Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back today to talk about getting in a
Speaker 1: box once again. This is going to be the sequel
Speaker 1: to an episode that aired on Tuesday of this week.
Speaker 1: That previous one, we talked about cats getting in boxes,
Speaker 1: cats being unable to resist the lure of a cardboard cube,
Speaker 1: and we discussed some biological facts about cats that could
Speaker 1: potentially drive the box seeking behavior, including a natural behavioral
Speaker 1: preferences for hiding places, especially under stressful conditions. We talked
Speaker 1: about some studies about that, but then also things that
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about as much before, like thermoregulation, which
Speaker 1: seems to me to be potentially a big part of
Speaker 1: the explanation of why cats would seek especially some kinds
Speaker 1: of box as the kinds that don't really afford anything
Speaker 1: like a hiding place. But we also talked about the
Speaker 1: more difficult to explain phenomenon of cats sitting on and
Speaker 1: in flat squares on the floor, as well as studies
Speaker 1: into cats and visual illusions. Today, we wanted to come
Speaker 1: back and look at the human side of this. Humans
Speaker 1: desiring to get into the box or get into the square.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, because you know your mind can't help. But
Speaker 1: but go in this direction, because I mean, on one level,
Speaker 1: the same cardboard boxes that end up attracting the cat
Speaker 1: in a household, well, it'll attract children for sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you've been around children, or ever been a child,
Speaker 1: you know the appeal of a box, a big cardboard box,
Speaker 1: or so many things you can do with it, cut
Speaker 1: some holes in it, some windows, some doors you've you've
Speaker 1: got yourself, you know, potentially a whole afternoon of entertainment.
Speaker 1: There were you a Ford builder as a child, I
Speaker 1: definitely was, Um, I think, yeah, I think so, But
Speaker 1: I don't remember having as I feel like there far.
Speaker 1: You know, we live in an age now where they're
Speaker 1: just where cardboard boxes are just such a regular part
Speaker 1: of our life, and as a kid, I don't remember
Speaker 1: having as much access to cool giant cardboard boxes. Oh well,
Speaker 1: I just mean in general, I mean building small enclosures
Speaker 1: out of anything you can get, just boxes, because we
Speaker 1: would pouch cushions of course, a perfect building material for
Speaker 1: indoor forts. But also I recall Uh, with a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, we spent one summer at least building a
Speaker 1: ford out of sticks in the woods, just sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, leaning them together to create a very
Speaker 1: rough sort of hut. I don't think it would have
Speaker 1: been functional as a living space, because the roof would
Speaker 1: have leaked if it rained or anything like that, but
Speaker 1: it was still it felt very cool to have built
Speaker 1: something that you could get inside. Yeah, And and so
Speaker 1: there's definitely the whole childhood to mension to it, and
Speaker 1: I guess we'll continue to touch a bit on that.
Speaker 1: But but also I think as adults we can we
Speaker 1: can look to boxes and box like in environment, and um,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to sort of engage with the degree
Speaker 1: to which we are drawn to these spaces or repulsed
Speaker 1: by these spaces, and and sometimes it's hard to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly how we feel about them. So we should
Speaker 1: go ahead and state the obvious, and that is that
Speaker 1: we know on one level that can that small confined
Speaker 1: spaces can be extremely detrimental to human well being. Solitary
Speaker 1: confinement is a cruel and debilitating treatment. It's associated with
Speaker 1: a whole host of negative mental states. Yes, clearly that's true.
Speaker 1: And another thing is sort of along the same lines
Speaker 1: as when I was trying to find good sources for
Speaker 1: today's episode. For every you know, one source you could
Speaker 1: find that has anything to do with a desire for
Speaker 1: small spaces, there are going to be a hundred about
Speaker 1: the hatred of small spaces, about claustrophobia and related you
Speaker 1: know mind states Like obviously, being in a tight, confined
Speaker 1: space when you don't want to be there or against
Speaker 1: your will is a major preoccupation of humans. It's really
Speaker 1: easy to get obsessed with this idea and really hate it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: though at least for some, at least for a segment
Speaker 1: of the population, confined spaces of choice can certainly be comforting,
Speaker 1: at least in moderation and if and also I should
Speaker 1: say it, sometimes it might be more of a of
Speaker 1: a desire for the confined space than a reality of
Speaker 1: the confined space. Uh. And I'll get a little bit
Speaker 1: more into what I mean by that, and just a
Speaker 1: bit um but you know, it should be noted that
Speaker 1: the human beings might not all think of box living
Speaker 1: is the ideal way to go. But but we also
Speaker 1: we do spend a lot of time living in boxes
Speaker 1: in the modern world. I mean, there's a high chance
Speaker 1: you're in a box space right now, or if you
Speaker 1: were outside, perhaps you can see various box spaces from
Speaker 1: where you are. I mean we are creatures of the box.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean not just our houses, but also say
Speaker 1: our cars, but also boxes within the boxes. So within
Speaker 1: a house or within an office building where you were,
Speaker 1: you might have a little office or a little corner
Speaker 1: that's sort of made into a partially enclosed thing, or
Speaker 1: a cubicle if you're lucky at work. Yeah. But I mean,
Speaker 1: but even just talking about our houses in our rooms. Um,
Speaker 1: and I mean I have to admit, like right now,
Speaker 1: I am in a small closet, I'm in a confined
Speaker 1: space that, for the most part, feels pretty comfortable. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty I'm pretty happy in this this little confined space.
Speaker 1: I've have my my computer here, I have my mike. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a bookshelf here that has some some books, some games,
Speaker 1: there's some miniatures on it. All the coats in the
Speaker 1: house are helping to pad out the sound. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I I definitely feel a certain attraction to
Speaker 1: to a cozy, confined space like this. I it's probably
Speaker 1: for me conditioning because I'm used to recording in the
Speaker 1: studio that sort of a dark, padded area when we
Speaker 1: were recording in the office, but even recording from home,
Speaker 1: I'm also in a box. I am in the corner
Speaker 1: of a room sort of walled off by an acoustic partition.
Speaker 1: All that essentially creates a sort of shadowy corner where
Speaker 1: I can explore all the depraved thoughts that that will
Speaker 1: eventually become part of this podcast. Now. We we recently
Speaker 1: discussed Theogenis in our episode on Beans, the fifth century
Speaker 1: BC cynic philosopher who is said to have lived in
Speaker 1: a tub or a large jar in the streets. Uh
Speaker 1: And and after we mentioned I had to look up
Speaker 1: some interpretations of what this might have looked like. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it is like it looks like a big stone
Speaker 1: barrel that he's living in. Yeah. I think it was
Speaker 1: said to be maybe in the marketplace of Athens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so right right on the middle of everything. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, you know, even a tub large jar not
Speaker 1: that different from a box. And I should point out
Speaker 1: that there is a disorder that is known as Diogenes syndrome,
Speaker 1: though it's not tied to the idea of living in
Speaker 1: confined spaces. It's actually something of a misnomer as it's characterized.
Speaker 1: The syndrome is characterized by self neglect, squalor hoarding, and
Speaker 1: social withdrawal. Diogenes, however, was a minimalist and uh, and
Speaker 1: you don't see stories about him hoarding anything that would
Speaker 1: run against the whole idea. Nor was he socially withdrawn. No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean you could consider Diogenes with drawn in the
Speaker 1: sense that he made a point out of rejecting social convention.
Speaker 1: So he was sort of withdrawn from the social contract
Speaker 1: in a way of withdrawn from a buy in with
Speaker 1: the rest of society and from expectations and norms. But
Speaker 1: he was not withdrawn in terms of his interactions with
Speaker 1: other people. He was very public and confrontational about being
Speaker 1: not a part of your system. Man. Now you might
Speaker 1: well wonder, well, if there is a psychological disorder associated
Speaker 1: with a desire to live inside a tub or a jar,
Speaker 1: a box, you know what, what would we call it?
Speaker 1: Perhaps not claustrophobia, but claustrophilia. And yes, there there is
Speaker 1: such a classification abnormal pleasure derived from being in a
Speaker 1: confined space. I was looking this up and at least
Speaker 1: I found. I don't know if you came across the
Speaker 1: same thing that most of the sources using this term,
Speaker 1: we're using it with a kind of sexual connotation, that
Speaker 1: it was like a particular sexual obsession or fetish for
Speaker 1: being in confined spaces. Um. I ran across a little
Speaker 1: of that. I mean for the most party, I just
Speaker 1: you don't see it discussed near as much as claustrophobia. Um.
Speaker 1: And And I guess the thing is, claustrophobia is something
Speaker 1: that can kick in and and be a detriment to
Speaker 1: you know, your your ability to uh to live your life.
Speaker 1: You know, it could prevent you from, say, boarding a
Speaker 1: crowded train that you need to need to board, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, whereas claustrophilia, Um, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it could get you into some slainness and trouble. But
Speaker 1: but but yeah, you just don't see as much literature
Speaker 1: about it. Um you you, Yeah, you do see some
Speaker 1: stuff that that seems to be going in a more
Speaker 1: erotic direction. But even some of that, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's getting into an area where you're not necessarily talking
Speaker 1: about like pure titillation. You're ultimately getting at this sort
Speaker 1: of this idea of enclosure and the comforting aspect of enclosure,
Speaker 1: even if it is discussed in an area that is
Speaker 1: like um, you know, closer to um more, you know,
Speaker 1: erotic considerations. But for instance, there was one paper that
Speaker 1: I found, a Romanian paper recently published titled what If
Speaker 1: I Didn't Go Out Anymore, which which I think is
Speaker 1: a great, great title by Rosella Valdre. And uh, I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to get access to the full paper, so
Speaker 1: I'll just read that the abstract here, which I think
Speaker 1: gets to the the heart of what the author is discussing. Quote.
