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

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

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today is a thrilling

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Speaker 3: occasion for us here on the podcast because this very

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Speaker 3: episode is publishing on Tuesday, October first, twenty twenty four,

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Speaker 3: which makes it the inaugural entry in our traditional month

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Speaker 3: long celebration of Halloween. So longtime fans, you know what's

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Speaker 3: going on, you know what's in store. But in case

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Speaker 3: you're new to the show, the pitch is that every

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Speaker 3: October on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we devote all

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Speaker 3: of that month's core episodes two topics related to monsters, ghosts, demons, curses,

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Speaker 3: and horror Halloween stuff, and also for our weird House

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Speaker 3: cinema episodes. For the Fridays of this month, we're going

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Speaker 3: to be looking at horror movies.

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Speaker 2: That's right. October is the month when you can turn

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Speaker 2: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind and find that we

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Speaker 2: were doing horror and monster stuff one hundred percent of

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Speaker 2: the time, as opposed to our normal like, I don't know,

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Speaker 2: thirty five to forty percent of the time.

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Speaker 3: That's right. People have pointed out before. I mean, we're

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Speaker 3: you know, we got monsters on the brain. That's kind

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Speaker 3: of how we are. So throughout the year you'll get

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Speaker 3: a smattering, but for October, it's it's all we do.

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Speaker 2: And I'm excited about the episode we're going to kick

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Speaker 2: off here today, the series we're kicking off here today

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Speaker 2: because this is a topic we've been talking about doing

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Speaker 2: for years now. This is well when we get around

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Speaker 2: to planning out our October episodes, this one's been on

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Speaker 2: the list for a while and we're finally hopping aboard.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder why it took us this long. I

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Speaker 3: don't think there's a particular reason just shook out that way.

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Speaker 3: But today we're beginning a series on locomotive horror, the

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Speaker 3: mini shades of menace and supernatural fright that we have

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Speaker 3: projected onto trains. Now, this is a topic that's going

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Speaker 3: to take us into a bunch of different realms of folklore, history, science,

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Speaker 3: and technology. But I think the best best place to

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Speaker 3: begin here is to look at some famous examples of

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Speaker 3: trains in horror fiction and rob if you don't mind,

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Speaker 3: I want to kick things off with an example of

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Speaker 3: a story that I just read in full for the

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Speaker 3: first time this weekend.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have it, okay.

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Speaker 3: So the story in question is a short tale of ghosts,

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Speaker 3: spectral visions, and premonitions by Charles Dickens, and it's called

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Speaker 3: The Signalman. This story was published in eighteen sixty six

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Speaker 3: as part of a set of short stories by Dickens

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Speaker 3: and a handful of other authors, with the collection as

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Speaker 3: a whole called Mugby Junction. So there's sort of a

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Speaker 3: locomotive and railroad theme running throughout. This collection was a

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Speaker 3: special Christmas edition of a magazine that Dickens founded called

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Speaker 3: All the Year Round. And I'm going to briefly summarize

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Speaker 3: the story, including the ending, so as a warning, if

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Speaker 3: you want to read it without having the ending spoiled,

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Speaker 3: you could pause and do that now. It's fairly short.

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Speaker 3: It only takes like twenty minutes or so to read.

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Speaker 3: The Signalman begins with an unnamed narrator who wanders to

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Speaker 3: the edge of a huge trench in the earth around

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Speaker 3: sunset one day. And at the bottom of this trench

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Speaker 3: there is a railway line leading into a dark tunnel.

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Speaker 3: And at the edge of the tunnel, beside the tracks

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Speaker 3: there is a tiny box like signal house and the

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Speaker 3: signalman who works it. So a bit of historical context

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Speaker 3: that helps you understand the story better. In the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 3: signal operators were a crucial part of railroads. These were

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Speaker 3: workers who had to stay at little houses beside the tracks,

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Speaker 3: and they would be equipped with lights and colored flags

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Speaker 3: and usually a telegraph line to relay information to and

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Speaker 3: about passing trains, which meant that signalers were pivotal to

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Speaker 3: railroad safety. They gave the trains information, They passed the

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Speaker 3: information via flags or sometimes even shouted verbal signals. They

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Speaker 3: passed information to oncoming in engine drivers, and this could

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Speaker 3: be information about the conditions of the tracks ahead, like

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Speaker 3: is there an obstruction, a flood, some of their kind

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Speaker 3: of problem, or about the movements of other trains like

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Speaker 3: was there a train stalled on the tracks ahead or

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Speaker 3: somewhere it shouldn't be. And they also kept information about

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Speaker 3: when trains passed to make sure everything was running on

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Speaker 3: schedule and alert other stations and trains if there was

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Speaker 3: some kind of danger or delay. They were also sometimes

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Speaker 3: responsible for operating track switches to divert the course of

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Speaker 3: a train, like if there's a fork in the line.

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Speaker 3: But because of the nature of their work, signal operators

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Speaker 3: were sometimes characterized as kind of pitiable people like it

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Speaker 3: was stressful work because the lives of many people were

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Speaker 3: in their hands. If they made a mistake, it could

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Speaker 3: lead to disaster. But it was also isolated, lonely work

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Speaker 3: because they would be spending long shifts by themselves in

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Speaker 3: remote and sometimes unpleasant locations along the rail lines. So

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Speaker 3: anyway back to the story. The narrator comes to a

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Speaker 3: deep cutting in the earth at the emergence of a

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Speaker 3: rail tunnel, and he looks down into it and sees

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Speaker 3: this tiny signal house and the man who works there

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Speaker 3: standing at the door. Curious. The narrator calls out and says, Helloa,

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Speaker 3: it's that one of those hellos that spelled halloa or

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Speaker 3: how you say that? Do you say the oa? Or

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Speaker 3: is that just oh hello, I die I'm not sure.

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Speaker 3: It's like balbo helloa. Below there, He's trying to get

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Speaker 3: the man's attention. The man at first seems confused and

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Speaker 3: even frightened, but then reluctantly invites the narrator down a

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Speaker 3: hidden pathway to meet him. And here, I'm going to

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Speaker 3: read a descriptive passage to communicate the atmosphere of the story.

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Speaker 3: The narrator says his post was in as solitary and

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Speaker 3: dismal a place as I ever saw. On either side,

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Speaker 3: a dripping, wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view

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Speaker 3: but a strip of sky. The perspective one way only

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Speaker 3: a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon, the shorter perspective

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Speaker 3: in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light,

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Speaker 3: and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose

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Speaker 3: massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air.

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Speaker 3: So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot

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Speaker 3: that it had an earthy, deadly smell, and so much

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Speaker 3: cold wind rushed through it that it struck chill to me,

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Speaker 3: as if I had left the natural world.

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Speaker 2: Ooh, that is nice.

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Speaker 3: Anyway, The narrator notices that the signalman is acting weird.

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Speaker 3: He's preoccupied, even a bit haunted, And they eventually get

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Speaker 3: to know one another and become familiar, and after some

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Speaker 3: time has passed between them, the signalman confesses what it

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Speaker 3: is that's troubling him. At several times past, the signalman

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Speaker 3: has had visions of a man in the night, posed

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Speaker 3: against the red light, the danger light at the mouth

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Speaker 3: of the tunnel. The figure stands with one arm raised up,

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Speaker 3: waving violently, and the other arm thrown over his eyes

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Speaker 3: like a blindfold. And when the signallman sees the figure,

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Speaker 3: he hears a voice calling out, saying, Helloa below there,

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Speaker 3: look out, And then as suddenly as it appeared, the

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Speaker 3: figure vanishes into darkness. And twice before, at the time

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Speaker 3: of the story, the signalman has seen this shadow man

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Speaker 3: in the red light and heard the voice, and then

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Speaker 3: immediately after those visions, disaster has fallen somewhere nearby on

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Speaker 3: the tracks. A One time it was a terrible engine

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Speaker 3: collision in which many people were killed. Another time it

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Speaker 3: was the sudden and mysterious death of a young woman

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Speaker 3: riding on board a passing train. And so now the

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Speaker 3: signalman is not only haunted by this vision, but by

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Speaker 3: what it means. When he sees it and when he

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Speaker 3: hears the voice, he knows there will soon be a disaster,

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Speaker 3: and he wants to telegraph the station so he can

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Speaker 3: perhaps avert it. But he has no idea what the

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Speaker 3: disaster will be, and he can't explain the reason he

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Speaker 3: knows it's coming, so he can't give a warning that

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Speaker 3: anybody will heed. So he's tortured with this terrible knowledge

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Speaker 3: that he can't use to help anyone. Now the narrator

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Speaker 3: is troubled by all this. He seems to believe that

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Speaker 3: the man is suffering from a nervous condition, and the

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Speaker 3: next day he plans to come back and find a

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Speaker 3: way to convince the signalman to go see a doctor.

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Speaker 3: But when the narrator arrives at the trench in the

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Speaker 3: earth the next day, he instead finds a large gathering

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Speaker 3: of railroad officials on site. Apparently the signalman was cut

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Speaker 3: down by a train the night before. He was standing

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Speaker 3: in the tracks as if in a trance. The engine

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Speaker 3: driver saw him as the train was approaching and tried

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Speaker 3: to call out to him to get him to move

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Speaker 3: out of the way. And he was calling out halloa

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Speaker 3: below there look out and waved one arm violently to

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Speaker 3: get the signalman's attention. But at the last moment the

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Speaker 3: engine driver was terrified of what he was about to see,

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Speaker 3: and so he threw his other arm over his face

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Speaker 3: to cover his eyes.

