Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and on Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part four of our series on horror.
Speaker 1: Vacui or fear of the void or fear of the vacuum,
Speaker 1: a concept that has relevance in art and design, where
Speaker 1: it describes an impulse to fill in blank or uniform
Speaker 1: spaces with detail, as well as relevance in philosophy and
Speaker 1: in physics, where it's been used to describe the longstanding belief,
Speaker 1: often derived from Aristotle, that a vacuum or a void
Speaker 1: could not exist in nature, and that empty space was
Speaker 1: in fact an incoherent concept. So in the previous episode
Speaker 1: of this one, we talked about how this view in
Speaker 1: physics persisted through the Middle Ages and part of the
Speaker 1: early Modern period in Europe, and important experiments by figures
Speaker 1: like Evangelista Torcelli, the man with the batman symbol for
Speaker 1: a mustache, or rob I think, as you pointed out
Speaker 1: at the sort of the crucifix goatee h as sort
Speaker 1: of the crucifix Van Dyke, Yeah, yeah, him and uh
Speaker 1: and Blaze. Pascal, of course, established that an approximate vacuum
Speaker 1: could actually be created inside a glass tube, and that
Speaker 1: the force truly responsible for preventing a void from forming
Speaker 1: in most cases, such as in the case of like
Speaker 1: a pump or a siphon, was not nature's mysterious hatred
Speaker 1: for vacuums, but in fact the weight of the air
Speaker 1: we breathe, known today as atmospheric pressure. But something we
Speaker 1: alluded to in the previous episode is also the fact
Speaker 1: that while the laws of nature don't exactly rule out
Speaker 1: a vacuum in the way that Aristotle and the Scholastics thought,
Speaker 1: there is also some nuance to the issue, because you
Speaker 1: can create an approximate vacuum, but it's really hard or
Speaker 1: perhaps impossible to create a perfect vacuum, depending on how
Speaker 1: you define your goals. When we talk about a vacuum
Speaker 1: in like real world examples, instead of you know, ideal
Speaker 1: thought experiments, we are never talking about completely empty spaces
Speaker 1: with no particles whatsoever. Instead, we're usually talking about an
Speaker 1: area where the density of gas particles is very low,
Speaker 1: or the inside of a container where the density of
Speaker 1: gas particles is much lower than the density of particles
Speaker 1: on the outside, and the latter type of vacuum, where
Speaker 1: a container that has a lower density of gas particles
Speaker 1: than the world outside is is common throughout the world
Speaker 1: of technology and electrical appliances and scientific equipment, especially of
Speaker 1: years past, but still somewhat today. A couple of classic
Speaker 1: examples incandescent light bulbs. They make light by running current
Speaker 1: through a filament. It gets so hot that it starts
Speaker 1: to emit photons starts to glow. But these bulbs are
Speaker 1: not full of air at regular atmospheric pressure, and if
Speaker 1: they were, that would be a problem. The filament would
Speaker 1: tend to fail very quickly. That's not good for incandescent bulbs,
Speaker 1: so instead they are typically either filled with an inert
Speaker 1: gas like argon or nitrogen, or they are pumped out
Speaker 1: to contain a vacuum. The earliest light bulbs were vacuum
Speaker 1: based rather than inert gas based. Another component used in electronics,
Speaker 1: one that will be very familiar to electric guitar players,
Speaker 1: as vacuum tubes, which were once commonly used to manipulate
Speaker 1: current to amplify and rectify electrical signals. They've been replaced
Speaker 1: with silicon transistors in most modern devices, but they still
Speaker 1: have their uses. And by the way, if you want
Speaker 1: to see something really weird and awesome, look up pictures
Speaker 1: of vacuum tube based computers. Before transistors took over to
Speaker 1: become the logic circuitry inside computers. I guess that happened
Speaker 1: roughly around the sixties or so. But before that, the
Speaker 1: information processing in computers was done on large arrays of
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes. And I'm very tempted to say like that,
Speaker 1: I wish to see a certain kind of computer snobbery
Speaker 1: arise where they're like gamers who are like, oh, you
Speaker 1: play on transistors, I've got a vacuum tube rig. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some of the images that come up from me they
Speaker 1: look very uh, there's a mad science quality to these.
Speaker 1: They look like there's some sort of strange experiment containing uh,
Speaker 1: you know, contained gases or something. Yeah, it does look
Speaker 1: like that because they look like almost like kind of
Speaker 1: like pills in a blister pack, you know, the little
Speaker 1: blisters popping out. But they're they're not containing special gases.
Speaker 1: They are containing lower density of gases. What that what
Speaker 1: those tubes contain is relatively nothing compared to the atmosphere. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: one place tubes are still popular in electrical devices today
Speaker 1: is in guitar amplifiers, where a lot of players prefer
Speaker 1: the feeling of playing with tubes as opposed to solid
Speaker 1: state amps. Rob, I don't know if you've ever come
Speaker 1: across this debate, you know, sometimes I think people look
Speaker 1: on the tube preference as a kind of snobbery. Personally,
Speaker 1: I can see both sides, Like, I think solid state
Speaker 1: amps sound great, but tubes are. They're cool? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: not being a guitar player myself, I rarely get any
Speaker 1: of these conversations, and I rarely hear any of this.
Speaker 1: So is this something where I know a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations for regarding like retro technology and
Speaker 1: music and recording and production. It actually does come through
Speaker 1: to the final product. It actually is something that affects
Speaker 1: the final sound of the music. Is that the case here?
