Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: it's still Halloween season, so we're going into the anthology territory.
Speaker 1: That's right. We have a long tradition here on Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind of taking short spooky stories around
Speaker 1: this time of year, uh, snipping them out of their host,
Speaker 1: drying them, and then stuffing them with science to create
Speaker 1: an informative and entertaining Halloween sausage. We did this for
Speaker 1: a few years based on creepy pasta stories, and then
Speaker 1: we kind of felt like that well was running a
Speaker 1: little dry, so we turned to an even richer and
Speaker 1: deeper treasure trove of horror fiction, and that is horror
Speaker 1: and sci fi anthology series. Uh. A lot of these
Speaker 1: are shows that aired on TV. A lot of them
Speaker 1: are also films that feature, you know, several different stories
Speaker 1: in an anthology format, and there's just a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: out there. We're We're talking the likes of the Twilight Zone,
Speaker 1: The Outer Limits, Tales from the Dark Side, Tales from
Speaker 1: the Crypt Monsters, Black Mirror, and just so many many more. Uh.
Speaker 1: Plus there's a highly popular Simpsons Treehouse of horror episodes,
Speaker 1: as well as various against cinematic horror anthology, such as
Speaker 1: The Vault of Horror. So this is gonna be volume four,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna do volume five this year. We
Speaker 1: did volume one in two thousand eighteen, we did volumes
Speaker 1: two and three and twenty nineteen, so we're continuing the tradition.
Speaker 1: And uh and again, yeah, I just have to say,
Speaker 1: there's just so much out there in terms of horror
Speaker 1: and sci fi anthology television. Uh. And then there's this
Speaker 1: an additional ton of horror and sci fi anthology cinema.
Speaker 1: So once again this year I found myself just combing
Speaker 1: through contenders that I had either forgotten about, was half
Speaker 1: aware of, or just had flat never heard of. Like
Speaker 1: like a lot in horror especially, I feel like the
Speaker 1: horror anthology genre tends to feel like low hanging route.
Speaker 1: But but the kicker is that when well done, there's
Speaker 1: nothing else quite like it. Well, yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean there's almost an ancient memory aspect to a
Speaker 1: horror anthology because it feels like people sitting around a
Speaker 1: campfire going around the circle, each taking a turn to
Speaker 1: tell a story. Yeah, and uh, like the literary short
Speaker 1: story provides wonderful opportunities that full length or episodic mediums
Speaker 1: don't provide. Like a lot of times, you can really
Speaker 1: put a particular idea in the forefront, you can put
Speaker 1: a particular twist in the forefront. Uh. And it can
Speaker 1: work better than it would if you tried to build
Speaker 1: an entire you know, uh TV series around this or
Speaker 1: an entire feature leath length film around us. I was
Speaker 1: actually just thinking the other day about the good things
Speaker 1: about having a short format for horror, because we watched
Speaker 1: a new horror movie that came out this year. It
Speaker 1: was a Shutter original film called Host. It was like
Speaker 1: a Zoom horror movie. It takes place entirely on Zoom,
Speaker 1: but the characters do a say once and there's demonic
Speaker 1: shenanigans and the movie is about an hour long. And
Speaker 1: I thought that worked fantastically because it's, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not a super deep film. It's not especially like thoughtful
Speaker 1: or interesting, but just for an excellent little boo frolic,
Speaker 1: an hour is a perfect length. Uh And and I
Speaker 1: wish more horror movies would just kind of embrace that
Speaker 1: and say, no, we're not going to be as long
Speaker 1: as it's supposed to be. We're not gonna pad this
Speaker 1: out to eighty six minutes. We're gonna be an hour long.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's good enough for Attack of the
Speaker 1: Crab Monsters, an hour run time is good enough for you. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely thought about that when I watch when I
Speaker 1: watched for the first time, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: like just shorter format, but nan they got everything in.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you're a horror director out there, don't
Speaker 1: worry about patting it out. I mean, if your movie
Speaker 1: is only fifty four minutes long, I think that's great. Now.
Speaker 1: You mentioned zoom based horror earlier. In a bit later
Speaker 1: on in the episode, we're gonna discuss an episode of
Speaker 1: the nine nineties revival of the Outer Limits. I want
Speaker 1: to mention that there this is not the episode we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about, but there is an episode called
Speaker 1: dead Man Switch that's that's extremely good, and it has
Speaker 1: to do with individuals humans that are put into uh
Speaker 1: separate bunkers during an alien invasion and each one is
Speaker 1: functioning as a dead man switch for the planetary defense system.
Speaker 1: But the fun thing about it is all these people
Speaker 1: are solely communicating with each other via this like you know,
Speaker 1: closed network television, basically a zoom scenario. Uh So it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very interesting piece to watch during this
Speaker 1: time of increased zoom meetings, etcetera. All right, well, let's
Speaker 1: just jump right in here to our first selection. This
Speaker 1: is from the Night two horror anthology film creep Show.
Speaker 1: Uh this is the Lonesome Death of Jordi Verrel. Alright,
Speaker 1: so sidebar before we get started on the plot. This
Speaker 1: segment stars Stephen King in the flesh. He's the actor
Speaker 1: in it. So I've got to ask what are your
Speaker 1: favorite Stephen King acting spots and and I'll announce mine.
Speaker 1: He's got a cameo in a movie called Sleepwalkers. If
Speaker 1: you've never seen it, I think it came out in
Speaker 1: the eighties or early nineties, and it is about shape
Speaker 1: shifting cat demon things that suck the life essence out
Speaker 1: of young women. And then I think they can turn invisible,
Speaker 1: they can like look like different things, and their weaknesses
Speaker 1: that if they're attacked by cats they die. But anyway,
Speaker 1: in Sleepwalkers, there is an amazing scene that features a
Speaker 1: cameo by Stephen King as a perturbed cemetery caretaker who
Speaker 1: is angry that that perverts keep coming into his cemetery
Speaker 1: at night. But it also contains cameos by Toby Hooper
Speaker 1: and Clive Barker. Oh, I love it when we have
Speaker 1: scenes like that, and that's a fitting like Grizzly cameo
Speaker 1: for for Stephen King. Um, because I remember, probably during
Speaker 1: like the height of my my, my young obsession with
Speaker 1: Stephen King novels. Uh, the TV series Golden Years came out,
Speaker 1: which I don't think is anybody's favorite of Stephen King project.
Speaker 1: I don't think they ever finished it. You know, it
Speaker 1: went maybe a season, maybe less in a season, but
Speaker 1: I remember there being oh, it's like a goodness, I'm
Speaker 1: having a hard time he remembering what the gist of
Speaker 1: it was a man aging rapidly I think, or aging backwards,
Speaker 1: one of the two. Um. It had. One of the
Speaker 1: best things about it was it had David Bowie's Golden
Speaker 1: Years as the theme music. But there's a scene where
Speaker 1: Stephen King shows up as a as a bus driver
Speaker 1: and at the time I was like, this is amazing
Speaker 1: that's Stephen. He's the author and he's the bus driver. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course he would go on to have so many
Speaker 1: more interesting cameos and things. Um. For instance, I never
Speaker 1: saw this, but he has pretty wacky one in the
Speaker 1: TV version of The Shining he's this band leader, like
Speaker 1: this really um energetic band, big band leader with a
Speaker 1: pencil thin mustache. He looked fabulously greased back hair, got
Speaker 1: a pencil mustache. That that is not a good look
Speaker 1: for Stephen King. I don't know, you know, he's he
Speaker 1: kind of has the like the face for for facial hair.
Speaker 1: Though he can make most of it work. I feel
Speaker 1: it kind of works. He does better full beard, I
Speaker 1: mean full beard. He looks appropriately shaggy and kind of
Speaker 1: right early with the pencil mustache, he looks like maybe
Speaker 1: he would be the guy who would be discovered in
Speaker 1: the cemetery. Now, in terms of just his acting roles,
Speaker 1: go like things where he's not just a cameo but
Speaker 1: he's actually playing a bit part. He had a really
Speaker 1: fun one in the biker drama Sons of Anarchy. Uh
Speaker 1: several years back. He played a guy who makes bodies disappear.
Speaker 1: So he's you know, just kind of this stern but
Speaker 1: creepy guy in a in a basement that will uh
Speaker 1: you know, make that make that body disappear when you
Speaker 1: need it to end. He insists on listening to eighties
Speaker 1: music while it happens. Well, I've never seen that either,
Speaker 1: but but I'll have to look it up. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into two creep show here. So creep show
Speaker 1: for anyone who's not familiar with it, with Stephen King
Speaker 1: and George Ramiro's tribute to pre code horror comics of old.
