330
01:15:44,130 --> 01:15:46,030
Speaker 2: blurred the lines more for the way that I was

1331
01:15:46,189 --> 01:15:47,350
Speaker 2: thinking about them, you know?

1332
01:15:48,030 --> 01:15:51,750
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Anything else on this story?

1333
01:15:51,990 --> 01:15:54,050
Speaker 2: No, I think that pretty much wraps it up. But

1334
01:15:54,070 --> 01:15:56,650
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from listeners out there, listeners

1335
01:15:56,689 --> 01:15:59,750
Speaker 2: and viewers, if you're watching on Netflix. that's where you'll

1336
01:15:59,770 --> 01:16:02,410
Speaker 2: find the video version of the show, write in because

1337
01:16:02,430 --> 01:16:04,830
Speaker 2: we'd love to discuss this more with you in a

1338
01:16:05,390 --> 01:16:08,890
Speaker 2: future Listener Mail episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

1339
01:16:09,750 --> 01:16:12,860
Speaker 2: Maybe you have different interpretations, different thoughts, and so forth.

1340
01:16:12,979 --> 01:16:15,040
Speaker 2: Or you can speak to other examples of the sorts

1341
01:16:15,080 --> 01:16:18,060
Speaker 2: of things we're talking about with either story. But I

1342
01:16:18,080 --> 01:16:20,600
Speaker 2: would love to hear if there are other specific examples

1343
01:16:20,680 --> 01:16:26,769
Speaker 2: of wolfwares in fiction. Certainly if there's anything older that

1344
01:16:26,810 --> 01:16:29,720
Speaker 2: comes to mind because nothing really came up for me

1345
01:16:29,800 --> 01:16:32,480
Speaker 2: particularly that you could think of as a wolf wear.

1346
01:16:33,560 --> 01:16:35,420
Speaker 2: But yeah, write in. We'd love to hear from you.

1347
01:16:35,460 --> 01:16:38,179
Speaker 2: And also, if you have any suggestions for next year,

1348
01:16:39,280 --> 01:16:42,760
Speaker 2: because we love to get ahead of the game in

1349
01:16:43,140 --> 01:16:45,559
Speaker 2: selecting these. This time, I think we both made our

1350
01:16:45,590 --> 01:16:49,470
Speaker 2: selections pretty late. But in past year, I think last year,

1351
01:16:49,520 --> 01:16:53,010
Speaker 2: I made my mind up like in the summer. So yeah,

1352
01:16:53,110 --> 01:16:55,250
Speaker 2: if you have things you want us to consider for

1353
01:16:55,570 --> 01:16:58,930
Speaker 2: the subsequent Halloween episodes, go ahead and write in now.

1354
01:16:59,870 --> 01:17:01,570
Speaker 2: All right, just a reminder to everyone out there that

1355
01:17:01,640 --> 01:17:03,240
Speaker 2: Stuffed to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

1356
01:17:03,260 --> 01:17:06,320
Speaker 2: culture podcast with four episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And

1357
01:17:06,360 --> 01:17:08,420
Speaker 2: then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to

1358
01:17:08,439 --> 01:17:10,620
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1359
01:17:11,000 --> 01:17:14,350
Speaker 2: We hope you've enjoyed our Halloween offerings this year. And

1360
01:17:14,390 --> 01:17:15,990
Speaker 2: we have just a little bit more Halloween to go

1361
01:17:16,390 --> 01:17:17,610
Speaker 2: before we wrap it all up.

1362
01:17:18,090 --> 01:17:21,270
Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.

1363
01:17:21,310 --> 01:17:21,790
Speaker 2: Posway.

1364
01:17:22,010 --> 01:17:23,350
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1365
01:17:23,410 --> 01:17:25,800
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1366
01:17:25,850 --> 01:17:27,740
Speaker 1: a topic for the future or just to say hello.

1367
01:17:28,210 --> 01:17:31,570
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

1368
01:17:39,939 --> 01:17:42,380
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

1369
01:17:42,760 --> 01:17:46,089
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple

1370
01:17:46,100 --> 01:17:48,450
Speaker 1: Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1371
01:18:01,400 --> 01:18:01,750
Speaker 2: Thank you.