Speaker 1: People argue about this, I mean the people argue about
Speaker 1: to what extent you can hear the difference in something
Speaker 1: that comes out of a tube amp versus a a
Speaker 1: good modern attempt to approximate that with transistors. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to try to weigh in on one side of
Speaker 1: the bait here. Uh. Basically, my experience is that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Solid state amps sound fine, they sound great, but there's
Speaker 1: also just something kind of cool about tubes. They might
Speaker 1: kind of feel differently when you're playing a guitar through one,
Speaker 1: especially if you're in the room with it, as opposed
Speaker 1: to listening to a recording. I'm not sure. Yeah, listeners,
Speaker 1: let us know. Do you think tubes are tubular or
Speaker 1: do you think solid state is solid? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I will weigh in and say I think it's a
Speaker 1: stupid thing to like get mad at people or criticize
Speaker 1: people about one way or another. Calm down, guys, fair enough,
Speaker 1: But coming back to the bigger point. In cases like
Speaker 1: the vacuum lightbulb or the vacuum tube for current amplification, Uh,
Speaker 1: the area inside the glass and these devices is again
Speaker 1: not a perfect vacuum. There are particles of atmosphere in there,
Speaker 1: they're just way fewer of them than in an equivalent
Speaker 1: area outside. And there are actually designations for the different
Speaker 1: levels of vacuum that are achieved through technological means. You know,
Speaker 1: you can have like a medium vacuum, a high vacuum,
Speaker 1: and ultra high vacuum uh and uh and and so
Speaker 1: so that's what's possible on Earth. But then you might
Speaker 1: be wondering in response to that, Wait a minute, though,
Speaker 1: isn't outer space at least a vacuum? Isn't isn't the
Speaker 1: space between the planets or the space between the stars
Speaker 1: at least a vacuum. Again, the answer here is yes
Speaker 1: and no. It depends on what you mean. Space is
Speaker 1: a vacuum when compared to Earth's atmosphere, and it is
Speaker 1: even lower density than most partial vacuums created by humans.
Speaker 1: I was trying to find a good estimate for the
Speaker 1: density of outer space, and I came across a couple
Speaker 1: of things in that book I was talking about. In
Speaker 1: the last episode called the Void by the by the
Speaker 1: physicist Frank close Uh, he writes about well, he's writing
Speaker 1: about the reasoning that led people to assume that outer
Speaker 1: space was a vacuum. When scientists such as place Pascal
Speaker 1: started to know, notice that the atmospheric pressure was different
Speaker 1: at different altitude. So you go up on a mountain,
Speaker 1: the atmospheric pressure is lower. That does tend to suggest
Speaker 1: that if you go higher and higher, the density of
Speaker 1: particles just keeps getting lower and lower, and you would
Speaker 1: eventually reach an altitude at which there was effectively no
Speaker 1: nowhere to breathe anymore, There was no atmosphere anymore, which
Speaker 1: some people found maybe kind of like threatening in principle
Speaker 1: or maybe threatening to their theological ideas of how the
Speaker 1: universe was put together. Nevertheless, you could show it was true.
Speaker 1: As you go higher and higher, the density gets lower,
Speaker 1: so close rights quote, at a height of a hundred kilometers,
Speaker 1: the pressure is less than a billion of that on
Speaker 1: the ground, at four hundred kilometers a million million, and
Speaker 1: en route to the Moon in space it is down
Speaker 1: by ten to the nineteen, an amount that is less
Speaker 1: than the size of a proton compared to a kilometer.
Speaker 1: We can thus say that essentially all of the atmosphere
Speaker 1: is a thin shell whose thickness is less than one
Speaker 1: thousand of the Earth's radius. Wow. I I don't doubt
Speaker 1: that's true. But that's the kind of thing that I
Speaker 1: don't even I don't usually picture it that way. I
Speaker 1: you know, I picture the atmosphere is extending much higher
Speaker 1: up off the surface of the Earth. Yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: for for for me, this like the reality of of
Speaker 1: the thinning of the air. Uh. At the higher altitude
Speaker 1: you get to. This was always kind of spelled out
Speaker 1: for me by looking at something like the Lockheed you
Speaker 1: to the spy aircraft that have these just a super
Speaker 1: long um super a wide wingspan than enabled it one
Speaker 1: of several design functions, but the most obvious one that
Speaker 1: enabled it to uh to to to to fly at
Speaker 1: such high altitudes where there is just there's just less air. Yes,
Speaker 1: the air is thinner, it's harder and harder to generate lift,
Speaker 1: but okay, that's how much thinner the atmosphere gets as
Speaker 1: you extend up off of the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: What out when you go even beyond that? Well, I
Speaker 1: came across some sort of quick and dirty estimates by
Speaker 1: a radio astronomer named Alistair Gunn doing a short Q
Speaker 1: and A for the BBC, And note that the following
Speaker 1: are approximate. But what gun says is that roughly within
Speaker 1: the Solar system uh space between the planets contains an
Speaker 1: average of about five atoms per cubic centimeter. So that's
Speaker 1: very low density, but there still is gas out there,
Speaker 1: it's just extremely dispersed in interstellar space, the space between
Speaker 1: Solar systems in our galaxy, so like where you know
Speaker 1: where the voyager probes are eventually headed to or where
Speaker 1: Mumua came from. That interstellar space has about one atom
Speaker 1: per cubic centimeter according to gun here, and then in
Speaker 1: intergalactic space, the space between galaxies, uh, the density is
Speaker 1: about a hundred times less than that. It gets pretty
Speaker 1: lonely out there, right, But still there are not no particles.
Speaker 1: They just get farther and farther apart on average. So
Speaker 1: the reason space is so empty is of course gravity.
Speaker 1: Objects with mass attract one another, so mass tends to
Speaker 1: clump together over time, creating this varied terrain of cosmic density,
Speaker 1: with very high density say in the middle of a star,
Speaker 1: and still still lower density around that star and around
Speaker 1: the planets around that star, and then lower density in
Speaker 1: between the stars, and then lower density in between the
Speaker 1: galaxies and so forth. But it wasn't always this way.
Speaker 1: In the early history of the universe, matter was dispersed
Speaker 1: far more evenly, and you could think of the early
Speaker 1: universe in a way as a kind of well in
Speaker 1: a in a strange way, almost kind of like an ocean.
Speaker 1: I guess it wasn't liquid, but like an ocean or
Speaker 1: a cloud or something where uh, there were there were
Speaker 1: more uniform distributions. But then as space expanded that more
Speaker 1: varied terrain that we know today influenced by gravity emerged. Yea,
Speaker 1: So we had the accretion of these various cosmic bodies
Speaker 1: of different sizes, and then the resulting sort of shrinkage
Speaker 1: between these accretions. So in a weird way, you could
Speaker 1: argue that Aristotle is kind of technically vindicated in that
Speaker 1: there probably are no large scale, long term areas of
Speaker 1: perfectly empty space in the universe. But I think that
Speaker 1: in the normal way of understanding Aristotle, he was wrong.