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Speaker 2: Oh wow, I.

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Speaker 3: Think it's a wonderfully chilling ending. Even now just telling

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Speaker 3: it again, I got a little bit of a little

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Speaker 3: bit of a shiver, a goosebump there. Now, you might think,

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Speaker 3: because a lot of ghost stories, what they're really about

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Speaker 3: is the ghost. And actually you could say that it's

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Speaker 3: arguable whether or not this should be classified as a

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Speaker 3: ghost story or whether it's actually a premonition story that

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Speaker 3: just has a has a similar aesthetic reform to a

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Speaker 3: ghost story. But but you could argue that, yeah, maybe

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Speaker 3: the setting is kind of incidental. What it's really about

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Speaker 3: is the ghost and the human interaction. But I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I think the railway setting is not incidental here. I

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Speaker 3: think the setting along the tracks is actually quite thematically central.

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Speaker 3: It matters that the signalman is a signalman, like what

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Speaker 3: his job is is core to the anguish that he's

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Speaker 3: suffering with this terrible knowledge, and the fear and the

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Speaker 3: dread and the gloomy atmosphere and the danger are all

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Speaker 3: centrally based on railroad technology. And you can tell well

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Speaker 3: and even Dickens himself had strange, i'd say, at best,

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Speaker 3: ambivalent feelings about rail travel and its effects on the world.

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Speaker 3: There's a different story in this same collection, Mugby Junction,

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Speaker 3: where Dickens is writing about a character looking down at

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Speaker 3: a railroad junction and says, but there were so many

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Speaker 3: lines gazing down upon them from a bridge at the junction,

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Speaker 3: it was as if the concentrating companies formed a great

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Speaker 3: industrial exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground spiders that

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Speaker 3: spun iron.

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Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's nice anyway.

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Speaker 3: All that to make the point that I think a

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Speaker 3: lot of these horror stories that are about trains are

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Speaker 3: not incidentally about trains. They're not just stories that could

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Speaker 3: be set anywhere that just happened to be a setting

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Speaker 3: the author liked. I think a lot of them really

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Speaker 3: are in serious ways about trains and what trains mean.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And this is a really fascinating subject to

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Speaker 2: get into, and I feel like I I do have

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Speaker 2: to like mention at the top of all this that

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Speaker 2: I love trains. I enjoy riding on trains, subway or otherwise,

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Speaker 2: bullet trains everywhere ever I've really enjoyed trains. I live

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Speaker 2: next to a train track, I've lived next to it

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Speaker 2: for over a decade, and I still find reasons to

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Speaker 2: enjoy watching the trains go by or especially the trucks

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Speaker 2: on the tracks and various maintenance equipment or special loads.

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Speaker 2: Occasionally that occurs, and I get a kick out of that.

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Speaker 2: But so suffice to say, trains are very every day

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Speaker 2: to me, and I like them. I don't inherently think

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Speaker 2: they are creepy. And yet at the same time, there

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Speaker 2: is something about the train that fits so well, not

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Speaker 2: only fits well within these stories, but serves as a

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Speaker 2: great skeleton for these stories. And a lot of it

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Speaker 2: comes down to ideas that the train itself there's something

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Speaker 2: unnatural about it. There's something really almost a sense of

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Speaker 2: future shock that's never gone away, you know. And also

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Speaker 2: the idea that the train is a location is inherently unnatural,

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Speaker 2: and there's something about it that is sort of inherently haunted.

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Speaker 2: And there are different ways to approach this, and I

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Speaker 2: was thinking about this, and I was looking up various

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Speaker 2: short stories and works of horror and thinking about various

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Speaker 2: movies as well that use train settings, and some of

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Speaker 2: them are you know, you can find overt examples of like, Okay,

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Speaker 2: this is a movie about a train with a killer

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Speaker 2: on the train. You know, it's you know, it is

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Speaker 2: just a setting for murders. Plenty of examples of that,

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Speaker 2: but one of the examples that I think came to

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Speaker 2: my mind the most, and this is one that I

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Speaker 2: remember watching an adaptation of it when I was younger.

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Speaker 2: This comes from the works of Sarrothur Conan Doyle and

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Speaker 2: a particular short story titled The Adventure of the Copper Beaches.

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Speaker 2: This would have been an eighteen ninety two tale, and

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Speaker 2: I vividly remember watching the Jeremy Brett Granada television adaptation

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Speaker 2: of this when I was a kid. You can find

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Speaker 2: this streaming, and you can get this on disc as well.

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Speaker 2: It's It's, It's. These were all really accurate adaptations of

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Speaker 2: the shlock Home stories. But basically this does not involve

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Speaker 2: a haunted train. There's not even a murder on the

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Speaker 2: train or anything of that nature. It's just Holmes and

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Speaker 2: Watson are taking the train into the countryside to look

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Speaker 2: into a particular crime. And at first Holmes is consumed

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Speaker 2: by his newspaper much of the way, you know, if

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Speaker 2: it were today, he'd be on his his iPhone or something.

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Speaker 2: But he finally puts his newspaper way and he begins

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Speaker 2: to survey the scenery outside the window and he makes

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Speaker 2: a kind of terrifying observation. He goes on a bit

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Speaker 2: of a ramt multiple paragraphs that I can't I can't

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Speaker 2: read all of it here, but I'm gonna read essentially

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Speaker 2: an abridged version. Okay, So Holmes says the following to Watson,

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Speaker 2: you look at these scattered houses and you are impressed

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Speaker 2: by their beauty. I look at them and the only

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Speaker 2: thought which comes to me is a feeling of their

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Speaker 2: isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be

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Speaker 2: committed there. They always fill me with a certain horror.

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Speaker 2: It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that

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Speaker 2: the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present

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Speaker 2: a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling

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Speaker 2: and beautiful countryside. The pressure of public opinion can do

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Speaker 2: in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is

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Speaker 2: no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured

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Speaker 2: child or the thud of a drunkard's blow does not

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Speaker 2: beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors. And then the

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Speaker 2: whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a

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Speaker 2: word of complaint can set it going. And there is

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Speaker 2: but a step between the crime and the dock. But

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Speaker 2: look at these lonely houses. Think of the deeds of

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Speaker 2: hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on year in,

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Speaker 2: year out in such places, and none the wiser. It

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Speaker 2: is the five miles of country which makes the danger.

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Speaker 3: That's a very interesting paragraph because it strikes me as

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Speaker 3: both containing some wisdom and truth but also representing a

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Speaker 3: pathological way of thinking. You know, it's like, yeah, there

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Speaker 3: is some correct observation there, but also it's just it

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Speaker 3: reveals Holmes's way of looking at the world as just

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Speaker 3: like a place of dangers and miseries, and you can

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Speaker 3: sort of do an inventory of the potential for dangers

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Speaker 3: and miseries by looking at any place.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it definitely reveals something of Holmes's nature.

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Speaker 2: And again it's the train itself is not creepy. Here

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Speaker 2: in the adaptation and in the book you get the

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Speaker 2: very you know, Holmes the insense of oh, these are

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Speaker 2: just gentlemen on a train. But then when you get

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Speaker 2: this morbid observation, ultimately it's about how the countryside is

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Speaker 2: creepy and not even the city is creepy. But there's

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Speaker 2: something about the train technology's role in this.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, I would have no way of proving that

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Speaker 3: that Arthur Conan Doyle was actually trying to make this

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Speaker 3: particular point, but I would not be surprised if this

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Speaker 3: kind of observation was actually a state. And about the

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Speaker 3: way a train changes the way you look at the world.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's about the vantage point that it provides

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Speaker 2: the broadening human travel abilities, It permits homes a chance

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Speaker 2: to observe something terrifying about human nature and human civilization.

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Speaker 2: And it's a scene that I think just got stuck

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Speaker 2: in my head at an early age. So I literally

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Speaker 2: think about the scene almost anytime I'm on a train,

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Speaker 2: certainly if it's a novel train and I get to

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Speaker 2: look out at the countryside.

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Speaker 3: Which, by the way, I love doing rob I'm like you,

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Speaker 3: I also very much love trains. I mostly have just

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Speaker 3: positive feelings about them. So I did not pick this

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Speaker 3: topic because I think trains are inherently creepy, but maybe

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Speaker 3: because they're sort of cuddly to me. I wonder I'm

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Speaker 3: interested in the way is that they might bring terrors

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Speaker 3: to mind for many people, especially people in say the

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Speaker 3: nineteenth century.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but seriously, I'll be riding a train like

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Speaker 2: even more recently, a few months back, I had to

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Speaker 2: ride the bullet train Japan. Look out of the beautiful

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Speaker 2: countryside and yet here Sherlock Holmes whispering my ear. They

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Speaker 2: might be murdering in there.

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Speaker 3: So thank you, Sherlock, but they think of the horror

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Speaker 3: is hidden beyond.

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Speaker 4: Yes.

