Speaker 1: By my Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And it won't be the first time that
Speaker 1: Halloween themed content is spilling over into November. That we've
Speaker 1: got a really good excuse this time, which is uh
Speaker 1: and I didn't know this before before. Before we started recording. Today,
Speaker 1: our producer Seth was telling us that apparently quite a
Speaker 1: few Simpson's Treehouse of Horror episodes have had to air
Speaker 1: after Halloween because they've been preempted by baseball or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and of course, you know, we can always
Speaker 1: drive on the fact that not all scary movies come
Speaker 1: out during the month of October, and many come out
Speaker 1: throughout the rest of the year, and ultimately, on this show,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's kind of Halloween year round. Um. Though,
Speaker 1: I guess the tragedy is that some times we put
Speaker 1: off content we're like, oh, this will be perfect for Halloween,
Speaker 1: let's save this for October, and then we make it
Speaker 1: through October and we're like, ah, didn't actually fit that
Speaker 1: one in this year? Maybe this will happen next October.
Speaker 1: But hey, we're keeping another tradition alive right now because
Speaker 1: this is going to be the Is this the seventh
Speaker 1: anthology episode we've done for October? I think it is.
Speaker 1: I think this is number seven. Um, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we've been doing it seven years, because some years we've
Speaker 1: put out more than one volume. But basically the idea
Speaker 1: here is these kind of spinoff of some old creepy
Speaker 1: post episodes that we did back in the day, where
Speaker 1: we look to the world of horror anthology films and
Speaker 1: especially TV shows, we pick something out of the basket
Speaker 1: and we we sort of use it as an excuse
Speaker 1: to talk about something something you know, science, e or um,
Speaker 1: you know, cultural, basically, some sort of sort of topic
Speaker 1: that that in many cases might not make for a
Speaker 1: full episode of stuff to blew your mind on a zone,
Speaker 1: but the horror anthology episode gives us an excuse to
Speaker 1: talk about it, and vice versa, the topic gives us
Speaker 1: an excuse to talk about that particular episode. This is
Speaker 1: especially valuable back in the days before Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: when we did not have a weekly outlet for for
Speaker 1: any obsessions with macab vielings. So I guess with Weird House,
Speaker 1: we're always talking about movies and uh and and I
Speaker 1: know specifically what you've got in your heart with these
Speaker 1: anthology episodes is like the nineties Outer Limits revival. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I look forward to talking about about one of those.
Speaker 1: I've really been enjoying watching those throughout the pandemic. Um,
Speaker 1: My wife and I have been watching these pretty much
Speaker 1: every week remotely with a couple of friends of ours. Actually, uh.
Speaker 1: They host a podcast by the name of Talking Tofu,
Speaker 1: So if you want a like a vegan themed funny podcast,
Speaker 1: I recommend that. I don't know if they're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about out or Limits at all in there. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: leaving that all for me. But at any rate, I've
Speaker 1: really enjoyed um exploring and re exploring the nineties Outer
Speaker 1: Limits episodes because there's there's some real garbage in there, um,
Speaker 1: but there are some great episodes. And and also just
Speaker 1: about anybody who was doing TV during the nineties seems
Speaker 1: to show up at one point or another, as well
Speaker 1: as a wide variety of Canadian actors. So I to
Speaker 1: think long and hard about which episode to pick here
Speaker 1: and ended up going with one from the second season.
Speaker 1: This is the sixteenth episode of season two came out
Speaker 1: in and it's titled The d Programmers. Now Rob, I
Speaker 1: ended up having to jump through a lot of digital
Speaker 1: hoops to watch this one, but I'm so glad I did.
Speaker 1: This is a phenomenal pick. Yeah, these uh, these episodes
Speaker 1: were I think there is of this recording. They're in
Speaker 1: kind of a streaming limbo where you can fortunately still
Speaker 1: purchase them digitally, which is not the case for some
Speaker 1: anthology shows like I think Tales from the Crypt is
Speaker 1: still exceedingly hard to get ahold digitally right now because
Speaker 1: of some rights issues, um outer limits. Yeah, if you're gonna,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna just straight up stream them without purchasing them,
Speaker 1: sometimes you have to. You have to find uh unique
Speaker 1: ways of viewing them. But if you look around, you
Speaker 1: can find them. And I believe you can digitally purchase
Speaker 1: these episodes still. Uh So The Deep Programmers is out
Speaker 1: there for anyone who who wishes to view it. All right,
Speaker 1: give me the scoop on The Deep Programmers, all right,
Speaker 1: So I'm just I'm not gonna give it the full
Speaker 1: weird House treatment obviously, but just to go through the
Speaker 1: people involved, Um, it was directed by Joseph L. Scanlon,
Speaker 1: who lived through longtime TV genre director who worked on
Speaker 1: such shows as as Outer Limits. He did seven episodes
Speaker 1: of that, He did four episodes of Star Trek the
Speaker 1: Next Generation, he did an episode of Quantum Leap, and
Speaker 1: seven episodes of Land of the Lost, among many other things.
Speaker 1: The writer on this was James Crocker, TV writer who
Speaker 1: wrote multiple episodes of The Outer Limits as well as
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's Twilight Zone revival which I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I remember that one. He also did uh some
Speaker 1: Star Trek Deep Space nine as well as the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties Twilight Zone Revival and more. But speaking of Trek,
Speaker 1: the most notable casting in this episode is Brent Spiner. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: Data himself plays this uh this reprogrammer that that's introduced
Speaker 1: as being kind of like this this um part of
Speaker 1: the like the human Resistance movement. He's there to deprogram
Speaker 1: people who have been brainwashed by the the enemy alien overlords.
Speaker 1: And he's a real pleasure in this because you know,
Speaker 1: everybody loves Data. He was great on on Star Trek
Speaker 1: Next Generation and then the you know, the related movies. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people may know him from Independence Day uh seven
Speaker 1: episodes of Night Chord, uh. He pops up in Shocker
Speaker 1: and The Aviator, few episodes of Blunt Talk, various other things,
Speaker 1: A lot of work, but this is one of the
Speaker 1: few play if not the only place I can remember
Speaker 1: seeing mean Brent Spiner like, he's he's he's he's rough
Speaker 1: and tumble. He's a bad cop in this, Yeah he is. Uh.
Speaker 1: I actually having never seen tons of Star Trek The
Speaker 1: Next Generation, I remember I a few years back. I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, everybody my age has watched a bunch
Speaker 1: of TNNG, I should like watch, you know, go through it.
Speaker 1: And I started in the first season, and oh it was.
Speaker 1: It was rough going. I am to understand it gets
Speaker 1: better as it goes on, but but I didn't make
Speaker 1: it all that far though. Of course, you know, he
Speaker 1: is there in the first season as data. So when
Speaker 1: I think of Brent Spiner, I think of Dr oakein
Speaker 1: an Independence Day, who you know is a who is
Speaker 1: really one of the biggest rays of sunshine in that movie.
Speaker 1: He plays a uh, I don't even know how. He
Speaker 1: plays a sort of emotionally stunted, sort of childlike scientist
Speaker 1: who has apparently been in a bunker for forty years
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, yeah, he's um a goofy mad scientists
Speaker 1: kind of a character. But wait, who is he in Shocker?
Speaker 1: I've seen Shocker a number of times and I don't
Speaker 1: remember him at all. It's listed on his filmography. I've
Speaker 1: never seen Shocker. I've only heard heard you gush about it.
Speaker 1: You heard me gush? Huh, yeah, I thought you liked it, right,
Speaker 1: you have nice things to say about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: Shocker is very bad, but it's a it's an entertaining bad.
Speaker 1: It's it's ridiculous. All right. Well, we'll speaking of actors
Speaker 1: in this. Uh, just a couple of others of note here. Um.
Speaker 1: Eric Anderson plays Evan Robert Cooper. Uh. This is a
Speaker 1: TV and film actor who played Rob in Friday the Thirteenth.
Speaker 1: The final chapter is that one of the Good Ones?