Speaker 1: You can create a volume of functional vacuum, but it's
Speaker 1: not a perfect vacuum. Yeah, and it sounds like you
Speaker 1: can also do a fair amount of arguing over the
Speaker 1: size of said vacuum. Yeah. This was making me wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what what is the average density of the universe overall? Um?
Speaker 1: And so I was looking around at that I did
Speaker 1: find a NASA page on this. This is according to
Speaker 1: research I think carried out by the by w MAP,
Speaker 1: by the Wilkinson Microwave and Isotropy probe that was looking
Speaker 1: at fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background. And in uh
Speaker 1: in a write up on that research by NASA that
Speaker 1: they say, quote w Map determined that the universe is flat,
Speaker 1: from which he follows that the mean energy density in
Speaker 1: the universe is equal to the critical density within a
Speaker 1: zero point five percent margin of error. This is equivalent
Speaker 1: to a mass density of because as an aside, ultimately
Speaker 1: mass and energy can be exchanged for one another. They
Speaker 1: are with you know, mass is just a huge amount
Speaker 1: of energy um. Coming back to the quote, this is
Speaker 1: equivalent to a mass density of nine point nine times
Speaker 1: tend to the negative thirty grams per cubic centimeter. But
Speaker 1: the density of normal matter is not even that high
Speaker 1: because most of the energy density in the universe is
Speaker 1: not normal matter. It's dark matter or dark energy. So
Speaker 1: maybe normal it is not even the right word, because
Speaker 1: the kind of matter we're talking about that we're familiar
Speaker 1: with is the minority of stuff. Less than five percent
Speaker 1: of the stuff in the universe is actually made of atoms.
Speaker 1: So the the the quote actual energy density of atoms
Speaker 1: is equivalent to roughly one proton per four cubic meters.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine kind of a like a large
Speaker 1: palette box and that's like one proton in there, and
Speaker 1: that's the the average density of the universe. Yes, so
Speaker 1: if we were to like redistribute it, that's how it
Speaker 1: would play out. I think we should redistribute it get
Speaker 1: a fresh start on this thing. Now. These numbers are admittedly, um,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe a little bit challenging to sort of picture
Speaker 1: in your head all the time. But I do like
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with with with hard numbers. Here, we're
Speaker 1: doing with dealing with objective numbers related to the vacuum
Speaker 1: and the void. Uh, something we don't always have in
Speaker 1: this particular journey. Uh. Sometimes we're dealing with very very
Speaker 1: subjective qualities. Oh, you mean, like Aristotle's argument that you
Speaker 1: couldn't have empty space because if it not be by
Speaker 1: d it could not exist. Yeah, or certainly getting into
Speaker 1: some of the philosophical uh ends of the spectrum where
Speaker 1: we're dealing with what's the difference between uh, emptiness and nothingness,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between eternity and nothing? Um, it can
Speaker 1: it can get a little lucy goosey, well, the difference
Speaker 1: between I'm gonna defend exploring the difference between emptiness and nothingness.
Speaker 1: I think that is an interesting distinction, but one that
Speaker 1: I'm not sure science has has all the answers on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it does come down to
Speaker 1: the subjective experience. I was talking with my wife before
Speaker 1: I came in here, and she brought up the example
Speaker 1: of isolation tanks. Isolation tanks being a situation where on
Speaker 1: one level, you have certainly limited your space. You are
Speaker 1: isolated or within a tank. You're floating within a tank, uh,
Speaker 1: and therefore you're cutting off how much of like the
Speaker 1: the outside world you are in. But then there's also
Speaker 1: something to the experience UH that is boundary breaking. You know,
Speaker 1: floating in this salt um bath that is the same
Speaker 1: temperature as your body uh serves to sort of break
Speaker 1: down the division between where you stop and the rest
Speaker 1: of the world begins. So, yeah, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: cases like you don't have to have an isolation tank
Speaker 1: to engage in that kind of uh boundary dispute. You know.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that people often seek uh, maybe
Speaker 1: not isolation tanks exactly, but isolation from stimuli specifically in
Speaker 1: order to be creative. Is and that kind of strange
Speaker 1: that almost implies that they think a principle of psychological
Speaker 1: horror vakay is going to come into effect, right that
Speaker 1: if you rob yourself of the normal overwhelming stimuli of
Speaker 1: everyday existence, you will get your like you will team
Speaker 1: with ideas. Yeah, but it is one of these things
Speaker 1: too where it's like a lot of times you're just
Speaker 1: you're just changing out one high stimuli environment for another. Uh.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's just a new one, a novel. And
Speaker 1: like when you go to the beach and you walk
Speaker 1: on the beach, Yeah, it's a different experience than being
Speaker 1: you know, stuck in a city or in a library
Speaker 1: or in your own house. But I mean that there's
Speaker 1: a lot going on at the beach. You know, there's
Speaker 1: crashing waves and expanses of sand and birds and all
Speaker 1: sorts of little shells to look at. Likewise, of course,
Speaker 1: so I'll walk through the woods. Is just I mean,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about this before on the podcast, Like
Speaker 1: your your senses are are able to fully engage in
Speaker 1: the environment for which they have evolved, uh, taking in
Speaker 1: all these details and in changing details in the world
Speaker 1: around you. Oh yeah, that does relate to these theories
Speaker 1: about how nature tends to engage our attention in a
Speaker 1: different way than than built environments do. And that essentially
Speaker 1: that it uh, I've forgotten all the details of exactly
Speaker 1: what that theory is, but that it UH that nature
Speaker 1: can basically be absorbing to the attention but essentially not
Speaker 1: stress inducing. I think, yeah. And of course this is
Speaker 1: not even getting into social isolation cutting yourself off from
Speaker 1: UM wanted and unwanted UH social connections. UH. Certainly there's
Speaker 1: a lot to be said for cutting yourself off from
Speaker 1: the UH connection to one smart device and the internet
Speaker 1: and so forth. Thank thank Finally, before we move on
Speaker 1: from this, I was wondering, like, what are the superlatives
Speaker 1: in terms of vacuums created by humans in the laboratory
Speaker 1: or or with the aid of technology. What's the lowest
Speaker 1: pressure humans can achieve. I'm not sure what the answer
Speaker 1: is in terms of the lowest pressure overall, but I
Speaker 1: definitely came across the contender and it is certainly one
Speaker 1: of the most impressive artificial vacuum systems ever created by humans,
Speaker 1: if not the lowest pressure. And it's actually the large
Speaker 1: Head round collider at the way it's largest particle accelerator,
Speaker 1: which is operated by the by the Ropean Organization for
Speaker 1: Nuclear Research or CERN. I believe it is still the
Speaker 1: largest vacuum system in operation in the world. It was
Speaker 1: certainly at the time it was put together, and I
Speaker 1: can't think of what would be larger than it. But
Speaker 1: it has more than a hundred kilometers of piping held
Speaker 1: in a state of vacuum for various purposes. There has
Speaker 1: to be ultra high vacuum piping for the actual particle
Speaker 1: beams to travel through so that like the accelerated particles
Speaker 1: don't collide with gas molecules and ruin the experiments. And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what would happen if they did collide.