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Speaker 2: Now, another tale that comes to mind concerning trains is

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Speaker 2: the Ray Bradbury story The Town where No One Got Off,

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Speaker 2: And I'm mostly familiar with this one from a nineteen

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Speaker 2: eighty six adaptation on the Ray Bradbury Theater television show

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Speaker 2: starring a young Jeff Goldblin Oh or you know. This

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Speaker 2: was what the same year as The Fly, so you

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Speaker 2: know young Jeff Goblin. I don't remember how old he

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Speaker 2: would have been at this point in his career, but anyway,

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Speaker 2: so this is another story where the train itself is

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Speaker 2: not creepy, but there's something about the way it connects

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Speaker 2: people in places that takes on a very sinister air.

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Speaker 2: So in this story we follow a man from the

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Speaker 2: city this is Jeff Goblum's character in the adaptation, who

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Speaker 2: takes a train ride out into the country side to

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Speaker 2: confirm according to him, his ideals about country living, and

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Speaker 2: his of course curiosity with this particular stop where nobody

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Speaker 2: ever gets off. You know, what is it with this town?

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Speaker 2: And you know this also ties into some general fascination

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Speaker 2: with train travel. You're like, well, what is this stop?

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Speaker 2: Who lives here? Who are these people? And he meets

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Speaker 2: up and tags along with an old countryman during this journey.

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Speaker 2: And there's a twist though, and I'm about to spoil it,

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Speaker 2: so skip ahead, pause, and so forth if you don't

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Speaker 2: want it to be spoiled. But the twist is that

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Speaker 2: the city man has ventured out to the country to

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Speaker 2: commit the perfect murder of a stranger, and the old

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Speaker 2: man has lured him out to do the same, to

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Speaker 2: commit the perfect murder of a city guy who has

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Speaker 2: wandered into the country. And I'm going to read it

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Speaker 2: just a quick quote here from the original rapere Very

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Speaker 2: short story. Now, the darkness that had brought us together

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Speaker 2: stood between the old man, the station, the town, the

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Speaker 2: forest were lost in the night. For an hour. I

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Speaker 2: stood in the roaring blast, staring back at all that darkness.

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Speaker 2: So this is a story that works in a number

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Speaker 2: of ways, exploring course just the darkness of human nature

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Speaker 2: and you know, temptation to do evil and so forth

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Speaker 2: our attitudes towards others, and perhaps as well a little

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Speaker 2: commentary on the idea that you still see in modern

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Speaker 2: objections to say, the expansion of city rail, that oh, well,

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Speaker 2: if you do this, it's going to allow criminals to

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Speaker 2: just move around super easily. They'll just they'll just go

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Speaker 2: right into the into the really nice parts of town

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Speaker 2: and just start doing crimes. But uh, and then on

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Speaker 2: top of all of this, I feel like this there

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Speaker 2: is also this sense of the train as a technology

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Speaker 2: that shortens the distance between individuals, so it brings us

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Speaker 2: closer together. But does it maybe bring us two close?

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Speaker 2: You know, does it just it just opens up the

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Speaker 2: room for it breaks down barriers that should be in place,

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Speaker 2: that sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: Hmmm, I'm gonna have to think on that. But in

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Speaker 3: a minute, I do want to get into talking about

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Speaker 3: some of the most common themes I feel like I've

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Speaker 3: observed in train related horror stories, and so maybe this

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Speaker 3: will come back up then. But before we do that,

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Speaker 3: I know you wanted to mention a few more examples.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, some of these are gonna be a little more

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Speaker 2: in passing, but I was just trying to list off

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Speaker 2: a few in my head that stood out. The Midnight

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Speaker 2: Meat Train by Clive Barker.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: If you're only familiar with the movie, let me just

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Speaker 2: remind you that the original Books of Blood short story

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Speaker 2: is quite good.

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Speaker 3: It's one of those stories where, if this makes any sense,

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Speaker 3: I kept expecting it to turn out to be less

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Speaker 3: literal than it was, and like the literalness of the

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Speaker 3: payoff is actually kind of genius.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it works better in short story format.

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Speaker 2: Another one is The Tall Grass by Joe R. Lansdale.

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Speaker 2: This one was adapted on the Love and Robots television

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Speaker 2: series the animated anthology series, and it's quite good. Involves

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Speaker 2: a train sort of I forget if it breaks down

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Speaker 2: or slows down, but it kind of gets into that

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Speaker 2: area of like, oh, the train is something that connects

390
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Speaker 2: point A to point B, but then what goes on

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Speaker 2: in between and the idea that you know, you're you're

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Speaker 2: often going through you know, very isolated countryside or you know,

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Speaker 2: so it seems to the observer. Yeah, let's see getting

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Speaker 2: into the realm of not only train horror fiction, but

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Speaker 2: subway horror fiction, which we already got into a little

396
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Speaker 2: bit of midnight me Train. There's an excellent older weird

397
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Speaker 2: fiction tale called Far Below by Robert Barbara Johnson, and

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Speaker 2: this one is adapted into an okay episode of the

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Speaker 2: anthology series Monsters, but the original short story is fabulous.

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Speaker 2: It involves people becoming ghouls in the deep tunnels beneath

401
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Speaker 2: New York City.

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Speaker 3: Nice.

403
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Speaker 2: Let's see, oh, we we would have to we have

404
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Speaker 2: to mention blame the monorail from Kings The Dark Tower

405
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Speaker 2: series is a like a super intelligent computer train that

406
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Speaker 2: goes crazy. And I'd forgotten about this one, but a

407
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Speaker 2: problematic horror. Master HP Lovecraft, in describing the Shoguth at

408
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Speaker 2: the end of nineteen thirty one's At the Mountains of Madness,

409
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Speaker 2: compares this indescribable monster, you know, it's like this blob

410
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Speaker 2: monster in part to a subway train. Okay, yeah, like

411
00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:28,520
Speaker 2: there's not much you could compare it to, but to

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Speaker 2: a train, which maybe reveals something about some of the

413
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Speaker 2: attitudes one might, you know, have about trains or observe

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Speaker 2: about them. I'm going to read a quick quote here,

415
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Speaker 2: but we were not on a station platform. We were

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Speaker 2: on the track ahead as the nightmare plastic column of

417
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Speaker 2: fetid black herodescence, oozed tightly onward through its fifteen foot sinus,

418
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Speaker 2: gathering unholy speed and driving before it a spiral, re

419
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Speaker 2: thickening cloud of the palette abyss vapor. It was a terrible,

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Speaker 2: indescribable thing. You just kind of described it, though, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: vaster than any subway train.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first of all, I do love that comparison. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: I can picture that the monsters moving like a subway train. Also, yeah,

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Speaker 3: this doesn't Lovecraft do this all the time. He says

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Speaker 3: it's impossible to describe this, and then he describes it.

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Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, yeah, I can't describe it, but I'm gonna

427
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Speaker 2: go on for about a good page. They alling you

428
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Speaker 2: how impossible this is to describe.

429
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Speaker 3: It's sort of like a way of saying, let me

430
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Speaker 3: describe this, but just know that it's worse than whatever

431
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Speaker 3: I'm saying.

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Speaker 2: Yes, And of course there are just great train moments

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Speaker 2: sprinkled throughout horror and even just horror flavored fiction. For instance.

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Speaker 2: I mean there's We've talked about the Vampire action sequence

435
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 2: with Subways and Blade on Weird House Cinema before. Who

436
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:49,480
Speaker 2: can forget the arrival of the Dementors on Hogwarts Express

437
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:53,480
Speaker 2: in Alfonso Quran's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,

438
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:56,560
Speaker 2: which for my money, is the best film in that

439
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:00,600
Speaker 2: whole series, and a very creepy sequences these rates or

440
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:04,520
Speaker 2: creeping aboard the train and the ice is forming over

441
00:24:04,560 --> 00:24:05,760
Speaker 2: the glass and so forth.

442
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:09,560
Speaker 3: I only barely remember the moment you're talking about. Wait,

443
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,040
Speaker 3: do the Dementtors get on the train and arrive by train?

444
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:14,880
Speaker 3: Or they're like surrounding a train.

445
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:16,639
Speaker 2: They're surrounding the train. Yeah, they didn't get it, they

446
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:20,360
Speaker 2: didn't buy a ticket, things about it. So at any rate,

447
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:23,280
Speaker 2: suffice to say, there are a lot of great horror

448
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 2: and horror flavored train scenes in film and television, in

449
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,679
Speaker 2: fiction written fiction. So I'm sure there are some excellent

450
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,119
Speaker 2: examples that I haven't even thought to mention here. So

451
00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 2: as always, we'd love to hear from folks out there

452
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,960
Speaker 2: if you have any examples that stand out in your

453
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 2: mind and line up with some of the examples we're

454
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:43,000
Speaker 2: discussing here.

455
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:47,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely right in now, Rob, if you don't mind,

456
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:49,200
Speaker 3: I thought it would be interesting to try to look

457
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,440
Speaker 3: at what are some of the most common and distinctive

458
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:57,959
Speaker 3: themes of locomotive horror. What do train horror stories often

459
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:02,560
Speaker 3: get focused on as opposed to just the usual themes

460
00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:04,840
Speaker 3: of horror. Here's what I could think of so far.

461
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 3: First of all, I think a big theme of train

462
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 3: horror is fate. These stories very often focus on people

463
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:18,680
Speaker 3: who have some kind of foreknowledge or premonition of horrible

464
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:22,760
Speaker 3: events or outcomes, but have no way to prevent them

465
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 3: from happening. This is a core idea of the Dickens

466
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 3: story The Signalman. But it happens in a lot of

467
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 3: train fiction that you know something is going to happen,

468
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,479
Speaker 3: and you usually don't want it to happen, but you

469
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 3: can't stop it. And I think this relates to unique features,

470
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 3: especially in the nineteenth century, of trains as a transportation technology.

