Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday
Speaker 1: vault time, folks. This episode originally aired on October nineteen,
Speaker 1: and it is our Anthology of Horror volume two. That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean we'll introduce this in the episode itself, but briefly,
Speaker 1: this is you know and Thought TV anthology episodes that
Speaker 1: are horror themed. We take them, we use them as
Speaker 1: a springboard to talk about science. This was the second
Speaker 1: one in this series, and we'll be sharing the third
Speaker 1: one in the series as a vault episode in the
Speaker 1: weeks ahead, and hey, might even get an all new
Speaker 1: fourth volume. We'll see what we can put together. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, and my name is Robert Gooley Lamb.
Speaker 1: I am Corrosive Joseph McCormick, and we are here with
Speaker 1: our producer death Nicholas Johnson. Yes, and it is that
Speaker 1: time again. Uh, it's it's been a year since we
Speaker 1: did Anthology of Horror volume one, and so we're about
Speaker 1: to assault you with Anthology of Horror volume two, and
Speaker 1: then guess what the episode after this, He's going to
Speaker 1: be Anthology of Horror volume three. It's not an anthology
Speaker 1: unless they're at least three volume exactly. So yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been looking forward to this all year pretty much, Robert.
Speaker 1: I know the back corners of your brain are just
Speaker 1: full of cobwebs made of old horror anthology TV episodes.
Speaker 1: Every time we get talking about this, you dredge something
Speaker 1: up from the void, something you saw on TV as
Speaker 1: a kid. Am I wrong about this? Pretty much? Because
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I watched a lot of television,
Speaker 1: and of the various joyfully weird things that were on
Speaker 1: television reruns or syndicated horror and oology shows were one
Speaker 1: of the best because you never knew exactly what you're
Speaker 1: going to get each episode. It's an anthology. So each
Speaker 1: episode of something like The Twilight Zone or Night Gallery
Speaker 1: or Outer Limits or Tales from the Crypt, each one
Speaker 1: is its own thing, its own world. It has its
Speaker 1: own cast, its own monster or threat or sci fi weirdness,
Speaker 1: and it's completely encapsulated. I love especially some of these
Speaker 1: are really good. Actually, the Twilight Zone I think is
Speaker 1: even better than a lot of people remember, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times it's because The Twilight Zone
Speaker 1: was not an hour long show, or I think maybe
Speaker 1: it was in one of its later seasons which turned
Speaker 1: out to be disastrous. I mean, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a type twentysomething minute short story. It's it's a good
Speaker 1: way not to get bogged down and stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: matter with when you're not going into like in depth
Speaker 1: character storytelling, but you're like exploring high level premises. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's more it's more in line with
Speaker 1: certainly some of the short stories you you know, the
Speaker 1: classic short stories you think of a say like Philip K. Dick,
Speaker 1: where it's it's really about rolling out a cool idea,
Speaker 1: maybe a cool twist or a shock, but mostly about
Speaker 1: you know, to make you think about something. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I I love a really great episode of an
Speaker 1: anthology show. Certainly, like you said, some of those Twilight
Speaker 1: Zones hold up amazingly. Well, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: one of my favorites of all time today. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then also some of the worst examples. I have one show,
Speaker 1: and this is a show I didn't I don't think
Speaker 1: I even watched when it came on, but Perversions of Science.
Speaker 1: It was sci fi sort of spinoff of Tales from
Speaker 1: the Crypt and uh, I haven't watched fully sleazy, but
Speaker 1: very like future smooth. Yeah. Yeah, lots of cursing, some
Speaker 1: gratuitous nudity, but like a lot of these shows, often
Speaker 1: tremendous talent packed into each episode, like some great actors,
Speaker 1: some great directors. Um. So every horror anthology show, I
Speaker 1: feel like the ones that i've I look back on
Speaker 1: finally are the ones I haven't even seen yet. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's so many treasures to ever. I watched so many
Speaker 1: of these things. It's very specifically on Beach Hotel cable.
Speaker 1: This is what I remember. Yeah, it was like I
Speaker 1: watched Mystery Science Theater three thousand that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess basically when my family went to the beach,
Speaker 1: everybody else would be out in the sun and I'd
Speaker 1: be watching the sci fi channel. But that's how you
Speaker 1: see reruns of Monsters, which is a show that I
Speaker 1: had completely forgotten about until you you sent me something
Speaker 1: about it the other day and I was looking at
Speaker 1: the images from the opening credits and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, yes, that's way back in there. Somewhere
Speaker 1: deep in the recesses of my mind. This is there.
Speaker 1: I've seen it before, all right, Well, before we get
Speaker 1: more properly into into monsters, I just want to tell everybody,
Speaker 1: like what the basic format here is. If you haven't
Speaker 1: heard one of our anthority of horror episodes before, or
Speaker 1: the creepy Pasta episodes that preceded it, the idea is, uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna grab a few in in each episode. We're
Speaker 1: gonna each grab one episode of a horror anthology show.