Speaker 1: I think I may have covered the crate in a
Speaker 1: in a previous episode. I'm not sure, but it has
Speaker 1: some wonderful segments, but they're all like sort of mean,
Speaker 1: uh grizzly uh segments that are you know, very much
Speaker 1: in the vein of classic tales from the Crypt and
Speaker 1: so forth, where uh there are bad people that do
Speaker 1: bad things and get their come up. It's usually in
Speaker 1: grizzly ways with a little bit of gallows humor thrown in.
Speaker 1: And like we said, not only is this written by
Speaker 1: Stephen King, but this segment also stars the author as well. Again,
Speaker 1: it's the Lonesome Death of Jordy veryl and it's a
Speaker 1: little bit the Color out of Space and a little
Speaker 1: bit the Blob. It's about a redneck who comes in
Speaker 1: contact with space goo. Uh. Then after coming in contact
Speaker 1: with space goo, some sort of alien plant or plant
Speaker 1: like organism takes over his body. And then he makes
Speaker 1: the terrible mistake of climbing into a hot bath to
Speaker 1: ease his discomfort. The alien plant infection overtakes him and
Speaker 1: he ends up following papahanming Way into the sunset. Then
Speaker 1: we hear on the t V that rainy weather is
Speaker 1: moving in which will spread, no doubt, spread the alien
Speaker 1: plants even wider across the Earth. You know, this connects
Speaker 1: to several other horror stories, uh in interesting ways. One
Speaker 1: that I didn't think of until just now is the
Speaker 1: way that it connects to, especially the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is very
Speaker 1: good and which characterizes the spores that come down and
Speaker 1: possess the humans and turn them into the replicants. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're very plant like. I mean, obviously they're not from Earth,
Speaker 1: so they're not exactly of the Kingdom of the Plants,
Speaker 1: but there's clearly a similarity with plants and an affinity
Speaker 1: for plants among the aliens, and the ending of the
Speaker 1: Jordy Viril segment makes me think very much of the
Speaker 1: beginning of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers Remake, because
Speaker 1: in the opening credits to The Body Snatchers Remake, there
Speaker 1: is this sequence that just kind of shows these filaments
Speaker 1: almost blowing in the wind, and it accomplishes a very
Speaker 1: sinister visual connotation without any words or any explanation, just
Speaker 1: of the idea of biological material kind of drifting and
Speaker 1: through through the air, through space, carried on currents of
Speaker 1: various kinds. Yeah, and of course the weakenings instantly think
Speaker 1: to other sort of plant based horror properties, such as
Speaker 1: the Day of the Triffids, which we've mentioned on here before.
Speaker 1: That's a big one about plant plant like aliens overtaking
Speaker 1: the earth or troll too. That's right, that's right. So
Speaker 1: this Jordy Viral episode, it is the question for me,
Speaker 1: are there any plants that can grow on or in
Speaker 1: the human body under sort of normal circumstances, Because obviously,
Speaker 1: like a dead body filled with dirt, you could grow
Speaker 1: some some plants, and that if you had some sort
Speaker 1: of somehow I had an outfit that had like lots
Speaker 1: of dirt pockets you could grow grow that way. Also
Speaker 1: wanted to you know, avoid discussing bacteria and fungi, sticking
Speaker 1: to just good old plants, which again seems more in
Speaker 1: line with the plant like organisms that we're dealing with
Speaker 1: in this short um. And we're not counting things that
Speaker 1: might look like plants but are in fact tumors or
Speaker 1: what have you. So for the most part, plants don't
Speaker 1: want to be on us or inside us, unless, of course,
Speaker 1: their seeds are traveling on our hair or garments, or
Speaker 1: if their seeds are traveling through our digestive systems. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: there's just not much of an in game going on
Speaker 1: with the inside of the human body or even like
Speaker 1: on the exterior of the human body. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: seeds need to get in the dirt. But sometimes things
Speaker 1: go wrong, as horribly wrong. As reported in by the
Speaker 1: BBC and various other outlets, a man named Ron vet
Speaker 1: and I believe uh had been battling emphysema, and he
Speaker 1: underwent an X ray as his condition worsened. The doctors
Speaker 1: then discovered that a p had gone down the wrong um,
Speaker 1: you know, the wrong pipe and sprouted in the warm,
Speaker 1: moist environment of the patient's lung. It had only grown
Speaker 1: a half an inch long, but you know, still it
Speaker 1: was enough to cause some concern. Surgeons removed it. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh, we should stress here that what was happening
Speaker 1: is that the P was sprouting as if it were
Speaker 1: under the soil reaching up for sunlight. Thus it grew
Speaker 1: in the darkness of a human body as if it
Speaker 1: were going to sprout out of the body and find
Speaker 1: the sun. Now an energy terms, it couldn't keep growing
Speaker 1: like that forever, right, because eventually it would need sunlight
Speaker 1: in order to supply new energy. But of course, a P,
Speaker 1: like many other uh you know, like the yolk of
Speaker 1: an egg or something, has some chemical energy built into
Speaker 1: it that can propel that initial sprouting from the dark place. Uh. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: it would probably eventually not be able to find sunlight,
Speaker 1: but it still would, I guess, be some kind of
Speaker 1: gross thing in your lung. So it's a good thing
Speaker 1: they took it out. But in the spirit of of
Speaker 1: making the familiar strange, I think we should dwell for
Speaker 1: a minute on the idea of seeds using bodies such
Speaker 1: as human bodies for dispersal. We don't dwell on this
Speaker 1: as a parallel to any kind of botanical body horror
Speaker 1: because it just seems so normal. Well, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you just eat fruit with seeds in it. But
Speaker 1: this is really kind of strange the more you think
Speaker 1: about it. So, of course, there are evolutionary pressures on
Speaker 1: plants that caused them to find methods of seed dispersal,
Speaker 1: not just to produce seeds of for a new generation
Speaker 1: of plants, but to try to get them physically away
Speaker 1: from the parent and uh. And this is because like
Speaker 1: the can share genes of the parent and offspring plant,
Speaker 1: it's don't want to be forced to compete directly with
Speaker 1: one another for resources. And these resources would include soil space, water,
Speaker 1: nutrients in the soil, access to sunlight. If you can
Speaker 1: get the kids out of the house, that's good because
Speaker 1: then you're not fighting over food. And competition of this
Speaker 1: kind can be reduced by dispersing seeds, and nature of
Speaker 1: course has lots of ingenious solutions for this. We've talked
Speaker 1: about some on the show before. For example, you know
Speaker 1: all the different structures the parachute or wing like structures
Speaker 1: that seeds sometimes sprout in order to ride on the
Speaker 1: wind to or to drift, like the like the filaments
Speaker 1: in in Invasion to the body snatchers. Then there were
Speaker 1: even exploding seed pods like you would find on the
Speaker 1: sandbox tree or Hera crepitans, And so this is a
Speaker 1: tree that has thorns all over its trunk. I think
Speaker 1: I've read somewhere that it's called the monkey Can't Climate tree,
Speaker 1: and it produces seed pods that look kind of like
Speaker 1: tiny pumpkins, and they explode in their right literally explodes
Speaker 1: in ballistic propulsion of seeds up to distances of like
Speaker 1: a hundred meters away according to some reports. But also,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, a lot of seeds rely on
Speaker 1: animals to be dispersed, and this is known as zoo cory.
Speaker 1: So there's epizoo cory, which is the transport of seeds
Speaker 1: on the outside of the animal. So you think of
Speaker 1: like the burrs that get stuck on a dog's fur,
Speaker 1: stuck to your socks. One example of this is the
Speaker 1: burdock plant, which was apparently the inspiration behind the invention
Speaker 1: of velcrow, invention of the loop and fastener system. But
Speaker 1: then there's also, of course what's known as indo zoo
Speaker 1: Corey the transport of seeds inside of the animal, and
Speaker 1: this usually involves creating a tasty, fruiting body containing the seed,
Speaker 1: waiting to get eaten, traveling around inside an animal's digestive system,
Speaker 1: then being released in the animals species to grow in
Speaker 1: a new place. And so if you eat some tasty blackberries,
Speaker 1: you are, in a way, Jordi varrel, you are the
Speaker 1: moost of this plant that is using your digestive system,
Speaker 1: using and your your legs, your mobile body in the
Speaker 1: dispersal of seeds as part of its reproductive cycle. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are even some seeds that are somewhat obligate in
Speaker 1: this way. They need to be primed to grow inside
Speaker 1: an animal's digestive system. Blackberries would be an example, which
Speaker 1: I think usually needs some time in a bird's gizzard
Speaker 1: before they will grow. But all the stories you read
Speaker 1: of like okay, well you know, my cousin knows a
Speaker 1: guy who swallowed a watermelon seed and it grew a
Speaker 1: watermelon inside his stomach, that that's not true. I could
Speaker 1: not find any evidence that anything like that ever happens.
Speaker 1: But while it's unlikely that you would grow a plant
Speaker 1: from a seed in your body while you are alive.