471
00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 3: When you're on a train, you are headed somewhere, and

472
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 3: you've usually usually chosen to get on the train, but

473
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:52,879
Speaker 3: the travel is not occurring by your own physical power,

474
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 3: and the train is not under your control to steer,

475
00:25:57,080 --> 00:26:00,320
Speaker 3: and it is not within your practical power to get

476
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:03,160
Speaker 3: off the train. So once you're on a moving train,

477
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:07,679
Speaker 3: you are being taken ineluctably to the train's destination, and

478
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 3: no matter how much you may want to, you cannot

479
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 3: change course.

480
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is this is indeed a great, a

481
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:20,680
Speaker 2: great observation of horror train fiction. Yeah, and even science fiction.

482
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,600
Speaker 2: You know, you get into even examples like I keep

483
00:26:23,640 --> 00:26:26,040
Speaker 2: thinking of snow Piercer, the TV series, in the film,

484
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 2: and like, what are they doing with trains? And they're

485
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 2: doing a lot with trains thematically and with setting, but

486
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:33,880
Speaker 2: one of them kind of turning this concept on its head,

487
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 2: is that the train has no destination. It's just going

488
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 2: endlessly around the world. There's like no destination left to

489
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 2: go to because there's nothing left of human civilization except

490
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 2: the journey of the train.

491
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 3: But that has some metaphorical potency of its own, right,

492
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 3: the idea of just a movement that never ceases with

493
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 3: no endpoint or goal. Yeah, infinite games, right, Yeah. But

494
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 3: also I was thinking about how the physical characteristics of

495
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:05,399
Speaker 3: locomotives and travel by rail feed into this theme of

496
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:11,399
Speaker 3: fate and unavoidable outcomes, because trains are enormous and enormously

497
00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:14,880
Speaker 3: powerful machines, which it would be you know, not only

498
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:16,639
Speaker 3: while if you're a passenger on a train, can you

499
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:18,800
Speaker 3: not steer the train yourself? You know, it's stuck to

500
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 3: the tracks. It's going wherever the engine driver takes it.

501
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 3: It would also be hopeless to personally resist the movement

502
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:27,359
Speaker 3: of the train. You know, you can't like push it

503
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:33,280
Speaker 3: or anything overwhelming physical power. Also, travel by train is fast.

504
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:36,439
Speaker 3: You enter the belly of this great beast in one place,

505
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,160
Speaker 3: and then before you know it, you're just in another city,

506
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 3: another part of the country, another part of the world,

507
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:45,520
Speaker 3: contributing to this sense of too quickness, like I have

508
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 3: not had time to prepare for what's coming.

509
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, this this theme instantly makes me think of this

510
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:58,160
Speaker 2: particular reggae song I believe Bob Marley and the Whaler's

511
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:01,680
Speaker 2: covered it at one point, called stop that Train, and

512
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 2: it's you know, the chorus is stop that train, I

513
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,919
Speaker 2: want to get off, and so forth, And like we

514
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:11,280
Speaker 2: instantly connect with this idea, like something is propelling me

515
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:15,239
Speaker 2: toward a destination and I've changed my mind about it,

516
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:16,919
Speaker 2: or I never wanted to go there to begin with,

517
00:28:17,280 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 2: I would like to get off the train.

518
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:22,199
Speaker 3: Or maybe you just now understand what it means to

519
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 3: go to this destination. You got on the train thinking

520
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 3: one thing, and then you learn something it changes your mind.

521
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:32,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, So It's like the technology becomes this excellent metaphor

522
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 2: for so many different aspects of human life, including life

523
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:37,679
Speaker 2: itself in our linear experience of it.

524
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, okay. I think fate and fatalism, unavoidable outcomes,

525
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 3: that's a big theme. Second theme I would say is

526
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 3: very common in these stories is isolation and alienation. I

527
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 3: think because you cannot safely exit a train in motion.

528
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 3: Stories set on trains often emphasize themes of being cut

529
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 3: off and isolated from the rest of the world, the

530
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 3: world outside. So you can look out the windows of

531
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 3: the train at the world as it goes by, but

532
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 3: you can't interact with that world. You can only watch

533
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 3: pieces of it quickly merge into and out of your view,

534
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 3: And I think that creates this feeling of unreality and distance.

535
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 3: This is sort of what I was getting at in

536
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 3: response to that rant by Sherlock Holmes looking out at

537
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 3: the world. I wonder if this feeling of unreality and

538
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:30,760
Speaker 3: alienation contributes to the malice that Home sees when looking

539
00:29:30,760 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 3: out it houses through a passing train window. If he

540
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 3: would feel any different if he were just standing on

541
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 3: the ground looking at the same scene.

542
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's a great point.

543
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 4: Yeah.

544
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 3: Now, beyond that more abstract feeling, the kind of uncanny

545
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:58,560
Speaker 3: separation of the train and its passengers from the outside world,

546
00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 3: there's a different type of isolation that often comes up

547
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 3: in these stories, and it's much more practical individual isolation

548
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 3: in closed train compartments. In a lot of the non

549
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 3: fiction writings about trains from the nineteenth century, and we're

550
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 3: going to get into some of these as the series

551
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 3: goes on, you see a particular concern about people being

552
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:25,640
Speaker 3: by themselves and vulnerable to attacks in the privacy compartments

553
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 3: of passenger trains. Now, I think this is interesting because

554
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 3: obviously the train was not the first time there were

555
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 3: ever rooms with walls and small spaces where people could

556
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:41,440
Speaker 3: become isolated and trapped, say with a dangerous person. But

557
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 3: for some reason, compartments on trains seemed especially frightening to

558
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 3: people in this regard. Like if you read newspaper articles

559
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 3: from London in the eighteen sixties, people are writing about

560
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 3: with terror about this idea of getting stock or cornered

561
00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 3: in a train car. But it's interesting to look at

562
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 3: like why this environment in particular struck people as a

563
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 3: place that was dangerous.

564
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting to think about it. I mean,

565
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 2: I'm tempted to think of it as like the world

566
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 2: has been squished down and elongated, and so all of

567
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,720
Speaker 2: those little confined spaces that you might encounter in the

568
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 2: world are just maybe a little more confined or seem

569
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 2: a little more confined because the world has been narrowed

570
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 2: down into these uniform bricks of habitation.

571
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another theme that I think pops up in these

572
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 3: stories is train tunnels as journeys to the underworld, so

573
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 3: passing through into darkness, literally traveling under the earth. This

574
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,480
Speaker 3: serves as metaphorical in the same way that journeys to

575
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:46,479
Speaker 3: the underworld often do in fiction, as a way of

576
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 3: speaking about death often or great transitions and changes, and

577
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 3: then speaking of change. One more theme I think that

578
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 3: is quite prominent, especially in stories from the nineteenth century.

579
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:00,200
Speaker 3: I think this is less true as time goes on,

580
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:03,520
Speaker 3: but in stories from the nineteenth century, when passenger trains

581
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 3: were a more recent innovation, trains often are used as

582
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 3: the singular symbol of the technological era. So in the

583
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 3: same way that if you wanted to write a story

584
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 3: today commenting on the digital age, you might have as

585
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 3: an object in that story like a phone or a computer,

586
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,720
Speaker 3: that's like the icon of the technological environment. I think

587
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 3: in the same way, the locomotive was the core physical

588
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 3: symbol of the steam age and everything that came with it.

589
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 3: So the replacement of human labor with machine power changes

590
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 3: to the physical landscape of the world, a pollution of

591
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 3: the environment, the accelerating pace of human life, increasing power

592
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 3: to both create and destroy. All these things I think

593
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 3: were symbolized in the physical object of the train. The

594
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 3: train could key out to all of those technological ideas,

595
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,440
Speaker 3: and I think for that reason, it's not high purble

596
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 3: to say that somebody, especially in the nineteenth century, could

597
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 3: easily look on the steam engine and the steam engine

598
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 3: powered locomotive as something demonic, something unholy. It is humanities

599
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 3: packed with the devil that has given us great power

600
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 3: at the cost of our souls.

601
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 4: Yeah.

602
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's also worth keeping in mind

603
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 2: that again, no matter how every day and new and

604
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 2: even old fashioned train transportation may seem to us today,

605
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 2: we also have to look at the fact that, you know,

606
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 2: a lot of our fiction that we read today has,

607
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 2: in one way or another, has sort of roots in

608
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 2: the storytelling of this time period. You know, like you

609
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:46,520
Speaker 2: may not be setting around reading a bunch of Charles Dickens,

610
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 2: but inevitably you're reading people that were inspired by people

611
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,720
Speaker 2: who are inspired by Dickens. Or Yeah, you can add, however,

612
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 2: many layers of transition or and play there, but you

613
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 2: can't deny, at least in the English lange, which is

614
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 2: the importance of these works. Likewise, when you look at film, like,

615
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 2: trains have always been a part of the moving picture,

616
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:11,680
Speaker 2: and so you see cinema coming out of the late

617
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 2: nineteenth century still you know, fascinated with trains and capturing trains,

618
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:19,560
Speaker 2: and we've never stopped being fascinated with trains in our

619
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:24,440
Speaker 2: visual cinematic storytelling. Yeah, all right, so we've alluded to

620
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 2: some of the history here. I thought it would be

621
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 2: a good idea just to run through rather quickly some

622
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,239
Speaker 2: of the big moments in development of locomotive technology. This

623
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:35,840
Speaker 2: is not going to be a full blown invention episode,

624
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:38,240
Speaker 2: so we're not going to go through everything in detail.