Speaker 1: One of the psychological reactions to the COVID nineteen lockdowns
Speaker 1: is psychic withdrawal claustrophilia. The author asks why this paradoxical
Speaker 1: reaction occurs, naming the death drive and fear of freedom.
Speaker 1: Now you can probably hear from some of the keywords
Speaker 1: at the end of this that this paper I looked at,
Speaker 1: this is actually published in a journal for psychoanalysis, which
Speaker 1: means we're in Freudian or Freudian adjacent territory. So I
Speaker 1: guess we don't know what the I don't know empirical
Speaker 1: or modern scientific validity of the explanation given in this
Speaker 1: paper would be but I think the phenomenon it identifies
Speaker 1: as something I've seen expressed a good bid actually, that
Speaker 1: there is a certain personality type and a certain way
Speaker 1: that some people have adapted to, uh to the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen lockdowns that says, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I really need to leave my house anymore. I
Speaker 1: there there there are certain aspects of ongoing quarantine that
Speaker 1: are kind of appealing. Now, obviously that's not going to
Speaker 1: be true of everybody. I you know, I personally, Ever
Speaker 1: since the two week mark after my second vaccination, I
Speaker 1: have been thrilled at the prospect of of getting out
Speaker 1: of the house more often, and especially being able to
Speaker 1: be around other other people more often. That that's been
Speaker 1: really exciting to me, even though I think I'm overall
Speaker 1: a pretty introverted person, like I like being by myself, elf,
Speaker 1: I like being at home. Uh. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: they're sort of pent up demand that has built in
Speaker 1: my brain over the past year. But that's not there
Speaker 1: for everybody. Some people. Some people are like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of like how things are for me. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I guess you also have to realize you can divide
Speaker 1: it up in different ways, like there are people that
Speaker 1: are that are that I'm sure all about, like getting
Speaker 1: out back out there socially seeing friends and family, but
Speaker 1: might be more of this school when it comes to
Speaker 1: work and say, actually, why should I ever leave my
Speaker 1: house to work? Like can't I why why do I
Speaker 1: need to be in an office? Like it's gonna be
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it probably already is interesting in a
Speaker 1: lot of places where they're having to to re examine
Speaker 1: the purpose of the physical shared workspace and then potentially
Speaker 1: have to make a case for it to uh to
Speaker 1: their employees or you know whoever. Um. Whereas before it
Speaker 1: was just kind of a given well of course we
Speaker 1: all come and we share a single space to work, um.
Speaker 1: But now they're potentially having to put to go out
Speaker 1: there and say, hey, everybody, why don't we come back
Speaker 1: together and work in one big space again and share
Speaker 1: a coffee maker? Ding? Ding ding? You have got my
Speaker 1: number here. Yeah, I've been really excited ever since getting
Speaker 1: vaccinated to see friends more often. I have no desire
Speaker 1: to to go back to a shared workspace except I
Speaker 1: mean except that, I mean, it's not that I don't
Speaker 1: like seeing my coworkers. I very much do. I would
Speaker 1: like to see all of our co workers again. Socially,
Speaker 1: I just don't want to have to work around other people.
Speaker 1: I'm so much more productive at home by myself, where
Speaker 1: I can focus and not be distracted by a workplace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think it's going to break down
Speaker 1: differently for different people. But of course, as sort of
Speaker 1: an introvert myself, I also I can also get a
Speaker 1: sense of this too, where there's a lot of movement
Speaker 1: to open back up and you know, being to get
Speaker 1: back out there, and after you know, over a year
Speaker 1: of of doing the opposite, you know, it can it
Speaker 1: can feel a little much, you can feel a little threatening,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, the the idea of of going you
Speaker 1: know from you know, from zero to fifty and too
Speaker 1: short of a time, and I think there is I
Speaker 1: have seen some some authors online talking about the idea of,
Speaker 1: you know, the importance even of finding like middle ground
Speaker 1: things you can do to sort of work back up
Speaker 1: to things like this, so you know, and instead of
Speaker 1: like your first thing back out in the world shouldn't
Speaker 1: shouldn't be uh, you know, going to seventy miles per hour,
Speaker 1: it should maybe you know, do go to twenty five
Speaker 1: miles per hours. See what that feels like. Maybe start
Speaker 1: with a small get together with other vaccinated friends instead
Speaker 1: of the monster truck show. Yeah yeah, don't and and
Speaker 1: immediately go to the monster truck show or the or
Speaker 1: the Mega concert or whatever it happens to be. But
Speaker 1: but back just to the idea of of small, tied
Speaker 1: and closed spaces, comfy places being appealing. Um uh you know,
Speaker 1: even though there are you know, negative aspects again to
Speaker 1: such spaces. Uh I, I have to admit to having
Speaker 1: felt this kind of draw to such space is throughout
Speaker 1: my life. And sometimes it is an actual space that
Speaker 1: I'm inhabiting, like you know, the closet here for the
Speaker 1: for the podcasting. Other times I do think it gets
Speaker 1: more into not the reality of the enclosed space, but
Speaker 1: just the idea of the enclosed space, the vision, the
Speaker 1: mental image of the enclosed space, or a or a
Speaker 1: physical representation of something that looks like a a comfy
Speaker 1: enclosed environment. Yeah, I mean, I wonder about the extent
Speaker 1: to which some of the appeal of tight enclosed spaces
Speaker 1: is um at the conceptual level. It's not even necessarily
Speaker 1: like a physical sensory thing, but something about the idea
Speaker 1: of being in a small space. Yeah. So when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I remember I would have um, I
Speaker 1: had this dream and either I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was a recurring dream or just a very vivid dream
Speaker 1: that I had once that I just always remembered, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was in my house at the time,
Speaker 1: and I found a sort of tunnel underneath the stairs
Speaker 1: and it was painted, uh and carpeted with wall to
Speaker 1: ark hall carpeting the same as the rest of the home,
Speaker 1: and the tunnel extended maybe eight feet back. They made
Speaker 1: a sharp turn left, and it was a well lit
Speaker 1: environment in the dream, despite their you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: not being any presence of lights that I remember. But
Speaker 1: if you if you follow this this little tunnel back
Speaker 1: then you took that turn, uh, it would go for
Speaker 1: a little bit and then it would have another turn
Speaker 1: and it would so there would be like a kind
Speaker 1: of a spiraling around and then it would terminate in
Speaker 1: a cubical space that was just large enough for me
Speaker 1: to ball up comfortably. But either in this dream or
Speaker 1: in subsequent dreams, my body grew to where I can
Speaker 1: no longer comfortably venture into the heart of this this place. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then I ultimately couldn't reach the heart of it
Speaker 1: at all. Wow. So, you know, without going crazy with
Speaker 1: dream interpretation, because I don't know, I'm I'm kind of
Speaker 1: increasingly of the the night Blender school of dreams, where
Speaker 1: none of it means anything, but there are are obvious
Speaker 1: pair of else to make between this idea and anxieties
Speaker 1: of say, leaving childhood, of growing up, even a desire
Speaker 1: to return to the womb um if you want to
Speaker 1: get real Freudian about it, because of course, this is
Speaker 1: central to the Freudian dual concepts of Aarros and Thanatos
Speaker 1: Thanatos the god of death personification of the death drive,
Speaker 1: and Arrows, the god of love, and this is linked
Speaker 1: to a desire to return to the safety of the womb.
Speaker 1: You know, without buying into the explanatory validity of Freudian concepts,
Speaker 1: I do think that there's something interesting about the idea
Speaker 1: of of the death drive as it relates to I
Speaker 1: don't know, a sort of a sort of desire for
Speaker 1: the mortification of the flesh that that I want to
Speaker 1: link up to to a historical example I have in
Speaker 1: just a minute. Yeah, and of course, often, of course,
Speaker 1: Freudian thought takes a decidedly sexual tone uh in its explorations.
Speaker 1: But but even in a like a non sexual way.
Speaker 1: I feel like this, this idea of returning the womb,
Speaker 1: I feel like it. It holds a certain amount of
Speaker 1: truthiness to it. It. It actually reminds me of a
Speaker 1: wonderful short bit in a recent episode of The John
Speaker 1: Oliver Show where he talked about his desire to be
Speaker 1: an egg. Um. I think the basic setup was like,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing you don't actually share
Speaker 1: with your partner, your your desire to be an egg.