Speaker 1: Maybe it could be worse than ruining experiments. Certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: be good. You don't want it. But there are also
Speaker 1: advanced vacuum systems used to like insulate other elements of
Speaker 1: the collider, such as the magnets or the helium distribution line.
Speaker 1: So a lot a lot of evacuated space going on
Speaker 1: at at the LHC facility, and it's at extremely low density.
Speaker 1: They compare various vacuums that they create to the density
Speaker 1: of interstellar space. So that is horror vakay in in physics.
Speaker 1: But one thing I've been wanting to come back to
Speaker 1: is the fear of emptiness or the fear of empty
Speaker 1: spaces as as an actual literal fear that humans feel,
Speaker 1: the kind of uneasiness that one experiences in a depopulated space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this topic of chinophobia, um, and some and some other
Speaker 1: related terms. I figured a good place to start on
Speaker 1: all of this might be to return to cinema. We
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about cinema earlier in this journey,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we talked about the ninety seven Dario
Speaker 1: Argento horror classic Suspiria, and there's a there's a scene
Speaker 1: in that film that instantly came to mind when I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this fear, this horror associated with depopulated spaces.
Speaker 1: Like you're saying, uh, and if you've seen Suspiria the original, um,
Speaker 1: although I really like the remake as well, and I
Speaker 1: don't think they recreated this scene in the remake, but
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. Uh. This scene involves a blind
Speaker 1: man walking through an open, unoccupied city plaza at night.
Speaker 1: There are no other human beings in sight. The environment
Speaker 1: is is pretty well illuminated, though there's still some deep
Speaker 1: pockets of shadow. There's a growing sense of threat and terror,
Speaker 1: and eventually, and I think we get some very wide
Speaker 1: shots here too, to really take in all that space.
Speaker 1: And then as the tension builds, the dog begins to
Speaker 1: bark and in a in a nasty twist, because again
Speaker 1: this is a gilt film and they they're off a
Speaker 1: nasty uh. The dog turns on the blind man and
Speaker 1: kills him. But the way the scene builds up to
Speaker 1: that moment takes just full advantage of this very open space. Uh.
Speaker 1: This there this feeling that there's just something wrong in
Speaker 1: the openness of all of this, that there's just just
Speaker 1: this one individual and his dog out here, and something
Speaker 1: terrible is about to happen. I think this scene is
Speaker 1: a fantastic example, especially because of how different it is
Speaker 1: than than more of uh, most of Suspiria and most
Speaker 1: of other h you know, Italian horror films or Jealo films,
Speaker 1: which we noted in the first episode in the series
Speaker 1: are uh. They are often recognized for being especially visually busy.
Speaker 1: You know, they have that artistic sense of horror vakoy
Speaker 1: as in you you sense a desire to fill in
Speaker 1: all emptier uniform spaces with detail and richness and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, they're full of patterns and so I think
Speaker 1: the scene of you know, the man who is unfortunately
Speaker 1: cursed by the witches and then this this attack happens
Speaker 1: on him. It gets especially scary because it's so unlike
Speaker 1: the rest of the movie, having all this emptiness and
Speaker 1: blank space in the night. But I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this and about how the horror genre in particular tends
Speaker 1: to favor blank, vacant, empty locations in multiple ways. Uh So,
Speaker 1: one way is that they tend to favor settings that
Speaker 1: are like literally emptied in the narrative sense. They are
Speaker 1: literally emptied of human activity or neglected by humans in
Speaker 1: some way. So think of how much horror loves like
Speaker 1: abandoned or empty buildings and settlements. Maybe the first idea
Speaker 1: that comes to my mind is Dracula's Castle, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because it is a castle that has no servants
Speaker 1: bustling about, no courtiers, uh just empty halls and chambers,
Speaker 1: and then the solitary figure of Dracula himself as the host.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a like a Wear's waldo, except
Speaker 1: there's just one guy there on the page and he
Speaker 1: and he's really staring at your neck. Oh man, that
Speaker 1: would be a great twist center where's wild a book
Speaker 1: Where's Dracula, And each each page is a massive level
Speaker 1: of Dracula's castle and there's just Dracula. There's nothing there.
Speaker 1: It's just hum There are no other Waldos. By the way,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in
Speaker 1: the movie Shadow of the Vampire from the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: which stars It's a sort of a horror comedy about
Speaker 1: the making of the movie nos Ferrato, but it says
Speaker 1: that Max Shrek, the actor who plays nos Ferrato in
Speaker 1: the movie played by Willem Dafoe in this movie, was
Speaker 1: actually a vampire. That is what it assumes, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a great premise. And there's a moment
Speaker 1: where they ask, uh, the character who is in this
Speaker 1: telling a real vampire if he read the novel Dracula.
Speaker 1: He says yes. He says the novel made him sad,
Speaker 1: and they said why and he says, because Dracula had
Speaker 1: no servants. I forgot about that part. That's good, but
Speaker 1: it is kind of sad, isn't it. Like the when
Speaker 1: when Harker in the novel realizes that like it was
Speaker 1: the count himself who had to set out the meal
Speaker 1: for him, and so forth, there's something kind of uh
Speaker 1: not like not like I want vampires to have servants,
Speaker 1: but I don't know, there's something kind of lonely and
Speaker 1: uneasy about it. And I think it has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that it's in a castle.