625
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 2: And ultimately it's not just a hey, one day, a

626
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 2: guy invented a locomotive and they went with it. You know,

627
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:50,360
Speaker 2: there are a number of different people involved, different technologies

628
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:55,359
Speaker 2: that end up being utilized and built upon. But you know,

629
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 2: to start with the basic concept of a wheeled vehicle

630
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 2: on a set track, sometimes called like a wagonway. This

631
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 2: dates back as far as ancient Babylon wheeled carts affixed

632
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:10,320
Speaker 2: to some sort of rail, you know, to keep the

633
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 2: cart on track, literally on track, like that's how how

634
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,320
Speaker 2: do you refer to it? The language has already embedded concept.

635
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 2: But wheeled carts affixed to rails or of course have

636
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:24,840
Speaker 2: long been used in mining operations pulled by human or

637
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,760
Speaker 2: animal labor, well in advance of any kind of steam

638
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:32,799
Speaker 2: technology or electric like electronic technology, which would and this

639
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,319
Speaker 2: would have all would would lay the groundwork for the

640
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 2: locomotive revolution that's to come. And it's honestly kind of

641
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 2: interesting to think about the connection between trains and mine

642
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 2: carts here because mines, of course, as we've discussed in

643
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 2: the show before, are also places with their own deep

644
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:52,120
Speaker 2: seated myths and legends and definitely themes of traveling into

645
00:35:52,160 --> 00:35:52,840
Speaker 2: the underworld.

646
00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:55,640
Speaker 3: Yeah I was about to say, overlapping themes. Yeah.

647
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 2: Now, steam technology also runs pretty deep in its basic

648
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,800
Speaker 2: conception and theorized, for instance, in the second half of

649
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 2: the first century CE by Greek mathematician hero sometimes called

650
00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:11,880
Speaker 2: Heros or Heron. For centuries, however, steam technology was mostly

651
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 2: the domain of theories and concepts, followed by experiments and novelties,

652
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 2: you know, essentially little toys, leading up to a let's

653
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 2: see a seventeenth century pressure cooker, and then in sixteen

654
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 2: ninety eight Thomas Savory's steam pump the Miner's Friend. This

655
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 2: was invented as a way to use steam power to

656
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:35,800
Speaker 2: remove water from mines, sort.

657
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:36,319
Speaker 3: Of pump them out.

658
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, it actually wasn't that successful in pumping water

659
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 2: out of mines for a number of technological reasons and

660
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:47,240
Speaker 2: technological limitations at the time, but it pushed the technology forward.

661
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 2: And there are various examples of this sort of thing

662
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 2: in the development of steam technology. Leading up to the

663
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 2: steam train, we get the Newcomen engine, the Bolton and

664
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 2: Watt engine, we get the Cornish engine, and each of

665
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:04,319
Speaker 2: these has its own story that we don't have time

666
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,359
Speaker 2: to get into here. And then at the same time,

667
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 2: there were plenty of other schemes to power a land

668
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 2: vehicle with some sort of technology it steam or otherwise.

669
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,879
Speaker 2: So concepts and attempts at steam driven cars date back

670
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,920
Speaker 2: to the sixteen hundreds and French inventor Nicholas Joseph Kuno

671
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:24,160
Speaker 2: made the first steam powered vehicle in seventeen sixty nine.

672
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:27,360
Speaker 2: But then Richard Trevithek, one of the mines behind the

673
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:29,799
Speaker 2: Cornish engine, took it to the next level with a

674
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 2: steam powered engine designed to take advantage of the pre

675
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 2: existing iron enforced wooden rails called tramways that were already

676
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:39,799
Speaker 2: used in industrial parts of England, on which you had

677
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 2: horses pulling carts full of sa coal. Two decades after this,

678
00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 2: British engineer George Stevenson advanced the concept and locomotion number

679
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 2: one carried cargo and I believest six hundred passengers in

680
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:56,640
Speaker 2: a test run. And at this point there are various

681
00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 2: important figures in the UK, in the US and l

682
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 2: elsewhere who end up pushing the technology and the industry

683
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 2: of trains forward, because it's kind of like a push

684
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:08,440
Speaker 2: and pull there, like you need the technology, but you

685
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:11,319
Speaker 2: also need the industry, you need the business savvy, you

686
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:14,919
Speaker 2: need applications of the technology, and so it's a it's

687
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:19,160
Speaker 2: a fascinating but also kind of ever expanding history at

688
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:22,560
Speaker 2: this point. But the way this ends up affecting the

689
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 2: world is of course, train tracks steadily began to stitch

690
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:31,040
Speaker 2: together major centers of population within a given country, within

691
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 2: a given nation, but then also between cities and neighboring nations,

692
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 2: and they eventually seem to be encircling the earth kind

693
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:44,360
Speaker 2: of like that iron spider that was referenced the Dickens quote.

694
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 3: The great ground spiders that spun only iron.

695
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:50,919
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they're also burrowing underneath the earth.

696
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:53,680
Speaker 2: We have to remember that the London underground parts of it,

697
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 2: at any rate, the earliest parts of it began opening

698
00:38:56,160 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 2: in like eighteen sixty three, So base trained technology, you know,

699
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 2: spinning off of these other technologies, it ends up changing

700
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 2: the way humans and goods traverse the world, just changing

701
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:11,320
Speaker 2: so many things about the shape of human life.

702
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 3: And I think you can argue having ripple effects out

703
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:20,719
Speaker 3: through culture that are much bigger than just making it

704
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 3: faster to get stuff and people from one place to another.

705
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:26,480
Speaker 3: I mean, one example we've talked about on the show

706
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:30,360
Speaker 3: before is the way that train scheduled affected the cultural

707
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:34,759
Speaker 3: concept of time. Yes, like trains, it's very important that

708
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 3: you are operating on schedule. There can be danger if there,

709
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 3: you know, miscommunications of time even down to the to

710
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:43,759
Speaker 3: a matter of minutes. So like suddenly there is a

711
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:48,319
Speaker 3: necessity for exact measures of time that are you know,

712
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 3: held throughout a place, and that sort of changes everything

713
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 3: in a way. Lots of stuff follows downstream from that,

714
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 3: and there are other things like that.

715
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 4: Yeah.

716
00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like the continuity of the rail itself

717
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 2: stretching from this big city to this small town, like

718
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 2: they are one now in the is as far as

719
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 2: time is concerned. I mean, it always was, but you

720
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 2: can no longer have just sort of local time, like yeah,

721
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:15,399
Speaker 2: it's you know here, it's like three thirty five. Now,

722
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:17,359
Speaker 2: if you're saying it's three thirty five here, it has

723
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:19,359
Speaker 2: to be three thirty five back in the city. These

724
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 2: times absolutely have to match.

725
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 3: Okay. So we've talked about the use of trains as

726
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:37,879
Speaker 3: a setting or plot device in weird fiction. We've talked

727
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 3: about common themes attaching to locomotive horror themes like fate

728
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:47,400
Speaker 3: and helplessness, isolation and alienation. We talked a bit about

729
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:51,080
Speaker 3: the early steam locomotive models like George and Robert Stevenson's

730
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 3: Locomotion Number one in the eighteen twenties, and then the

731
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,839
Speaker 3: emerging cultural impact of steam powered trains in the mid

732
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 3: nineteenth century as they became more or incorporated into everyday

733
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:07,280
Speaker 3: life within industrial societies. But with technological and cultural changes

734
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 3: we know there often come anxieties. New technologies have not

735
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:15,480
Speaker 3: only a way of creating new fears and stresses, but

736
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:21,319
Speaker 3: also of exposing and tenderizing anxieties that existed before. So

737
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk briefly about what I think is

738
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:28,840
Speaker 3: a really interesting phenomenon which we could call the Victorian

739
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 3: railway madness panic. This was a particular journalistic and cultural

740
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 3: obsession in Great Britain lasting between roughly eighteen sixty and

741
00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty, in which it seems people were both fascinated

742
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 3: with and horrified by the idea of being confined with violent,

743
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 3: raving madmen on moving trains. So my main source on

744
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:00,720
Speaker 3: this subject is a historical article published in the Journal

745
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 3: of Victorian Culture in twenty sixteen called Shattered Minds mad

746
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:09,080
Speaker 3: Men on the Railways eighteen sixty to eighteen eighty. And

747
00:42:09,120 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 3: this article is by a scholar named Amy Milne Smith,

748
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:17,240
Speaker 3: who is a professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University. Overall,

749
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:19,919
Speaker 3: it's a fascinating read, and I regret that we don't

750
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 3: have time to get into all of the interesting details

751
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 3: and arguments that the author brings up here. I'm going

752
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 3: to mention some of the major points that stood out

753
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 3: to me as relevant for our discussion today, but it's

754
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 3: possible we'll come back to this paper a bit more

755
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 3: in the next episode as well. So this article begins

756
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:40,399
Speaker 3: by highlighting another article, an article from eighteen sixty three,

757
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 3: which is great because it's one of those social trend

758
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 3: articles that we still get today. Like you know, five

759
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 3: or ten years ago, it was like all the teens

760
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 3: are reading tide pods. But this one is from eighteen

761
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:55,280
Speaker 3: sixty three and it's called A Madman on the Rail,

762
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:59,680
Speaker 3: published in the London Review. And so I looked this

763
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 3: article up in full, actually, so I could see everything

764
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 3: it says. I found a full scan of it on

765
00:43:04,280 --> 00:43:07,320
Speaker 3: archive dot org and it is packed with interesting claims.