Speaker 1: Is that one of the are there good ones? That's
Speaker 1: the that's the last one in which Jason is a
Speaker 1: human before he's an undead revenant. So it goes one
Speaker 1: through four he's a human, and then in the fifth
Speaker 1: one it's a copycat killer, and then in the sixth
Speaker 1: one that's when he's a revenant. This is the last
Speaker 1: one before he gets his head cut in half by
Speaker 1: Corey Feldman. Okay, but Rob, the character in this is
Speaker 1: a sort of He's a sort of dashing hero who
Speaker 1: show is up. You know, you think he's going to
Speaker 1: save the day, but I think ultimately Jason just kills
Speaker 1: him in a basement. Alright. Well, the basic pitch the
Speaker 1: plot for this episode of the Outer Outer Limits, uh,
Speaker 1: and in the one of the should drive on. One
Speaker 1: of the great things about these nineties episodes of The
Speaker 1: Outer Limits is that generally they're they're very earnest, they
Speaker 1: really want to say something important about the human condition,
Speaker 1: and that serious tone is often what makes them so delightful,
Speaker 1: because sometimes there are wonderful sci fi ideas explored in them,
Speaker 1: sometimes not so much. Sometimes the attempt is there, but
Speaker 1: maybe not the delivery. But it also makes the things
Speaker 1: that don't work that make you know, some of the
Speaker 1: maybe some of the performances they're not that crisp uh,
Speaker 1: it makes them all the more hilarious because they're definitely
Speaker 1: not aiming for comedy. There maybe one or two I
Speaker 1: think that that do kind of aim for something more
Speaker 1: whimsical and fun, and I think some of those are
Speaker 1: the ones that really don't hold up. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, it's it's the seriousness that makes it work.
Speaker 1: Like if it was more self conscious, that would actually
Speaker 1: kind of cheapen it and make it not as fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in this one, it takes place on a future Earth.
Speaker 1: Earth we find out is ruled by alien overlords called
Speaker 1: the Torqure. Uh. They're kind of these repellent, reptilian humanoid
Speaker 1: titans who seem to live solitary lives, like they is
Speaker 1: if they evolve from some sort of solitary predatory species
Speaker 1: instead of something that had some sort of communal system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like eight foot tall alligator men. So they've got
Speaker 1: these reptilian outsides, and they they're very haughty, and they
Speaker 1: just like to sort of lord around their their bathtub
Speaker 1: and yell at their their human servants and say, oh,
Speaker 1: why aren't you bringing me my oil faster? Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: kind of like giant reptile Mr. Burns it is. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're that level of awful um. And I guess
Speaker 1: there's probably more than a dash of um Battlefield Earth
Speaker 1: to this as well. Yes, because of course that involved uh,
Speaker 1: super tall alien overlords who you know, have a like
Speaker 1: a brutal rule imposed over Earth. I made that exact note.
Speaker 1: I mean this to be clear. This episode is much
Speaker 1: better than Battlefield Earth. But I got some of those
Speaker 1: notes when I was just reminded of John Travolta in
Speaker 1: the movie yelling, I told you to get some man
Speaker 1: animals in here to fix this. Yeah, they look great
Speaker 1: in this. By the way that the Torqure when we
Speaker 1: first encounter them, we don't see their faces. We just
Speaker 1: see their arms. So there's kind of a sense of
Speaker 1: the one Sler in the Lorax uh to it. And
Speaker 1: then later we get to see them more or less
Speaker 1: in full and uh like Like most of these episodes
Speaker 1: of the Outer Limits, whenever there is a creature effect,
Speaker 1: it's practical and very well executed. So anyway, yes, we
Speaker 1: have torquor overlords ruling over everything. Helping them are these
Speaker 1: mentally reconditioned human slaves that are called Joe them. So
Speaker 1: the idea, at least to the getting of the episode,
Speaker 1: is that all of the humans left on Earth after
Speaker 1: it's been conquered by these aliens are brainwashed into being
Speaker 1: subservient to their their new alien masters. Right, and so
Speaker 1: we meet up with our our Joe Lem characters. Our
Speaker 1: main jo Lem character Evan here, and he's working for
Speaker 1: a tor Core overlord named col Tak. And there's this
Speaker 1: scene where they're preparing him his slime bath. They're preparing
Speaker 1: him his saragon oil. The other Joe Lem drops the
Speaker 1: saragon oil and breaks it and so uh this so
Speaker 1: coal Tag is brutally murders him. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: coal Tak complaining that the oil is not arriving fast enough.
Speaker 1: So he's in his slime bath. Bring it to me
Speaker 1: the oil. I need the oil. You Jolum are always
Speaker 1: so slow. Yeah, there's a there's a very strong Kangan
Speaker 1: Kodos vibe to their their voices in this. Yes, the
Speaker 1: Kangan Kodos thing was also very strong, And I wonder
Speaker 1: what is the timing on that Kangan Kotos? So they
Speaker 1: came out before ninety right, yeah they did? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they must predate this though then again, I mean
Speaker 1: this is I think the same year as Citizen Kang,
Speaker 1: which is maybe the closest analogue. Yeah. My my bed
Speaker 1: is they're both essentially inspired by some of the same
Speaker 1: sci fi precursors, except, of course, the Simpsons took it
Speaker 1: in a intentionally comedic direction, and the Outer Limits took
Speaker 1: it in a serious direction, not realizing how comedic it
Speaker 1: comes off. But it's really amusing in this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is uncanny how much kol Tax sounds like Kang now. Um.
Speaker 1: The next big phase in this is that we find
Speaker 1: out well Evan Uh, first of all, is spared. He's
Speaker 1: not going to die uh and his luck would have it,
Speaker 1: He's about to go off to rejuvenation training because a
Speaker 1: good Joe Loman is worth keeping around for a very
Speaker 1: long time via life extending a lien technology. So he
Speaker 1: boards a bus to the Bliss Renewal Center. Um. Which
Speaker 1: reminded when I saw this one for this time, it
Speaker 1: just instantly made me think of Simpsons and ren education. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: sit back and let the hooks do the work exactly um.
Speaker 1: But on the way he is kidnapped by the Human
Speaker 1: Resistance Movement and they attempt to deprogram him to remove
Speaker 1: all of this uh, this this alien brainwashing that has
Speaker 1: turned him into a servant and make him part of
Speaker 1: the resistance movement to take back Earth. And this is
Speaker 1: where we meet Brent Spiner's character, Resistance d programmer Professor
Speaker 1: Trent Davis, who is all about stopping a mud hole
Speaker 1: in a Joe lom if it busts up that that
Speaker 1: old Joe loam conditioning. Yeah, and I guess this is
Speaker 1: playing up on the idea of an aggressive practice of
Speaker 1: d programming UM trying to to say, Okay, this guy
Speaker 1: Evan here, the main character has been has been conditioned,
Speaker 1: or you might say brainwashed by by this alien programming
Speaker 1: that to to sort like make him fear having a
Speaker 1: will of his own. And you and Brent Spiner's ideas,
Speaker 1: you've got to really like make him snap out of
Speaker 1: it with a bunch of kind of brutal and even
Speaker 1: violent tactics, yelling in his face, burning him, cutting him,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Now, the twist here, and so
Speaker 1: you know, standard warning if you don't want this spoiled,
Speaker 1: if you want to go out and see this for yourself,
Speaker 1: pause right now and then come back later. But the
Speaker 1: twist is that they put him through this deep programming system.
Speaker 1: It seems to work. He's part of the resistance. Now
Speaker 1: he helps them in an attempt to assassinate UM, his
Speaker 1: former overlord. And then what do we find out at
Speaker 1: the end, We find out, oh, Brent Spiner was a
Speaker 1: Joe loom all along himself. He was. He was not
Speaker 1: part of the human resistance. He was just part of
Speaker 1: a rival torque course plot to take out one of
Speaker 1: his his his rival alien overlords. Right, So what you
Speaker 1: thought was a was a human rebellion against these a
Speaker 1: alien invaders was in fact an intra alien political struggle. Yes,
Speaker 1: which is a nice twist. And one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things about these Outer Limits episodes is they usually have
Speaker 1: a twist. So if you watch enough of them, you
Speaker 1: end up spending half the time just trying to guess
Speaker 1: what the twist is going to be. Uh, did you
Speaker 1: guess this one, Joe? Well, I did sort of see
Speaker 1: the twist coming, but only because I knew there was
Speaker 1: gonna be a twist. If I had not known there
Speaker 1: was going to be a twist, I might not have
Speaker 1: There may be episodes where the twist is there's no twist,
Speaker 1: but I can't think of what it would be off hand.
Speaker 1: There's some episodes where the twist occurs super early and
Speaker 1: then it's all about sort of the the the ramifications
Speaker 1: of that twist. But there's a twist in there somewhere.
Speaker 1: They're they're kind of a happy like San Junipero of
Speaker 1: the of the Outer Limits. Um, there might be Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think and nothing's coming to mind. Um.
Speaker 1: The real twist is this is so sweet most of
Speaker 1: the time, you know, because you have the cool narration
Speaker 1: that comes on to the end where the narrator kind
Speaker 1: of drives at home for you. And usually it's something
Speaker 1: like when the humans expand into the stars, they'll deal
Speaker 1: with their greatest enemy themselves. You know, it's always something
Speaker 1: like that, you know. Yeah, this one has some kind
Speaker 1: of pretentious phrases about free will. It was like, at
Speaker 1: what point does a humans free will cease to exist?