Speaker 1: And he goes on this extended a little monologue about
Speaker 1: the desire to be an egg, and like the comforting,
Speaker 1: how comfortable it would be to not only like to
Speaker 1: be inside the egg, but to be the egg, to
Speaker 1: be the goo within the the the protective outer shell
Speaker 1: of the egg. Yeah, beautifully expressed. Actually to be in
Speaker 1: there alone with the goop, just to you, in the goup,
Speaker 1: and knowing that whoever is around you outside you has
Speaker 1: to handle you very carefully. Yeah. And so I feel
Speaker 1: like it got to the heart of this sort of
Speaker 1: often kind of abstract or subconscious thing I feel when
Speaker 1: I'm especially if I'm looking at pictures of something or
Speaker 1: or encountering a setting in a motion picture or TV show,
Speaker 1: so especially tidy and cozy ship or train cabins um
Speaker 1: for instance, I really enjoyed the first two seasons of
Speaker 1: the snow Piercer TV show, and I think part of
Speaker 1: it is the way they depict some of the tight
Speaker 1: living spaces. I'm like, oh, I can I can imagine
Speaker 1: being in there. I can imagine curling up in that
Speaker 1: bed that's set into the wall. I haven't seen the show.
Speaker 1: I did see the movie snow Piercer, and I liked
Speaker 1: the movie, but there was absolutely nothing about it that
Speaker 1: was appealing whatsoever to me. Well, it may be a
Speaker 1: difference in how the show is. The sets are done well,
Speaker 1: I think, but I think the main difference is, of
Speaker 1: course the movie, which is also really good. The movie
Speaker 1: only has so much time and they've got to get
Speaker 1: to that bloody revolution, whereas the TV show just has
Speaker 1: more time to deal with, more space to lay out
Speaker 1: the world of the show, in the world of the train,
Speaker 1: and therefore you get those moments where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can imagine being in there. Nobody's dying in here
Speaker 1: right now, it seems fine. Now, apart from the post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic setting, in general, I just do really love the
Speaker 1: idea of old train compartment, little private compartment and a train.
Speaker 1: It's it's just lovely. Yeah, absolutely. Uh. Now another area
Speaker 1: and then this again goes to sci fi, is when
Speaker 1: you encounter a good suspended animation chamber in science fiction,
Speaker 1: like the like the Stasis pods, an alien even I
Speaker 1: find for me anyway, even when they give those pods
Speaker 1: kind of a darker tone, you know, like you're throwing
Speaker 1: up when you get out of it, or you're weak
Speaker 1: when you get out of it, or you're you know,
Speaker 1: they're really leaning into the sort of glass casket uh
Speaker 1: Grimm's fairy tale, uh, you know version of it. I
Speaker 1: often find them kind of relaxing to think about. Maybe
Speaker 1: not at a you know, an actual conscious level where
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, man, I wish I was in there
Speaker 1: and Michael Fastbender was threatening me with experiments in my dreams,
Speaker 1: but more like there's just something in me where I'm like,
Speaker 1: that looks comfy and safe and nice. I just want
Speaker 1: to be the mummy of Vladimir Linen. Yeah, it's that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And again It's like if I, if
Speaker 1: I stopped and I apply rational thought to it, it
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't sound so great, you know, or even just
Speaker 1: apply it to the plot of the thing that it
Speaker 1: is embedded within. But on some level it seems nice.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this this even applies to uh
Speaker 1: two really nice coffins and caskets. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've had this experience as well, But if I'm like,
Speaker 1: if I'm like checking out or it's it's not like
Speaker 1: if I'm at an actual funeral, but if I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking about caskets or caskets show up in a film, um,
Speaker 1: I'll sometimes look at them and be like, yeah, that
Speaker 1: that looks that looks pretty comfy. There's something attractive about that.
Speaker 1: And I realized part of it is that, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: kind of the whole game of casket making and casket
Speaker 1: salesmanship because it don't yeah there for the living. The
Speaker 1: living have to look at that and think I would
Speaker 1: I think I'd be comfortable in there. So the my
Speaker 1: you know, deceased, love when they will be comfortable in there,
Speaker 1: even though of course they're they're dead. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to them where they are. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: the scene in Edwood where Bella Lego see is coffin
Speaker 1: shopping and he's trying out laying in all the coffins
Speaker 1: and I can't even fold my arms. Yeah, um, I
Speaker 1: think it is. Also it is also compounded by the
Speaker 1: fact that even though I have never actually tried out
Speaker 1: a coffin, Um, you see this in films all the time,
Speaker 1: where someone is like that, you know, trying out a coffin,
Speaker 1: or they're hiding in a coffin to get away from
Speaker 1: bad guys, or maybe they've even been buried alive but live.
Speaker 1: People find themselves in in coffins all the time in cinema. Now,
Speaker 1: as much as the appeal of a small, tight, cozy
Speaker 1: space like a box or a coffin might be rooted
Speaker 1: in some kind of conceptual abstraction, you know, pictures you're
Speaker 1: putting together in your head about what would be conceptually
Speaker 1: comforting as a as a space to occupy. I think
Speaker 1: there could also be some raw physical biological reality to
Speaker 1: this because in the last episode we talked about research
Speaker 1: by Dodman and uh and Grandon about the stress relieving
Speaker 1: potential of flank pressure on the bodies of mammals. The
Speaker 1: research we were looking at was from the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and it specifically was focused on pigs, but it seems
Speaker 1: there is probably a broader mammalian response to having a
Speaker 1: gentle squeezing pressure on the side of the body that
Speaker 1: triggers a sort of stress relief response within the neuroendocrine system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that the one most famous example of this,
Speaker 1: and I think she we briefly mentioned her in the
Speaker 1: last one. I think she heard she was an author
Speaker 1: in one of the papers. You say, yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I was just talking about. H um was this would
Speaker 1: of course be the hug machine invented by Temple Grandon,
Speaker 1: has a therapeutic stress relieving device to resolve anxiety and
Speaker 1: sensory issues. And Temple Grandon, if you're not familiar, she's
Speaker 1: an animal behaviorist, but has also written a lot and
Speaker 1: done stuff about the autism spectrum. She herself phys autistic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they made a movie several years back, and
Speaker 1: I think Claire Danes later, if I'm not mistaken, I
Speaker 1: didn't in the film. I remember being a fun film.
Speaker 1: I usually don't watch a lot of biopics, but I
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty good. Um so uh so so Yeah,
Speaker 1: She invented it while attending college and was inspired by
Speaker 1: the by the squeeze shoots used for cattle inoculations. So
Speaker 1: cattle walks in the walls these kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: these walls move in kind of apply pressure from either side,
Speaker 1: and then you're able to inject the cattle uh at
Speaker 1: the cow within the inoculation um. And so she she
Speaker 1: found it very useful at least for you know, long
Speaker 1: stretch in her life. And then subsequent studies have found
Speaker 1: that that deep pressure may have a calming effect, especially
Speaker 1: on persons with autism, especially if those persons have high
Speaker 1: anxiety levels. This is actually described in a paper that
Speaker 1: Temple grand And published in nine in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. And the paper was called Calming
Speaker 1: Effects of Deep Touch Pressure in Patients with Autistic disorder,
Speaker 1: college students and Animals. Uh And so, just to read
Speaker 1: from Grandon's abstract here quote many people with autistic disorder
Speaker 1: have problems with oversensity to both touch and sound. The
Speaker 1: author and autistic person developed a device that delivers deep
Speaker 1: touch pressure to help her learn to tolerate touching and
Speaker 1: to reduce anxiety and nervousness. The squeeze machine applies lateral,
Speaker 1: inwardly directed pressure to both lateral aspects of a person's
Speaker 1: entire body by compressing the user between two foam padded panels.
Speaker 1: Clinical observations and several studies suggest that deep touch pressure
Speaker 1: is therapeutically beneficial for both children with autistic disorder and
Speaker 1: probably children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Only minor and
Speaker 1: occasional adverse effects have been noted. But then also Granded
Speaker 1: notes that that there are data to show that this
Speaker 1: is not only effective at calming people who have autism,
Speaker 1: but also at what it's called non referred college students,
Speaker 1: I think, just the general population, and also points to
Speaker 1: studies I think similar to and probably including the one
Speaker 1: we mentioned last time in animal welfare. And so that
Speaker 1: there could be some significant clinical value to some kind
Speaker 1: of squeeze machine that provides this this deep sort of
Speaker 1: hug like pressure with these foam pads almost swaddling the body. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And to come back to what I said earlier about
Speaker 1: like some of the sort of the erotic treatments of claustrophilia,
Speaker 1: I think some of that. My my sort of gout
Speaker 1: intuition here is that like some of that is ultimately
Speaker 1: getting back to this idea, you know, like, um, the
Speaker 1: idea that if I somehow closely can find my body
Speaker 1: if I like you know, you know, vacuum seal myself
Speaker 1: between two pieces of vinyl or latex or something that like,
Speaker 1: ultimately you're getting at the comforting reality of the uh
Speaker 1: similar to something that you might find in the Hugman
Speaker 1: sheen as as opposed to something that's just pure titillation.
Speaker 1: But I could be wrong on that, And of course
Speaker 1: obviously it's going to vary from from person to person. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna have exactly the same reaction to the sort
Speaker 1: of stimuli we're describing here. Well, I guess one thing
Speaker 1: this highlights is that it's not always totally easy to
Speaker 1: make a clear dividing line between what is erotic pleasure
Speaker 1: and what is other types of pleasure. Yeah, now, um,
Speaker 1: another thing that you see marketed in similar ways to
Speaker 1: the hug machine is of course a weighted blanket UM,
Speaker 1: which and I believe they even use these for dogs sometimes,
Speaker 1: but but humans, especially weighted blanket UH can be comforting,
Speaker 1: even like a nice sleeping bag. I don't know, these
Speaker 1: sort of sarcophagus style sleeping bags. Um. I've always found
Speaker 1: certainly the idea of him comforting. But even yeah, on
Speaker 1: a camping trip, like being all zipped up and kind
Speaker 1: of mummified in one of those can feel feel pretty nice. Um.