Speaker 1: It's in this big space meant to be occupied by
Speaker 1: many people, but he's the only one there. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess later we find out are some other you know,
Speaker 1: ghoul type creatures, but at first it's just empty except
Speaker 1: for him. But think of other movies with just abandoned locations,
Speaker 1: ghost towns, abandoned settlements, you know, empty empty streets and
Speaker 1: other places at night and so forth. Uh, Rob, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if you've noticed the same thing, but it
Speaker 1: strikes me that horror movies, especially favor locations that are
Speaker 1: not just empty as a matter of course, like you'd
Speaker 1: expect them to be empty, but locations that are empty
Speaker 1: in contrast to how we usually see them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: This has often played a great effect and various ghost
Speaker 1: towns and your westerns and of course depopulated cities like
Speaker 1: It's it's not enough to just replace the you know,
Speaker 1: you get into like post apocalyptic scenarios where it's like
Speaker 1: destroyed cities and bodies and so forth. And yes, zombies, um,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean you're necessarily going for this, uh
Speaker 1: this total feeling of emptiness. Uh, this this sense that
Speaker 1: that all the activity in presence of the was there
Speaker 1: previously is just gone. But one example that does come
Speaker 1: to nine, and this is a zombie film, but twenty
Speaker 1: eight days later, of course, that's all those wonderful shots
Speaker 1: of what depopulated London and our our our character walking
Speaker 1: around there and sort of experiencing just the overwhelming emptiness
Speaker 1: of the city. I think that's a great example. It's
Speaker 1: incredibly unnerving that opening. Uh So you could contrast that
Speaker 1: with like say a movie with scenes in a desert
Speaker 1: or a forest wilderness, which might be empty of human activity,
Speaker 1: but we would expect them to be empty of human activity.
Speaker 1: And in cases where movies focus on that, in the
Speaker 1: horror genre, at least, the horror usually comes from when
Speaker 1: you find something or someone, or suspect the presence of
Speaker 1: something or someone that you wouldn't usually expect to encounter there. Instead,
Speaker 1: locations that I think of his most common to horror
Speaker 1: movies are like empty versions of places you would usually
Speaker 1: expect to be full. So not just cities like at
Speaker 1: the beginning of twenty days Later, but I think of
Speaker 1: empty hospitals at the night shift, empty churches and cathedrals,
Speaker 1: whereas the congregation, empty school buildings after hours, empty empty castles.
Speaker 1: Like I said at the beginning, you know what happened
Speaker 1: to the crew of the event horizon? Why is this
Speaker 1: spaceship empty? Uh So, I think empty locations like this
Speaker 1: lend themselves well to horror for multiple reasons. One is
Speaker 1: a kind of just like literal understanding of danger in
Speaker 1: the world. Like you know, there's an uneasiness that comes
Speaker 1: from a location being empty, because it sort of means
Speaker 1: like you're on your own against whatever might threaten you.
Speaker 1: But if for the location is full of people, you
Speaker 1: might be able to get help from the werewolf if
Speaker 1: it's going to come at you, like people usually feel
Speaker 1: safer in numbers for totally good and logical reasons. You
Speaker 1: know two examples that come to mind. They're very related
Speaker 1: because they both involved the same sort of location. I
Speaker 1: think both of these examples kind of maybe you know,
Speaker 1: bend this line a little bit and and and blurred
Speaker 1: the distinction between uh emptiness being invigorating and empowering and
Speaker 1: it being terrifying. They both take place in shopping malls,
Speaker 1: and of course thinking about Donna the Dead from George
Speaker 1: Romero and Shopping Mall both films in which our characters
Speaker 1: find themselves in a depopulated mall shopping mall environment and uh,
Speaker 1: and eventually they're gonna have to deal with of course
Speaker 1: zombies in one film, and well and also um like
Speaker 1: evil bikers in one film, but then in the other
Speaker 1: film they're gonna have to deal with killer robots. And
Speaker 1: in both of these there's kind of like this um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, this kind of I guess capitalist rebellion
Speaker 1: um energy to them where it's like this this this
Speaker 1: place that contained me through commerce and also just the
Speaker 1: social environment of the mall. Now those constraints are not there,
Speaker 1: and I can just go into any any store in
Speaker 1: the mall and steal things. And then but then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, yes, it's like all the things that
Speaker 1: made this a normal place, that made this a you know,
Speaker 1: cathedral of of American culture during the nineteen eighties or
Speaker 1: what have you. Uh, that's gone as well. There's something
Speaker 1: unholy about the environment that's great observation. Yeah, about the
Speaker 1: malls in these movies, it's like the the fact that
Speaker 1: we see them with all of the people taken out
Speaker 1: of them, not shopping anymore, just automatically invites questions, kind
Speaker 1: of critical questions about what this place was for in
Speaker 1: the first place and what it meant. And of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: it invites that uneasy feeling, and I think that goes
Speaker 1: to the next thing. So there was the thing I
Speaker 1: already said about empty locations are in a very literal sense,
Speaker 1: they're scarier just because like their safety and numbers. But
Speaker 1: but empty locations and abandoned the locations I think are
Speaker 1: also good fodder for horror on a conceptual level because
Speaker 1: in some cases they invite you to wonder why the
Speaker 1: place is empty, like what happened here? Where did the
Speaker 1: people go? Or as you just said, they invite you
Speaker 1: to sort of look upon the purpose of the place
Speaker 1: with a newly critical eye, like when when people are
Speaker 1: not doing the things they're normally doing in this place,
Speaker 1: what is this place actually for? Yeah, we just go
Speaker 1: some of that in our and you alluded to this
Speaker 1: a little bit already, But the episodes that we did
Speaker 1: about Christmas ghost stories from Northern Europe to deal with
Speaker 1: this whole question like what is a church if it
Speaker 1: is midnight and no one is there, Like is it
Speaker 1: still a church? And if it is still a church,
Speaker 1: what what does that mean? Is it still sacred or
Speaker 1: just the sacredness come from the uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: congregation and the acts they do inside it. And so
Speaker 1: could the same building the church be used for unholy rites?