Speaker 1: We're gonna tell you what it's about, remind you what
Speaker 1: it's about if you've seen it before, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna break down some of the ideas involved there, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the science of the thing, whatever it happens
Speaker 1: to to be, even if we have to shoehorn it
Speaker 1: a little bit. And uh, and that's where the fun
Speaker 1: is exactly. We are nothing if not experts at dragging
Speaker 1: deep thoughts out of strangely shallow places. Yes. Uh again,
Speaker 1: We're gonna also go to some I think some rather
Speaker 1: deep waters in these twilight zones. Yeah, so let's begin
Speaker 1: with monsters. Okay. This This ran for three seasons from
Speaker 1: eight through ninete and I think I only caught it
Speaker 1: once at like my aunt's house back in the day,
Speaker 1: and I don't even know if it was in syndication
Speaker 1: or on the Sci Fi channel after it had finished
Speaker 1: its run. But today you can find all of it
Speaker 1: on Amazon Prime. You can find a lot of the episodes,
Speaker 1: maybe all of them just on YouTube. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a lot of these shows, it's a wealth
Speaker 1: of talent and weirdness. I was wondering how many people
Speaker 1: were hoping that this show would have disappeared into history forever,
Speaker 1: only to have the digital age to revive all of
Speaker 1: these old things that these actors did. Yeah, yeah, possible. Possibly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there you see some some interesting people show up
Speaker 1: in Monsters for instance. Uh, you know you have you
Speaker 1: have some great authors like Dan Simons shows up tom
Speaker 1: Noonan shows up writing and directing like a couple of episodes,
Speaker 1: Tony Shalub shows up, Gina Gershaun, Steve U Simmy in
Speaker 1: an excellent pig Monster related episode that I won't spoil
Speaker 1: for anybody. Oh man, we were just talking about pig Monsters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is a great pig Monster episode. I gotta
Speaker 1: dive in. But yeah, this show is kind of a
Speaker 1: spiritual successor to Tails from the Dark Side, which one
Speaker 1: eighty eight, which I did see a lot of and
Speaker 1: was traumatized to times by as a child. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the Monsters featured many of the same people, and again
Speaker 1: an incredible opening sequence, like a lot of these anthologies
Speaker 1: shows had, in which a humorous family of monsters settled
Speaker 1: in to watch TV together, I believe, right before they
Speaker 1: start watching their show, the mother monster shows up with
Speaker 1: a dish full of something she's been cooking, and the
Speaker 1: child monster declares, candied critters, Yeah, it's it's cheesy, it's great. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then it and then you proceed into some new
Speaker 1: story that's going to center around a monster. And usually
Speaker 1: that's like really cool practical effects too. So these episodes
Speaker 1: it can be a little hokey intentionally, so at times
Speaker 1: that the music is a little weird, this kind of
Speaker 1: sense music that I even have trouble loving at times,
Speaker 1: like synthetic saxophone music. You've got a very open heart
Speaker 1: for synth. Yeah, but great cast, cool monster and Uh.
Speaker 1: The episode I'm going to talk about today is one
Speaker 1: titled Far Below. And the reason I was so excited
Speaker 1: I didn't even know they'd covered this, but Far Below
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite short stories by Robert Barbour Johnson,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen o seven through seven. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: like a Weird Tales era story that I read years
Speaker 1: and years ago, and I've just I've lived my entire
Speaker 1: life up until like this week, having no idea that
Speaker 1: anybody had ever adapted it. So so I was instantly
Speaker 1: excited and I and I said, all right, I've got
Speaker 1: to cover this. So it takes place in the deepest
Speaker 1: depths of the New York subway system, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite places anyway, and you have a you have a
Speaker 1: special segment of city services that wage an endless campaign
Speaker 1: against the ghouls that burrow up from the depths. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a haunting tale. The positions them as workers
Speaker 1: in a dark and human place against an inhuman enemy,
Speaker 1: and they all are on the risk of losing their
Speaker 1: own humanity in the process. So this season two adaptation
Speaker 1: of Far Below has a lot going for it. So
Speaker 1: not only do you have Johnson's short story as the
Speaker 1: you know, the the inspiration for it. It was adapted
Speaker 1: for the screen by Michael McDowell, the screenwriter who gave
Speaker 1: us Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and perhaps to a
Speaker 1: lesser extent, Thinner. Two out of three ain't bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus it's directed by the legendary producer Deborah Hill, whoa
Speaker 1: Deborah Hill of like John Carpenter movie fame. Yeah Yeah,
Speaker 1: longtime collab collaborator and producer of John Carpenter's films such
Speaker 1: as Halloween, Halloween to the Fog, Halloween three, Season of
Speaker 1: the Witch, Yes, Escape from New York, Escape from l A.
Speaker 1: She also produced Clue, The Dead Zone, The Fisher King,
Speaker 1: and Big Top Peeweek. So, but this was one of
Speaker 1: the only two things she ever directed. So I was instantly,
Speaker 1: you know, intrigued. And then the cast is small but
Speaker 1: pretty fun. In that veteran actor Barry Nelson places his
Speaker 1: character Dr. Vernon Rathmore Barry Nelson was he in Planet
Speaker 1: of the Vampires? Oh, he might have been. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can do a quick look up on that while I
Speaker 1: cover some of other things he was in. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he's one of these character actress that was in everything.
Speaker 1: A lot of TV work back in the day. A
Speaker 1: few classic horror anthology shows as well, like Twilight Zone,
Speaker 1: Suspense and The Alfred Hitchcock hour, but I think most
Speaker 1: people will probably remember him from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining,
Speaker 1: in which he played Ullman opposite Jack Nicholson in the
Speaker 1: job interview scene. That's correct that I was also mistaken
Speaker 1: Planet of the Vampire, says Barry Sullivan. Okay, different bar
Speaker 1: They were like there are a lot of Berriers back
Speaker 1: in the day. Um. So the adaptation itself is pretty fun.
Speaker 1: It introduces a new twist, and they opted to present
Speaker 1: the Ghoules, which are not really referred to as such
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. They present them much more like
Speaker 1: the more Locks from the nineteen sixty adaptation of HD
Speaker 1: Wells The Time Machine, which I think is a fine choice.