Speaker 1: Could it happen after you're dead? Again? You mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: Rob that if a seed was maybe in your pockets,
Speaker 1: in your pockets were full of soil, it could grow
Speaker 1: out of that. But could it actually grow from inside
Speaker 1: your body? Well, I could not find a verified example
Speaker 1: of this. I found a disputed claim about a fig
Speaker 1: tree that grew out of a murdered man's stomach in
Speaker 1: a cave in Cyprus. But it looks like that that
Speaker 1: account is has has generally been refuted. But I was
Speaker 1: reading an article that talks about that that rumored story
Speaker 1: in Life Science by Laura Geigel, and the author here
Speaker 1: consulted a soil science professor from Oregon State University named j. Knohler,
Speaker 1: and it was Nhler's opinion that such a thing is
Speaker 1: actually plausible. He said that seeds can sometimes emerge from
Speaker 1: dead animals, so he imagines they could likewise emerge out
Speaker 1: of a dead human um. But he said it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to be in their stomach. It could actually grow
Speaker 1: from any part of the dead person's digestive tract. It
Speaker 1: could be in their large intestine, small intestine, and the
Speaker 1: way it breaks down would work like this. So you'd
Speaker 1: have a dead, decaying body all around the plant seed
Speaker 1: that would sort of help it out with nutrients, very
Speaker 1: possibly with the third party of ungus involved. So microscopic
Speaker 1: fungi in the soil would help decompose the dead body breakdown,
Speaker 1: you know, the fungus would break down fats and proteins
Speaker 1: into simpler constituent nutrients, and then the fungus would share
Speaker 1: these nutrients with nearby plants, possibly even seeds that are
Speaker 1: among the decaying organic material of the body in a
Speaker 1: symbiotic relationship. So they would exchange simple sugars that the
Speaker 1: plant produces for these nutrients that they're getting from decomposing
Speaker 1: the body. But I wanted to think about another way
Speaker 1: of possibly framing infection by an alien plant, apart from
Speaker 1: directly becoming the host or substrate of the plant itself,
Speaker 1: And that's the idea of infection via a plant vector.
Speaker 1: Or to put it as a question, would you let
Speaker 1: a zucchini flower cough in your mouth? And I was
Speaker 1: looking around for for answers to this question can you
Speaker 1: get infected from a plant? And I found an article
Speaker 1: by a plant pathologist and diagnostician at iowas a University
Speaker 1: named Dr. Lena Rodriguez Salamanca, and she said that sometimes
Speaker 1: her lab receives questions from the public, including the question
Speaker 1: of can I catch and infectious disease from a plant.
Speaker 1: The answer is in most cases no. You know, pathogens
Speaker 1: that are specialized to infect plants, and of course there
Speaker 1: are many of these. Plants can be infected by fungi,
Speaker 1: by viruses, by bacteria, just like animals can. But usually
Speaker 1: a pathogen that is specialized for one kingdom of life
Speaker 1: is not just going to jump, you know, from that
Speaker 1: one into another kingdom of life and infected. It is
Speaker 1: not adapted to that. But there are cases of a
Speaker 1: few known opportunistic pathogens that will make this jump, and
Speaker 1: this is especially true for people with compromised immune systems.
Speaker 1: So one example is an infectious bacterium known as a
Speaker 1: pseudominous erugenosa, and Rodriguez Salamanca says that it can cause
Speaker 1: a weak soft rot on plants such as lettuce, and
Speaker 1: this bacterium has been known to jump the kingdom barrier
Speaker 1: sometimes infect people with compromised immune systems. This can lead
Speaker 1: to infections of the urinary tract, of the lungs, the
Speaker 1: blood and wounds including burns, but for most people it
Speaker 1: does not represent a threat. But then there are other ones.
Speaker 1: For example, there is a fungal infection caused by the
Speaker 1: fungus Sporothrix shanky i, which thrives on the dead thorns
Speaker 1: of a rose stem, and this has given rise to
Speaker 1: the name rose pickers disease or rose handler's disease. So
Speaker 1: if you're handling a rose and you, you know, get
Speaker 1: pricked by one of these dead thorns that has the
Speaker 1: fungal infection, or get a scratch, this way, the fungus
Speaker 1: can get into your scan, potentially into your lymph system.
Speaker 1: And apparently you can also inhale spores of this fungus
Speaker 1: and this can cause all kinds of problems infections of
Speaker 1: the skin, of course, but of the eyes, the lungs,
Speaker 1: the nervous system, bones, and joints. And then finally she
Speaker 1: mentions that there are infectious agents of plants that can
Speaker 1: produce set candary byproducts that are harmful to humans, and
Speaker 1: she gives the example of fungi that attack corn. The
Speaker 1: phrase she used specifically is ear rots, which is a
Speaker 1: new sort of words quick for me. But this includes
Speaker 1: the genus Fusarium and these fungi produced secondary microtoxins, including
Speaker 1: quote few Monison's z ralinone and the aptly named vomitoxin, which, yes,
Speaker 1: that that is what it sounds like. And of course
Speaker 1: these are byproducts that can affect you in all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways. She talks about how most of the things
Speaker 1: like this, like like Aspergillis flavius also is a is
Speaker 1: a contaminant that you could find in grains that produces
Speaker 1: secondary microtoxins. A lot of these things that produce these
Speaker 1: secondary microtoxins that can harm you would be found specifically,
Speaker 1: not in like leafy plants like let us, but on grains.
Speaker 1: And she she mentions, you know, you don't need to
Speaker 1: be too worried because like grain producers monitor for the
Speaker 1: presence of these organisms. So yes, it is in fact
Speaker 1: possible for a human to catch a disease from a plant,
Speaker 1: much in the same way that we could catch a
Speaker 1: disease from a mosquito or a bat, but fortunately it's
Speaker 1: not very common. All right, with that, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead close the book on Ajority Veril and I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and take our first break, but when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will unlock another entry in horror
Speaker 1: anthology history than all right, we're back. Is it time
Speaker 1: to go to the Outer Limits? Yeah, let's go to
Speaker 1: the Outer Limits. Uh. So I mentioned that we would
Speaker 1: be looking at an episode from the nineties revival of
Speaker 1: the Outer Limits. UM not to be confused with the
Speaker 1: original series from the from the nineteen sixties. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is a series that ran through two thousand and two. Now,
Speaker 1: I watched a few of these on TV back in
Speaker 1: the day, but via Amazon Prime Watch Party, we've been
Speaker 1: watching an episode a week with a couple of friends,
Speaker 1: and I have to say, the nineties Outer Limits has
Speaker 1: everything I love. You've got really cool sci fi concepts,
Speaker 1: you have great monster makeup, a little nineties cheesiness, uh
Speaker 1: sprinkled in there, and some really fun performances as well,
Speaker 1: sometimes by people you've you've never heard of, but oftentimes
Speaker 1: by people that went on to have uh you know,
Speaker 1: key roles in in various sci fi properties or uh
Speaker 1: you know they did they did additional television work, so
Speaker 1: you never know who you're gonna get. Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: I haven't watched this yet, but there's an episode where
Speaker 1: Gary Busey shows up playing a televangelist. There's a one
Speaker 1: where Michael Ironside shows up playing a mutant. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: is you just never know who's going to be in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of oh that guy in it. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: name an actor who is doing TV during this period
Speaker 1: of time, and there's a great chance that they were
Speaker 1: on an episode of The Outer Limits. So during the
Speaker 1: Outer the nineties Outer Limits run they did a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two episodes. That's compared to forty nine episodes
Speaker 1: from the original nineteen sixties series. And again I certainly
Speaker 1: haven't watched them all, but this is a really good
Speaker 1: one we're gonna be talking about. It's an episode that
Speaker 1: is probably a bit heavy handed, as these sort of
Speaker 1: things tend to be. Um, but this is also rather pronounced,
Speaker 1: as it was essentially a n commentary about climate change denihalism.
Speaker 1: That's very early. Yeah, yeah, you know, earlier than say
Speaker 1: an Inconvenient Truth and um and the like. But we'll
Speaker 1: get into something like the basic where it fits into
Speaker 1: the basic timeline of of climate change understanding here shortly.
Speaker 1: But but first of all, just so everyone can find
Speaker 1: it if you're interested in watching it, it's titled to
Speaker 1: Tell the Truth, and it was written by Lawrence Myers
Speaker 1: and directed by Neil Fernley. It stars Gregory Harrison as
Speaker 1: Dr Larry Chambers. You may remember Gregory Harrison from various
Speaker 1: TV shows. I think he's like like on Trapper, John
Speaker 1: m D or something. Um and uh, you know various
Speaker 1: other shows. Uh, a kind of a soap opera vibe. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely and uh and and in this he plays a
Speaker 1: terraforming botanist on the off world colony of Janice five.