Speaker 1: And at that point would we still be human? Questions
Speaker 1: that are are not really exploring in this episode. It's
Speaker 1: not about those questions than the episode we're discussing here. Naturally,
Speaker 1: this all takes place within the context of an extreme
Speaker 1: sci fi scenario. Humans are conditioned to be joe Lems,
Speaker 1: presumably from a very young age, and then this conditioning
Speaker 1: is continually enforced across a lifespan that that might prove
Speaker 1: quite long due to these rejuvenation treatments, and there certainly
Speaker 1: is a human component to the culture that forces this
Speaker 1: worldview on them. But at the helm of all of
Speaker 1: this are these alien masters. Well one thing, though, you
Speaker 1: mentioned being conditioned since childhood. In this case, they say
Speaker 1: that the alien invasion was only about two years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah so uh so, really these
Speaker 1: guys haven't been I guess that's the long view is
Speaker 1: that is that they're going to keep him around for
Speaker 1: a while. But Evan has couldn't have been a jolem
Speaker 1: for that long. Uh But still the idea is that
Speaker 1: he's he's largely forgotten his previous life. He's forgotten what
Speaker 1: it was to be a free to human and now
Speaker 1: all he thinks is the joelem way. So um. Again,
Speaker 1: this episode is called the d Programmers, And when the
Speaker 1: term d programming has been used before in the context
Speaker 1: of real world ideologies, were generally talking about a scenario
Speaker 1: of an alleged cult or some other group with an
Speaker 1: ideology that's deemed harmful. And I was looking into this
Speaker 1: a bit. The idea emerged pretty much during the nineteen
Speaker 1: seven DS as a part of the counter cult movement. Now,
Speaker 1: before we do that, forces to back up another step, because,
Speaker 1: of course, the first big question would be what constitutes
Speaker 1: the cult um you'll typically encounter a list of criteria
Speaker 1: that includes stuff like separation from one's pre existing support group,
Speaker 1: devotion to a single domineering figure. I read one list
Speaker 1: that focused on charismatic leaders, transcendent belief systems, systems of control,
Speaker 1: and systems of influence. But obviously there's a great deal
Speaker 1: of ambiguity in in some of these UM definitions. And
Speaker 1: while we can all point to specific, especially historic examples
Speaker 1: of destructive cults and say, yes, well that's a cult,
Speaker 1: you can also throw this word at various religious and
Speaker 1: political ideologies. UM. Now, certainly harmful and abusive cults. It
Speaker 1: do exist centered around harmful ideologies, harmful systems, and or
Speaker 1: harmful individuals. Uh. So that the question isn't whether such
Speaker 1: groups exists, but to what degree other groups are lumped
Speaker 1: in with them, uh, etcetera. Now, another key to understanding
Speaker 1: this idea of d programming is the notion of brainwashing.
Speaker 1: This is a term coined by journalist and propagandist Edward Hunter,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen o two through who wrote Brainwashing in
Speaker 1: Red China The Calculated Destruction of Men's Minds, a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two anti communism book based on a nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: article that he wrote. And uh, this was apparently an
Speaker 1: outlandish idea even at the time contemporary psychologist and had
Speaker 1: it took issue with it. Later commentators would criticize it um,
Speaker 1: but it struck a nerve. It made its way into
Speaker 1: mainstream fiction even uh and uh we see that in
Speaker 1: films like The Manchurian Candidate and various works of visual
Speaker 1: or written media. And it also made its way into
Speaker 1: political discourse. I think you can possibly see this, this
Speaker 1: type of ideas being associated with behavior as trends in
Speaker 1: psychology that maybe later psychologists would look back on and
Speaker 1: say that they may have sort of over emphasized the
Speaker 1: role of like mechanistic conditioning and how much it could
Speaker 1: do in shaping a person's cognitive and behavioral tendencies. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean you take you take some understanding of behavioralism,
Speaker 1: throw in a few more pop psychologists, a hefty dose
Speaker 1: of red scare, and you have you have a firm
Speaker 1: bedrock upon which to build this idea of of of brainwashing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and even you have like, for instance, the CIA's
Speaker 1: mk Ultra program gets in on it and tries to
Speaker 1: uh to weaponize the idea of mind control, thinking that
Speaker 1: the enemy may have developed techniques that do this, And ultimately,
Speaker 1: of course, the mk ultra revolve around seeking answers and methods.
Speaker 1: Um from from print, for instance, the world of Psychedelics, thinking, well,
Speaker 1: psychedelics seem to have this effect on the way people
Speaker 1: view the world. Maybe we could use that to break
Speaker 1: down the human mind and then build something up in
Speaker 1: its place. Yeah, And I think the question is, like,
Speaker 1: what level of mechanistic control can you ultimately have over
Speaker 1: somebody else's behavior? Can you? Can you essentially just sort
Speaker 1: of like format the hard drive of somebody's brain and
Speaker 1: completely rewrite their their personality, their behaviors, and program them
Speaker 1: like a robot or much more likely, you know, is
Speaker 1: sort of the reality that in the kind of mundane
Speaker 1: way that we would all observe throughout our lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: humans can have strong influences on each other, especially if
Speaker 1: there's if there's a lot of them, and they form
Speaker 1: a kind of, uh a reinforced social network. But humans
Speaker 1: don't have lines of code in their brain, and you
Speaker 1: can't like just format the hard drive and rewrite their
Speaker 1: operating system exactly. Uh. An excellent source on this that
Speaker 1: I recommend um as a Slate article written by Lorraine
Speaker 1: Bosonal titled The True Story of Brainwashing and How It
Speaker 1: Shaped America. UM It's great reading gets into all this
Speaker 1: in detail, but essentially they write that the brainwashing and
Speaker 1: mind control, both of these were essentially a boogeyman based
Speaker 1: on fear of communism, fear of Eastern culture, and the
Speaker 1: fear that Russia, China, and ultimately Korea had something that
Speaker 1: we didn't have. They had some tool for breaking down
Speaker 1: people's will and uh and changing their mind set. But
Speaker 1: as it turned out, the author describes, brainwashing was not real.
Speaker 1: Torture and trauma very much were. And for instance, the
Speaker 1: POWs that were observed. Uh, there was this fear that that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's the popes during the Korean War, that they had
Speaker 1: undergone some sort of brainwashing, that there, you know, their
Speaker 1: their minds had been changed, when in reality they were
Speaker 1: they were just really traumatized individuals subjected to torturous conditions. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there were no brainwashed sleeper agents. There were just
Speaker 1: traumatized humans. But she she quotes Timothy uh Melly, professor
Speaker 1: of English at Miami University at the time of the writing.
Speaker 1: At any rate, uh and UH this individual says, quote,
Speaker 1: the basic problem that brainwashing is designed to address is
Speaker 1: the question why would anyone become a communist? And I
Speaker 1: feel like that kind of summarizes a lot of this,
Speaker 1: uh right there, Yeah, And I guess you could apply
Speaker 1: that actually to any kind of ideological or life change
Speaker 1: that you don't understand. I mean, you can ask the
Speaker 1: same question like why would somebody join what you might
Speaker 1: think of as a cult or why would somebody do X?
Speaker 1: Or why something that doesn't at all seem appealing to
Speaker 1: you and you can't understand why somebody would do it,
Speaker 1: you may at that point have to assume that it's
Speaker 1: like it's like the computer of somebody's brain has been
Speaker 1: hacked and there there's malware in it, when in fact,
Speaker 1: a more useful model might be to uh uh think
Speaker 1: more outside the box in terms of what human incentives are.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I personally think that a lot of
Speaker 1: times we can just have a failure of imagination in
Speaker 1: fathoming people's say, desire for certain kinds of social interactions
Speaker 1: and how much like a is something that even is
Speaker 1: a like truly harmful cult or idy I'll g could
Speaker 1: fulfill these needs for people if they're not getting them
Speaker 1: elsewhere exactly. Yeah. And so looking back to the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, here um at Heart, you just had controversial,
Speaker 1: ideologically driven groups uh that were often attractive to young people.
Speaker 1: And this was not an exclusive reality of the nineteen seventies, obviously,
Speaker 1: but this was a pronounced period of concern over it.
Speaker 1: The mid twentieth century United States provides more than enough
Speaker 1: not only Cult Panic, but also Red Panic, Satanic Panic,
Speaker 1: and much more. We got Panics of plenty. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have an endless, endless supply of them. And again
Speaker 1: not to say that some of these groups were not,
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately harmful, but many of them were not.