Speaker 1: We'd also would be remiss if we didn't mention isolation
Speaker 1: tanks or you know, flotation tanks in all of this,
Speaker 1: because that is I mean, that's just close to what
Speaker 1: John Oliver was talking about with the the dream of
Speaker 1: being an egg as possible, Like you really do become
Speaker 1: the goop, you become the salty goop in there. The
Speaker 1: salty goop is you know, generally at the the same
Speaker 1: temperature as your body, and you're cut off from the
Speaker 1: rest of of of reality and you're you're you're left
Speaker 1: with the inner reality of of you, of yourself. If
Speaker 1: only you could take a nice tasty yolke in there
Speaker 1: with you and then just hang out for weeks yea.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the appeals of some of
Speaker 1: the sort of stasis chamber sci fi that you get,
Speaker 1: is that sometimes you are in a goop in there, right,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh man, look at the coup just looks
Speaker 1: so nice and warm and comforting, like when Neo wakes
Speaker 1: up in the Matrix. I remember so that scenes supposed
Speaker 1: to be liberating, but I remember, you know, when he's
Speaker 1: pulling all the plugs out and he's got the goop
Speaker 1: all over him and everything. I always remember thinking in
Speaker 1: that scene like, oh, look, that looks like the worst
Speaker 1: like wake up early in the morning scene. Ever, just
Speaker 1: don't you want to get back in that cozy goop bed? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it, yeah, I mean, ultimately, I guess the
Speaker 1: character cipher Um, you know, he had it figured out.
Speaker 1: He's like, get me back in that goop? What do
Speaker 1: I have to do? Can you get me back in
Speaker 1: that group today? I'll betray any friends. I don't care.
Speaker 1: I just kind of get back in the egg. Anyway.
Speaker 1: This subject of desiring to be squeezed into a small
Speaker 1: space or or or in a box of some kind,
Speaker 1: it got me thinking about a subject that I've actually
Speaker 1: long found fascinating and thought about, especially over the last year,
Speaker 1: and that is the subject of people who were known
Speaker 1: as anchor rights. These were people who, in the medieval
Speaker 1: period would willingly enclose themselves permanently inside a tiny cell,
Speaker 1: where they would usually spend the rest of their lives confined,
Speaker 1: devoting their days to prayer and meditation, sometimes interacting with visitors,
Speaker 1: and passing food and waste only through small holes in
Speaker 1: the walls. There's actually a great article fromen from the
Speaker 1: British Library about the Anchoritic tradition. It's by a scholar
Speaker 1: named Dr Mary Wellesley who's a British Library affiliate, and
Speaker 1: it's called the Life of an anchor s. An anchores
Speaker 1: is a term used for a female anchorite. And also,
Speaker 1: I just want to give a shout out in general
Speaker 1: to the British Library and their various blogs and stuff,
Speaker 1: because they consistently put out a lot of fantastic content
Speaker 1: that features primary source materials front and center and quotes
Speaker 1: extensively from the primary sources. I love that they do that.
Speaker 1: That that's a great site. But anyway, so so back
Speaker 1: to Wellesley's article here. Uh So, the word anchorite and
Speaker 1: the word anchors these are from the Greek anachorio, which
Speaker 1: means to withdraw. So the cell in which an anchorite
Speaker 1: lived was known as their anchor hold. And so if
Speaker 1: you want to picture one of these places, you have
Speaker 1: to imagine a sort of tiny, maybe closet sized stone
Speaker 1: house that's attached to the outside wall of a church.
Speaker 1: Wellesley estimates that the average anchor hold was probably no
Speaker 1: bigger than about twelve feet square. Some of them might
Speaker 1: have had two small rooms, but it seems most were
Speaker 1: just one tiny cell, one little room. And again this
Speaker 1: cell would have had no door, so an anchorite or
Speaker 1: anchor s would have to have a support system in
Speaker 1: order to survive, and for this reason, it seems this
Speaker 1: was a pathway that was mostly reserved for wealthy people
Speaker 1: who could afford to pay one or two servants to
Speaker 1: spend basically the rest of their lives looking after them.
Speaker 1: So they would have to have a servant to bring
Speaker 1: them meals, to take away waste and garbage, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: so this exchange of materials would usually happen through one
Speaker 1: of three openings in the walls of the anchor hold.
Speaker 1: The most common design for an anchor hold seems to
Speaker 1: have been it would be a cell built into the
Speaker 1: side of a church building, and it would have one
Speaker 1: window that opens into a kind of parlor, a tiny
Speaker 1: adjoining room where material could be passed back and forth
Speaker 1: to the servants. So you could take away waste, you
Speaker 1: could bring them meals. And then there would be a
Speaker 1: second small window, known as a squint, which would open
Speaker 1: into the church itself, and this would be so that
Speaker 1: the anchorite or anchors could watch Mass and receive communion
Speaker 1: from inside the church. And then there would be a
Speaker 1: third small window that would open to the outside world,
Speaker 1: and it was through this window that the occupant could
Speaker 1: receive visitors. Now you might think that being walled up
Speaker 1: permanently inside a tiny cell for the rest of your
Speaker 1: life sounds pretty awful, and it certainly would be if
Speaker 1: it were against your will. But it seems that the
Speaker 1: anchoritic life was actually quite desirable to lots of people
Speaker 1: in the late Middle Ages, at least to people who
Speaker 1: could afford it. Wellesley notes some some figures that there
Speaker 1: were at least a hundred known anchorites and anchoresses in
Speaker 1: England in the twelfth century, and then two hundred more
Speaker 1: from the thirteen to the fifteen centuries. She also notes
Speaker 1: an interesting gender divide that women outnumbered men consistently among
Speaker 1: the anchoritic lifestyle, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth century
Speaker 1: there were twice as many anchoresses as there were male
Speaker 1: anchor rights, and in the thirteenth century there were about
Speaker 1: three times as many. And we'll come back to some
Speaker 1: possible reasons offered for the popularity of anchoritic life and
Speaker 1: the special popularity among women in a bit, But first
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up how there's another thing that's
Speaker 1: interesting to me about the way that medieval sources talk
Speaker 1: about anchor rights and anchor us is that they are
Speaker 1: sometimes spoken of as if they were already dead, even
Speaker 1: while they're alive. So I wanted to set the scene
Speaker 1: by reading a passage from Wellesley's article quote. At the
Speaker 1: moment of an anchoress's enclosure, a priest would recite the
Speaker 1: Office of the Dead, which was the set of prayers
Speaker 1: said at a person's funeral. This symbolized that the recluse
Speaker 1: was dead to the world. In fact, it seems that
Speaker 1: some cluses did not leave their cells even after they died.
Speaker 1: Archaeological excavations of some anchor holds have revealed the remains
Speaker 1: of people who presumably once lived there. In St Anne's
Speaker 1: Church in Lewis, Sussex, the anchors is grave has been
Speaker 1: positioned in exactly the place where she would have knelt
Speaker 1: daily to view the mass through the squint. So you live,
Speaker 1: you live in the anchor hold, you do mass through
Speaker 1: this tiny slot in the wall, and then you get
Speaker 1: buried peering through the slot. Wow, it's um this is
Speaker 1: one that is You run into plenty of things in
Speaker 1: the historical record that are that are challenging for the
Speaker 1: modern for for many modern humans to to understand. But
Speaker 1: this one, yeah, this one's This one's tough because on
Speaker 1: one hand, it sounds like it's easier to just say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: these were clearly zombies. There were zombies, and you cared
Speaker 1: about them, so you just kind of locked them in
Speaker 1: a hole next to the church and Dan and any
Speaker 1: but you. But then you you realize, of course that's
Speaker 1: that's that's fantasy. So you try and sort of try
Speaker 1: to find parallels in the modern world, and like, it's
Speaker 1: it's crazy to imagine this. Like at a at I
Speaker 1: was like a modern Christian church that somebody could be
Speaker 1: you know, like a wealthy church member could just say, hey,
Speaker 1: can I just live in the wall over here and
Speaker 1: then and then watch you know, church all the time,
Speaker 1: and I'm just here and I'll just never leave, and
Speaker 1: then you can just bury me in there. Like, I
Speaker 1: guess the closest thing I can imagine is if you
Speaker 1: had like a really big sports fan and they had
Speaker 1: what do they call those, like the special rooms that
Speaker 1: you watch from the sky box. Yeah, Like what if
Speaker 1: you had your own SkyWings and it was just for you,
Speaker 1: just large enough for you to sit and eat wings
Speaker 1: and watch your football game. Um, but you're just like,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna leave. I'm just gonna stay there all
Speaker 1: the time. I'll watch all the football games, and when
Speaker 1: I die, you can just steal me up in there.
Speaker 1: I love church that much. Yeah. But of course even
Speaker 1: that is that does not feel like an accurate description
Speaker 1: of what's happening here. No, I think there's something So
Speaker 1: I think there's some stuff will get to in a
Speaker 1: minute that might help explain the psychology of this little more.