Speaker 1: And I love how perfectly on the nose that the
Speaker 1: title is, I mean the name of the colony and
Speaker 1: our planet is because this is an episode that is
Speaker 1: concerned with truth, denial and the mistrust of information. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it has characters whose faces change and who are
Speaker 1: not what they seem. Yeah. So here's the deal. The
Speaker 1: Janice five colony is going pretty well. It has a
Speaker 1: bright future, but doctor Chambers is concerned by some of
Speaker 1: the geologic evidence. Geologic evidence that includes the remnants of
Speaker 1: an extinct shape shifting alien civilization. But five years ago
Speaker 1: he got it really wrong. He predicted cyclo cyclical catastrophe. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he thought it was gonna be a volcanic catastrophe,
Speaker 1: but then this didn't come to fruition. Now he's come
Speaker 1: to believe that the cyclical threat that is facing this
Speaker 1: planet is actually solar and that in another and then
Speaker 1: another devastating solar storm is just on the horizon, so
Speaker 1: he urges that the colony be moved or even evacuated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a great fake out beginning where a couple of
Speaker 1: characters appear to be looking out a window and then
Speaker 1: they see the sky it fills with these shimmering auroras
Speaker 1: and that turns into fire everywhere, and you you think, oh, no,
Speaker 1: are our main character is going to be killed right
Speaker 1: at the beginning. But though it turns out it is
Speaker 1: a simulation they're looking at. But I was wondering why,
Speaker 1: why if they're simulating the future of the climate or
Speaker 1: their simulating solar activity, does it create a video display
Speaker 1: of what it's simulating, would happen? I don't. I guess
Speaker 1: it's just a robust simulation um package they have there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good simulation. Usually simulation spit out like
Speaker 1: some numbers. This one does it full like I'll give you,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a movie. So I mean I guess
Speaker 1: it's all about you know, creating something you know, visual
Speaker 1: that of course the audience can get into, but also
Speaker 1: these colonists, because even sympathetic members of the colony have
Speaker 1: their doubts about dot your Chambers. After all, he got
Speaker 1: it wrong once before. And then there's this added detail
Speaker 1: that he recently lost his wife and then even went
Speaker 1: missing for a couple of weeks in the in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: So this there's this lingering question can he be trusted?
Speaker 1: Is he acting out of sort of just nihilistic hatred
Speaker 1: for the colony? Plenty of and also just plenty of
Speaker 1: the colonist who don't want to go through all of
Speaker 1: this again, and the higher ups also have a lot
Speaker 1: invested in the situation. One thing I think this episode
Speaker 1: models extremely well is that when the care so Dr.
Speaker 1: Chambers is trying to convince these characters that his simulation
Speaker 1: is correct, and when characters find the implications of his
Speaker 1: conclusions unpalatable, like well, they don't want to have to
Speaker 1: move or you know whatever, it's not in their interests
Speaker 1: to try to evacuate. Most of the substance of their
Speaker 1: disagreement is not really about what he's saying, but it's
Speaker 1: about him as a person, So they say, like, you've
Speaker 1: got a psychological reason that you would make all this
Speaker 1: stuff up, you know that they start like talking about
Speaker 1: his personal history and attacking his character and saying, who
Speaker 1: is this guy? Can we really trust him? Very reminiscent
Speaker 1: of how similar debates in reality play out. But also
Speaker 1: I've just got to say one of my favorite parts
Speaker 1: of this episode was the repeated threatening visits from this
Speaker 1: guy named Fenton, who has just really got it out
Speaker 1: for Dr Chambers. He seems to be a neighbor of
Speaker 1: his who is some kind of security employee. Uh, but
Speaker 1: he he looks basically like a diminutive evil ken bone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I loved Finton in this because he's I mean, he
Speaker 1: he works, he's a gain a character, but he also
Speaker 1: you know, he's not particularly threatening and he does he
Speaker 1: also has a great toady vibe to him, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: totally buying that in this off world colony where where
Speaker 1: it's later explained that you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: go here that didn't have a shot at ascending uh
Speaker 1: into the uh you know, into into higher levels back
Speaker 1: on Earth, like this is their shot, and you totally
Speaker 1: buy Finton as a guy who you know, probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be head of security or a major security player anywhere else,
Speaker 1: but here on on Janice five, he's got a shot. Well,
Speaker 1: even on Janice five, he's not the head of security.
Speaker 1: He answers to the guy with the beard. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what that guy's name is, but yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: some kind of cop or something. But it was just
Speaker 1: really funny how he repeatedly shows up to be like
Speaker 1: this threatening figure, but he's this cute little nerd. Now. Um,
Speaker 1: the key individual here, like the key antagonist I guess
Speaker 1: you would would call him, is the head of the colony,
Speaker 1: Franklin Murdoch, and he's played by the terrific William Atherton.
Speaker 1: Now Atherton is best known for playing Uh. First, there
Speaker 1: was a character in die Hard named Thornburgh, but most
Speaker 1: famously I think he played Walter Peck in four Ghostbusters.
Speaker 1: He he was just a perfect nineteen eighties weasel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He has a special knack, I think for playing arrogant bureaucrats.
Speaker 1: So in die Hard he's a sleazy, opportunistic reporter and
Speaker 1: in uh in Ghostbusters he plays the villainous e p
Speaker 1: a agent. Yeah, yeah, which is which is is always
Speaker 1: weird now when I rewatch Ghostbusters to think about Ghostbusters,
Speaker 1: because yeah, he has just played as like a straight
Speaker 1: villain or at least a sub villain in the film,
Speaker 1: despite representing the you know now in battled US Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency, which is there too, especially in the film,
Speaker 1: like he's acting to protect New York City from environmental
Speaker 1: damage from from things like unlicensed nuclear accelerators and and
Speaker 1: this containment system that even Egon describes as something that
Speaker 1: can't be turned off without quote dropping a bomb on
Speaker 1: the city. I mean, I think there are a couple
Speaker 1: of ways you could read. Of course, I love Ghostbusters
Speaker 1: and the character is very funny. You could read it
Speaker 1: as that the politics of the movie are conservative. That's
Speaker 1: one another way of reading it is just that like
Speaker 1: this is a comedy where the protagonists are are dangerously
Speaker 1: irresponsible people, and that that's sort of true. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean certainly, like if you really analyze the character
Speaker 1: of Peter bankman, um, you know, how how likable is
Speaker 1: he really? Uh? But you know, Bill Murray, he makes
Speaker 1: it work, Yeah he does. He does now again now, now,
Speaker 1: Peck and Ghostbusters is definitely an arrogant jerk I don't
Speaker 1: want to get past that point. And Atherton brings some
Speaker 1: of that same energy to this performance, but this time
Speaker 1: he is definitely the face of anti environmental forces. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I think he's he's actually well presented here. Instead
Speaker 1: of being just a pure money grubbing heel, Murdoch is
Speaker 1: presented as being someone who opposes Chambers for several reasons. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, Murdoch has a position of power and
Speaker 1: importance here on the colony that he would never have
Speaker 1: achieved on Earth. He has this this really nice little
Speaker 1: monologue where he talks about it. I think he's talking
Speaker 1: is he He's not talking to Fenton, He's talking to
Speaker 1: another character Will mention in a little bit. Also, Murdoch,
Speaker 1: like all the other colonists, has in an economic stake
Speaker 1: in the colony's success, but he also stresses that this
Speaker 1: does not rank above the importance of his own life.
Speaker 1: Murdoch seemingly quite authentically in one of these things, proclaims
Speaker 1: that also Janice five is his home and he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to leave it. So he has that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: tying him to the current situation. And then finally he
Speaker 1: he is concerned that is convincing his chambers. Maybe he
Speaker 1: has been wrong before and he might be wrong again
Speaker 1: for very human reasons. I mean, this episode, actually, like
Speaker 1: you're suggesting, raises a lot of very interesting and legitimate
Speaker 1: real life concerns about saying how to communicate scientific conclusions
Speaker 1: that would motivate action in the real world, because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of difficulties there. But I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the difficulties I think is that science, unlike most
Speaker 1: other epistemological methods, is very upfront about uncertainty. So like
Speaker 1: it builds in the fact that, like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to tell you that this is a conclusion with
Speaker 1: x probability instead of just saying, like, here's how it is.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that even though that is probably
Speaker 1: the best method that you can use for actually figuring
Speaker 1: out what's true, it is not particularly convincing to motivate
Speaker 1: people to do things that they don't want to do otherwise,
Speaker 1: because it's like, oh, wait a minute, you're acknowledging you're
Speaker 1: not certain, then you know, how can how can we
Speaker 1: make all these costly decisions on the basis of your conclusion? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's a there's a line in there
Speaker 1: where one of the columns is saying, you're asking us
Speaker 1: to ruin our lives again, like you've already done it
Speaker 1: once before, and now you're asking to do it again
Speaker 1: and and and we can't even be certain about it.