Speaker 1: Many of them were just different ideologies that seemed scary
Speaker 1: to certain parts of of the public. I was reading
Speaker 1: a source on this titled Exit Counseling and the Decline
Speaker 1: of d Programming UM. This was by sociologist Stephen A. Kent,
Speaker 1: and UM in a counselor by the name of Joseph
Speaker 1: p uh sim Heart was published in two thousand two
Speaker 1: in Cultic Studies Review, And they were talking about just
Speaker 1: how this deep programming approach work. The the idea that okay,
Speaker 1: someone has been exposed to uh to ac cult. They've
Speaker 1: joined a cult, and now we want to get them
Speaker 1: out of it. What can we do? How do we
Speaker 1: how do we reverse mindwashing? Well, we have to deprogram them.
Speaker 1: Um So, so the first of all, just the the
Speaker 1: the obvious thing here is that that we know that
Speaker 1: that that brainwashing uh and and and mind control. These
Speaker 1: are uh these are at at least over simplifications of
Speaker 1: far more complex problems. And therefore the idea of dep
Speaker 1: programming is based in that fallacy and that oversimplification. At
Speaker 1: least from the outside, it has always kind of seemed
Speaker 1: to me that the the logic behind deprogramming is essentially
Speaker 1: counter brainwashing. That someone has brainwashed you to be in
Speaker 1: a cult, and now we have to like brainwash you
Speaker 1: back out of bit like you know, is I took
Speaker 1: you into this thing, and I'm gonna take you out
Speaker 1: the same way. Uh. So you you have to like
Speaker 1: use sort of like aggressive, uh forceful tactics to try
Speaker 1: to essentially brainwash somebody back into whatever is deemed the
Speaker 1: legitimate culture. Is Yeah, and of course the first step
Speaker 1: and all of that is just by establishing or labeling
Speaker 1: uh the offending ideology or group as a cult as
Speaker 1: something that is in some way deviant, that is engaging
Speaker 1: in mind control, and therefore there's something to reverse. But
Speaker 1: then the d programming itself it often took the form
Speaker 1: of involuntary extractions from the allegedly deviant ideology or group
Speaker 1: and then attempts to forcibly reverse the alleged mind control
Speaker 1: or brainwashing. And of course all of this should raise
Speaker 1: just a number of red flags for anyone, because, among
Speaker 1: other things, it assumes that the individual, often a young adult,
Speaker 1: just has no agency or choice, like they cannot be
Speaker 1: trusted to make make choices about what they believe in
Speaker 1: and what they do. Um. You know, they were pulled
Speaker 1: in one direction by charismatic force, and now we have
Speaker 1: to pull them back in another direction through intensive, uh
Speaker 1: you know, strong arm tactics like it's a boot camp
Speaker 1: or something. And then on top of that, you run
Speaker 1: the risk of engaging in actual kidnapping and abuse in
Speaker 1: an attempt to deprogram somebody. So you quickly get into
Speaker 1: very legally and ethically murky waters, assuming you don't land
Speaker 1: on as bad or as you know, worse um situation
Speaker 1: uh compared to what you were attempting to save them.
Speaker 1: From um so charges of religious oppression and civil rights
Speaker 1: violation were also made. There were various lawsuits related to
Speaker 1: D programming efforts. And so one of the things that
Speaker 1: that Kent and his co out there point out is
Speaker 1: that is that you saw this um this movement away
Speaker 1: from D programming um uh, this idea that that first
Speaker 1: of all D programming didn't prove all that effective, but
Speaker 1: then it gave way to techniques that were more progress
Speaker 1: of non coercive that we're more about the autonomy of
Speaker 1: the individual and an attempt to value everyone present UM
Speaker 1: and find a structure that would like work with everyone's
Speaker 1: value systems, including the value system UM of the group
Speaker 1: that the individual is is that they're attempting to extract
Speaker 1: them from all. Right, so maybe there is a recognition
Speaker 1: of flaws within some of these so called D programming tactics.
Speaker 1: But of course you would still have the problem that
Speaker 1: people are ending up in in in cults that at
Speaker 1: least you know their loved ones are uh could probably
Speaker 1: make a strong case or a really negative influence on
Speaker 1: their lives and are certainly hurting hurting family relationships and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh So, so is there something else
Speaker 1: people go to is another option for trying to trying
Speaker 1: to help guide their loved ones out of these groups. Right,
Speaker 1: and it seems like, yeah, this this idea of exit
Speaker 1: counseling or at least this basic approach seemed to largely
Speaker 1: replace it, which which which sounds like a no brainer. Right,
Speaker 1: should we maybe do something more like counseling? And what
Speaker 1: we think of now is intervention with a family member
Speaker 1: we're worried about, or should we kidnap them with the
Speaker 1: aid of some sort of third party? Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it seems certainly from from a legal and moral standpoint, uh,
Speaker 1: there's only one direction you should go in. And of
Speaker 1: course it also seems that the d programming had had
Speaker 1: had a checkered success rate as well. Reminds me of
Speaker 1: some other stuff I was reading about the Scared Straight
Speaker 1: programs that of course we're quite big what I guess
Speaker 1: back in the the nineties, especially the idea that if
Speaker 1: you had like problem kids or kids that that were
Speaker 1: at risk, you would have somebody come in and scare
Speaker 1: them straight with a really scary talk about prison life
Speaker 1: and how um you know. Ultimately, some of the numbers
Speaker 1: didn't subsequently did not support the idea that this was effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine. I think it comes down to the
Speaker 1: just the reality that that human beings are far more
Speaker 1: complicated than that. You know, you can't just scare someone
Speaker 1: straight you in order to move the away from from
Speaker 1: one way of life or worldview towards another. You can't.
Speaker 1: You can't rescue them from from a particular you know,
Speaker 1: social group or ideology by essentially kidnapping them and um
Speaker 1: and just pointing in the other direction like they're an automaton.
Speaker 1: It just needs to be Oh, all you have to
Speaker 1: do is just get them, wind them up and point
Speaker 1: them in the right direction, and they'll be fine. Like
Speaker 1: that's just that's that's not really how people work. Well, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just seems like a very top down way of
Speaker 1: viewing your ability to influence other people. So if you
Speaker 1: want to steer somebody toward a path in life that
Speaker 1: you might very well correctly think would be much better
Speaker 1: for them in the long run and might make them
Speaker 1: much happier in the long run and make their loved
Speaker 1: ones happier in the long run, obviously, there are ways
Speaker 1: of doing that other than just trying to sort of
Speaker 1: like dominate and command them to move in that direction.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, obviously sometimes you can influence people
Speaker 1: by by sort of dominating and commanding them, but you
Speaker 1: can also influence people with say positive incentives, reminding them
Speaker 1: of reminding them of all the good things and opportunities
Speaker 1: that are open to them in in in a freer life,
Speaker 1: outside of the strictures of whatever kind of you know,
Speaker 1: culture or other thing. This is yeah, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: this is ultimately I think in oversimplification, but it seems
Speaker 1: like the mind control D programming model was more based
Speaker 1: in the idea that something was done to an individual
Speaker 1: and that thing can be undone, you know, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's ultimately based in the in the the
Speaker 1: simplistic fallacy of mind control and brainwashing. Now, as for
Speaker 1: how that relates to this Outer Limits episode, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this episode, you know, ultimately has a dark
Speaker 1: view on life and uh, you know, one one in
Speaker 1: which you're going to be manipulated by one alien overlord
Speaker 1: or another you know, sort of you've got to serve
Speaker 1: somebody vibe. Uh. It feels like they're striking a very
Speaker 1: anti D programming chord here, which I think is the
Speaker 1: chord to strike in your in your fiction, as our
Speaker 1: main character is is just D program quote unquote into
Speaker 1: serving to another cruel master. Well, one bit of complexity
Speaker 1: that this Outer Limits episode does get into is we
Speaker 1: didn't mention that they're actually multiple human parties involved in
Speaker 1: um in the D programming process. So in this episode
Speaker 1: you have Brent Spiner, and yet he's playing this like
Speaker 1: brutal D programmer, who's you know, yelling at yelling at Evans,
Speaker 1: saying wake up, snap out of it. You know you're
Speaker 1: a human, and like cutting him with a knife and
Speaker 1: kicking him around and all this again trying to top
Speaker 1: down just like dominate and coerce him into into snapping
Speaker 1: out of it. But then the other side is alongside
Speaker 1: them is evans wife from before the alien invasion. They
Speaker 1: had become separated, they didn't know what had happened to
Speaker 1: each other and uh and by getting reacquainted, she actually
Speaker 1: I think that the episode shows that she is more
Speaker 1: effective than Brent Spiner is in breaking through with him,
Speaker 1: and she's actually not not knowingly part of the alien
Speaker 1: plot to get him to assassinate she is also confused
Speaker 1: about what's going on. That's right, So in a way,
Speaker 1: even though it has a cruel twist at the end
Speaker 1: the episode might sort of be making the point that
Speaker 1: you might have more success breaking through to somebody who
Speaker 1: has been uh who has been conditioned into a state
Speaker 1: of un freedom by offering them sort of like positive
Speaker 1: incentives of love and connection and reminding them of what's
Speaker 1: good about the other way of life, rather, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe more so than just like beating them and yelling
Speaker 1: at them and trying to command them to be free. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's a shame they didn't re explore
Speaker 1: this world in other episodes of the Outer Limits, because
Speaker 1: the nineties Outer Limits show they did this from time
Speaker 1: to time there there. Sometimes they would do a series
Speaker 1: of even like three or four episodes that took place
Speaker 1: within the same universe and uh and continued sometimes same
Speaker 1: characters or or same faction, same world like this would
Speaker 1: have been. It would have been an interesting one for
Speaker 1: them to come back to and explore that compassion angle
Speaker 1: more and maybe give us some more uplifting ending. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's how the humans actually do rebel successfully against
Speaker 1: the uh whatever whatever they're called, the alligator men. Yeah,
Speaker 1: give him a gift basket of saragon oil, and then
Speaker 1: that they would, they'll realize, Oh the Jrolem really do
Speaker 1: care about me? No, no, no, I didn't mean that
Speaker 1: for them, I mean for each other. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: mount the resistance than all right, well let's switch gears.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the next next anthology selection here, what
Speaker 1: do you have for his show? All right, well, I've
Speaker 1: got an episode of the Hammer House of Horror. Rob.