Speaker 1: You know, you need some sort of subterranean humanoid but
Speaker 1: in human creature. If you're not gonna go for like
Speaker 1: what I imagine is the straight up Google or perhaps
Speaker 1: sort of the dog like love crafty and goul, than
Speaker 1: I think a Morelock is a solid choice. Now, I
Speaker 1: want to know more about the the ghouls in the
Speaker 1: story in the in the segment, are I mean, are
Speaker 1: they sort of the grave flesh eating scavengers we we
Speaker 1: know of as gools? Um? Not so, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: clearly an inspiration from Pigman's model the Lovecraft story, in
Speaker 1: which ghoules are bubbling out from the like the underworld,
Speaker 1: um and uh and potentially corrupting mortal minds. Like, clearly
Speaker 1: that was part of the inspiration. That's part of the
Speaker 1: world from which the story emerges. But in in the
Speaker 1: story itself and in the adaptation, it's more like these
Speaker 1: are creatures. They are wandering up from the depths like
Speaker 1: we've It's kind of a tolken Esque idea of if
Speaker 1: we've dug too far into the earth, and now these
Speaker 1: things are coming up, and we have to stop them
Speaker 1: because they're going to continue to pick off subway workers
Speaker 1: and you know, vagrants and then eventually other people, and
Speaker 1: if we don't keep them in check, they will just
Speaker 1: overwhelm us. This is funny. I was just reading The
Speaker 1: Two Towers in the chapter where Gandalf explains what happens after,
Speaker 1: you know, after he plunged down, after the Balaragi says,
Speaker 1: they went into the depths of the earth, far below
Speaker 1: where any you know, the thing that lives above, and
Speaker 1: it is the abode of slimy things and things that
Speaker 1: cannot be named yes, and and indeed these are these
Speaker 1: are some of those nameless things. So on the subject
Speaker 1: of Google's, we of course have an entire episode in
Speaker 1: the Vault about the idea of Google's. We've talked at
Speaker 1: length as well about life underground and the effects of
Speaker 1: human life underground, and so I don't want to retread
Speaker 1: on much of that content. It's it's definitely there and
Speaker 1: we love it. And if you want more subterranean humans
Speaker 1: and Googles, go check those episodes out. But I did
Speaker 1: find a line of the inquiry on this that I
Speaker 1: think is pretty solid. So we have an underground war
Speaker 1: in a great modern metropolis against inhuman enemy that rises
Speaker 1: from the depths, and yet these more lockesque creatures are
Speaker 1: drawn up to feed on humans, the humans that have
Speaker 1: overpopulated this region. They seem to feast on vagrant and
Speaker 1: subway workers, and would feast on far more of the
Speaker 1: populace if not for the efforts of Dr Rathmore and
Speaker 1: his you know, basically, the premises auditors have come to
Speaker 1: check him out because his department is seems to be
Speaker 1: way overfunded, way were armed, and the outsiders asking why
Speaker 1: do you need all these weapons? Why do you need
Speaker 1: all this funding, and and then the story is about
Speaker 1: presenting exactly why this funding is needed. But basically, in
Speaker 1: this fight, uh, the fictional characters are far below have
Speaker 1: much in common with those who battle various organisms that
Speaker 1: we label pests in the real world. And the most
Speaker 1: obvious parallel is the rat, the true citizen of the
Speaker 1: subway tunnels exactly. I mean when you go down there
Speaker 1: to take a train, they're not in your way or
Speaker 1: you know, getting into your stuff. You're in their world.
Speaker 1: You're just a guest. Yeah. Now, to be sure, a
Speaker 1: single rat can be a problem even in a you know,
Speaker 1: a sort of a prehistoric, precity sense of human existence.
Speaker 1: And the same can be said of same mosquitoes. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they both can spread or help spread pathogens. Uh.
Speaker 1: The same can be said of something like the locust.
Speaker 1: But but all these examples of our organisms as well,
Speaker 1: that can become an even greater problem when they are
Speaker 1: imbalanced by human activity. So let's let's think about the
Speaker 1: rat as biologists Ken Appland put it quoted in the
Speaker 1: Case for Leaving City Rats Alone by Becca Cudmore for Nautilus.
Speaker 1: Rats are disruption specialists, so they thrive in disrupted ecosystems,
Speaker 1: they spill into unbalanced realms and carve out a kingdom
Speaker 1: for themselves. And he points out that the very few
Speaker 1: wild animals have done this quite as well as the
Speaker 1: rats in the human world without undergoing domestication. That's an
Speaker 1: interesting point. Yeah, so we we think about organisms that
Speaker 1: can successfully thrive at the edges of human civilization. You've
Speaker 1: you've got two main versions. You've got those that become
Speaker 1: tame and and eventually get bred by humans, like dogs
Speaker 1: or farm animals or even cats, which are a little
Speaker 1: bit wilder versions wilder but still definitely domesticated. Yeah. Then
Speaker 1: you've got the ones that are just sort of destroyed
Speaker 1: by our presence, which are i'd say maybe the majority
Speaker 1: of animals, and like when we change an ecosystem, they suffer.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, you've got this third category, the ones
Speaker 1: we think of as unwelcome survivors in our environments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you've disrupted everything. But this is an organism that
Speaker 1: thrives on disruption. They can go right in there and
Speaker 1: find a place for itself. You know, all the rat
Speaker 1: needs is a is a is a place to borrow
Speaker 1: fifty grams of calorie rich or moderately calorie rich food
Speaker 1: per day and some water to drink. Um. And they
Speaker 1: they're going to find that they're going to find an
Speaker 1: abundance of that in our environments. I mean in our garbage,
Speaker 1: in our in our you know, in our refuse, and
Speaker 1: in the in the leavings of our civilization, and for
Speaker 1: all of our domesticated minions, for all of our traps
Speaker 1: and our poisons. Rats still rule cities like New York City.