Speaker 1: As a brief aside about the scientific premise of the episode,
Speaker 1: I was interested in Chambers suggest gen that, so what
Speaker 1: happens on on Janice five on the planet is that
Speaker 1: Chambers believes every one thousand years, basically the planet is
Speaker 1: sterilized and nearly all life is wiped out by solar activity.
Speaker 1: That that just bombards the surface of the planet with
Speaker 1: radiation and uh and and you know, wipes everything clean,
Speaker 1: and then life has to bounce back. And I was wondering,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how would it be possible for complex
Speaker 1: life to even evolve on such a planet? And I
Speaker 1: was trying to I was trying to make it work.
Speaker 1: One way I thought of is well, maybe years are
Speaker 1: longer on Janice five than they are on Earth. So
Speaker 1: a thousand years is actually a much longer period. Uh
Speaker 1: So I was looking at you know, what, what's a
Speaker 1: what's a planet that has a really long orbital period
Speaker 1: in our Solar system? Neptune takes a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: five years to orbit the Sun. So if Janice is
Speaker 1: like Neptune, then a thousand Janie years would be a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five thousand Earth years. But the crazy
Speaker 1: thing is that's still the blink of an eye and
Speaker 1: evolutionary time. Uh. And sometimes it can be hard to
Speaker 1: put that in perspective. But if you consider it like this,
Speaker 1: so uh, the if the evolution of life on Earth
Speaker 1: fits into you know, we don't know exactly when the
Speaker 1: first cells arose or or the chemical evolution that gave
Speaker 1: rise to the first cells happened, but if you put
Speaker 1: it in basically the last four billion years, more than
Speaker 1: twenty four thousand periods of a hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: thousand years could fit into that. So it makes you think, well,
Speaker 1: if you're going to take this premise seriously that somehow
Speaker 1: complex life evolves on a planet that is sterilized every
Speaker 1: thousand years or so, either that sterilization has to be
Speaker 1: taken into account in the biology of the life that evolves,
Speaker 1: like it goes dormant somehow to avoid the sterilization. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that possibility, I think is raised in the episode,
Speaker 1: or it evolves at rates that are that are unthinkable
Speaker 1: given the kind of evolution we understand here on Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, you know, it's it's a very thoughtful show,
Speaker 1: even with its occasional hoke nous, you know, and and
Speaker 1: necessary leaps in you know, in the fantastic Um. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's interesting to think about the idea of
Speaker 1: say comparing it to the organisms that that depend on
Speaker 1: cyclical forest fires. Uh, it's just part of the environment
Speaker 1: that they live in. That's a very good point of comparison.
Speaker 1: And actually a similar idea comes up in the Three
Speaker 1: Body Problem by c Chin Lou. Oh. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: in the simulation that they're working with, right, with the
Speaker 1: world with multiple suns, right, the ideas that they're they're
Speaker 1: unpredictable times when the environmental conditions of their home planet
Speaker 1: become basically unsurvivable and the aliens have to disappear, have
Speaker 1: to sort of like go into a hibernation or dehydration
Speaker 1: state in order to just like ride out the uninhabitable
Speaker 1: period and then re emerge once the planet becomes less hostile.
Speaker 1: So this is the basic set up for the the episode.
Speaker 1: And I want stress here, by the way, when this
Speaker 1: is where the audio realm uh Janice five the name
Speaker 1: of the colony. This is this is not Janice like
Speaker 1: the uh as in Janet or anything. This is the
Speaker 1: two faced got And so that's sort of the yeah.
Speaker 1: So from anyway, anyway, from here, the episode, you know,
Speaker 1: takes a couple of I thought really satisfying twists and
Speaker 1: turns that I don't want to spoil too much in
Speaker 1: this episode in case you want to want to see
Speaker 1: it for yourself, and I recommend you do. But let's
Speaker 1: just say that some folks are accused of being shaped
Speaker 1: shifting aliens that survived uh, you know, like they living
Speaker 1: in the depths of the earth or something um. And
Speaker 1: we're forced to wonder if Chambers will be proven right
Speaker 1: or wrong and what it will mean for the people
Speaker 1: of the colony. Now again, this episode is an obvious
Speaker 1: treatment on the of the dangers of climate change and
Speaker 1: the role that climate change denialism plays in our society.
Speaker 1: To put everything in an historical framework, the greenhouse effect
Speaker 1: was described by French physicist Joseph four in eighteen twenty four.
Speaker 1: BBC has a nice breakdown of key moments after that
Speaker 1: in a Brief History of Climate Change, which brings up everything.
Speaker 1: It brings up everything through because you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: when the timeline came out. But it's a nice handy
Speaker 1: reference point for some of the stuff we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: But they hit a few key points. From the later
Speaker 1: twentieth century, U S scientist Wallace Brocker put the term
Speaker 1: global warming in the title of a science paper, popularizing
Speaker 1: the term, and in nineteen eighty seven the Montreal Protocol
Speaker 1: came into effect to protect the ozone layer, and in
Speaker 1: nine eight the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change formed
Speaker 1: to colate and assess the evidence. And of course the
Speaker 1: i p c C continues to collect and assess the
Speaker 1: evidence on on the state of climate change even today.
Speaker 1: I think their most recent major update and report was
Speaker 1: in furteen. It was the fifth Assessment Report, and it
Speaker 1: paints a pretty dire picture. Now. One thing that this
Speaker 1: BBC timeline also points out, and this is something that
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan wrote about in The demon Haunted World as well.
Speaker 1: Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the u N in
Speaker 1: nine and urged a global treaty stating quote, we are
Speaker 1: seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: reaching the atmosphere, and then She goes on to to
Speaker 1: point out that the future changes will quote likely be
Speaker 1: more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto.
Speaker 1: And as Sagan pointed out, Thatcher, no matter what else
Speaker 1: you know think about her in her politics, was is
Speaker 1: one of the few heads of state we can point
Speaker 1: to that had a science background. She was a research
Speaker 1: chemist with a chemistry degree from Oxford. A weird thing
Speaker 1: to remember. Yeah, in in the demon Haunted World, Sagan
Speaker 1: brings us up because he's talking about science and politics
Speaker 1: where they meet, and the idea here is that Margaret Thatcher,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever else her her politics might mean, or
Speaker 1: whatever you know, other details regarding her place in history,
Speaker 1: she perhaps had an advantage in understanding these dire warnings
Speaker 1: coming from the scientific community because of her own scientific background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I mean, it is not all that common
Speaker 1: to see world leaders, major political leaders, coming from a
Speaker 1: scientific background, I think, doesn't I think Angela Merkel has
Speaker 1: a scientific one of the few other ones you can
Speaker 1: easily point to. Yeah, but I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of other examples and it come up very very short.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is interesting, and I'm not saying necessarily
Speaker 1: that one needs to be a scientist to be a
Speaker 1: political leader. I mean that that also seems like a
Speaker 1: unreasonable demand. And it's not necessarily true that scientific careers
Speaker 1: would provide all of the kind of skills you need
Speaker 1: to be a good political leader. But it seems like
Speaker 1: it would be good to have at least a higher
Speaker 1: proportion of people with scientific backgrounds involved in politics. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's strange to just like look at the professional backgrounds
Speaker 1: of people who become politicians and notice how uniform it
Speaker 1: is most of the time. I mean, at least in
Speaker 1: the United States, politics is overwhelmingly dominated by lawyers and
Speaker 1: people from business. You kind of wonder how different our
Speaker 1: politics might be if there was a more representative sample
Speaker 1: of people from other fields, of people from the sciences,
Speaker 1: of teachers, of labor. Leader. Isn't so forth that all
Speaker 1: like became political leaders. Also, Yeah, I mean, at the
Speaker 1: very least, you want leaders who listen to trusted scientists.