Speaker 1: Do you know the Hammer House of Horror? Yes, Now
Speaker 1: I have to say I've I've only watched the one episode,
Speaker 1: the one we're discussing here today. But um, but it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a pretty fun little series. Uh
Speaker 1: this came out what so you know we're we're we're
Speaker 1: balanced right there on the edge, you know of the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies in the nineteen eighties. Essentially it's a late
Speaker 1: nineties seventies production. Uh, comes to us from from Hammer,
Speaker 1: so it has that hammer you know, British horror drive
Speaker 1: vibe to it. But each episode is a different story. Um,
Speaker 1: and some of them have some pretty great casts. I
Speaker 1: mean they all, I think they all have a pretty
Speaker 1: great cast. If one episode we have Peter Cushing and
Speaker 1: a young Brian Cox. If you're not sure what a
Speaker 1: young Brian Cox looks like, uh, this is an episode
Speaker 1: worth checking out. And there's another episode, by the way,
Speaker 1: titled Guardian of the abyss uh In the plot of
Speaker 1: this one involves John D's mirror, or a mirror that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be one of John D's mirrors. I didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to watch it in full, but I
Speaker 1: had to see if what mirror they showed, and I
Speaker 1: included a picture of it here for you, Joe. It
Speaker 1: it is, obviously, is not the fabled magic mirror, the
Speaker 1: Aztec mirror that that John D actually had. This is
Speaker 1: a real They really goth this one up. They had
Speaker 1: to make it look like a like a European haunted mirror. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got like a silver rim and a bunch of
Speaker 1: elaborate handles. Get out of here with that, give me
Speaker 1: that or gone face on it. Yeah. Yeah. But this
Speaker 1: episode that we're gonna talk about here is titled The
Speaker 1: Mark of Satan. Yes, and boy does it have that
Speaker 1: hammer horror field. Like you say, it's got that late
Speaker 1: seventies British thing. It just this whole thing just like
Speaker 1: it smells like back bacon, you know, Heinz baked beans,
Speaker 1: it's all there. You can smell it through the film.
Speaker 1: So this episode, I guess I'll describe it first and
Speaker 1: then we can talk about what what this connected to
Speaker 1: for me. So this episode begins with a scene of
Speaker 1: brain surgery. You've got a team of doctors who are
Speaker 1: opening up a patient's skull, and suddenly the patient, he
Speaker 1: seems to show signs of awareness. His eyes start to
Speaker 1: move scanning the room. He twitches. You see these sort
Speaker 1: of flickers of waxing consciousness, and then the patient starts
Speaker 1: to talk. In the middle of the brain surgery. He's
Speaker 1: moaning and he says, leave my soul alone. Solid opening.
Speaker 1: They had me right there at the beginning. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got a supernatural or potentially supernatural hospital drama, some sort
Speaker 1: of intense surgery with all sorts of tools and like
Speaker 1: clamps holding the character's head in place. Yeah, leave my
Speaker 1: soul alone. So next we meet our protagonist who is
Speaker 1: named Edwin Roared and Edwin works in the morgue at
Speaker 1: the same hospital. He is assigned to process the cadaver
Speaker 1: of the patient from the surgery and the opening scene,
Speaker 1: and we learn in this in this next scene that
Speaker 1: the patient was someone named Samuel Holt now Roared is
Speaker 1: played by the actor Peter Mcinry, who was born in
Speaker 1: ninety and he's quite good in this. He plays a
Speaker 1: nice focal point of insanity, you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: that necessary character to so many weird tales where like
Speaker 1: the madness is overtaking them. Um. I it was not
Speaker 1: really familiar with this guy, but he had a strong
Speaker 1: career on the British stage and on television. Among other things,
Speaker 1: he was in the nineteen seventy three horror anthology film
Speaker 1: Tales that Witness Madness And another interesting genre piece that
Speaker 1: he's credited to is a film I haven't seen, but
Speaker 1: now I'm super interested in, Footprints on the Moon from
Speaker 1: ninety five um, which also featured klas Kinski in a role.
Speaker 1: It was a well received, seemingly surreal jallow film by
Speaker 1: Luigi Bezzoni, in which uh, the actor Florinda Bulcan plays
Speaker 1: a woman who is psychologically disturbed by these dreams she
Speaker 1: keeps having about an astronaut dying on the moon. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I love that pitch. I'm intrigued. I've never heard
Speaker 1: of it. Uh, yeah, I gotta look that up. A
Speaker 1: couple of other actors have noted this one. Conrad Phillips,
Speaker 1: who lived twenty sixteen, plays um Dr Manders a delightfully
Speaker 1: impish character. Yeah he's uh what, there's a partner at
Speaker 1: the big getting where he's like, well, gentlemen, we are
Speaker 1: looking at the mortal remains of an individualist. And then
Speaker 1: we also have Georgina Hale And this was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. She placed Stella. She was in a
Speaker 1: number of Kin Russell movies, including nineteen seventy one Is
Speaker 1: the Devil's Which Is, which is, of course an excellent
Speaker 1: and uh famed film, infamous I'm to understand, and infamous
Speaker 1: in some circles as well, but and and for a
Speaker 1: long time hard hard to get your hands on. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, um, it's an a notable film, no
Speaker 1: matter where you stand on it, whether you want to
Speaker 1: to view it or or burn it. Well. So, getting
Speaker 1: back to the plot of the episode, we go through
Speaker 1: the autopsy of the patient from the opening scene, Samuel Holt,
Speaker 1: who was in brain surgery and said leave my soul alone.
Speaker 1: We uh. It is revealed that prior to his brain surgery,
Speaker 1: this patient, Samuel Holt, had tried to perform a self trepidation.
Speaker 1: He attempted to create a hole in his own skull
Speaker 1: with a power drill, allegedly to relieve pressure in his brain.
Speaker 1: I think Dr Manders has some kind of comment about this.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, pressure in the brain. Leads to
Speaker 1: a trip to the Old Iron Manga and while sewing
Speaker 1: up holds body after the autopsy, Edwin accidentally pricks his
Speaker 1: finger with the suture needle, and at first he doesn't
Speaker 1: think anything of this. He just puts some iodine on it.
Speaker 1: But when his boss finds out, his boss gets very upset.
Speaker 1: He's like, uhh. He tells Edwin that he needs to
Speaker 1: go to casualty and uh, I think tells him he
Speaker 1: needs to get his tetanus shots and a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff because well. It turns out that when Holt was
Speaker 1: dying of a blood clot in the brain, Holt himself
Speaker 1: had believed that this this was caused by an infection,
Speaker 1: an infection that he called an evil virus. So the
Speaker 1: guy who said leave my soul alone, he believed he
Speaker 1: was infected with a virus of evil. Now, a couple
Speaker 1: of threads begin to develop in this episode that reflects
Speaker 1: something about Edwin's deteriorating psychological state. So one thing is
Speaker 1: that Edwin perceives a strange pattern emerging everywhere he goes.