766
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:10,400
Speaker 3: But I have to mention the opening lines because the

767
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:13,400
Speaker 3: editors of the London Review really know how to grab you.

768
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:17,799
Speaker 3: They say, we demand that a bishop or privy counselor

769
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:20,880
Speaker 3: be slaughtered in a railway carriage for the benefit of

770
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 3: his country. Sidney Smith long ago made a similar demand

771
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 3: that a dignitary of the church be burnt alive in

772
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 3: a railway carriage which had spontaneously caught fire, for this

773
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 3: is the only means of impressing railway directors with the

774
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 3: propriety of affording travelers some means of communicating with the guard. Okay,

775
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:45,480
Speaker 3: So if I'm grading this as a first year persuasive essay,

776
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:47,840
Speaker 3: that might be coming on a little strong, but not

777
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 3: bad to begin by making it clear how serious you

778
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:53,879
Speaker 3: think an issue is that? What's the problem that they

779
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 3: say can only be solved by human sacrifice?

780
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, threatening the clergy with ritual death seems a

781
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 2: little Styes.

782
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 3: So here's the problem quote. Traveling express with madmen is

783
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 3: unfortunately not an improbable circumstance of real life. And if

784
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:15,960
Speaker 3: there be any tendency to mania, the excitement of rapid

785
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:19,439
Speaker 3: transit through the air is the very thing to bring

786
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 3: it on. So this article is not isolated. I think

787
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:28,920
Speaker 3: we could characterize this as part of a journalistic phenomenon

788
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 3: of the eighteen sixties of newspaper and magazine articles really

789
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:39,840
Speaker 3: focusing on and highlighting the dangers of madmen on trains,

790
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 3: and so this article by Amy Miln Smith explores a

791
00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 3: lot of that cultural obsession, and it concerns two different

792
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 3: nightmare train ride scenarios that sort of gripped the minds

793
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 3: of the British public in these decades. So the first

794
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 3: scenario is I think more plausible from our perspective today,

795
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:05,320
Speaker 3: and that scenario is violent madmen are getting on board

796
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,959
Speaker 3: trains and other passengers are trapped in the cars with them.

797
00:45:09,560 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, because this is an idea that has never completely

798
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:15,520
Speaker 2: gone away and still makes the headlines, whether you're talking

799
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 2: about the trains, particularly say New York subway. I mean,

800
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 2: it's become it's a trope. It's a joke about the

801
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 2: individual's misbehaving or posing a danger on an un given

802
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 2: train car. And then likewise we see echoes of this

803
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 2: with in aviation as well.

804
00:45:31,520 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 4: Yeah.

805
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:35,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's you know, to a certain extent or reality,

806
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 2: but also something that is easily easily built up in

807
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:40,359
Speaker 2: the imagination as well.

808
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:43,759
Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, exactly. So there is no doubt there were

809
00:45:43,920 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 3: cases in this time period where people were violently attacked

810
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:49,520
Speaker 3: by a stranger on a train. Of course, this can

811
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 3: happen in pretty much any public place, and that the

812
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 3: train is one place it does happen. And while I

813
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,720
Speaker 3: think a kind of vividness bias probably made this scenario

814
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 3: seem more calm than it actually was, you can't blame

815
00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 3: people for being alarmed. I mean, nobody would want to

816
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:07,920
Speaker 3: be trapped in a confined space with a person who's

817
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 3: acting erratically and then becomes violent. That's a bad situation

818
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 3: to be in. So you can't blame people for seeing

819
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 3: that as a problem. But the issue seems to be

820
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:21,040
Speaker 3: that people came to believe, because of the reporting environment,

821
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,800
Speaker 3: that this was an extremely common problem, when in fact

822
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:29,320
Speaker 3: it probably was not. The second scenario described in this article, however,

823
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:33,960
Speaker 3: is more strange and intriguing, certainly from our modern medical

824
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 3: point of view, and that idea is that the act

825
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:42,840
Speaker 3: of riding on board a steam train could itself drive

826
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:46,759
Speaker 3: someone mad and send them shrieking and slashing at their

827
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 3: fellow passengers. The author writes about this as a common

828
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 3: medical expert sentiment of the eighteen sixties, saying quote, doctors

829
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:59,840
Speaker 3: warned that intense vibrations of the railway carriage, the speed

830
00:46:59,880 --> 00:47:03,680
Speaker 3: of travel, and the danger of traumatic accidents could unsettle

831
00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 3: both people's physical and mental health. So this led to

832
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 3: not only the fear that you might be the victim

833
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:14,760
Speaker 3: of a railway madman, but that without any prior warning,

834
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 3: you might become one yourself.

835
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 2: Yeah again, getting decided there's something about train travel that

836
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 2: is inherently abnormal, and it can make you abnormal as

837
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 2: well or enhance abnormal tendencies.

838
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 3: Now, Milne Smith sort of charts the historical arc of

839
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 3: this panic about railway mad men, saying that it sort

840
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:40,280
Speaker 3: of begins as a topic in the eighteen sixties, peaks

841
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:44,279
Speaker 3: in the eighteen seventies, and then pretty much completely disappears

842
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:46,840
Speaker 3: by later in the nineteenth century. It's sort of gone

843
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 3: by the eighteen eighties, or the same kind of phenomenon

844
00:47:52,239 --> 00:47:55,240
Speaker 3: when reported on in the later decades of the nineteenth

845
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 3: century for some reason, or treated as kind of quaint

846
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 3: instead of as terrifying. She also says that railway madness

847
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 3: in this cultural context really meets all of the key

848
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 3: criteria to find to be defined as a moral panic

849
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 3: in the way academics would normally understand the term. So

850
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 3: there's sort of a topical consensus of fear and apprehension

851
00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:21,800
Speaker 3: about some apparent or alleged trend in society. Quote, drawing

852
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 3: on latent fears and triggered by sensational events, and so

853
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 3: she says that while the normal moral panic lasts maybe

854
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 3: several months for a number of reasons, the railway madness

855
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,840
Speaker 3: panic lasted roughly two decades, again, from about eighteen sixty

856
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,880
Speaker 3: to about eighteen eighty. And what made this especially potent

857
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 3: was that it triggered at the same time anxieties about

858
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:51,800
Speaker 3: technological change, but also apparently some kind of gendered anxieties

859
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:56,960
Speaker 3: about failed masculinity, because she says in the eighteen sixties

860
00:48:56,960 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 3: in Britain there was generally increasing public consciousness of mental illness.

861
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:04,080
Speaker 3: There was a lot of talk in the press about

862
00:49:04,120 --> 00:49:06,480
Speaker 3: what was at the time often referred to as lunacy

863
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:10,840
Speaker 3: and lunatics, and about perceived failures of the asylum system.

864
00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 3: And while this consciousness of mental illness, the author contends,

865
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 3: was in general observed in both men and women with

866
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:23,480
Speaker 3: rough parody, for some reason, the railway travel induced madness

867
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 3: was believed to be a distinctly male phenomenon. The railway

868
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:32,480
Speaker 3: mad men were, for some reason, specifically mad men. She

869
00:49:32,520 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 3: also gets into some interesting things about the sensationalism demands

870
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 3: of the press at the time. In the eighteen sixties,

871
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:43,400
Speaker 3: there were a lot of newspapers that were at the

872
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:46,719
Speaker 3: same time that they might look down on and have

873
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:50,759
Speaker 3: scathing editorials about the idea of the so called sensation novels.

874
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 3: In fiction, they were very happy to really ramp up

875
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 3: the gory details and exaggerate anything about violent crime or

876
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 3: mad men in the papers, and so there was there

877
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:05,800
Speaker 3: was a hunger in the British press in the eighteen

878
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:10,399
Speaker 3: sixties for stories about violent mad men, and especially if

879
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:14,439
Speaker 3: the circumstances of the story were strange, and apparently for

880
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 3: some reason people just really latched onto the setting of

881
00:50:18,160 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 3: the railway train for this kind of story. So it

882
00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 3: was like, this is what the eighteen sixty equivalent of,

883
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 3: This is what people are clicking on.

884
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you could basically take anything and spin

885
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 2: it out, right, because even if you a week goes

886
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 2: by you don't have an actual madman attack on a train,

887
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:38,440
Speaker 2: perhaps you have something that could be played up as

888
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:42,520
Speaker 2: they brush with a train madman, you know, like some

889
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:46,719
Speaker 2: are amount of erratic behavior or reported erratic behavior or

890
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:50,920
Speaker 2: reported shiftiness that can then be blown up into a story.

891
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:54,319
Speaker 3: Yes, that's exactly right, very perceptive roll because she does

892
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:57,479
Speaker 3: get into exactly that that dynamic. I mean we're still

893
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:01,839
Speaker 3: doing it today, yes, yeah. And so like the way

894
00:51:01,880 --> 00:51:06,520
Speaker 3: it is is there are some initially very terrible events,

895
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:09,719
Speaker 3: Like there was one very famous case of an actual

896
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:12,719
Speaker 3: murder on a train in Great Britain. It was in

897
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:17,000
Speaker 3: July eighteen sixty four. A London banker named Thomas Briggs

898
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 3: was beaten and murdered inside of a locked train compartment. Eventually,

899
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 3: a German tailor named Franz Mueller was convicted of the murder.