Speaker 1: You you know, you want scientists to um and uh
Speaker 1: and scientifically minded people to be in positions to speak
Speaker 1: to scientific topics and then have that be a part
Speaker 1: of the you know, the upper political consideration. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a controversial statement to make on a
Speaker 1: science podcast. Um, but let's come back to this Outer
Speaker 1: Limits episode. So this came out in which curiously and
Speaker 1: this you know, I don't know what degree this is, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is actually um, you know, essential, but it's curiously
Speaker 1: the same year that the rate of average global surface
Speaker 1: warming began a slowing trend that lasted till now. As
Speaker 1: Rebecca Lindsay points out on climate dot Gov, this really
Speaker 1: just meant that quote the rate of average global surface
Speaker 1: warming from two thousand and twelve was slower than it
Speaker 1: had been for two to three decades leading up to it,
Speaker 1: but the big picture of long term warming continued unchanged. Still,
Speaker 1: climate change deniers at the time took took what climate
Speaker 1: scientists described as a temporary pause or hiatus as proof
Speaker 1: that quote global warming stopped in Oh yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: seeing that claim a lot floating around on the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so again, that might just be pure you Obviously, this
Speaker 1: this episode was probably written uh prior to ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what the exact production history on
Speaker 1: on the script was that it might just be you know,
Speaker 1: pure coincidence that had happened exactly that year, but maybe
Speaker 1: not who knows. I would tend to think coincidence because
Speaker 1: I doubt people. I mean, climate change was not as
Speaker 1: much of a salient issue or political controversy at the time,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't the same like period data to latch
Speaker 1: onto and denying it yet. Yeah, but the idea of
Speaker 1: calling it a pause or hiatus could be really kind
Speaker 1: of misleading. I mean it seems like, actually, what I
Speaker 1: was just talking about goes both ways. It would be good,
Speaker 1: I think, to have more scientists involved in political leadership,
Speaker 1: but it would also probably be good to have more
Speaker 1: people who are experienced with rhetoric and messaging involved in science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean that honestly. Yeah, that that's kind of
Speaker 1: confusing terminology to throw out there. And and even if
Speaker 1: you don't have an agenda, if you don't have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a dog in the hunt, and of course
Speaker 1: this will discuss everybody has a dog in this particular hunt. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you can see how you might misinterpret that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Yeah, this was the idea was pushed by
Speaker 1: some that this means, oh, well, global warming has stopped,
Speaker 1: like it's over. Uh, you were freaking out over nothing.
Speaker 1: This despite that global warming is a human cause condition
Speaker 1: still saw two thousand twelve as the warmest fifteen year
Speaker 1: period on record at that time, with greenhouse gases climbing
Speaker 1: to new record highs, the oceans were warming, sea levels
Speaker 1: were rising, ice was melting. Now, as we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show before, part of this comes down to a misunderstanding,
Speaker 1: willful or otherwise, on how science functions. Science is not
Speaker 1: a tool that works or doesn't work, and then maybe
Speaker 1: cast aside like a crooked drill bit or something that
Speaker 1: needs to be replaced. The part in to tell the
Speaker 1: truth about Chambers having gotten it wrong before certainly smacks
Speaker 1: of the common climate denialism mantra of but what about
Speaker 1: the warnings of the new ice Age and other such criticism, right,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot wrong with with that approach, obviously,
Speaker 1: ranging from the treating uh, you know, of all science
Speaker 1: and scientists, regardless of area focus is kind of a
Speaker 1: monolith like, oh, you know, this is what science is doing.
Speaker 1: Is what the scientists are doing. And I found a
Speaker 1: scientist that says otherwise, because that also gets into the
Speaker 1: cherry picking and uh, you know, assuming that air and
Speaker 1: recalibration are not part of the scientific process. One of
Speaker 1: the real difficulties with scientific communication is that you can
Speaker 1: always make a kind of confusing reference to the past.
Speaker 1: Like you can find controversy on essentially any issue. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no scientific issue I can think of
Speaker 1: where through through the entire history of the awareness of
Speaker 1: the issue, all scientists have had it right and been
Speaker 1: on the same page about it. So if you're interested
Speaker 1: in generating the the idea of confusion or controversy about
Speaker 1: any particular scientific conclusion, and you want to make references to, well,
Speaker 1: when have people said different things about this issue in
Speaker 1: the past, you can always find something like that. And
Speaker 1: in some cases issue scientific consensus about issues develops and
Speaker 1: changes very rapidly. I mean, I think about the ways
Speaker 1: that um for example, current recommendations about how best to
Speaker 1: battle the coronavirus out UH masks and social distancing and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. People who are kind of people who
Speaker 1: are opposed to following the current best guidelines about those
Speaker 1: things will make reference to what people were saying in
Speaker 1: the earliest weeks of the of the pandemic. You remember this, right, Like,
Speaker 1: like initially scientific guidelines were not recommending people wear masks.
Speaker 1: That changed very quickly. We did a very early episode
Speaker 1: where we about the coronavirus, where we we we mentioned that,
Speaker 1: though I should also point out that we also drove
Speaker 1: home that you know we're recording this on such and
Speaker 1: such date, at such and such point in this pandemic.
Speaker 1: Be aware that that, you know, everything may change as
Speaker 1: this story develops. It can be a really frustrating thing.
Speaker 1: I mean. The evidence now for the effectiveness of mask
Speaker 1: wearing too slow the spread of the virus is very good.
Speaker 1: It comes from multiple kinds of studies. Studies looking at
Speaker 1: the effects of mask mandates at the population level, studies
Speaker 1: looking at the effects of physical barriers on the propagation
Speaker 1: of droplets and aerosols, and can rolled environments, how it
Speaker 1: spreads between hamsters and things like that. The bottom line
Speaker 1: from all of this research up to now is that
Speaker 1: there's very good reason to wear a mask if you
Speaker 1: go out in the public setting or anywhere near people
Speaker 1: outside your household. But no matter how much evidence accumulates
Speaker 1: in that column, there's always going to be this historical
Speaker 1: reference point where people can say, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: like the experts weren't saying that at the beginning of March,
Speaker 1: So how can we be sure that they're right. Now,
Speaker 1: Why is what scientists are saying about the coronavirus or
Speaker 1: about climate or anything now better than what they were
Speaker 1: saying in the past. And it can seem confusing, But
Speaker 1: for the most part, the answer is actually pretty simple,
Speaker 1: and it's that now we have better evidence. There's more evidence,
Speaker 1: more relevant evidence, better quality evidence. That's the difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this makes me think about the fact that science can
Speaker 1: be very susceptible to political weapons when those weapons are
Speaker 1: leveled at it, because science, science is ultimately this thing
Speaker 1: that is that is taking place and analyzing, you know,
Speaker 1: the fun mineral aspects of the larger world, the cosmos,
Speaker 1: whereas politics is very much a condition of of social dynamics.
Speaker 1: And so you know, these political weapons, these singers and
Speaker 1: and got your points and basically anything that might be
Speaker 1: used from by one political opponent against another, like those
Speaker 1: are things that are designed to work within a social
Speaker 1: context for the most part, into a certain extent, within
Speaker 1: illegal context. But but sciences is like the world beyond
Speaker 1: this domed colony of of law and society. And I wonder,
Speaker 1: now that I've said that out loud, I wonder if
Speaker 1: that's kind of the the beauty of this, uh, this
Speaker 1: setting in this outer Limits of episode, because the people
Speaker 1: in the colonists are literally living inside a bubble of
Speaker 1: their own construction, uh, you know, of their own design,
Speaker 1: and trying to evaluate threats that exist outside, like literally
Speaker 1: outside the sphere of their immediate domain. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back with more.
Speaker 1: And we're back now, of course in this Outer Limits episode. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, as as as we we've pointed out before,
Speaker 1: there's this stark difference between what's going on with Dr
Speaker 1: Chambers and what's going on with us, because well, it's
Speaker 1: just in the show, it's just Dr Chambers preaching to
Speaker 1: a crowded room and making a case with difficult evidence.
Speaker 1: Though climate change data is certainly complex, but but in
Speaker 1: our world it is a case of overwhelming scientific consensus. Um,
Speaker 1: it's especially as far as climate scientists are concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt about that. I mean, we've talked about
Speaker 1: the consensus on this issue and and the studies measuring
Speaker 1: it in previous episodes. I think we talked about that
Speaker 1: in one of the episodes we recorded after you came
Speaker 1: back from the World Science Festival in the previous year.
Speaker 1: And we discussed one of the panels about science communication
Speaker 1: and about climate change. But yeah, there's no doubt at
Speaker 1: all that almost all climate scientists are people with expertise
Speaker 1: in the relevant fields, are on the same page with
Speaker 1: the broad strokes of climate change. It is a problem,
Speaker 1: it is major threatening, It is caused in large part
Speaker 1: by the products of human industry. And yet it can
Speaker 1: certainly feel at times like it's just one doctor Chambers
Speaker 1: pleading with the rest of the colony because there is
Speaker 1: significant and UH and and dangerous lack of commitment to
Speaker 1: combating the problem, especially in the United States, and a
Speaker 1: great deal of anti science and anti climate science worldview
Speaker 1: UH is often found here, especially in places of significant
Speaker 1: political power. Yeah, the anti science sentiment is extremely dangerous,
Speaker 1: Like just this year in we've seen the results in
Speaker 1: real time um uh with the coronavirus as failure to
Speaker 1: listen to scientists and take advisories about mask wearing and
Speaker 1: social distancing seriously have led to outbreaks and surges that
Speaker 1: have cost human lives first and foremost, but also cost
Speaker 1: time and money. Uh. You know, it can still be
Speaker 1: difficult to gauge such threats, but it's certainly a more
Speaker 1: I think readily understandable situation compared to climate change, which
Speaker 1: you know, one of the issues. There is again complex
Speaker 1: climate science dealing with you know, longer periods of time
Speaker 1: uh as opposed to everything happening within the space of
Speaker 1: a few months. Though at the same time, we are
Speaker 1: also living in a time of dangerous climate alteration, as
Speaker 1: we endure rising seas, intense hurricanes, and increased droughts and
Speaker 1: heat waves. It's perhaps more pronounced now than ever before.