Speaker 1: He notices the number nine. There's an office sweepstakes that
Speaker 1: pays out a prize of nine pounds. He has to
Speaker 1: store Holt's body and freezer number nine. He has to
Speaker 1: sew up a body using nine stitches to every three inches,
Speaker 1: and things like that. Even more alarmingly, he sometimes believes
Speaker 1: he can hear radio signals in his head and these
Speaker 1: are seemingly broadcasted from a weather vane on the roof
Speaker 1: of the hospital. Beyond that, he starts to believe that
Speaker 1: crowds of ominous strangers wearing sunglasses or sort of following
Speaker 1: him around town, watching him and menacing him. Now, eventually
Speaker 1: we see his home situation, which is that Edwin is
Speaker 1: single and he lives in a house with his extremely
Speaker 1: grumpy and judgmental mother, along with a tenant who lives
Speaker 1: in the house named Stella, and this is this character
Speaker 1: is played by Georgina Hale. Edwin at some point tells
Speaker 1: Stella about you know, he's explaining the delusions he's experiencing,
Speaker 1: and she, very unhelpfully is pretty much like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: yep um, And so it seems like everywhere he goes
Speaker 1: things nobody's really intervening to make things better. So his
Speaker 1: psychological state worsens. He comes to believe that his mother
Speaker 1: has somehow infected him with an evil virus that is
Speaker 1: attacking his brain, and he believes that she may have
Speaker 1: killed his father years ago with the same virus, though
Speaker 1: it seems his father actually died of meningitis. At one point,
Speaker 1: Edwin visits a priest to seek counsel, and then the
Speaker 1: priest very helpfully decides to tell him about the passage
Speaker 1: in the Book of Revelation concerning the number of the Beast.
Speaker 1: So it's like, oh, yes, uh, this man is offerings
Speaker 1: from some form of psychosis. What he needs is the
Speaker 1: Book of Revelation. Yes, it's like, but the faith offers
Speaker 1: many directions for your your your your confusion and obsession
Speaker 1: that may tell you about it. So from here things
Speaker 1: get worse and worse. Edwin ends up doing murders. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's having these full blown delusions that a a coven
Speaker 1: of Satan worshiping doctors and acquaintances of his have put
Speaker 1: a virus in his brain in order to control him
Speaker 1: and that they want him to eat a baby for Satan.
Speaker 1: But then there's a strange so you know, this could
Speaker 1: just be a story about a man losing his mind,
Speaker 1: but the the episode develops that the same exact delusion
Speaker 1: we discover was held by the man from the surgery
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the episode, Samuel Holt, And in
Speaker 1: the end, Edwin, like Holt, tries to relieve himself of
Speaker 1: the pressure by performing a self trepidation with an electric drill,
Speaker 1: and he also, like Holt, ends up in neurosurgery and
Speaker 1: echo of the opening scene, and the doctors are operating
Speaker 1: on Edwin's brain and we hear a moaning plea leave
Speaker 1: my soul alone, m And the ending is very ambiguous.
Speaker 1: I think the viewer is meant to understand that there
Speaker 1: actually is no Satanic coven and that this is in
Speaker 1: Edwin's head. But I think the unanswered question in the
Speaker 1: narrative is whether Edwin was somehow actually infected with this
Speaker 1: demonic obsession and and this this imagery when he pricked
Speaker 1: his finger while he was working on Holt's body, It
Speaker 1: sort of raises this question of would it be possible
Speaker 1: for this this series of demonic images and ideas to
Speaker 1: somehow infect a person like an evil virus. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know of any realistic mechanism by which something like
Speaker 1: this would happen. I kind of doubt there is, but
Speaker 1: I would like to explore a sort of related idea
Speaker 1: that that is quite real, which has to do with
Speaker 1: the idea of a relationship between virus like mechanisms and
Speaker 1: the deep contents of the human brain, even things that
Speaker 1: somebody might think of as the soul. Now, um, the
Speaker 1: fact that this episode centers around round trepid Nation I
Speaker 1: found kind of interesting, especially since it came out in
Speaker 1: Britain in nineteen eighty. This would have been right after
Speaker 1: the Countess of Welliams and uh and Mark Amanda Fielding
Speaker 1: first ran for British Parliament on the platform Trap Nation
Speaker 1: for the National health advocating research into its benefits. UM.
Speaker 1: She famously trepanned herself in nineteen seventy, following Dutch Trap
Speaker 1: Nation proponent Bart Huges's example, and UM, you know this,
Speaker 1: UH may sound a bit crazy, but as as Michael
Speaker 1: Paulin pointed out in his excellent book How to Change
Speaker 1: Your Mind, Fielding has proven herself to be an effective
Speaker 1: drug policy reformer UH. In subsequent years lobbyist and research coordinator.
Speaker 1: In she founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness, later renamed
Speaker 1: the Beckley found Nation, which supports neuroscientific research. Her recent
Speaker 1: and current work, Paul And writes, shifted away from trepid
Speaker 1: Nation and towards the possibilities posed by psychedelics. So you
Speaker 1: think it's possible this episode was influenced by by her
Speaker 1: famous advocacy for for drilling a hole in your skull. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I I would. I would almost bet on it.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like the time, you know, like
Speaker 1: a lot of horror uh fiction, you know, it speaks
Speaker 1: to what's going on in the public mindset, and so
Speaker 1: I feel like there's just there's just too much trepin
Speaker 1: nation in the in the in the in the air
Speaker 1: for this not to be kind of at least a
Speaker 1: partial response to it. Not that it has anything particularly,
Speaker 1: you know, deep to say about trepid Nation itself, but
Speaker 1: it's it's it leans. It's a it's just a concept
Speaker 1: that leans, uh, that allows one to lean into the
Speaker 1: horror a bit. You know. It's it's just it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like fly paper for for horror writing. Now,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to hear more about about trepin nation though,
Speaker 1: we we did an episode several years back titled The
Speaker 1: Tone of Madness UM that gets into all of that.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's sort of the the older historical
Speaker 1: idea of trepidation as well as um the more modern
Speaker 1: twentieth century advocates of it. But you know, the basic
Speaker 1: idea came down in the modern sense that you have
Speaker 1: you known increase of blood in the brain that could
Speaker 1: bring about altered states of consciousness, um, etcetera. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a really fascinating, um fascinating topic. To be clear
Speaker 1: that this is what was claimed by its advocates, not
Speaker 1: that we're advocating trepidation, right, there's no I don't don't
Speaker 1: believe there's any scientific evidence that it actually works, but
Speaker 1: it had its vocal proponents. But if you're even halfway tempted,
Speaker 1: I think you should you should take you should just
Speaker 1: follow the model of a Manda Fielding, who who again
Speaker 1: has turned away from UM from advocating trepid nation and
Speaker 1: looking more into uh actual you know, legitimate research into psychedelics. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you know ultimately that that's a whole area of
Speaker 1: research that does not require drilling a hole in your skull.
Speaker 1: And it goes without saying, don't drill a hole in
Speaker 1: your skull, especially based on anything that you hear on
Speaker 1: this podcast or see on the hammer House of Horror. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't make major life decisions based on the Hammer House
Speaker 1: of Horror series. But on the subject of viruses in mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: this this does bring up a really interesting question of like,
Speaker 1: did you ever wonder, you know, down at the cell level,
Speaker 1: at the molecular level, what is the mechanism of say,
Speaker 1: memory formation. You know, our memories to to a great
Speaker 1: extent or a lot of what makes us who we are.
Speaker 1: And so you might say that in a metaphorical since
Speaker 1: you know, memories are a big part of what would
Speaker 1: make your soul. And so I was reading about some
Speaker 1: interesting research and a couple of articles from January. One
Speaker 1: of them was a news feature in Nature by Sarah
Speaker 1: Reardon called cells hack virus like protein to communicate, and
Speaker 1: another one was in The Atlantic by Ed Young called
Speaker 1: brain cells share information with virus like capsules. And these
Speaker 1: two articles were in turn summarizing and reacting to the
Speaker 1: pretty much simultaneous publication of a couple of scientific papers
Speaker 1: in the journal Cell, both concerning a very interesting gene
Speaker 1: and its associated protein, which is known as ARC ARC
Speaker 1: A r C. One of these papers was by Ashley
Speaker 1: at All in in Cell, and the other one was
Speaker 1: by Petution at All. Now, the gene known as ARC
Speaker 1: is present in all kinds of different organisms. You you
Speaker 1: can find different versions of it, saying human cells, in
Speaker 1: the cells of mice, in the cells of flies like
Speaker 1: Drosophila flies, in the cells of reptiles and birds. And
Speaker 1: it apparently encodes a product known as the ARC protein,
Speaker 1: where ARC stands for activity regulated cytoskeleton associate DID protein
Speaker 1: and ARC has been known about since the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: but some recent discoveries have made it seem even more interesting.