900
00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:32,320
Speaker 3: I think it involved like a transatlantic pursuit of the suspect,

901
00:51:33,120 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 3: but what he was eventually convicted. So that was an actual,

902
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:39,719
Speaker 3: like terrifying violent crime on a train. But then you

903
00:51:39,760 --> 00:51:42,520
Speaker 3: could spin that out into a lot of other scenarios

904
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:47,760
Speaker 3: where in many cases like nobody was actually even hurt,

905
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:50,799
Speaker 3: but they would just the press would put a lot

906
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 3: of emphasis on something kind of weird and disturbing happened

907
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:58,359
Speaker 3: on a train and think of the danger that could

908
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 3: have unfolded. So there's one example that the author cites

909
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:07,000
Speaker 3: in this paper of a story where there's an express

910
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 3: train from King's Cross to Peterborough and a large sailor

911
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:14,240
Speaker 3: gets on board. The journey begins, and then the sailor

912
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 3: begins behaving erradically, accusing his fellow passengers of stealing from him,

913
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:21,719
Speaker 3: and then at one point he tries to leap out

914
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 3: of one of the windows of the moving train. Several

915
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:27,280
Speaker 3: other passengers prevent him from getting out of the window.

916
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 3: They're able to restrain him until the train comes to

917
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 3: a stop, and then authorities take over. And note how

918
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:38,080
Speaker 3: in the story there's no indication that anyone was actually

919
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 3: badly hurt, but the press reporting just really emphasized the

920
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:45,240
Speaker 3: theme of madness and the threat that the sailor could

921
00:52:45,320 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 3: have posed to the other passengers. There's another report she

922
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:53,480
Speaker 3: mentions that's in the Wrexham Advertiser in eighteen sixty nine.

923
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:57,399
Speaker 3: It's the story of an aristocratic man from Falkirk who

924
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 3: got onto a train and then took off all his clothes,

925
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:04,080
Speaker 3: leaned out the window and started talking nonsense. After the

926
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:06,600
Speaker 3: station master was alerted, they got him off the train,

927
00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 3: and then, strangely, after they got him off the train,

928
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:11,520
Speaker 3: it reports that he seemed to come back to his senses,

929
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 3: and this ties into the idea I mentioned a minute ago.

930
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:19,439
Speaker 3: The strange belief at the time that there was such

931
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 3: a thing as sudden railway madness, so that essentially a

932
00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 3: man who was, by all outward indications previously healthy, could,

933
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 3: by some mechanism of the movements and environment of the train,

934
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 3: be rendered instantly violently insane. And this was not considered

935
00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:43,880
Speaker 3: a fringe or quack theory at the time. From what

936
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:46,280
Speaker 3: I can tell, like, the idea was advanced by many

937
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 3: physicians and in articles in some of the leading medical

938
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:53,240
Speaker 3: journals of the eighteen sixties. One example that Miln Smith

939
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:56,400
Speaker 3: sites is in eighteen sixty two, the medical journal The

940
00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 3: Lancet published a series of articles about the threats to

941
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:03,799
Speaker 3: public health posed by railway travel. Uh and, as she

942
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:07,359
Speaker 3: summarizes as follows quote, the articles listed a number of

943
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:11,320
Speaker 3: potentially dangerous effects of railway travel on the unsuspecting passenger,

944
00:54:11,760 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 3: ranging from fatigue to hemorrhoids to paralysis. A man suffering

945
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:21,319
Speaker 3: hemorrhoids Okay, maybe I don't know, but it goes on,

946
00:54:21,520 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 3: A man suffering from underlying mental anxieties or born with

947
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:29,799
Speaker 3: a predisposition to insanity could have his illness triggered by

948
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:31,640
Speaker 3: the railway trip itself.

949
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:34,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean this is one of those things

950
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:37,399
Speaker 2: where on one hand, it seems outrageous. But then also,

951
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:39,920
Speaker 2: I mean, there is some nugget of truth to the

952
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 2: fact that travel can be stressful, sure, and can aggravate

953
00:54:44,600 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 2: other you know, things going on in your your mental

954
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 2: life or you know, your mental health. So yeah, there's

955
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 2: there's a line though, between you know, actual concern and

956
00:54:58,320 --> 00:54:59,840
Speaker 2: something that just becomes a panic.

957
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 3: That's right. And then once again, as we said earlier,

958
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:06,560
Speaker 3: like in the cases where somebody is actually acting violently

959
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:09,520
Speaker 3: on a train, that's obviously a huge problem, but the

960
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:15,320
Speaker 3: social panic around this seemed to vastly exaggerate the prevalence

961
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,080
Speaker 3: of the problem. There was this perception that it's happening

962
00:55:18,080 --> 00:55:21,759
Speaker 3: all the time and it's just a persistent danger of

963
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:25,319
Speaker 3: riding the trains and something must be done about it.

964
00:55:25,719 --> 00:55:28,840
Speaker 3: And yet another interesting thing Melan Smith gets into is

965
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:33,160
Speaker 3: the kind of difficulty in enacting any of the proposed

966
00:55:33,200 --> 00:55:37,720
Speaker 3: solutions to this alleged problem. So the solutions included things

967
00:55:37,760 --> 00:55:40,799
Speaker 3: like changes in the design of rail cars, because some

968
00:55:41,080 --> 00:55:44,280
Speaker 3: passenger cars at the time would have a situation where

969
00:55:44,320 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 3: like you'd be in a compartment or a carriage and

970
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:50,719
Speaker 3: you'd be essentially locked in from the outside with no

971
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:53,720
Speaker 3: way of traveling to like other parts of the train.

972
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 3: If something bad was happening in your compartment or carriage

973
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:00,720
Speaker 3: and you wanted to go some where else, you couldn't

974
00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 3: really leave until the train came to a stop. So

975
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 3: that's a possible solution. You could change the design of

976
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:08,400
Speaker 3: the train. You could add interior corridors and ways of

977
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:11,440
Speaker 3: getting back and forth. You could also add in ways

978
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 3: to communicate with the train guard, so people in compartments

979
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:18,320
Speaker 3: could you know, could have like a like a cord

980
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 3: or some kind of thing they could pull, or way

981
00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 3: of communicating with some kind of authority figure on the train.

982
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:26,480
Speaker 3: Or another idea that would come about a good deal

983
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:30,239
Speaker 3: later was you could get emergency brake cords. People talked

984
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:35,880
Speaker 3: about adding in windows, interior windows to the train compartments,

985
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:38,520
Speaker 3: so that you know, you could signal for help, you

986
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 3: could look at somebody else. But apparently a lot of

987
00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:45,279
Speaker 3: these solutions took a long time to implement because they

988
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:49,240
Speaker 3: faced opposition, often on the grounds that they were violations

989
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:54,640
Speaker 3: of the privacy of the individual carriage or compartment. But

990
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:58,680
Speaker 3: the author argues that the social panic about railway madness

991
00:56:58,719 --> 00:57:03,840
Speaker 3: went on because, in her opinion, it wasn't actually about

992
00:57:03,880 --> 00:57:07,239
Speaker 3: the true practical question of safety on a train car.

993
00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:09,479
Speaker 3: I mean, that's an element, but that's not the main thing.

994
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:13,200
Speaker 3: It was a way of expressing deeper anxieties that could

995
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:16,560
Speaker 3: not be fixed by a rail guard or a breake cord.

996
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:20,640
Speaker 3: She writes, quote the railway was a symbol of civilization,

997
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 3: and yet it demonstrated how quickly civilization could fall away

998
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:29,280
Speaker 3: from modern man. So the underlying anxiety has to do,

999
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:33,840
Speaker 3: in her opinion, with a perceived fragility of the body

1000
00:57:33,880 --> 00:57:36,120
Speaker 3: and the mind, a fear that was sort of in

1001
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:39,440
Speaker 3: the air in Victorian culture in Great Britain in the

1002
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 3: eighteen sixties and seventies, related to consciousness of mental illness,

1003
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:48,240
Speaker 3: but then also spurred on by these popular stories about madmen,

1004
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:51,640
Speaker 3: and the fear was that someone could go mad at

1005
00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:54,800
Speaker 3: any moment, even by the jostling of a train car.

1006
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 3: And so this sort of symbol of changes in the

1007
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:01,800
Speaker 3: society around them, the technological environment, and of things happening

1008
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:04,800
Speaker 3: faster than you can understand, and the pace of modern

1009
00:58:04,840 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 3: life changing and all this like stuff coming on so fast,

1010
00:58:08,040 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 3: and that colliding with this idea of the fragility of

1011
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 3: our minds and bodies, and that leading to this fear

1012
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:18,400
Speaker 3: that people could be changed in an instant. They're they're

1013
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:21,040
Speaker 3: moving too fast through the air, the loud train car,

1014
00:58:21,240 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 3: the jostling back and forth of the train car, it

1015
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 3: sets them off. And now it could be someone in

1016
00:58:27,480 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 3: the train car with you, or it could be you yourself

1017
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:32,400
Speaker 3: that now you are no longer in control.