Speaker 1: And and not everyone has their head in the sand. Certainly,
Speaker 1: According to a report from the Yale Program on Climate
Speaker 1: Change Communication and George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication,
Speaker 1: almost six and ten Americans are either alarmed or concerned
Speaker 1: by global warming, which the authors pointed out as being
Speaker 1: a major shift. As for the rest, though well, researchers
Speaker 1: and thinkers have been exploring these questions for years. Again,
Speaker 1: we have a we have we have passed episodes to
Speaker 1: get into this a bit. Why do we deny the evidence?
Speaker 1: You know? Why why deny um climate change? Now? Certainly
Speaker 1: there's much to be said for how unpleasant the reality is.
Speaker 1: No one wants to be a part of a problem
Speaker 1: like this, or to dwell on a future of massy stabilization, relocation,
Speaker 1: and extinction. We as humans are in many ways just
Speaker 1: poorly wired to deal with threats of this magnitude and scale.
Speaker 1: We're better with the short term. Uh, you know, but
Speaker 1: but but what are what are we ultimately to do?
Speaker 1: I Mean, one of the things we've talked about in
Speaker 1: previous episodes about this is the idea that identity protective
Speaker 1: cognition plays in why people respond negatively to climate science.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing that we should be sympathetic about.
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody engages in identity protective cognition. Everybody engages
Speaker 1: in forms of motivated reasoning on various issues to try
Speaker 1: to protect their their picture of the integrity of their
Speaker 1: self and how they fit into a social system. So uh,
Speaker 1: And this is one of the dangers of scientific issues
Speaker 1: becoming politicized is that once an issue becomes politicized, the
Speaker 1: social and identity connotations of the sides of that issue
Speaker 1: become more relevant than the evidence does. And unfortunately, this
Speaker 1: can happen really rapidly with issues that don't happen to
Speaker 1: have any particular like political values or implications attached to
Speaker 1: them inherently. I mean, there are examples. I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about, how do you remember how at some point
Speaker 1: this year, suddenly it became a political issue with a
Speaker 1: political valence whether or not hydroxy chlora quinn was an
Speaker 1: effective therapeutic for COVID nineteen, which when you step back
Speaker 1: and think about that, that's it's like crazy that that
Speaker 1: is not an issue that really has any particular political implications.
Speaker 1: It doesn't implicate any fundamental values. It just happened to
Speaker 1: get politicized because of who was talking about it, what ways,
Speaker 1: and you know how that was appearing in the media.
Speaker 1: You know, if Donald Trump had come out and said it,
Speaker 1: said that it was not effective, it could have been
Speaker 1: politicized in exactly the opposite way. So, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like weird, how how totally contingent things like this can be.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, once a scientific question gains political connotations, it
Speaker 1: can be very hard to take them off. Just kind
Speaker 1: of stuck there. And people don't want to believe in
Speaker 1: things that they think of as beliefs inappropriate for a
Speaker 1: person such as themselves, you know, and and so that
Speaker 1: that's one of the real dangers. I mean, the best
Speaker 1: thing to do about science is to try to prevent
Speaker 1: scientific questions from acquiring a political connotation to begin with,
Speaker 1: you have to do your best to try to make
Speaker 1: sure that, uh that a a scientific message or the
Speaker 1: communication of a scientific conclusion is not associated with anybody
Speaker 1: of any particular political affiliation. But that can be very
Speaker 1: hard to do. Yeah, absolutely, I mean it like issues
Speaker 1: can be asymmetrically politicized, right. All all it takes is
Speaker 1: basically one major political figure to to decide to make
Speaker 1: a scientific question a politicize this issue, and you know
Speaker 1: they can usually do it. But again, in all this
Speaker 1: communication is key, you know. And uh and and a
Speaker 1: lot of this episode of the Outer Limits is about
Speaker 1: like trying to communicate, um, the nature of science to
Speaker 1: people that have their doubts, uh, that are denying what's
Speaker 1: going on. Uh. So I looked at a paper for
Speaker 1: a little more in this titled Understanding and Countering the
Speaker 1: Motivated Roots of Climate change Denial, is by Gabriel Long
Speaker 1: Parodi and uh Irena Fagina, published earlier this year in
Speaker 1: Current Opinion and Environmental Sustainability. The paper focuses on communication
Speaker 1: approaches to reach climate change deniers in peer viewed studies
Speaker 1: from the past two years. With a special focus on
Speaker 1: what the authors described as people engaged in quote motivated denial.
Speaker 1: This means the people in question have access to the facts,
Speaker 1: but they still deny them. On some level. They make
Speaker 1: a choice to deny the science and cling to another
Speaker 1: view of reality that flies in the face of scientific consensus.
Speaker 1: But it's easier to accept. Yeah, And again, to be fair,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I think people should accept the scientific
Speaker 1: consensus on climate change, but I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who deny it are not doing so, like
Speaker 1: out of a conscious perversity, thinking like I won't accept
Speaker 1: the facts. I mean, the fact is that motivated reasoning
Speaker 1: changes how facts appear to us. Things that are perfectly
Speaker 1: reasonable to believe just suddenly don't seem plausible to you
Speaker 1: because of motivations you have. Yeah. Yeah, because I mean,
Speaker 1: in one hand, there's the responsibility of what human infoke.
Speaker 1: Climate change means. It means accepting your part of the problem,
Speaker 1: and then it also means accepting that the problem threatens
Speaker 1: much of the stability and normalcy that you hold dear.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, you may feel the need to speak out
Speaker 1: and act and so forth, And it can be easier,
Speaker 1: you know, on on some level, to simply live in
Speaker 1: denial like that is an easier mental construct, uh to
Speaker 1: to erect in the mind, as opposed to dealing with
Speaker 1: all of these additional change changes, uh to the the
Speaker 1: world you've grown accustomed to. Now. Chambers does end up
Speaker 1: being accused of being an alien shape shifter at one
Speaker 1: point in this Outer Limits episode, but he never reverses
Speaker 1: this charge on the colonists, which is which which is
Speaker 1: worth worth noting, especially because it ties in a little
Speaker 1: bit into what um The authors here in the study
Speaker 1: discussed that I think they would agree that this was
Speaker 1: the right move. One of the key points to say
Speaker 1: the aliens right, well, yeah, essentially not to say say, oh,
Speaker 1: climate change denire is you're a bunch of aliens. There's
Speaker 1: something wrong with you. You're you're you're broken in some way.
Speaker 1: You know that. That's That's one of the key points
Speaker 1: and climate change communication, uh, they point out, is to
Speaker 1: is not to dismiss deniers outright, but to acknowledge their
Speaker 1: opinions and beliefs. And they they acknowledge that this can
Speaker 1: be difficult, obviously, but they point to four different strategies
Speaker 1: that that seem to show promise and or seem to work. Okay,
Speaker 1: what are the strategies all right? The first is reef
Speaker 1: fraiming solutions to climate change as ways to uphold the
Speaker 1: social system and work towards its stability and longevity. Now
Speaker 1: in the Outer Limits, Chambers does this, of course, by
Speaker 1: pointing out that if they don't act, the stability of
Speaker 1: the colony will be threatened. Um. If if he could have,
Speaker 1: you know, actually had an honest discussion with Murdoch, he
Speaker 1: might have told him, Look, this will ruin your prospects
Speaker 1: of profits from the colony. It will endanger your power.
Speaker 1: It's going to threaten this home that you hold dear. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know this is this is a threat to all
Speaker 1: the things we we value here. Yeah. So I think
Speaker 1: this is saying, like, you know, to be factual in
Speaker 1: representing what the threats are, but to emphasize the kinds
Speaker 1: of threats that are particularly salient to people with the
Speaker 1: political identity who are more likely to deny climate change. So,
Speaker 1: to use a Simpsons example, if you were trying to
Speaker 1: convince members of the Simpsons family not to make a
Speaker 1: foolish investment in a tobacco farm, you might appeal to
Speaker 1: Homer in particular by saying if you do that, you're
Speaker 1: not going to have a budget for beer or to
Speaker 1: pay the cable bill, right, you know, like you you
Speaker 1: single out the issues that are actually most salient to people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a good example of this is we we
Speaker 1: we we see this in the realization, for instance, that
Speaker 1: climate change is a national security issue as well as
Speaker 1: a purely environmental one. Yeah. Yeah, it's not just about
Speaker 1: saving the earth or saving the environment, but safeguarding things
Speaker 1: like our supply chains, etcetera. So um so yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the ideas here is don't just the idea of
Speaker 1: like we need to save the planet, like you know,
Speaker 1: that's going to carry with it. I mean that's true,
Speaker 1: uh you know, but but but that how does it
Speaker 1: need to be tweaked to to to meet the world
Speaker 1: view of the person on the other side. And that
Speaker 1: gets into the second piece of advice they have, and
Speaker 1: that's reducing the ideological divide by incorporating the purity of
Speaker 1: the earth rather than how we harm or care for it.