Speaker 1: In previous episodes, I think we've even talked about rats
Speaker 1: societies in New York City, And yeah, there are sort
Speaker 1: of separate subcultures of rats within the cities that that
Speaker 1: they occupy. Yes, and that's gonna that's indeed gonna become
Speaker 1: very important to or in just a minute. Okay, the
Speaker 1: rat was already perfectly evolved to do all of this. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were stealing from other organisms before us. Most likely,
Speaker 1: we just continue to offer more and more to steal,
Speaker 1: creating waste, disruption and hiding places everywhere we go. And
Speaker 1: of course we went absolutely everywhere, bringing rats in our wake.
Speaker 1: Becca Cudmore's article, however, deals mostly with the Vancouver rat Project,
Speaker 1: which points out that some experts identify the potential dangers
Speaker 1: posed by fighting back against the rat occupation too hard.
Speaker 1: And part of it comes down to this, to the
Speaker 1: disruption of these stable rat colonies. Uh, these these stable areas,
Speaker 1: these little little pocket civilizations that the rats have established
Speaker 1: in these disrupted ecosystems. These are some of the key
Speaker 1: points that have been made. First of all, drive rats
Speaker 1: out of one home or block and into another home
Speaker 1: or block, and you might be spreading rat pathogens that
Speaker 1: otherwise be quarantined within this stable group. Oh yeah. Plus,
Speaker 1: urban rats have a garbage based diet, meaning that they
Speaker 1: absorb a lot of bacteria, and this is often place
Speaker 1: specific bacteria. It's tied to the building, to the people
Speaker 1: that live in that particular building. Drive them out and
Speaker 1: you spread these particular bacteria elsewhere. You're stirring the pot, right,
Speaker 1: and then rats in one area will wage bloody war
Speaker 1: against any stranger rat that arrives. This applies to New
Speaker 1: York City as well, where I've read and I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before about how a native rat
Speaker 1: population tends to do a decent job of fighting off
Speaker 1: rat invasions that come in on ships, etcetera. Um, And
Speaker 1: so it's a perpetual turf war. But these turf wars,
Speaker 1: especially when you stir them up by fighting back against
Speaker 1: the rats too hard, potentially, uh, those turf war wars
Speaker 1: spill rat blood. They cause rats to urinate out of fear,
Speaker 1: and so what we get is a mix of rat
Speaker 1: blood and rat urine and rat gut contents real which
Speaker 1: is brew. In fact, Kaylee Buyers of the Vancouver Rat
Speaker 1: Project points out that these brawls allow bacteria to converge,
Speaker 1: to mix and potentially create new disease. It's bacteria that
Speaker 1: wouldn't otherwise interact with each other, are pooled together, swap
Speaker 1: genes and form new diseases, such as a methocillin resistant
Speaker 1: staff or m r S. A. Oh wow, I didn't
Speaker 1: even think about that as a consequence of another thing
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, of course, horizontal gene transfer between
Speaker 1: single celled organisms like bacteria. You know, if one acquires
Speaker 1: a useful adaptation and say resisting a certain antibiotic, they
Speaker 1: can share that gene for that adaptation via a sort
Speaker 1: of analogy of bacterial sex. It's not sexual reproduction, but
Speaker 1: they can take part of their genome and just put
Speaker 1: it in another bacterium. Yeah, so we have a situation
Speaker 1: where we disrupted the environment. Organism that thrives and disruption
Speaker 1: is moved in, and then if we attempt to remove
Speaker 1: that organism, we bring more this eruption into the scenario,
Speaker 1: We bring more more chaos. Uh So the idea of
Speaker 1: of fixing these probably becomes more of a hard problem
Speaker 1: of dealing with these rat infestations. Uh So. Anyway, not
Speaker 1: not to say that we shouldn't fight against rats and
Speaker 1: keep them from living too high on the hog, but
Speaker 1: we got here through disruption, so we shouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if there are consequences for disrupting it further totally. And
Speaker 1: if you're going to fight a secret war against the ghouls,
Speaker 1: well then perhaps it's worth fighting. Uh you know, at
Speaker 1: a perpetual stalemate, right White turn a cold war into
Speaker 1: a hot war, exactly. All Right, I'm gonna have more
Speaker 1: about the war against rats and potentially ghouls here in
Speaker 1: a second, but first let's talk go an ad break here.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, we're back to city rats the
Speaker 1: ghouls of the real world. Yeah, and comparing it to
Speaker 1: that episode of Monsters far Below based on a beloved
Speaker 1: ghoule short story. Uh. So here's another thing to think
Speaker 1: about here. Uh. We've talked about how rats spread with
Speaker 1: human civilization, and there's such a highly successful organism, and
Speaker 1: yet there are a few areas of the world that
Speaker 1: have remained essentially rat free, the most notable of which
Speaker 1: is the Canadian province of Alberta. Uh. It's virtually free
Speaker 1: of the Norway rat. Uh. Now, while rats do turn
Speaker 1: up from time to time, brought in through traditional means,
Speaker 1: you know, they come in, you know, on a shipment
Speaker 1: or or so forth, but the province has been very
Speaker 1: proactive in squashing these flare ups to hold onto that
Speaker 1: rat free championship that they've that they've earned. You know,
Speaker 1: I have been to Alberta. Actually, I have been to
Speaker 1: the city of Calgary and and driven around in there,
Speaker 1: and I never noticed roving teams of anti rat sorcerers,
Speaker 1: rat exorcists of any kind. And so, so what's the secret? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like everybody's next question. How did they get rat free?