Speaker 1: I mean also like you can't, uh though, it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to understand, even from a modern religious perspective.
Speaker 1: Even if you're a religious person today, usually your religious
Speaker 1: devotion wouldn't seem to take this form, right, you know
Speaker 1: that this level of like a total body sacrifice to
Speaker 1: to your religious practice. Well, like, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us can understand say that the desire or sort
Speaker 1: of the the ideal of say a monastic life. You know,
Speaker 1: I find myself and maybe this is from you know,
Speaker 1: just being a fan of like the name of the
Speaker 1: Rose and all where like occasionally I'll be like man
Speaker 1: with like you know, background thought that's not really tied
Speaker 1: to a lot of practical thinking, where it's kind of
Speaker 1: like what if I was just a monk instead, Like
Speaker 1: this is sort of idea and roughly in your head
Speaker 1: that would be easier. I would just live in a
Speaker 1: little space and I would have my duties and you know,
Speaker 1: again it's just like this this sort of empty fantasy
Speaker 1: in the back of your head that doesn't actually match
Speaker 1: up with the reality of monastic life or what you
Speaker 1: actually want out of life. But it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of in the background there enough to where I
Speaker 1: can I can be like, well, I understand the desire
Speaker 1: for some of that, but but not the living inside
Speaker 1: of a tomb. It's not a it's not a desire
Speaker 1: you have fully formed, but you can kind of feel
Speaker 1: pulses of it every now and then. Yeah, exactly, I
Speaker 1: know that feeling. Um anyway, So to go on with
Speaker 1: Wellesley's article here more about about the life of anchors is.
Speaker 1: In particular, she cites at century how to guide for
Speaker 1: people who wish to become anchors is and this is
Speaker 1: called the and again I'm not quite sure how to
Speaker 1: pronounce this, but is I think it is the oncrane
Speaker 1: we uh, which is spelled a n c r e
Speaker 1: n e uh. And then the second word is w
Speaker 1: I s s e the oncrene wee. I'll say so
Speaker 1: the on crene wes says, admiring their own white hands
Speaker 1: is bad for many anchors is who keep them too beautiful,
Speaker 1: such as those who have too little to do. They
Speaker 1: should scrape up the earth every day from the grave
Speaker 1: in which they will rot. Yeikes. Wow. So like, if
Speaker 1: your hands are too clean, that's clear you're you're being
Speaker 1: idle too much. So you need to supplement your prayer
Speaker 1: and contemplation with scraping up the dirt. And and I
Speaker 1: guess that further shows your devotion to God. But it
Speaker 1: reflects one of the major characteristics of the life of
Speaker 1: an anchorus, which is asceticism, the denial of worldly pleasures
Speaker 1: in favor of the pure life of contemplating and praying
Speaker 1: to God. And this was a common way of viewing
Speaker 1: holiness in medieval Europe, that the body is corrupt and sinful,
Speaker 1: and that the fleshly desires of the body must be
Speaker 1: denied in favor of the pure edification of the spirit.
Speaker 1: And so of course you could see this in all
Speaker 1: kinds of ways that medieval monks might sort of punish
Speaker 1: themselves or deny their own bodily desires. But the Oncrene
Speaker 1: Wete makes it clear that you shouldn't go overboard with asceticism,
Speaker 1: and Wells pulls a great quote here. Uh so this
Speaker 1: is from the source. It says no one should gird
Speaker 1: herself with any kind of belt except for her confessor's permission,
Speaker 1: or wear any iron or hair or hedgehog skins, or
Speaker 1: beat herself with these or with a lead whip, or
Speaker 1: make herself bloody with holly or brambles. So the idea
Speaker 1: of being denied the flash but don't punish the flesh, right,
Speaker 1: that seems maybe if you're punishing the flesh of that much,
Speaker 1: I wonder if there was a kind of a suspicion
Speaker 1: that like you're maybe you're getting pleasure from going overboard
Speaker 1: to that extent, like you're going too far, and perhaps
Speaker 1: there's like a horseshoe theory of pleasure and pain here,
Speaker 1: like you go too far into pain and you're actually
Speaker 1: maybe getting a kick out of it. Well, it reminds
Speaker 1: me of again that the idea of the isolation tank
Speaker 1: in in the modern setting, Like the idea is that
Speaker 1: you don't pay as much attention to your body, uh,
Speaker 1: in order to contemplate other things. And I feel like
Speaker 1: it's something similar is going on in these cells here.
Speaker 1: But uh, but but again, yeah, if you're if the
Speaker 1: whole idea is to focus on God and not the body,
Speaker 1: then yeah you shouldn't. I can see the argument for
Speaker 1: not finally manicuring your hands, but also not spending too
Speaker 1: much time punishing your hands either. Now, another interesting thing
Speaker 1: that Wellesley gets into in this article is she quotes
Speaker 1: from a primary text from the Middle Ages, uh called
Speaker 1: I think it's called just book, but it is by
Speaker 1: an author named Marjorie Kemp and uh. Welsley mentions that
Speaker 1: this is one of the earliest known, or maybe the
Speaker 1: earliest known autobiographical book written in English, and Kemp visits
Speaker 1: a famous anchoress in this book known as Julian of Norwich,
Speaker 1: and the meeting is described as follows in Kemp's book quote,
Speaker 1: Then she was charged by our Lord to go to
Speaker 1: an anchoress in the same city, who was called Dame Julian.
Speaker 1: And so she did, and she showed her the grace
Speaker 1: that God had put in her ole, and many full
Speaker 1: speeches and conversations that Our Lord spoke to her soul,
Speaker 1: and many wonderful revelations which she revealed to the anchoress
Speaker 1: in order to establish if there was any deception in them,
Speaker 1: For the anchoress was an expert in such things and
Speaker 1: could give good counsel on the matter. And Wellesley notes
Speaker 1: that this account by Kemp is interesting for several reasons.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's a picture of female friendship written
Speaker 1: by a woman, something that is not very common in
Speaker 1: the texts that survived to us today from the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: But also she notes that it shows a woman in
Speaker 1: a position of spiritual authority. She Julian of Norwich here
Speaker 1: is being sought for religious counsel at a time when
Speaker 1: the church itself was controlled entirely by men, and Wellesley
Speaker 1: claims that the reason Julian could be sought out so
Speaker 1: readily for spiritual advice even though she was not part
Speaker 1: of the male authority structure of the church was that
Speaker 1: she was an anchoress, and this raises an interesting tradiction.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that anchorses were walled up and unable
Speaker 1: to leave their cell for the rest of their lives,
Speaker 1: they were nevertheless very much an important part of the
Speaker 1: civic and ecclesiastical community, maybe more so than they would
Speaker 1: be if they were free to walk the streets. This
Speaker 1: is interesting and it makes me wonder. Uh this might
Speaker 1: be a stretch, but maybe not so much, given um
Speaker 1: many of the things that are referenced by the author.
Speaker 1: But in Uh Red Dragon and in the Silence of
Speaker 1: the Lambs, we have two characters go to visit Hannibal
Speaker 1: Lecter Uh not in a interview room, as seems to
Speaker 1: be typical of InCAR with incarcerated individuals, both in reality
Speaker 1: and in other fictional treatments, but they go visit him
Speaker 1: at his cell, at his enclosure, and he's presented. Of course,
Speaker 1: on one hit level, this is a monster uh the
Speaker 1: in in his layer. But on the other hand, he
Speaker 1: is a wise individual who is segmented apart from society
Speaker 1: and is sought out for their wisdom and insight. That's
Speaker 1: really good comparison. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder if the anchoritic tradition was somewhat in Thomas
Speaker 1: Harris's head here might have been. I mean, Harris made
Speaker 1: allusions to a lot of to a number of historical elements,
Speaker 1: and I think even, um, you know elements from from
Speaker 1: Christian history. So perhaps, well, I want to think more
Speaker 1: about this role of the anchorite or the anchoress in
Speaker 1: the community and their their role as a source of
Speaker 1: spiritual authority. Uh So the guide books for anchorus is
Speaker 1: at at the time advised them to be careful not
Speaker 1: to spend too much time socializing through the window to
Speaker 1: the outside world. For example. Uh this is again from
Speaker 1: the Acreane Wee. It says that you shouldn't take meals
Speaker 1: with visitors. Quote this is showing too much friendliness because
Speaker 1: it goes against the nature of any form of religious life.
Speaker 1: And most of all that an anchoress who is utterly
Speaker 1: dead to the world. One has often heard of the
Speaker 1: dead speaking with the living, but I have never found
Speaker 1: yet that they ate with the living. So this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. It's like it contains this contradiction. On one hand,
Speaker 1: the anchorite or the anchoress. The anchorus is dead to
Speaker 1: the world. She is of no value to the world.