Speaker 1: Thank thank, thank, But finally, I think there are also
Speaker 1: conceptual suggestions, like a place that is empty in contrast
Speaker 1: to the expectation that it should be full, like all
Speaker 1: of these depopulated places we've been talking about that has
Speaker 1: long been associated with death, right like you would think
Speaker 1: under normal old ideas like humans have left this formerly
Speaker 1: inhabited place, like a like a soul leaving a body.
Speaker 1: But in addition to all these more literal concerns, I
Speaker 1: think horror films in particular, but other genres as well,
Speaker 1: often use blank space also known as negative space, in
Speaker 1: the frame of of the film as a visual marker
Speaker 1: to create uneasiness. So this is less literal about like
Speaker 1: what is threatening the characters, and more just kind of
Speaker 1: the feelings that we get from how a movie looks
Speaker 1: I don't know how much of this is a natural
Speaker 1: psychological expectation that humans have and how much is just
Speaker 1: sort of a like a learned convention and emergent convention
Speaker 1: of filmmaking that we have all learned implicitly from watching movies.
Speaker 1: But I think the baseline fact is that when we
Speaker 1: see negative space in a movie, we somewhat expect it
Speaker 1: to become filled. There's empty space on the screen. We
Speaker 1: expect something to come to occupy that space, and of course,
Speaker 1: once you have expectation, you have the ability to create tension,
Speaker 1: and by denying the fulfillment of that expectation, like you know,
Speaker 1: like a character peers out into the darkness and it's
Speaker 1: uniform darkness, not not filled in with detail, there's no detail,
Speaker 1: or they look into an empty room with nothing in it,
Speaker 1: or some other negative space. We expect something to happen,
Speaker 1: something to fill that space, sort to come into view,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, that is unresolved tension and uneasiness
Speaker 1: and the sort of the prime example, like one of
Speaker 1: the core feelings that is evoked by weird fiction and cinema. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think a great recent example of all this
Speaker 1: would be Jordan Peel's Note that came out just last year.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do any spoilers for it, because I
Speaker 1: don't think you've seen it yet, have you. I still haven't, no,
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of listeners haven't, So I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna spoil it. But I will say that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of shots that established the sky as
Speaker 1: the domain of some manner of inhuman threat and uh.
Speaker 1: And then below beneath the sky you have the this
Speaker 1: wonderful California desert setting as well, so it's very geographically open.
Speaker 1: But then you have this open sky, you also have
Speaker 1: some some wonderful clouds at play, both during the daytime
Speaker 1: sequences in the nighttime sequences. But still it does this
Speaker 1: fabulous job of establishing um a cloudy or even open
Speaker 1: skies being possibly a threat. And I found when I
Speaker 1: watched it in the theater when I left the theater,
Speaker 1: when I left the dark theater and went out into
Speaker 1: the day, because it was Mattenee that I attended, Uh, instantly,
Speaker 1: I kind of felt in danger. I kind of felt
Speaker 1: some of the danger from the film still, like residually
Speaker 1: coursing through my body to where I was like, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead, and get to the car. I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't feel great walking across this this wide open
Speaker 1: parking lot beneath this uh this scary sky. Oh boy. Well,
Speaker 1: I will admit that when I come out of a mattenee,
Speaker 1: I often feel uneasy. Uh, No matter what the movie was,
Speaker 1: there's just something weird about coming out of a dark
Speaker 1: ended movie theater and it's still light outside. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like other worlds, It's what's what's going on? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me of that feeling like when you
Speaker 1: take too long of a nap in the middle of
Speaker 1: the day. It's like, yeah, it's disorienting. You've you've been
Speaker 1: in a cave watching a cinema, and then then you
Speaker 1: go out into the real world. Now, in thinking about
Speaker 1: how Note made me temporarily feel about open skies, I
Speaker 1: did find it interesting to come across various mentions of
Speaker 1: a supposed phobia online dubbed cassadastrophobia, which is described as
Speaker 1: a fear of essentially falling up into the sky. M Now,
Speaker 1: I I couldn't find any academic discussion of this alleged phobia,
Speaker 1: and I'm not doubting anyone's experiences around it because for starters,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of room for anxiety and paranoia to creep
Speaker 1: up in one's experience of reality. Um. It may simply
Speaker 1: just be newly defined and understudied UM. But to whatever
Speaker 1: extent it's an actual phobia, it would seem to be
Speaker 1: kind of a subset of this idea of quenophobia pronounced
Speaker 1: fear of of the open You know, a feeling that
Speaker 1: this open sky might either swallow you up or somehow
Speaker 1: gravity is going to fail and you'll float up into it.
Speaker 1: That is an interesting fear because it doesn't correspond to
Speaker 1: anything that I can think of that ever happens in reality.
Speaker 1: And it's very specific. Yeah, And it's interesting because I
Speaker 1: can kind of relate to these overwhelming feelings of viewing
Speaker 1: either a clear blue sky in the day or certainly
Speaker 1: a sprawling star escape in a rural environment where you're
Speaker 1: free of light pollution and cloud cover and everything's really expansive.
Speaker 1: Um and and it. But it's also it's weird because
Speaker 1: these are both This is that can be very inspiring
Speaker 1: and beautiful but can maybe reach the point of being
Speaker 1: overwhelming and and maybe it ends up having this effect
Speaker 1: where you think about what would happen if I like,
Speaker 1: what if I just fell up into it? And it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. Nobody's like, this is not going
Speaker 1: to happen. You have, you have a number of other
Speaker 1: concerns if gravity stops working. Besides, you know where you're
Speaker 1: gonna float to. But um, but yeah, I can. I
Speaker 1: can sort of look back on times in my life
Speaker 1: where I've been looking up at like a big, clear
Speaker 1: blue sky or some sort of star escape and feeling this,
Speaker 1: especially with the blue sky. I think there are times
Speaker 1: where I looked up at the star escape and I
Speaker 1: was maybe a little afraid of aliens more than I
Speaker 1: was afraid of just falling up into the blue Were
Speaker 1: you afraid of aliens because you watched Unsolved Mysteries and
Speaker 1: they had the scary Yes. As a child, I was.
Speaker 1: I was afraid of it, afraid of aliens because there
Speaker 1: was no counter narrative. I think of discusses on the
Speaker 1: show before you would just encounter this said this episode
Speaker 1: or episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and they're like, Yep, there
Speaker 1: might be aliens out there. It seems like there's good
Speaker 1: evidence for it. I don't know, And you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have Carl Sagan coming on afterwards and explaining all
Speaker 1: the reasons why you shouldn't be worried. That would be hilarious.