Speaker 1: What they do? What can I do to get that
Speaker 1: in my city? Well, basically they were just able to
Speaker 1: heat the rats out before they moved in, which I
Speaker 1: think lines up rather nicely with the story of far
Speaker 1: below the idea of keep the ghouls from boiling up
Speaker 1: into New York City because once they're up, there's no
Speaker 1: getting rid of them. Announce of prevention is worth a
Speaker 1: pound of cure. Yeah. So basically this is how it
Speaker 1: went went down. The Norway rat arrived in North America
Speaker 1: and roughly seventeen seventy five keyports cities never had a chance.
Speaker 1: But from there they gradually spread across the continent, and
Speaker 1: that took time for certain areas. The rats didn't enter
Speaker 1: eastern Saskatchewan until the nineteen twenties, and according to Alberta's
Speaker 1: official website on their history of rat control, the rats
Speaker 1: continue to spread northwest at a rate of fifteen miles
Speaker 1: or twenty four kilometers per year. So they first reached
Speaker 1: the eastern border of Alberta in nineteen fifty and that's
Speaker 1: where they stopped them with rat control measures, keeping the
Speaker 1: province and its cities free of the furry invaders. And
Speaker 1: uh and that also includes its largest city, Calgary. Basically,
Speaker 1: they realized the threat to all levels of human activities,
Speaker 1: especially agriculture, you know, which there was a lot of,
Speaker 1: which is why the Department of Agriculture did a lot
Speaker 1: of the heavy lifting, especially early on, but legislation also
Speaker 1: mandated control of tests by quote every person and every
Speaker 1: level of government like county clerks or yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean essentially, like they basically they've spread the message
Speaker 1: to absolutely everyone, and then every municipality had to have
Speaker 1: a pest control inspector. A control zone was established. And
Speaker 1: and this is good far below hinges in part in
Speaker 1: the idea that a bureaucratic outsider, uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: most of the world has no idea about the Google threat.
Speaker 1: The whole tale is his education into the reality of
Speaker 1: the struggle against the ghouls. And Alberta's efforts actually mirrored
Speaker 1: this in some to some degree. They had to. They
Speaker 1: sought to enlist the population against the rap threat, you know,
Speaker 1: to build up, you know, the public awareness. So they
Speaker 1: had to educate the pub like about rats. Most people
Speaker 1: in Alberta had never seen a rat before. It's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine. Yeah, so Alberta's so Alberta agriculture educators traveled
Speaker 1: around with preserved rats specimens to inform the public. There's
Speaker 1: a fabulous photocolored photographs that the Alberta's website includes of
Speaker 1: these educators on a farm in Alberta with a bunch
Speaker 1: of preserved rats, not in a container, just laid out
Speaker 1: on the grass. There's a child holding one up by
Speaker 1: the tail, and they're just saying, like, these are rats.
Speaker 1: This is why you need to be vigilant about. This
Speaker 1: is what you need to look out for. It's like
Speaker 1: teaching New Zealanders about squirrels. Yeah, I guess so, um,
Speaker 1: and I mean, what better way than the physical thing itself.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, there were conferences, there were posters,
Speaker 1: there were pamphlets, you know, some of these like straight
Speaker 1: up propaganda posters about the terror of the rat. They
Speaker 1: advocated the use of poisons to fight back, though they
Speaker 1: also had to bring in outside experts to help them,
Speaker 1: because again, most Alberta residents had no experience with cats,
Speaker 1: and that includes experience fighting them. Uh So they were
Speaker 1: able to battle the rat infestations along the eastern border
Speaker 1: and keep them mostly within ten to twenty kilometers of
Speaker 1: the border, and the program continues today in an altered
Speaker 1: but still effective form. It's actually illegal to own a
Speaker 1: pet rat in the province. You've got to be a zoo,
Speaker 1: a university, or a recognized research institution. Uh there's also
Speaker 1: a rat hotline where you report rat and flare ups
Speaker 1: in case, you know they when they do occur. But
Speaker 1: one of the problems is that, again most Alberta residents
Speaker 1: don't have a good eye for rats. Hello, and extremely
Speaker 1: tiny dog just ran across my kitchen floor. Well, what
Speaker 1: happens if they end up reporting muskrats, gophers, ground squirrels
Speaker 1: and other similar organisms and then you know, the rat
Speaker 1: police come out to check and they're like, oh, those
Speaker 1: are not rats, those are muskrats. Uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: can't really do anything about that. Uh. By the way,
Speaker 1: to come back to monsters, the anthology series If if
Speaker 1: you're wondering if there is an episod out of monsters
Speaker 1: that expressly concerns rats, there is. There's one called Stressed Environment,
Speaker 1: in which a female scientist who spent twelve years raising
Speaker 1: rats in a stressed environment, uh, you know, in the
Speaker 1: hopes of evolving their intelligence, faces to the terrifying results
Speaker 1: of your experiment. It stars Carol Linley, and it has
Speaker 1: stop motion rats that end up using spears against their
Speaker 1: human captors. Smart rats. Indeed, so this whole thing from
Speaker 1: far below about this team of bureaucratic professionals who work
Speaker 1: for the city who have to go underground to fight
Speaker 1: the uh, the menace coming up from below. Of course,
Speaker 1: in the story it's ghouls. You've got the analogy to rats,
Speaker 1: but I can't help but think of the fat bergs.