Speaker 1: She's basically not a living human being anymore. And yet
Speaker 1: she is a source of spiritual authority and insight, much
Speaker 1: in the same way that a message from beyond the grave,
Speaker 1: maybe to a person who's already gone to heaven, would
Speaker 1: be yeah, yeah, like they're almost like they're like they're
Speaker 1: half dead, that they already have a foot in the
Speaker 1: world beyond yeah. And so despite these warnings of like,
Speaker 1: you know, you shouldn't eat if you're an anchorss you
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat with visitors. That's just too friendly, it's clear
Speaker 1: that a good amount of interaction did take place through
Speaker 1: that window to the outside world. And in a way,
Speaker 1: the anchors could become a sort of hub for the communities,
Speaker 1: both spiritually and socially. And so I want to read
Speaker 1: another section from the on Creane West that is cited
Speaker 1: by Wellesley. Quote, the anchors is called an anchor and
Speaker 1: anchored under the church like an anchor under the side
Speaker 1: of a ship, to hold the ship so that waves
Speaker 1: and storms do not capsize it. Just so all Holy Church,
Speaker 1: which is described as a ship, should anchor. On the
Speaker 1: anchor us for her to hold it so that the
Speaker 1: devil's blasts, which are temptations, do not blow it over.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. So it's the the idea that the anchoress
Speaker 1: is is providing like a stabilizing element to the church
Speaker 1: or to the local faithful, to the physical being, the
Speaker 1: spiritual being of the church itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: so I think given some of these considerations, maybe it
Speaker 1: is less surprising how popular the anchoritic way of life was,
Speaker 1: right that that it, despite being sort of dead to
Speaker 1: the world, you would also in a weird way be
Speaker 1: held up as a special source of wisdom or insight,
Speaker 1: and you might have an important symbolic role in as
Speaker 1: a kind of like protector of the church and the
Speaker 1: church community and and somebody that people would seek out
Speaker 1: for advice. And it also seems that, like according to
Speaker 1: what Wellesley says here, that this was a way for
Speaker 1: for women to have spiritual authority within the church that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to have because by say, entering
Speaker 1: the clergy, which they couldn't do. Now, I was wondering
Speaker 1: what we have in the way of anchors as describing
Speaker 1: their own feelings about their lifestyle in their own words,
Speaker 1: and there's actually very little of that. So to read
Speaker 1: a section from Wellesley on that quote, the only text
Speaker 1: written by an anchor is to Survive the period is
Speaker 1: Julian of Norwich's Revelations. All of the other texts about
Speaker 1: anchoritism were written by people advising those who had chosen
Speaker 1: or wish to choose the Anchoritic way of life. In
Speaker 1: Julian's text, she gives away very little about her experience
Speaker 1: of being enclosed. At one point, she writes, quote, this
Speaker 1: place is prison, this life is penance. But we cannot
Speaker 1: be sure whether Julian was referring to her earthly life
Speaker 1: more broadly or the specific circumstances of her cell. Uh
Speaker 1: And I found that passage really interesting too, because I
Speaker 1: wonder if the the physical enclosure of the Anchoritic way
Speaker 1: of life takes on a special appeal if you already
Speaker 1: in a way view fleshly earthly life as itself a
Speaker 1: kind of prison or enclosure. Yeah, yeah, He's sort of
Speaker 1: like an immediate physical recreation of what you believe reality
Speaker 1: to be. So anyway that that's all bouncing around in
Speaker 1: my head about the possible psychology that would lead someone
Speaker 1: to want to become an anchoress. But also I just
Speaker 1: had to mention a couple of other details that that
Speaker 1: I came across that I thought were really great. This
Speaker 1: first one is another tidbit from Wellesley's article, and it's
Speaker 1: just a story about a saint named St. Dunstan who
Speaker 1: was an anchorite, and he was written out in a
Speaker 1: work by an eleventh century monk named Osburne. Apparently St.
Speaker 1: Dunstan would occupy himself with metal work, especially so he
Speaker 1: would do like work with gold while he was secluded
Speaker 1: in his cell. And at one point it is told
Speaker 1: in this in This Life of St. Dunstan, that the
Speaker 1: devil appeared to him and he's like, I'm the devil.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get you, And Dunstan defended himself by tweaking
Speaker 1: the devil's nose with a pair of hot metal tongs
Speaker 1: that he had been using to do his metal working with.
Speaker 1: So very good job, Dunstan. Well you know that this
Speaker 1: um this also makes me wonder about like the getting
Speaker 1: into sort of the isolation tank area, and also um
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation in general, Like if you're pursuing this spiritual
Speaker 1: life within the cell of of the anchored. You know,
Speaker 1: perhaps it ultimately aids that because you you've you've set
Speaker 1: yourself off from so much into reinformation, you know, you're
Speaker 1: perhaps putting yourself in a position to have one on
Speaker 1: ones with the devil. You know, also if you're engaging
Speaker 1: in metal work in there, because I mean, hopefully he
Speaker 1: wasn't using any you know, there's anything they produced a
Speaker 1: lot of smoke or fumes or anything, because that would
Speaker 1: surely these things were well ventilated. Surely that's a good point.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. Well. I think it's something
Speaker 1: we don't often think about when we are engaging in
Speaker 1: sort of half thought out desires for enclosed spaces. We
Speaker 1: don't think about the fact, oh yeah, I need I
Speaker 1: need to be able to breathe in there, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to have at least some fresh oxygen finding
Speaker 1: me within this chamber. Yeah, or to allow the mercury
Speaker 1: fumes to escape. One last detail just that I thought
Speaker 1: was too good not to mention, because this was not
Speaker 1: from Wellesley's article. I just came across this in the
Speaker 1: British Libraries collection summary for the en Creane Weee and
Speaker 1: it was a note uh describing the text and summarizing it,
Speaker 1: and it's listing many of the rules that are prescribed
Speaker 1: for the life of an anchorus. So to quote from
Speaker 1: the summary here, we learned that anchoresses were prohibited from
Speaker 1: eating meat, and that they were not allowed any accessories
Speaker 1: or items of clothing that were decorative rather than practical. Rings, brooches,
Speaker 1: patterned belts, and gloves were not allowed. They were also
Speaker 1: forbidden from keeping pets except cats. Cat is all about
Speaker 1: that box life. So yeah, tying back into the to
Speaker 1: the original episode here, I'm not sure what the religious
Speaker 1: significance of of allowing a cat into the cell is,
Speaker 1: but I thought that was interesting, especially compared to the
Speaker 1: sometime medieval associations between cats and witchcraft. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, there, there's there's probably more that could be
Speaker 1: said about that. I should also point out though Hannibal
Speaker 1: Elector was not permitted to have a cat, I do
Speaker 1: not remember him having cat. That would have gone poorly
Speaker 1: than now. Certainly, living out the rest of your life
Speaker 1: in a box that is the ultimate that. Certainly we
Speaker 1: can't top that, but why don't I thought we might
Speaker 1: come back to the idea of what about just living
Speaker 1: part of your life inside of a box. What if
Speaker 1: you only slept inside of a box. And of course, again,
Speaker 1: if we think about the fact that we do tend
Speaker 1: to sleep in um, you know, cubicle or rectangular rooms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we all kind of sleep in boxes. But how come
Speaker 1: we don't see much in the way of like actual
Speaker 1: sleeping boxes. How come I don't actually crawl into a
Speaker 1: box to sleep at night? Good question, I'd try it. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: First of all, I'd like to remind everyone that if
Speaker 1: you listen to our our episode or perhaps it was
Speaker 1: episodes on the invention of the bed, box like beds
Speaker 1: actually go back quite a way as in history. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, the some of the earliest examples of furniture
Speaker 1: within a domestic environment as opposed to a tomb, uh,
Speaker 1: certainly includes a box like bed. There's one from the
Speaker 1: Orkney Islands off this coast of Scotland from around and
Speaker 1: it's essentially a stone It's a stone bed box. It's
Speaker 1: like this, uh you know, it's it's not unlike the
Speaker 1: box that might be placed on the floor that your
Speaker 1: cat would climb into, except this was a stone box
Speaker 1: that you would you know, filled them with some hides
Speaker 1: and whatnot to make it comfy, but you're still sleeping
Speaker 1: in a box. Yeah. So I think if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: this would be sort of like imagining a stone bathtub
Speaker 1: that you would line with a soft material like straw
Speaker 1: or hides or things like that, and you can get
Speaker 1: in the bathtub and then and have the padding on
Speaker 1: the bottom. Yeah, exactly, So to a certain extent that
Speaker 1: the idea of sleeping in a box is I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just part of human history. And while you know
Speaker 1: a lot of our modern beds get away from a
Speaker 1: kind of boxing environment, and they're often they're more of
Speaker 1: an elevated situation, there are some times during which different
Speaker 1: humans certainly slept in boxes, and box sleeping was was
Speaker 1: the fat um because certainly Victorian curtain beds, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, create a box that you sleep in. And
Speaker 1: a part of part of this reality comes down to just,
Speaker 1: you know, the desire to have a warm place to sleep.
Speaker 1: You you want to contain your body heat in the
Speaker 1: same way that you and you know you would if
Speaker 1: you were just covered up with a bunch of blankets.
Speaker 1: But what if you also just use curtains to shut
Speaker 1: off the rest of the room. But then there's there's
Speaker 1: the next step, and that is the idea of the
Speaker 1: box bed. Uh. So these were a kind of wooden
Speaker 1: wardrobe that you slept inside of. UM. They were often ornate, uh,
Speaker 1: with an opening on one side. UM often and this
Speaker 1: was a door. So there's like a wooden door that
Speaker 1: swung open or slid open. Uh. Though there are other
Speaker 1: versions of it. They were more like they just had
Speaker 1: like a curtain. And then there are also versions of
Speaker 1: it that were like part of the wall, that were
Speaker 1: more more in line with the sort of sleeping environments
Speaker 1: you might see in a you know, in a in
Speaker 1: a confined you know, like ship cabin sort of situation.