Speaker 1: Uh And and there's an interesting scene that ed Young
Speaker 1: describes in his article about this where he's summarizing the
Speaker 1: research on one of the authors on one of these papers,
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist named Jason Shepherd who works at the University
Speaker 1: of Utah in Salt Lake City, who was studying the
Speaker 1: ARC gene and its associated proteins in mice. In the
Speaker 1: I believe the in the motor neurons of mice. And
Speaker 1: what the article describes is that Jason Shephard was observing
Speaker 1: the proteins that were made by this gene under a
Speaker 1: under a highly powerful microscope, and when he first saw
Speaker 1: the structures, what he thought was that they looked like viruses. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, these are not viruses, these are not external
Speaker 1: infectious agents. These are structures that are produced by the
Speaker 1: natural cells in a mouse's body. So what both of
Speaker 1: these papers were looking at were that they were studying
Speaker 1: what are known as extra cellular vesicles. And these are
Speaker 1: sort of little chunks of cell membranes that separate from
Speaker 1: their original host cells and then they go off somewhere
Speaker 1: and do their own things, so that you know, they
Speaker 1: actually are a part of a cell that leaves the
Speaker 1: cell and floats free of it to maybe go connect
Speaker 1: with another cell or do something else in the body.
Speaker 1: And extracellular vesicles can be found all throughout the body,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of questions about what they do.
Speaker 1: We don't really know a lot uh, And apparently these
Speaker 1: two teams were looking at these these extracellular vessels that
Speaker 1: were released by various neurons cells in the nervous system
Speaker 1: to find out what they were doing, and they independently
Speaker 1: found that the vesicles that are released by neurons in
Speaker 1: both flies and mice contain this ARC gene. Now it's
Speaker 1: interesting because there is already existing research to show some
Speaker 1: things about this ARC gene, for example, that the ARC
Speaker 1: gene helps neurons form connections between one another, and of course,
Speaker 1: connections between neurons underlie a lot of what the brain does.
Speaker 1: And there is also research to show very interesting macro
Speaker 1: behavioral effects of the ARC gene. For example, mice that
Speaker 1: are genetically altered to lack the ARC gene have difficulty
Speaker 1: with memory formation tasks. It seems like they can't learn,
Speaker 1: they can't make long term memories. So, say, if you
Speaker 1: train a mouse to run a maze, if they don't
Speaker 1: have the ARC gene, they can't make the ARC protein.
Speaker 1: They apparently can't learn anything about the maze that sticks
Speaker 1: with them. They might have to, you know, do the
Speaker 1: maze as if for the first time every time. So
Speaker 1: it seems that ARC is very important in whatever process
Speaker 1: it is in the brain that turns experiences into structural
Speaker 1: changes in the brain that would you know, allow you
Speaker 1: to say, cement a memory that could be referenced later on,
Speaker 1: but I mentioned that y'all article describes the scene where
Speaker 1: this researcher is looking at the at the arc proteins
Speaker 1: under the microscope, and that when he examined them, he
Speaker 1: saw what looked like these these hollow shells that very
Speaker 1: much resembled viruses. Specifically, they looked like textbook illustrations of HIV,
Speaker 1: which of course is a type of virus known as
Speaker 1: a retrovirus. And apparently a shepherd ran these images by
Speaker 1: some viral experts and they did confirm that yes, these
Speaker 1: shells that were being made by these cells within the
Speaker 1: mice's bodies looked a lot like the protein shells the
Speaker 1: capsids that you would find around viruses like HIV. So apparently,
Speaker 1: the arc genes that you would find in animals like
Speaker 1: mice today, it descends from an ancient class of ancestral genes,
Speaker 1: types of retro transposons, and they can be found in
Speaker 1: the genomes of all kinds of animals. As I said,
Speaker 1: but these genes are very interesting in that they can
Speaker 1: behave almost like independent infectious agents. They can copy themselves
Speaker 1: and then insert those copies of themselves somewhere else within
Speaker 1: the host's genome. But Apparently, at some point these ancestral
Speaker 1: retro transposons gain the ability not only to copy and
Speaker 1: paste themselves elsewhere within the genome, but to build a
Speaker 1: protein shell, essentially to build themselves a spaceship that would
Speaker 1: surround this gene, surround this length of genetic material, and
Speaker 1: then allow this cage protected strand of genetic information to
Speaker 1: leave its original host cell to fly off into space
Speaker 1: and and to go boldly. And ed Young writes that
Speaker 1: this actually is believed to be the origin of retroviruses.
Speaker 1: So in a way, we have these genes within our
Speaker 1: bodies that are actually cousins of wild, infectious retroviruses that
Speaker 1: infect people and harm them. Uh And and this apparently
Speaker 1: is why the shells or the capsids made by these
Speaker 1: stretches of DNA are so similar. The arc gene that
Speaker 1: you find in animals is apparently very similar to a
Speaker 1: viral gene called a GAG gene. And and again this
Speaker 1: is the gene that codes for the construction of this
Speaker 1: this protein shell, the capsid that protects the genetic material
Speaker 1: of a virus and allows it to get into a
Speaker 1: cell and infect it. So what we have here is
Speaker 1: that there are cells within the brains or the nervous
Speaker 1: systems of animals as diverse as you know, from mice
Speaker 1: to to Drosophila two flies that use this gene similar
Speaker 1: to a gene found in viruses, to build this protein
Speaker 1: shell or capsid, this structure to surround a strand of
Speaker 1: RNA based information like viruses do, and then send that
Speaker 1: RNA information to another cell, again like viruses do so,
Speaker 1: so in a way, you could look at the the
Speaker 1: brain cells as using a very similar structure to what
Speaker 1: is used in viruses to sort of in act one
Speaker 1: another with something with some kind of RNA information. So
Speaker 1: why would cells in the brain be doing this? And
Speaker 1: one possibility is that it's a way for neurons to
Speaker 1: sort of control each other, to exert some kind of
Speaker 1: pressure or influence on each other. Of course, in the
Speaker 1: case of a virus, a virus wants to infect a
Speaker 1: new cell so that it makes more copies of the virus.
Speaker 1: But in this case, a neuron could maybe use ARC
Speaker 1: to send RNA to a nearby cell, which upon arrival
Speaker 1: would influence which genes are activated within that cell. Now,
Speaker 1: there's still tons of questions that we don't have answered
Speaker 1: about what what is going on here, like what is
Speaker 1: exactly this RNA cargo for, what does it do? What
Speaker 1: does it do exactly? Though, again it's very interesting to
Speaker 1: view this virus like behavior at the at the cell
Speaker 1: level uh in light of what we know about the
Speaker 1: macro behavioral effects of the ARC gene. Once again, if
Speaker 1: you disable ARC, a mouse without apparently can't learn or
Speaker 1: make memories. Fascinating, So we have this this this kind
Speaker 1: of ancestral potential, ancestral viral component to uh to to
Speaker 1: to some of the like the basic attributes of what
Speaker 1: do we think to think to think of having a
Speaker 1: mind or having certainly having consciousness, but even having just
Speaker 1: like a functional animal brain, right though. A very interesting
Speaker 1: thing is, though lots of animals have ARC, they're not
Speaker 1: all descended from a common ARC ancestor, or at least
Speaker 1: not within the animal line. So fruit flies have ARC genes,
Speaker 1: mike mice have ARC genes, Humans have ARC genes. But
Speaker 1: it appears that say flies and vertebrates acquired these genes,
Speaker 1: these similar genes from different sources uh in uh to
Speaker 1: quote ed young in separate events that took place millions
Speaker 1: of years apart, and yet they've both got this stuff
Speaker 1: so it seems like it is something that is probably
Speaker 1: liable to be co opted by by animal gene gnomes
Speaker 1: in a way that is very useful, such that it
Speaker 1: happened multiple times in the history of life. And so
Speaker 1: there are all these really interesting possibilities about what this
Speaker 1: could mean in terms of learning more about how our
Speaker 1: brains work and how our bodies evolved, but also in
Speaker 1: even potentially in in therapeutics, because as we were talking about,
Speaker 1: ARC has been highlighted as possibly playing a role in
Speaker 1: a number of neurological disorders, including some age related loss
Speaker 1: of mental capacity. So Jason Shephard is quoted in in
Speaker 1: ned Young's article as as observing that the brains of
Speaker 1: young mice produce way more ARC protein than the brains
Speaker 1: of old mice. And it looks like that possibly by
Speaker 1: inducing an increased supply of ARC protein in an older
Speaker 1: mouse's brain, the older mouse's brain will show improved abilities
Speaker 1: to learn and adapt, maybe acting a little bit more
Speaker 1: like a younger mouse's brain, having that uh, that more
Speaker 1: plastic potential. So I found this fast sinating that it
Speaker 1: could quite literally be the case that there's something pretty
Speaker 1: much like a virus in the brain that makes our
Speaker 1: minds what they are. That's fascinating, and it of course
Speaker 1: to now to bring it back to Hammer House of Horrors.