Speaker 1: The people up above are completely oblivious to the fact
Speaker 1: that there are workers down beneath the streets, in the tunnels,
Speaker 1: in the darkness, waging battle against a monster that lives
Speaker 1: down there. And of course the agglomerations of fats, oils,
Speaker 1: grease and wet wipes and various fibrous substances that clagge
Speaker 1: kilometers of sewers, especially in places like England and or
Speaker 1: I guess the UK more broadly, but also in US cities.
Speaker 1: It seems like another perfect analogy for the wars being
Speaker 1: waged on our behalf below our feet that we don't
Speaker 1: even think about. Yeah, you create this vast, unnatural underworld,
Speaker 1: and it's going to it it's gonna end up potentially
Speaker 1: being populated by by opportunistic organisms or you know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be situations where things like fat burgs emerge and
Speaker 1: you need people to go wage war against them. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about fat Birgs. We have
Speaker 1: a whole episode about them from earlier this year that
Speaker 1: you can check out. So that was Monsters. Sub Monsters
Speaker 1: I think falls more in the you know, the category
Speaker 1: of fun but often kind of a little bit cheesy
Speaker 1: when it comes to horror anthology shows. But again, some
Speaker 1: of the like one of the big names, one of
Speaker 1: them the classier names in horror anthology is of course
Speaker 1: the classic Twilight Zone, right uh. And so there there's
Speaker 1: so many great episodes of the Twilight Zone that really
Speaker 1: do pose interesting questions that still remain interesting today. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are some that also have kind of hokey premises
Speaker 1: that don't hold up. But I want to talk about
Speaker 1: one that I really think does hold up and is
Speaker 1: still more and more mind blowing the more you think
Speaker 1: about it, and yet at the same time has an
Speaker 1: incredibly simple premise. I feel like this is a great
Speaker 1: example of a story premise getting a lot of bang
Speaker 1: for its buck. And so this is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite episodes of the Twilight Zone. Originally aired in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, and it's called shadow Play. So in the
Speaker 1: beginning of this episode of The Twilight Zone, a man
Speaker 1: named Adam Grant is awaiting the verdict. After being put
Speaker 1: on trial for murder, the juror's return from deliberation and
Speaker 1: they proclaim him guilty, and then the judge sentences him
Speaker 1: to death by the electric chair. But as he's being sentenced,
Speaker 1: Grant begins to laugh hysterically, and in a fit of
Speaker 1: rage and frustration, he runs around the courtroom yelling at people,
Speaker 1: not again. You can't do it to me again. You'll
Speaker 1: all die. Uh So in his jail cell, Grant starts
Speaker 1: talking with his roommates about how this has all happened
Speaker 1: to him before the trial, the sentencing, the imprisonment, and
Speaker 1: the execution have all happened to him a thousand times,
Speaker 1: but not as reality, always as a nightmare. Grant says,
Speaker 1: he's in a dream right now, and at the moment
Speaker 1: of his electrocution, he's going to wake up screaming back
Speaker 1: in reality. And because it's always been a dream in
Speaker 1: the past, this time it must be a dream too.
Speaker 1: So he tells everybody he can, don't let them send
Speaker 1: me to the chair, because when I die, I'll wake up,
Speaker 1: and when I wake up, you'll all die because I'll
Speaker 1: stop dreaming you. Then there's this newspaper reporter who was
Speaker 1: present at Grant's trial, and he starts to become a
Speaker 1: little worried that he is, in fact, maybe only being
Speaker 1: dreamed by Grant, and if Grant wakes up, he and
Speaker 1: everybody else in the world will see to exist. So
Speaker 1: he gets drunk and he goes to the house of
Speaker 1: his friend, who's the district attorney who was in the
Speaker 1: courtroom also who presented the case against Grant, and the
Speaker 1: newspaper reporter begins to beg the district attorney to stay
Speaker 1: the execution, and the d A of course, thinks this
Speaker 1: is preposterous, obviously, but the more his friend talks to
Speaker 1: him about it, the more doubts begin to creep in,
Speaker 1: however much he tries to resist them. Doesn't the world
Speaker 1: ever feel just not quite real? Isn't it sometimes just
Speaker 1: too perfect or just too full of too many coincidences?
Speaker 1: I think most people can actually identify with having this
Speaker 1: feeling every now and then about their own lives. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean especially we've talked before about some about coincidence,
Speaker 1: you know, and how we would do a whole episode
Speaker 1: to it, I believe, and and how we can over
Speaker 1: interpret that or at least that there's some vast conspiracy
Speaker 1: of foot well. I mean, this is what led like
Speaker 1: Carl Young to believe in this concept of synchronicity, that
Speaker 1: there could be that there was a connecting inciple in
Speaker 1: reality that was not based on physical causation but was
Speaker 1: based on like, based on meaning. Essentially, that events could
Speaker 1: be not caused by one another, but connected to one
Speaker 1: another through meaning. And this is why we have this
Speaker 1: feeling that there are too many coincidences in our lives now.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so after this moment, the District Attorney agrees
Speaker 1: to go speak to Grant in the prison before the
Speaker 1: execution takes place. Grant expects him before he arrives, and
Speaker 1: the d A tries to interrogate Grant on his theory.