Speaker 1: Each episode ends with like a formal debate between Robert
Speaker 1: Stack and Carl say, um, yeah, that so. But with
Speaker 1: the with the blue, It's hard to say. It's just
Speaker 1: at times I felt kind of an unnerving sense when
Speaker 1: there was like this really big blue sky. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'll get back to this, but but it also I
Speaker 1: went on a tangent here where I was reminded of
Speaker 1: something that Geraldine Pinch discusses in her book Egyptian Mythology
Speaker 1: about how the cloudless skies above ancient Egypt would have
Speaker 1: provided ready viewing of the stars and planets, thus instilling
Speaker 1: a great interest in the movement of the heavens in
Speaker 1: Egyptian mythology. And uh this I wasn't able to find
Speaker 1: a satisfying answer on this, but I mean, this definitely
Speaker 1: seems to be the case with the ancient Egyptians. But
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians were not the only people to find
Speaker 1: the sky very interesting. They weren't the only ones to
Speaker 1: have ah an advanced astronomy. I mean, you look at
Speaker 1: various examples from the ancient world, the Babylonians, the Greeks,
Speaker 1: uh India, China, Persia, the Mayans. They all had robust
Speaker 1: astronomical systems, and there there are disciplines that look into
Speaker 1: this sort of question, like how did the perception of
Speaker 1: the sky and the understanding of the cosmos and the
Speaker 1: movements of the stars. More specifically, like how did this
Speaker 1: affect a given civilization and their beliefs and their views.
Speaker 1: You have the disciplines of arco astronomy and ethno astrology,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of interesting work out there concerning, say,
Speaker 1: for an example, certain architectural traditions and to what extent
Speaker 1: they were created with astronomy and astronomical data in mind.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I see, like buildings that may or may
Speaker 1: not have been intended to align with the stars in
Speaker 1: a certain way. Yeah, And so what I guess I
Speaker 1: was curious about was, Okay, does this mean that are
Speaker 1: you going to have certain civilizations located in regions or
Speaker 1: with high population density and regions that had maybe more
Speaker 1: understructed views of the night sky with a lean towards
Speaker 1: a more robust astronomical culture or something. Um I didn't
Speaker 1: encounter much to really back that up. You know, there
Speaker 1: there wasn't much that I was encountering that said that
Speaker 1: there's any kind of like astrophilic or astrophobic division between
Speaker 1: cultures or anything not that I could tell. If it's
Speaker 1: out there and I missed it, and you know about it,
Speaker 1: listeners right in and let me know. But more often
Speaker 1: you seem to see this mix related to astronomical traditions
Speaker 1: that where a culture civilization realizes that okay, you know
Speaker 1: that the trackable movement of the sun and the stars
Speaker 1: is linked to various cycles of life, the passage of time,
Speaker 1: the seasons, navigation, and then you also have purely supernatural
Speaker 1: concepts such as omens and portents and the looking to
Speaker 1: the stars to try and divine the future, and and
Speaker 1: looking for yet individual data data about the individual experience
Speaker 1: UH in the heavens, alongside broader information about UH like
Speaker 1: how life works in the long term on Earth. So
Speaker 1: within a given astronomical culture, there might be a number
Speaker 1: of important but kind of mone aim considerations about the sky,
Speaker 1: alongside lofty or religious cosmological ideas and negative superstitions concerning
Speaker 1: certain anomalies such as say, eclipses, which we've discussed in
Speaker 1: the show before, as well as things that certain lunar
Speaker 1: phases and and other things that might in some cases
Speaker 1: might be out of the ordinary or somehow novel, but
Speaker 1: being anomalies, these would probably not be things where the
Speaker 1: source of the anxiety is anything you could identify as
Speaker 1: like fear of the openness of the sky, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more you read about, you know, some of these
Speaker 1: eclipse myths and all there are fear based um interpretations
Speaker 1: of them and and and myths involving you know, some
Speaker 1: sort of monster threatening reality and so forth. But then
Speaker 1: on the other side, you have even though they may
Speaker 1: seem like strange anomalies out of nowhere to some observers,
Speaker 1: and perhaps it's sometimes you're still gonna have astronomy get
Speaker 1: on top of that. As we discussed in those those
Speaker 1: episodes we did on eclipse myths, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: people begin to realize, okay, these things are trackable and
Speaker 1: we can tell when they will occur or we can
Speaker 1: predict them. Thank thank thank Now, within the context of
Speaker 1: horror Um, this idea of fearing the sky, fearing big
Speaker 1: open places um, it does line up not only thematically
Speaker 1: but specifically with the twentieth century writings of HP love Draft.
Speaker 1: I was looking around, and you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: I don't remember reading this story, but there's story titled
Speaker 1: The Other Gods, and there's this bit in it where
Speaker 1: the character who's I'm sure clearly um going mad thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the some sort of monstrous reality all around him, uh,
Speaker 1: exclaims the other gods, the other gods, the gods of
Speaker 1: the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of Earth.