Speaker 1: So you look in the cabinet where you keep the
Speaker 1: nice silver, and then you get jealous of the silver
Speaker 1: and say, I want to be the nice silver. I
Speaker 1: want to be in there while I rest. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: If you look look these up, you can find a
Speaker 1: number of different examples of this. UM. One website I
Speaker 1: was looking at this is a website called the Vintage News,
Speaker 1: and there is an author by the name of Louise
Speaker 1: flat Lee who wrote about them. In included a number
Speaker 1: of pictures, and this author say that they probably started
Speaker 1: out in Brittany six years ago and subsequently spread throughout Europe.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was it seems to have largely been
Speaker 1: something like the curtain bed, and that it was a
Speaker 1: good way to stay warm during cold nights, and it
Speaker 1: might have added security either real sure, your sort of
Speaker 1: psychological security for the protection of children during the night.
Speaker 1: You know, so you want the children to be safe, Well,
Speaker 1: let's have them sleep in this box. Uh, let's actually
Speaker 1: have a door on the box and we can just
Speaker 1: shut them up in there. It's interesting how the thermal
Speaker 1: value of the box bed mirrors what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with cats, that you know, you surround yourself with
Speaker 1: a at least partially insulated material to trap in your
Speaker 1: body heat. Yeah. Now, apparently a Scottish variant was popular
Speaker 1: in the six through nineteen centuries. So if you look
Speaker 1: around you can find examples of the Scottish box bed.
Speaker 1: And I have to say these look quite quite comfy.
Speaker 1: These These are not nearly as wardrobe like as some
Speaker 1: of the other examples you'll find. These are more uh,
Speaker 1: just bed spaces set into the wall with a curtain
Speaker 1: that may be drawn, and some of them look quite stylish,
Speaker 1: quite modern. Um. And then you'll you tend to have,
Speaker 1: you know, more traditional cabinets underneath them, and sometimes I
Speaker 1: think there's like a bench that folds out. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: kind of set into an alcove. It looks like incredibly
Speaker 1: cozy to me. I want to get in one right now. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look cool and I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: anyone out there who sleeps in one of these. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe there are some problems. I don't know. Like,
Speaker 1: I guess if you're sleeping two to a bed, somebody's
Speaker 1: gonna be stuck up against the wall there and can't
Speaker 1: get out. But if that person really likes to be cozy,
Speaker 1: that's probably the prime place to be, right. You're all
Speaker 1: the way in the back, as long as you don't
Speaker 1: have to go to the bathroom during the night. But
Speaker 1: then also I guess you you have firm walls in place,
Speaker 1: so if you're too tall, uh, you know, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna be bunched up in there. I don't know. That
Speaker 1: is the thing is. Looking at this picture you've attached,
Speaker 1: it looks very cozy, but it also looks relatively short. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this style apparently largely went out of style with the
Speaker 1: advent of twentieth century heating, but they that I've also
Speaker 1: read that they may be making a comeback, that Carve
Speaker 1: Scandinavian bed boxes seem to have made made a return
Speaker 1: in recent years. I wasn't really able to find much
Speaker 1: in the way of evidence of this. I'm not doubting it,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm mostly just finding some interesting designs on
Speaker 1: Pinterest boards and whatnot, and you know, and antique photos.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to hear from listeners on this as
Speaker 1: well as you know, if you've been checking out you know,
Speaker 1: bed and Breakfast throughout Europe or checking out real estate,
Speaker 1: are our box beds making a comeback? Are you finding
Speaker 1: people sleeping in wardrobes? What are the Airbnb keywords for this?
Speaker 1: Because to on another level, it seems like you can
Speaker 1: get in trouble for sleeping in a box. Because here
Speaker 1: in the United States, there was the story of cartoonist
Speaker 1: Peter Berkowitz who, in order to survive San Francisco's housing market,
Speaker 1: which you know has has been insane for a while,
Speaker 1: moved into a wooden box and a friends apartment, uh,
Speaker 1: paying just four hundred dollars a month. And I've seen
Speaker 1: pictures of this, This box. So it's I guess it's
Speaker 1: more in line with kind of like an anchor Right's cell,
Speaker 1: in that it's like this elongated wooden box. It has
Speaker 1: a bed in there and just you know, there's some
Speaker 1: room for some space. It's like this tiny compartment, except
Speaker 1: instead of being attached to a church, it's in your
Speaker 1: friends living room. Uh and um. And so he ended
Speaker 1: up writing a piece about it for The Guardian and
Speaker 1: getting some pressed out of it, you know, because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it too is just like, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: San Francisco housing market is insane. Look what I'm having
Speaker 1: to do to deal with it. And he ended he
Speaker 1: ended up getting busted for it because the idea was
Speaker 1: that these pods and boxes were said to violate local
Speaker 1: laws and create a fire hazard. Well maybe, but but
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I'd always kind of wonder Also
Speaker 1: if it's just like the neighbors just don't like it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's hard to tell how much of
Speaker 1: that is, you know, how much of it is his neighbors,
Speaker 1: how much of it is politics, etcetera. Um, you know
Speaker 1: he's making a stink about um about the housing market
Speaker 1: in the city, um, etcetera. But but I don't know
Speaker 1: there there you can also see that there could be
Speaker 1: some legitimate concerns about say ventilation or you know, if
Speaker 1: you especially if you make your own uh box to
Speaker 1: sleep and live in. Um, you know, are are you
Speaker 1: providing enough ventilation for this? Is you know, is there
Speaker 1: is air getting in there? Um? Like I think back
Speaker 1: to when we were recording together in a studio, we
Speaker 1: were in a box within a room. But then they
Speaker 1: had a separate like air conditioning fan system set up
Speaker 1: to keep the air circulated through that little box that
Speaker 1: we were in. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it word yeah,
Speaker 1: And sometimes there have been like five people in there
Speaker 1: ahead of us and it clearly was not working that hard.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the days of humidity inside the podcast studio,
Speaker 1: that was a time. Now now getting a little bit
Speaker 1: into this idea of box bed, but also coming back
Speaker 1: to the anchor rights. UM. I found a book by
Speaker 1: one Carrie Howie from two thousand seven titled Claustrophilia, The
Speaker 1: Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature. And if for anyone
Speaker 1: who wants a really deep contemplative dive on this topic,
Speaker 1: I think this would probably be the the book to
Speaker 1: check out because the author points to a kind of
Speaker 1: duel horror fascination with confined spaces, not only during the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, but also in say, modern cinema. So they
Speaker 1: specifically bring up the two thousand to David Finch Fincher
Speaker 1: film Panic Room as an example of this. I never
Speaker 1: saw that one. I was pretty goods where Jodie Foster
Speaker 1: plays the this woman and her and then she has
Speaker 1: a daughter, I think. And when the bandits come, led
Speaker 1: by Dwight Yoakum as the as the lead villainous bandit,
Speaker 1: and he's quite good in it. It's weird. He's kind
Speaker 1: of a creeper um, so he plays the role well.
Speaker 1: Uh so it becomes their place of of shelter but
Speaker 1: also kind of a prison. So it does get into
Speaker 1: this dual idea of like the panic room is being
Speaker 1: the place of safety but also the place that you're trapped. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm still not getting over Dwight Yoakum. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he's good in it. I don't know that I've seen
Speaker 1: Dwight Yoakum in many dramatic roles, but he's good in
Speaker 1: Panic Room anyway. Carrie, how he writes the following, Indeed,
Speaker 1: not only do fear and fascination go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: When enclosures are at stake, fear is often alloyed with desire.
Speaker 1: Claustrophobia is at bottom, in part, a denied love of confinement.
Speaker 1: That is to say, it is always alloyed with claustrophilia.
Speaker 1: The Middle Ages had a particularly sensitive and sensory understanding
Speaker 1: of this, and the devotional text discussed below will become
Speaker 1: clear that enclosure was unavoidable for High Medieval religious culture.
Speaker 1: It was not only secretly desired through repression, but openly courted, constructed,
Speaker 1: lived in. So I haven't read it, but I would
Speaker 1: imagine how his book probably touches on some of the
Speaker 1: themes of the anchoritic life as well. Yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: believe so. Now outside of the Western world and getting
Speaker 1: more into the modern world, I feel like we have
Speaker 1: to at least mention capsule or pod hotels in Japan.