Speaker 1: He tries to convince him that it couldn't be true.
Speaker 1: It's not possible that you are dreaming all this and
Speaker 1: we're just in your dream. The d A says, like,
Speaker 1: what you mean to tell me that my family, my friends,
Speaker 1: everybody in this city, in this state, everybody in the
Speaker 1: world is just living inside your dream. And Grant says,
Speaker 1: a dream builds its own world, and the d A asks, well,
Speaker 1: how can I be a part of your dream if
Speaker 1: I sleep and dream myself every night. And then Grant says,
Speaker 1: in this great line, you only sleep and dream because
Speaker 1: I dream you that way. So Grant is then headed
Speaker 1: to the electric chair at midnight, and the d A
Speaker 1: is faced with this choice. Should he call the governor
Speaker 1: to get a stay of execution? But that would be ridiculous,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it? But he has doubts. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: spoil the ending beyond that, but I will say my
Speaker 1: favorite part of this episode, aside from the great performance
Speaker 1: by Dennis Weaver as Adam Grant, is is in the
Speaker 1: middle part of the episode. It's the part where the
Speaker 1: doubts begin to set in for the reporter and the
Speaker 1: d A and the other prisoners on Grant's row. I
Speaker 1: feel like this story at once raises several of the deepest,
Speaker 1: most challenging questions at the core of metaphysics, psychology, and
Speaker 1: the philosophy of mind, questions like how do you know
Speaker 1: for sure that other people in the outside world are real?
Speaker 1: And how do you know your current experience is real
Speaker 1: as opposed to a dream? How do you know you're
Speaker 1: not dreaming right now? And then I think that the
Speaker 1: most mind blowing question from it, of course, is that
Speaker 1: if you're one of these other people in the story,
Speaker 1: like the d a or the reporter, how do you
Speaker 1: know that you're real? Could you, in fact be an
Speaker 1: imaginary person in somebody else's dream. And of course, with
Speaker 1: that last question, you may think the answer is just
Speaker 1: obviously self evidently no. I think it's probably no, but
Speaker 1: it might not be as cut and dry as we
Speaker 1: might hope. I want to come back to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Yeah, I watched this episode this morning, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really good. It's it's one of the again,
Speaker 1: a lot of these Twilight Zone episodes, they hold up
Speaker 1: so well, the shot and like stunning black and white. Uh.
Speaker 1: These you know, I guess at times the acting might
Speaker 1: feel a little dated to what you might have today,
Speaker 1: but it's it's all really solid. Also, this episode was
Speaker 1: adapted in the revival of The Twilight Zone, starring Peter
Speaker 1: Coyote Uh in The Elite. Yeah, I haven't either, but
Speaker 1: but I looked it up and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's Peter Cody. And then of course this episode was
Speaker 1: written by Charles Beaumont, who is one of like the
Speaker 1: legendary names of the Twilight Zone. You have a number
Speaker 1: of killer episodes. Yeah, it's really really good. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a really tight, well told story. Um, and I highly recommended,
Speaker 1: And in fact, I was just I was watching it
Speaker 1: on Netflix. So the Twilight Zones all on Netflix right now,
Speaker 1: so you can go look it up if you've got
Speaker 1: a subscription, and it's also on Hulu, I believe, if
Speaker 1: anyone wishes to watch them there. But there's tons of
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone awaiting you. I always forget just how many
Speaker 1: episodes of the show they did. I think there's like
Speaker 1: thirty six episodes in the first season, and not all
Speaker 1: of them are great, but a striking number of them
Speaker 1: are great. Yeah. Yeah, Well, maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, we can address
Speaker 1: these questions about dreams and being all right, we awaken
Speaker 1: you from the dream of advertising and back into the
Speaker 1: reality of our episode. All right, So I think we
Speaker 1: should deal with some of the questions I was just
Speaker 1: posing that are raised by this episode of The Twilight Zone. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the first one I think would be the most
Speaker 1: basic question, how do you know that you're entire life
Speaker 1: hasn't been a dream? How do you know that the
Speaker 1: people you interact with aren't just figments of your imagination.
Speaker 1: I think we all assume that other people are real
Speaker 1: and independent, or at least you probably should assume that
Speaker 1: the outside world really exists, will it will continue after
Speaker 1: I die and so forth. But it's harder than you
Speaker 1: might expect to prove this with certainty. Uh though, I
Speaker 1: think almost nobody actually holds this view. If you actually
Speaker 1: were to believe that your mind is the only thing
Speaker 1: that exists, and the rest of the outside world and
Speaker 1: all the people of it, they're just merely products of
Speaker 1: your imagination or your dream or whatever, this is known
Speaker 1: as sollipsism, and to be more specific, I think it
Speaker 1: would be metaphysical solipsism, metaphysical meaning this is how the
Speaker 1: world is, as opposed to something like methodological solipsism, which
Speaker 1: you might say is one of the tools of Saint Descartes,
Speaker 1: who I'll talk about in a minute, which would just
Speaker 1: mean like solipsism might be a useful philosophical tool for
Speaker 1: a moment. And by the way, listeners who are fans
Speaker 1: of the excellence sitcom The Good Play will recognize this
Speaker 1: is one of the philosophies that is currently being explored
Speaker 1: in season three. Oh yeah, yeah, I haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker 1: I think I only did season one. Does it stay good?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it it just gets better. They do a
Speaker 1: really good job of mixing it up and defying expectations. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do want to stress I think solipsis um
Speaker 1: is one of those points of view that especially can
Speaker 1: be frustrating to normal people because you can point out
Speaker 1: that it's really hard to disprove, and that can create
Speaker 1: the false impression that, like, some philosophers actually believe this.