1018
00:58:33,560 --> 00:58:33,840
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1019
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what you mentioned about this increasing awareness of

1020
00:58:40,120 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 2: or this view of one's mental state as being fragile.

1021
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 2: Do you see this reflected, you know, in the fiction

1022
00:58:47,080 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 2: of the time period as well. I can't help but

1023
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:51,320
Speaker 2: think of at least of a couple a couple of

1024
00:58:51,360 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 2: cases in the cases of Sherlock Holmes, where we see

1025
00:58:56,480 --> 00:59:01,280
Speaker 2: madness play an important role, often affecting people of means,

1026
00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:05,720
Speaker 2: people of status. There's, of course, the case of the

1027
00:59:05,720 --> 00:59:09,440
Speaker 2: Creeping Man, and that one, of course involves some gorilla

1028
00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 2: hijinks and is borderline science fiction. But then there's the

1029
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:17,800
Speaker 2: and there's the excellent case of the Devil's Foot, which

1030
00:59:17,840 --> 00:59:23,520
Speaker 2: involves on the outset some sort of unknown occurrence or substance.

1031
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:27,800
Speaker 2: It's unknown what actually happens that drives an entire room

1032
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:30,680
Speaker 2: full of people either kills them dead or drives them insane,

1033
00:59:31,080 --> 00:59:32,840
Speaker 2: and at the beginning. It seems like it could even

1034
00:59:32,880 --> 00:59:36,560
Speaker 2: have a supernatural cause. We don't know, but you know

1035
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:39,200
Speaker 2: both of these stories that there are stories that seemed

1036
00:59:39,200 --> 00:59:41,640
Speaker 2: to drive home this idea that was in the public

1037
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 2: consciousness that yeah, nobody is immune. Anybody can be affected

1038
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:49,480
Speaker 2: by some sort of change in their mental state.

1039
00:59:50,080 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 3: Yes. And the prominence, the emerging prominence of railway travel

1040
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:56,520
Speaker 3: in human life in the eighteen sixties. I mean again,

1041
00:59:56,840 --> 01:00:01,800
Speaker 3: remember how how quickly railways became central to industrial societies

1042
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 3: in the mid nineteenth century. There was just an explosion

1043
01:00:04,960 --> 01:00:07,040
Speaker 3: in the number of railway lines and the number of

1044
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 3: passengers from like eighteen fifty to eighteen sixty in Great Britain.

1045
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:14,240
Speaker 3: That came on so quick. I think that change in

1046
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:17,480
Speaker 3: the world around them and in travel and infrastructure in

1047
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:21,920
Speaker 3: human life probably created this feeling that one could change

1048
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:25,400
Speaker 3: internally very quickly as well. So, Rob, I think you

1049
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:28,480
Speaker 3: said this earlier, but I think one could plausibly argue

1050
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:31,439
Speaker 3: that there is a kind of Victorian era future shot

1051
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:35,080
Speaker 3: going on, that all of this technological change coming on

1052
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 3: so fast and changing the character of human life so much,

1053
01:00:40,440 --> 01:00:43,840
Speaker 3: really does create in itself a kind of anxiety that

1054
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:47,160
Speaker 3: people end up working out in these horror stories and

1055
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 3: in these sensational journalistic obsessions.

1056
01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 2: Again, this is so fascinating, given how every day train

1057
01:00:56,760 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 2: travel really is and how at least from my vantage point,

1058
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:02,640
Speaker 2: how pleasant it can be. Like even you know, I

1059
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:08,480
Speaker 2: rode public transportation trains here in Atlanta for a long time,

1060
01:01:09,040 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 2: and you know, sometimes it's weird, sometimes it's startling, you know,

1061
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:17,400
Speaker 2: but even in those cases, often found it kind of peaceful,

1062
01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:20,160
Speaker 2: you know, you used to. Nowadays, I guess you can

1063
01:01:20,280 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 2: probably get some sort of a wireless connection just about

1064
01:01:23,200 --> 01:01:27,920
Speaker 2: anywhere on most major train train rides. But there was

1065
01:01:27,960 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 2: a while where when you were underground on the train,

1066
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 2: you were, or at least I was completely cut off

1067
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:33,960
Speaker 2: and there was nothing I could do on my phone.

1068
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:36,840
Speaker 2: You know, I would just have to to read. I

1069
01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:39,040
Speaker 2: got to read, uh, you know, I got to be

1070
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:41,000
Speaker 2: sort of cut off from everything in a good way.

1071
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:44,600
Speaker 2: And in that could happen no matter what the other

1072
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 2: conditions were. If there was like somebody loud on the train,

1073
01:01:47,480 --> 01:01:49,919
Speaker 2: if the train was hot, if the train was maybe

1074
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:52,960
Speaker 2: empty and spooky, you know, all that could could could

1075
01:01:53,040 --> 01:01:57,000
Speaker 2: play play into it. But it's it's fascinating to look

1076
01:01:57,040 --> 01:01:59,320
Speaker 2: back on this time period where again there is something

1077
01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:01,960
Speaker 2: there's maybe a little bit of Victorian future shot going on.

1078
01:02:02,440 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 2: There is also, undeniably so many other things coming into play.

1079
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:10,480
Speaker 2: We discussed, you know, awareness of sort of a growing

1080
01:02:10,560 --> 01:02:13,680
Speaker 2: but unbalanced awareness of mental health. I can't help but

1081
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:16,160
Speaker 2: think about how syphilis might have played into all this

1082
01:02:16,280 --> 01:02:19,560
Speaker 2: as well, you know, awareness of how that can affect

1083
01:02:19,640 --> 01:02:24,880
Speaker 2: one's mental state. Yeah, there is a fascinating topic, and

1084
01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:26,920
Speaker 2: then of course we see how it plays out, how

1085
01:02:26,920 --> 01:02:31,480
Speaker 2: it influences all of these various fictions and remains a

1086
01:02:31,480 --> 01:02:34,600
Speaker 2: part of say, railway fiction in general.

1087
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:37,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot more to talk about,

1088
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:39,320
Speaker 3: and that's why we are not done with this topic.

1089
01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:41,240
Speaker 3: This was part one. We will be back with part

1090
01:02:41,280 --> 01:02:45,000
Speaker 3: two of our discussion of the locomotive Horror and Trains

1091
01:02:45,040 --> 01:02:47,439
Speaker 3: of Terror on Thursday of this week.

1092
01:02:47,520 --> 01:02:50,840
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, that's right. In the meantime, also recommend

1093
01:02:51,240 --> 01:02:53,720
Speaker 2: do yourself a favor. Do a Google image search for

1094
01:02:53,840 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 2: some punch cartoons and throw train in there. You'll see

1095
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:03,800
Speaker 2: various examples of alleged Victorian train madness. I really wanted

1096
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:06,800
Speaker 2: to see the one with the lady thinking she's looking

1097
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 2: at her own reflection but it's actually somebody's face. Oh,

1098
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:11,040
Speaker 2: I couldn't find out.

1099
01:03:11,480 --> 01:03:14,480
Speaker 3: I think this was a cartoon actually arguing against one

1100
01:03:14,520 --> 01:03:17,400
Speaker 3: of the safety innovations that was proposed on trains. So

1101
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:20,000
Speaker 3: the idea was that you would put these windows in

1102
01:03:20,040 --> 01:03:22,760
Speaker 3: the compartments so that it would be easier to communicate

1103
01:03:22,840 --> 01:03:24,960
Speaker 3: back and forth or see what's going on. But then

1104
01:03:25,000 --> 01:03:27,160
Speaker 3: the idea is, oh, a lady's like, you know, dressing

1105
01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:29,080
Speaker 3: in front of the mirror and on the other side

1106
01:03:29,120 --> 01:03:31,320
Speaker 3: there's some kind of creep looking at her.

1107
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:35,040
Speaker 2: All right, well, we'll be back on Thursday. Then we'll

1108
01:03:35,040 --> 01:03:36,800
Speaker 2: get into ghost trains a bit in that one, and

1109
01:03:36,840 --> 01:03:38,600
Speaker 2: so it should be a good time. But in the

1110
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:40,800
Speaker 2: meantime we'll remind you that's stuff to blow your mind.

1111
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:43,480
Speaker 2: It is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core

1112
01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:47,040
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, where, of course very much

1113
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:50,360
Speaker 2: in the Halloween spirit of things this month, so most

1114
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:52,680
Speaker 2: of our topics are going to be a little bit

1115
01:03:52,720 --> 01:03:55,800
Speaker 2: creepy as intended, and then on Fridays we set aside

1116
01:03:55,840 --> 01:03:57,800
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

1117
01:03:57,800 --> 01:04:00,240
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema, and this week it is going

1118
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:03,760
Speaker 2: to be train oriented, so we're excited for the tie

1119
01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 2: in here.

1120
01:04:04,480 --> 01:04:07,880
Speaker 3: We're gonna have trains. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Telly Savalas

1121
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:09,280
Speaker 3: ooh boy, it's going to be a good time.

1122
01:04:09,600 --> 01:04:10,000
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1123
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:14,160
Speaker 3: Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1124
01:04:14,440 --> 01:04:16,000
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1125
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:18,440
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1126
01:04:18,600 --> 01:04:20,640
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

1127
01:04:20,680 --> 01:04:23,360
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

1128
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:31,600
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

1129
01:04:32,160 --> 01:04:35,080
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1130
01:04:35,160 --> 01:04:37,960
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1131
01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:54,880
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.