Speaker 1: So this is more about putting I guess you could say,
Speaker 1: the hopeful spin on it and emphasizing our ability to
Speaker 1: make changes and perhaps even our responsibility to to look
Speaker 1: after the earth that is going to fall in line
Speaker 1: with various religious world views, rather than just the shame
Speaker 1: point of realizing that we've done a lot of harm
Speaker 1: and that we need to change our ways. Now the
Speaker 1: author is going to point out to other areas one
Speaker 1: number three, rather having conversations about the scientific consensus around
Speaker 1: climate change with trusted individuals. Now, I think that's easier
Speaker 1: said than done. Um Uh, take outer limits for example,
Speaker 1: Chambers is mistrusted. Uh and you know who who else
Speaker 1: are you going to talk to here? If you cherry
Speaker 1: pick you're trusted individuals? Um? You know that can those
Speaker 1: trusted individuals can include climate deniers or people with without
Speaker 1: perhaps with sometimes with a scientific background, but not a
Speaker 1: scientific background in climate science. I mean, I think this
Speaker 1: ties in very much to what I was just talking
Speaker 1: about with identity protective cognition, Like you don't want to
Speaker 1: embrace the belief that you see as antithetical to people
Speaker 1: in your social group who have the kind of integrity
Speaker 1: that you value, and so yeah, I think one of
Speaker 1: the best and most important ways to get around this
Speaker 1: is to show, hey, people like you, people who you
Speaker 1: socially identify with, they they also agree with the scientific
Speaker 1: consensus here. And then the fourth point they bring up
Speaker 1: is encouraging people to explosively discuss their values and stands
Speaker 1: on climate change prior to engaging with climate information. So
Speaker 1: the idea with this one is that quote self affirmation
Speaker 1: is challenged when people face climate change because it requires
Speaker 1: them to consider their contribution to the problem, which can
Speaker 1: threaten their sense of integrity and trigger self defense. And finally,
Speaker 1: you know, they say, you want to stress solutions that
Speaker 1: match in individual's values and don't threaten their sense of
Speaker 1: identity or their way of life. And now, of course,
Speaker 1: if we as we've discussed before, this also underlines the
Speaker 1: horror of politicization of climate change and the attempt to
Speaker 1: try and uh and bake in climate change denial into
Speaker 1: a political worldview. Once something like this becomes politicized, it's
Speaker 1: difficult to unpoliticize it. Yeah, he'sa Freeman wrote an excellent
Speaker 1: piece on COVID and climate denialism for The New York
Speaker 1: Times earlier this month that touches on the work of
Speaker 1: John Cook, research assistant professor at the Center for Climate
Speaker 1: Change Communication at George Mason University and founder of the
Speaker 1: website skeptical science. Um Cook argues that ideology and tribalism
Speaker 1: tend to come before facts and people's beliefs about climate change,
Speaker 1: and that means a lot of the power here falls
Speaker 1: to people of influence within an ideology, and that means
Speaker 1: that leadership is crucial to overcoming climate change denialism. And again,
Speaker 1: isn't that what we see in this Outer Limits episode.
Speaker 1: Murdoch is the leader of the colony, and while he
Speaker 1: admits that he actually briefly you believes Chambers, or at
Speaker 1: least entertains the idea that Chambers may be correct, he
Speaker 1: otherwise works against him at every turn, and the people
Speaker 1: look to Murdoch. Uh. Furthermore, Murdoch is a sort of
Speaker 1: head of state in the off world. Colony. Doesn't only
Speaker 1: argue against rationally against Chambers, he all so ultimately engages
Speaker 1: in more underhanded tactics, including the use of disinformation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they try to personally discredit Chambers with with attacks on
Speaker 1: his what I would say, his character, but attacks on
Speaker 1: his biology. Yeah, I would say character and biology is
Speaker 1: the first character and then ultimately biology itself. Um. If
Speaker 1: we look to our current situation in October twenty with
Speaker 1: with COVID and climate change. It's it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: how to tell the truth forecast our current leadership situation.
Speaker 1: Um so so so again, this is one of those episodes.
Speaker 1: Even though it came out in the nineties, it's still
Speaker 1: is very relevant today. According to cook Um however, only
Speaker 1: ten percent of Americans are outright dismissive of the science
Speaker 1: on climate change, and that seems to correl correlate well
Speaker 1: with the twelve percent of Americans who are not concerned
Speaker 1: about COVID. Friedman writes, quote, this means, he said, referring
Speaker 1: to Cook, the solution lies, uh, not in persuading those
Speaker 1: already steeped in science denial, but in not sculating the
Speaker 1: other nine of the public from scientific disinformation. He likened
Speaker 1: the challenge to eradicating polio, an incurable disease that was
Speaker 1: all but eliminated in the United States through vaccinations. In
Speaker 1: the case of climate and COVID, he said that means
Speaker 1: using facts and research combined with vivid analogies to explain
Speaker 1: the techniques used to mislead the public. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that cook does through skeptical science,
Speaker 1: which if you want to check out the website it's
Speaker 1: just skeptical science dot com. Uh. He provides useful real
Speaker 1: world analogies to counter climate denial arguments, and he also
Speaker 1: wrote an illustrated book titled Cranky Uncle Versus Climate Change,
Speaker 1: How to Understand and respond to Climate science Deniers. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to end on too dark a note here,
Speaker 1: but but I do seriously worry about because as as
Speaker 1: difficult as it is to prevent scientific issues from becoming
Speaker 1: politicized in the first place, when you're just dealing with leaders,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to make sure that like major media
Speaker 1: figures and politicians don't start injecting political valences and trying
Speaker 1: to get people to align politically around something that's not
Speaker 1: really a political issue. It is just a scientific question
Speaker 1: with a factual answer. Um. That's hard enough. It seems
Speaker 1: like nowadays things are going to be even harder than that,
Speaker 1: because you essentially have the distributed capability through the Internet
Speaker 1: and virality and social media to do the same thing
Speaker 1: to politicize issues. I mean, I already see worrying signs
Speaker 1: of how sort of like emerging out of the depths
Speaker 1: of the Internet, you'll get weird conspiracy theories politicizing whatever
Speaker 1: vaccine we end up with for for COVID nineteen Yeah, yeah, exactly, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and to to a wonderful extent, like one
Speaker 1: of the great things about a show like The Outer
Speaker 1: Limits is that essentially it's always about people having conversations
Speaker 1: about uh, you know, science, fictional threats, and and and
Speaker 1: and and given that in a short format you have
Speaker 1: to boil everything down to a simple area like two
Speaker 1: people trapped in a room or in this case, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one scientist speaking to the community in this colony.
Speaker 1: But of course, in reality, we have a far more
Speaker 1: complicated communication system. There's a greater number of players involved,
Speaker 1: there are different communications systems involved, uh networks, the way
Speaker 1: that different voices become um uh you know, more pronounced
Speaker 1: in our culture, it's it's it's it's far more complicated
Speaker 1: than what we have in the Jan's five example. But
Speaker 1: but I think it works nicely to still as as
Speaker 1: an example of the the sorts of problems that we
Speaker 1: encounter as humans. I mean, I guess we've sort of
Speaker 1: been saying that one of the best outcomes, if we
Speaker 1: could enact it with scientific issues that have political ramifications,
Speaker 1: is to not allow them to become politicized in the
Speaker 1: first place. But if that's not really possible, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can't prevent issue people from trying to politicize issues,
Speaker 1: I think the question is what does the mental vaccine
Speaker 1: against the politicization of scientific issues look like? How do
Speaker 1: you best plant that sort of like, uh, that meme
Speaker 1: or that seed in somebody's brain that will grow into, uh,
Speaker 1: grow into a sort of mental immune system that rejects
Speaker 1: these politicizations of scientific issues when it encounters them. That,
Speaker 1: you know, so people know how to recognize when it's
Speaker 1: happening and stop it before it infects them. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is the That is the the ongoing problem that we're
Speaker 1: continuing to struggle with. And this is the point where
Speaker 1: we would have the narrator of the Outer Limits jump
Speaker 1: back in and nicely summarize the struggle that we've just
Speaker 1: witnessed on the screen. But of course, the fallible humans
Speaker 1: failed in their attempt. Yeah, alright, We're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and close out this volume of the Anthology of Horror,
Speaker 1: but we will be back with part five, Volume five,
Speaker 1: when we will explore even more episodes from TV and
Speaker 1: film horror sci fi anthology history and discuss some of
Speaker 1: the science and culture surrounding them. In the meantime, if
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