Speaker 1: Um not. Obviously, nobody's making the point that this research
Speaker 1: means that this episode is entirely possible or practical or
Speaker 1: anything that. Yes, proof of the episode um revealed, but
Speaker 1: uh no it um. It does make you uh uh
Speaker 1: you know, sort of reflect on the seemingly outrageous notion here,
Speaker 1: maybe being a little more reasonable than one might assume
Speaker 1: just one watching it. I mean, obviously I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how arc proteins are. Something similar would make you, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, start obsessing over numerology and feeling like you
Speaker 1: have there's a there's an outside pressure from people in
Speaker 1: sunglasses for you to eat a baby. But but still,
Speaker 1: uh you know, the the basic premise, uh you know,
Speaker 1: matches up with this idea a little bit segue to
Speaker 1: something totally different. I remember when I was a kid
Speaker 1: one time. This is one of my hotel cable memories.
Speaker 1: Do you have hotel cable memories from being Yeah, one
Speaker 1: of mine was we went somewhere we had the hotel
Speaker 1: channels and I saw an episode of Hammer House of Horror,
Speaker 1: when I was way too young, and I don't remember
Speaker 1: much about it except that it was an episode that
Speaker 1: had a werewolf in it. And then the real twist was, uh,
Speaker 1: so you think, okay, werewolf, somebody's gonna get you know,
Speaker 1: bit by the werewolf, gonna get mauled, and that's the
Speaker 1: real that's the shocker at the end. But instead somebody
Speaker 1: got killed with an axe in the werewolf episode, just
Speaker 1: about like a guy with an axe. I wonder if
Speaker 1: that was the Peter Cushing episode. I think that one
Speaker 1: involves the animal human hybrids. I don't think it had
Speaker 1: Peter Cushing because I think I would have recognized him
Speaker 1: at least from Star Wars. I you know, this whole
Speaker 1: mention of this episo that it does make me wonder,
Speaker 1: like what was in the waters too to inspire these
Speaker 1: other elements. You know, we can point to the Trepid
Speaker 1: nation influence that would have been a president in the
Speaker 1: news and so forth. But this idea of of a virus,
Speaker 1: an evil virus um it reminds me a little bit
Speaker 1: of the plot of The Creeping Flesh from nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: which had Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in it, and
Speaker 1: it involves the development of a serum against evil, the
Speaker 1: idea that that you could you could that I think
Speaker 1: Peter Cushing's characters working on developing one and about to
Speaker 1: have a big breakthrough, like where where did this strange?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: a dumb idea in some respect is very uh. It
Speaker 1: produces the the idea of of evil to something that
Speaker 1: you know, kind of kind of like getting back to
Speaker 1: the brainwashing, uh de programming idea that something has been
Speaker 1: done and it can be undone like that, that evil.
Speaker 1: It's a broad tent concept and in human civilization, uh
Speaker 1: that we could find some sort of underlying cause of it,
Speaker 1: cause behind it and uh and and effectively remove it
Speaker 1: and everything would be fine. You know, sometimes the dumb
Speaker 1: idea is a brilliant idea. There's almost something exactly like
Speaker 1: that in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. You know that
Speaker 1: we have to discover like they discover essentially a jar
Speaker 1: of Satan. It's like this physical substance or it's not
Speaker 1: quite it's something I think they call it, like the
Speaker 1: anti god and there's anti God. Yeah, there's some very
Speaker 1: loose uh pseudo scientific connections. Actually, well, I mean talking
Speaker 1: about real physics, but the connections I guess would be
Speaker 1: the pseudo part where they're saying, oh, yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: a particle in an anti particle in in modern physics,
Speaker 1: and so you have the same thing as true, like
Speaker 1: God is like the particle, and then you've got an
Speaker 1: anti particle anti God that they come together and they annihilate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I agree. There a dumb idea taken too to the limit.
Speaker 1: You know, you can make it very entertaining, or sometimes
Speaker 1: a kind of dumb or traditional idea given a new
Speaker 1: code of paint using um, you know, some current scientific buzzwords, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, or something from the headlines like that can
Speaker 1: make all the difference as well, because the basic idea
Speaker 1: here is like, is a curse idea a contagious curse.
Speaker 1: Man catches curse from cursed individual and then has to
Speaker 1: deal with the curse. It's not unlike many werewolf stories,
Speaker 1: except instead of the curse of turning into a wolf
Speaker 1: uh and killing people, it's this, uh, this curse of
Speaker 1: of of these these various more you know, I guess,
Speaker 1: some more obscure, more mysterious um psychological issues popping up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately makes it more terrifying because it's these
Speaker 1: are these are things that that we can point to
Speaker 1: in the real world that he's suffering, you know, like
Speaker 1: a sudden obsession over things, uh, you know, a change
Speaker 1: and behavior consciousness. Well, and in the light of the
Speaker 1: scientific stuff we were talking about today, I think, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it sort of invites you to rethink the
Speaker 1: idea of what a what a virus or infectious agent is.
Speaker 1: I mean, we naturally think of infectious agents as things
Speaker 1: that are bad and harmful because I mean usually when
Speaker 1: it's like it is, uh, you know, a pathogen in
Speaker 1: the body that is infecting you in order to make
Speaker 1: copies of itself and it doesn't really care how much,
Speaker 1: you know, if it makes you miserable or debilitates you
Speaker 1: someway in the process, that's obviously bad. But there are
Speaker 1: also these essentially things that function like infectious agents, that
Speaker 1: have very similar behaviors that are within the body, and
Speaker 1: they might even be things that make you who you
Speaker 1: are in a very inextricable way. Yeah, he kind of
Speaker 1: driving home what you know, to come back around to
Speaker 1: Heed Young and his work, the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: we are multitudes. You know that that this idea of
Speaker 1: there being this single thing and this is what we are. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, is obviously fallacy. But then you know when
Speaker 1: you start looking at like the the organism itself, well,
Speaker 1: there is the organism, but then they are all the
Speaker 1: additional organisms within it that make make it up and
Speaker 1: and influence the ultimate presentation and experience, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: so you you could make distinctions that are valid distinctions.
Speaker 1: You can look at a cell in the body and
Speaker 1: say this is an animal cell, this is a you know,
Speaker 1: mammalian cell, and then this is a bacterial cell. But
Speaker 1: in fact, I think he makes a good case that
Speaker 1: when we think about what we are, it should probably
Speaker 1: actually include both, Like the bacteria are also us. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in watching Hammer House of Horror, our
Speaker 1: producers Seth informs us that as of this recording, it
Speaker 1: is currently available on peacock. Uh. I was looking around
Speaker 1: and I found it available to to view as a
Speaker 1: part of a few different streaming packages online, you know,
Speaker 1: various channels. Uh, so it's it's definitely out there. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, multiple episodes. This is the only one I've seen,
Speaker 1: and and I don't have the benefit of your your
Speaker 1: your hotel cable experience of of watching uh, watching it
Speaker 1: earlier in life. But but it looks like a really
Speaker 1: it's a really shows. Let me say, check out the titles,
Speaker 1: check out the cast members. Uh, there are several of
Speaker 1: these that look really interesting. Got that classic British crime? Yeah, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone. Of course, do you
Speaker 1: have favorite episodes of the Hammer, House of Horror, favorite
Speaker 1: episodes of the nineties Outer Limits series you'd like to
Speaker 1: chat about with us, We'll let us know. We'd we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. And of course, if you
Speaker 1: have thoughts about the scientific or cultural topics that we
Speaker 1: touched on in these episodes, Um, everything's fair game, right
Speaker 1: in We've we'd we'd love to discuss it with you.
Speaker 1: Our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published
Speaker 1: on Tuesday's and Thursdays. Check them out in the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed, and that is where
Speaker 1: you'll find them wherever you get your podcast. We also
Speaker 1: have Listener Mail on Monday's, Artifact on Wednesdays, and Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema on Friday's Huge Thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.