Speaker 1: Look away, go back, do not see, do not see
Speaker 1: the vengeance of the infinite to this is that cursed,
Speaker 1: that damnable pit, merciful gods of Earth. I am falling
Speaker 1: into the sky. Ah. Yeah, Well, that kind of fear
Speaker 1: does seem to fit into the I mean, probably not
Speaker 1: just Lovecraft, but you could say the broader convention of
Speaker 1: of cosmic horror, which uh, you know, is a horror
Speaker 1: that that has a lot to do not just with
Speaker 1: like specific threats to the individual characters, but a kind
Speaker 1: of terror at the idea of the insignificance of humankind
Speaker 1: when compared to some kind of greater force or greater
Speaker 1: meaninglessness in the in the cosmos as a whole. And
Speaker 1: one way you could really imagine that that sort of
Speaker 1: absurdity or meaninglessness being highlighted is just like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: capricious violations of the laws of physics. Suddenly you fall
Speaker 1: up instead of down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a lot of that in the weird fiction world. Um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this is is described as being
Speaker 1: in line with the literary philosophy of cosmicism, which is
Speaker 1: this idea that, yeah, though the universe is just teeming
Speaker 1: with alien threats, monster gods from space, but also it's
Speaker 1: related to this fear regarding humanity seemingly inconsequential place in
Speaker 1: a vast and alien universe. And I think this is
Speaker 1: often you know, you often see this emerging in a
Speaker 1: context of of of our increasing scientific understanding of of
Speaker 1: who we are and what the planet is and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and getting away from these older ideas about
Speaker 1: and also religious ideas about the importance of earth, the
Speaker 1: importance of humanity. Uh, and then what are you left with? Um,
Speaker 1: or at least what are you left with? And maybe
Speaker 1: in your darker moments or in your your moments of doubt, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sort of the antisocial side of the
Speaker 1: Copernican principle. Yeah, so like, yeah, I don't think the
Speaker 1: compernic in principle, like the fact that you should not
Speaker 1: assume that you are looking at the universe from a
Speaker 1: privileged place or that you are the center of the universe. Instead,
Speaker 1: should um assume you are looking at the universe from
Speaker 1: an average place within the universe. And of course that
Speaker 1: goes along with our discovery of uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: Earth not being the center of the solar system and
Speaker 1: so forth. Uh. Yeah, I think that's just a fact
Speaker 1: of life, and that is a good way to look
Speaker 1: at the universe. One need not feel despairing about it.
Speaker 1: But if one chooses to feel despairing about that realization,
Speaker 1: you kind of end up in the cosmic horror area. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and in the case of love Craft in particular,
Speaker 1: and perhaps related authors as well, you're not just dealing
Speaker 1: with this fear of cosmic insignificance either. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you also have to throw in there a healthy dose
Speaker 1: of misanthropy, of xenophobia and so forth. So uh, put
Speaker 1: that all in the stew together, and um, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of horror can can emerge. But also, yeah, this
Speaker 1: this feeling that maybe nothing matters. But a lot of
Speaker 1: this I think this, this thinking about the sky and
Speaker 1: this feeling about the perhaps fears of falling into the sky,
Speaker 1: And maybe they're not like, you know, a literal fear
Speaker 1: like oh I better hold onto the grass, but it's
Speaker 1: this sort of overwhelming sense of of the vast. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it does come back to what
Speaker 1: we discussed earlier, this connection between UM, the infinite and
Speaker 1: the finite, between how this is of great expanse can
Speaker 1: affect us. So to one line of thinking, clear of
Speaker 1: the blue sky might be relaxing and a brilliant star
Speaker 1: escape inspiring, but to others this could certainly be overpowering,
Speaker 1: perhaps bringing out feelings of vulnerability and insignificance. Yes, certainly,
Speaker 1: And this comes back to UM. You know something we
Speaker 1: talked about a couple of episodes ago about like the
Speaker 1: difference in art styles that people use to h to
Speaker 1: create sacred or RESTful or contemplative spaces in UH in
Speaker 1: different environments, and how it's not clear that there's always
Speaker 1: a correlation in this direction, but it's possible that you
Speaker 1: could have trends where people who spend more of their
Speaker 1: time in a kind of like a busy environment might
Speaker 1: be more inclined to have their sacred or RESTful or
Speaker 1: contemplative spaces decorated in a minimalist way that has more blankness,
Speaker 1: more uniformity of color, and things like that, whereas people
Speaker 1: who live in uh in more pastoral environments might be
Speaker 1: more attracted to sacred, RESTful, or or contemplative spaces that
Speaker 1: are full of rich detail. And the example was Tibetan art. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think I think all that applies here as well. Again,
Speaker 1: this this becomes so subjective depending on where one's head
Speaker 1: is and um, and you know what you're thinking about,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly you encounter, say a wide open space
Speaker 1: or an enclosed space, and then how does that affect
Speaker 1: how you're feeling? Now? I was looking around for other
Speaker 1: other sources commenting on some of this, and I did
Speaker 1: find a very interesting paper by Dr Francisco Matta. The
Speaker 1: papers all they a phenomenological investigation of the presence thing
Speaker 1: of space, and this was, Uh, this is an interesting paper.
Speaker 1: You can find it online, um and uh and read
Speaker 1: it for free of an interest here, But I just
Speaker 1: want to read one quote from it that kind of
Speaker 1: gets down to what we're talking about here quote. However,
Speaker 1: this search for freedom or empowerment can be frightening whenever
Speaker 1: one is searching for what we used to call a
Speaker 1: horizontality and puts oneself in situations in which one may
Speaker 1: perceive larger volumes of space, one runs the risk of
Speaker 1: losing sight of the limits of such a volume, in
Speaker 1: which case one will likely feel keenophobic. One may have
Speaker 1: this fearful experience since one has no anchors of reference,
Speaker 1: and therefore one is unable to become aware of any
Speaker 1: volume of space. For example, when out at c departing
Speaker 1: from the coastline and heading farther and farther into the ocean,
Speaker 1: one comes to be in the midst of a vast
Speaker 1: extension of limitless water. Canophobia is in fact the opposite
Speaker 1: of being placed, the being at home that comes with
Speaker 1: top ophilia. So that's interesting. I like that explanation a lot,
Speaker 1: This feeling of that you could be hit with that. Again,
Speaker 1: this is highly subjective, but you encounter this vast expands
Speaker 1: of ocean or sky or desert, and you you loose
Speaker 1: side of the limits, and you might think, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I have no place here, I have I have no
Speaker 1: belonging here. This is the overwhelming scope of the world
Speaker 1: kind of unhinges me from that, like that spatial sense
Speaker 1: of belonging. Alright, looks like we've gone the limit here.
Speaker 1: We're we're late for the sky, so we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and close it out. But we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there if you have thoughts and reflections
Speaker 1: on all of this. I'd especially love to hear from
Speaker 1: anyone out there who has had a similar or conflicting
Speaker 1: reaction to say, a very open blue sky or a
Speaker 1: very open um starvista at night. Uh be interesting to
Speaker 1: continue to discuss this on our listener mail episodes. Our
Speaker 1: listener Mail episodes of course published on Mondays in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Our Core Science
Speaker 1: episodes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form Monster Fact
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, and then on Fridays, we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns and just talk about a strange film on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot com Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio with the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. It stored propa