Speaker 1: I've never stayed in one of these, but I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us have seen photos and photo galleries
Speaker 1: of such hells. Um maybe you've seen them pop up
Speaker 1: in a documentary. Uh, And they do fall into that
Speaker 1: category that I've mentioned earlier, where it's like it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a sci fi pod, a stasis pod, and
Speaker 1: you can't help it look at it and think, oh,
Speaker 1: on some level, that's that's a desirable place to be. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: So these started in the late seventies, I believe, and
Speaker 1: they're they're notable for their low price, small space, and
Speaker 1: they're apparently ideal for business travelers as well as people
Speaker 1: who've say've been out on the town and they've become
Speaker 1: intoxicated and they can't return home, uh, you know across
Speaker 1: a you know, like you know, the Tokyo sprawl, and
Speaker 1: therefore this is like a quick place you can go
Speaker 1: in bed down. But but yeah, there's something undeniably attractive
Speaker 1: about them. I was looking at various photo galleries off them,
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing like mountainous regions as being popular. I
Speaker 1: guess if you have you don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: real estate, and you potentially need like a high sleep
Speaker 1: density environment, it makes sense to have capsules or pods
Speaker 1: for people to sleep in. You know, I've often wondered
Speaker 1: why they don't make airplanes where you can buy a
Speaker 1: horizontal sleeping pod instead of a seat. I would have
Speaker 1: to guess that it's just the geometry doesn't work out
Speaker 1: like they can't fit as many into the plane that way,
Speaker 1: um as they can vertical seats. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if you work in designing airplanes, well why is that?
Speaker 1: Why are there not planes like that? I want to know. Well,
Speaker 1: you do see things like this, I think in in
Speaker 1: first class accommodations for certain airlines with with long flights.
Speaker 1: I've never experienced it myself, but I know they have
Speaker 1: things like that. You see occasionally see photographs of it,
Speaker 1: uh and then maybe we have listeners out there who
Speaker 1: can attest to it. But speaking of of flights, I've
Speaker 1: also seen the capsule pod model at least argued as
Speaker 1: a solution for airports uh where, especially if you have
Speaker 1: solo travelers who have like a long layover. You know,
Speaker 1: it may not make sense to actually leave the airport
Speaker 1: check into a hotel, But you have that long layover,
Speaker 1: and what are your choices just to sleep awkwardly you
Speaker 1: in one of the chairs out there want while waiting,
Speaker 1: or to curl up in the corner and hope nobody
Speaker 1: messes with you. What if you could pour yourself into
Speaker 1: a nice comfy pod and just um you know, be
Speaker 1: the goog for six hours? Oh totally I would be
Speaker 1: the goo. I I have slept on an airport floor.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. Yeah, yeah, it's not particularly desirable.
Speaker 1: Um Oh. I should also mention there's there, at least
Speaker 1: there is or was a capsule hotel in Pinghang, China,
Speaker 1: the ping Haang Space Capsule Hotel, and this one is
Speaker 1: also run by robots. So it's very sci fi based
Speaker 1: on the photographs I've seen where you have these, um
Speaker 1: these capsule like environments that you sleep in, but also
Speaker 1: their zones where robots are bringing around. I think they're
Speaker 1: bringing around drinks. So, uh, smell the set up of
Speaker 1: a sci fi horror movie and nice bottle budget. Uh
Speaker 1: looks good. Yeah, capsule budget even Yeah. I guess one
Speaker 1: more thing we should discuss here. And there's there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of hard information and about this because these
Speaker 1: are mostly just designs. I don't think anyone actually has
Speaker 1: one of these. But at least back as far as
Speaker 1: various videos and animations depicting earthquake proof beds were making
Speaker 1: the round, do you remember these, Joe, maybe vaguely. They were,
Speaker 1: they were popular. You saw like Gizmodo articles about it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so I saw an article on the Verge about it,
Speaker 1: and you you even saw like Stephen Colbert and various
Speaker 1: like late late night talk show hosts covering it because
Speaker 1: it's just so weirdly comforting but also horrific to look at.
Speaker 1: Um I want to quote James Vincent's right up from
Speaker 1: the verge he that he nicely summarizes, quote earthquakes humanity's
Speaker 1: oldest foe, right up there with snakes, fire, and other
Speaker 1: humans when it comes to things that will definitely probably
Speaker 1: kill you someday, which is why you need one of
Speaker 1: these terrifying earthquake proof beds. In the event of a quake,
Speaker 1: You're conspicuously massive four poster will simply swallow you up whole,
Speaker 1: letting you get back to sleeping while the world itself
Speaker 1: shatters around you. Oh man, I love that, especially because
Speaker 1: it's like blatantly false that earthquakes or one of humanity's
Speaker 1: oldest foe is. Like, an earthquake is really not very
Speaker 1: dangerous at all until you are in a built city
Speaker 1: right right prior to the construction of of of cities
Speaker 1: and larger buildings. That's where the true danger in the scenario. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the one that that Vincent is specifically referring
Speaker 1: to here, I think is one that had a really
Speaker 1: neat um need animation to guide it, where you had
Speaker 1: essentially a bed that has a trap door in it.
Speaker 1: So earthquake occurs, sets off the sensor, that bed does
Speaker 1: a trap door effect, and you and whoever is sleeping
Speaker 1: on the bed just fall into like a pit and
Speaker 1: then it seals up behind you. And supposedly there's like
Speaker 1: water and supplies in there, and and imply remember ever
Speaker 1: wake up that you're just like you just wake up
Speaker 1: the next morning. Oh, I guess there was an earthquake
Speaker 1: in the night, because now I'm in the comfortable darkness
Speaker 1: of my bed's belly. Now I'm an anchor right for
Speaker 1: the next seventeen days or until we run out of water. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: there have been various versions of this, I think some
Speaker 1: of them are are have been kind of attributed to
Speaker 1: the to the same inventor. There's a Chinese inventor by
Speaker 1: the name of Wing wind z Uh called the metro
Speaker 1: farm bed that in its earlier stages just seems like
Speaker 1: a bed with high protective arms that doesn't look that
Speaker 1: weird at all. It looks actually kind of nice. Um.
Speaker 1: But then there are versions of of of their design
Speaker 1: that also involved moving doors, wings, etcetera. I've seen some
Speaker 1: variations of the of a so called earthquake proof bed
Speaker 1: that essentially looks like like sleeping on top of a
Speaker 1: box and then that box swallows you to protect you.
Speaker 1: I've also seen some where the bed itself doesn't drop you,
Speaker 1: but like big metal finger has come out from under
Speaker 1: the bed and cover you to protect you from earthquake debris.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that so many of these have these moving parts.
Speaker 1: It would seem to me, I mean, I'm no expert,
Speaker 1: but I would guess the best kind of earthquake proofing
Speaker 1: you could have on a bed would just be to
Speaker 1: give the bed a reinforced roof. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like you need the added complexity and potential danger
Speaker 1: of having doors that close and catch limbs that you know,
Speaker 1: the or or the requirements that you would need to
Speaker 1: maintain a particular sleeping uh posture in order to avoid
Speaker 1: being decapitated by your bad that sort of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I want to be fair, Maybe maybe there's stuff
Speaker 1: I'm not getting about this. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: these are concepts you know, um clearly inventors are still
Speaker 1: feeling out the possibilities because again I come back to
Speaker 1: my my own um inner world. And on one level, yes,
Speaker 1: this looks terrifying. It looks reminiscent of the scene where
Speaker 1: Freddie Krueger reaches up through the bed and pull somebody
Speaker 1: down into the bead. Know that that was that was,
Speaker 1: wasn't it? And then the bed just like vomits eighty
Speaker 1: three thousand gallons of blood onto the ceiling. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes it felt like um. So on one level, yes,
Speaker 1: it feels like that. But on the other level, it's like,
Speaker 1: what if my bed could hug me? What if my
Speaker 1: bed could could become my egg? And in that idea,
Speaker 1: especially in the wake of a potential threat like an earthquake,
Speaker 1: it does sound kind of nice. All right, well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and close it out here. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and press the panic button on our our
Speaker 1: our swallowing bed and uh and steal ourselves off for
Speaker 1: this episode. But we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: What are your feelings and thoughts on enclosed spaces for
Speaker 1: sleeping or living or otherwise. Have you stayed in a
Speaker 1: Japanese uh pod hotel or some of these examples and
Speaker 1: say it'll lear Switzerland. Report back. What was it like?
Speaker 1: Was it great? Was it not so great? Was it
Speaker 1: a mix of the two. Did you feel comfortable? Did
Speaker 1: you feel like the goop? We'd love to know all
Speaker 1: about that. Um. You know these various beds, box beds.
Speaker 1: Have you slept in one? Are they making a comeback?
Speaker 1: All of its fair game? Are you an anchor? Right?
Speaker 1: If so, let us know. If so, what are you
Speaker 1: doing listening to podcasts? I feel like that should not
Speaker 1: be allowed unless you were a podcast anchor, right where
Speaker 1: your sole responsibility is to listen to as many podcasts
Speaker 1: as possible with your podcat who's also there, um, in
Speaker 1: order to attain spiritual enlightenment. Oh also, I want to
Speaker 1: hear about people's experiments with their cats. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we mentioned this at the end of the last episode.
Speaker 1: Maybe we did, but but yeah, yeah, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: if you've put out a square to see if your
Speaker 1: cattle sit on it, that kind of thing, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel free to write us about it. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: there's already some action on that. We either received a
Speaker 1: listener mail or somebody shared it on the discussion module,
Speaker 1: which is the Facebook page where people who dig the show, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hang out and share links and whatnot. I
Speaker 1: think so far we got one yea in one day
Speaker 1: on Facebook, one person saying yeah, put down the tape
Speaker 1: square cat got right in, another person saying the cat
Speaker 1: doesn't even go anywhere near it. Yeah. I keep it coming.
Speaker 1: We need more data in the meantime, and if you
Speaker 1: would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, you'll find us wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just asked
Speaker 1: the rate review and subscribe huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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