Speaker 1: I don't think any philosophers actually believe in solipsism, but
Speaker 1: it's one of those weird edge cases, right that everybody
Speaker 1: just sort of accepts that you have to leap over
Speaker 1: it with an axiomatic assumption. I can't prove it. I'll
Speaker 1: just assume the outside world is real and other people
Speaker 1: are conscious, right, because if you give you if you
Speaker 1: were to believe this, like things get pointless or silly
Speaker 1: or dangerous really quickly. Right. Yeah, of course, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not a disprove But there's a funny implication of
Speaker 1: instability that follows from the assumption of metaphysical solipsis um. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it would go like this, if you're actually a
Speaker 1: metaphysical solipsist. You believe nothing that you experience as real.
Speaker 1: None of the other people actually exist, Uh, they're just
Speaker 1: figments of your imagination or something like that. What would
Speaker 1: be the point of telling anybody about it? Just like
Speaker 1: for your own amusement? Like would any of the imaginary
Speaker 1: people you interact with benefit from you explaining why you
Speaker 1: think that solipsism is true? Now for me, I guess
Speaker 1: the two reasons to tell people come to mind, though,
Speaker 1: though neither is really grounded in the reality of living
Speaker 1: within a dream. On one hand, you know, what better
Speaker 1: way to dismiss the stressors in your life than to
Speaker 1: tell them they're but figments of your imagination, right to
Speaker 1: go to full Scrooge on them. But you'd also have
Speaker 1: to tell that to all the people you like and love,
Speaker 1: and and that though is actually more attractive than one
Speaker 1: might think. I mean, this is essentially an exercise of detachment.
Speaker 1: Buddhist and Hindu teaching speak to the importance of freeing
Speaker 1: ourselves from the chains attachment. Both chains of iron, you know,
Speaker 1: chains to two things that are less desirable, but also
Speaker 1: chains of gold. Uh, change to the things in life
Speaker 1: that we love or or or give us, you know,
Speaker 1: stability and peace. We have to free ourselves from our
Speaker 1: hates and our loves and connect with the true underlying
Speaker 1: reality of Brahmin and uh and and so you know,
Speaker 1: that feels a little on par with what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. So I think some of the incarnations of
Speaker 1: this philosophy has realized in like Hinduism. I think especially
Speaker 1: I recall them being even more radical than sollipsism, actually
Speaker 1: and saying not only is the not only is all
Speaker 1: of the sense data of the outside world potentially an illusion,
Speaker 1: but also the self is potentially an illusion. So it's
Speaker 1: not it's not that I am the only thing that exists,
Speaker 1: but maybe even I don't exist. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: we're going to get into even more of this continue.
Speaker 1: But then again, since almost nobody who thinks about it
Speaker 1: seriously is tempted to believe in sollipsism, I think we
Speaker 1: can just like use the axiomatic pole vault and jump
Speaker 1: over the question. Yeah, I mean, I guess we don't
Speaker 1: even really follow into full blown solop sisum via social media,
Speaker 1: in which we all have, like you know, we have
Speaker 1: a carefully maintained version of ourselves, an unreal version of
Speaker 1: ourselves that interacts with unreal versions of other people, like
Speaker 1: it's just a bunch of masks, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think if anything we're going to lead us to
Speaker 1: like this full blown solipsism, it would be that. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's there are plenty of ways the word
Speaker 1: salop sisum is used that aren't exactly the same. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think one thing you're getting on there is like
Speaker 1: people often do behave very solipsistic lee on on social media.
Speaker 1: But that's more in the sense of not necessarily not
Speaker 1: believing that other minds exist or that the outside worlds exists,
Speaker 1: but just acting as if you only care about yourselves. True. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's beyond that. It's not just I'm the
Speaker 1: only one that matters, or that everybody is that everybody
Speaker 1: else only matters insofar as their attention to me. It's
Speaker 1: that they are not real. They are all figments of
Speaker 1: my mind. They are all but a dream. All right.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna jump over this question. If somebody actually
Speaker 1: holds metaphysical solipsism, I can't disprove them. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: push them in a ditch. Um, So we go onto
Speaker 1: the next thing. Which is maybe a more vexing problem,
Speaker 1: which is the problem with Cartesian skepticism. How do you
Speaker 1: know that your experience right now, in this very moment
Speaker 1: is real and not a dream? In shadow Play, Grant
Speaker 1: repeatedly explores this question. He's looking for clues in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, trying to notice details about his environment that
Speaker 1: would tell him he's in a dream. He'll point out, Hey,
Speaker 1: this thing doesn't make sense. That must mean I'm in
Speaker 1: a dream. They wouldn't put that right there. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: let you have this in there. They wouldn't you know,
Speaker 1: this wouldn't be scheduled in this way. Why am I?
Speaker 1: Why am I getting executed the same day I got sentence?
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense. I must be in a dream.
Speaker 1: Why are steaks being cooked in the oven? That sort
Speaker 1: of thing. That's a good one. No, I think that's
Speaker 1: just the nine But yeah, nineteen fifties culinary culture in America,
Speaker 1: it might be a largely bad dream. Uh so uh.
Speaker 1: The seventeenth century French philosopher, scientists mathematician Renee des Card,
Speaker 1: of course, was famously concerned with this question in a
Speaker 1: lot of his philosophical works, such as his meditations on
Speaker 1: first philosophy, uh, having doubts about philosophy that gave primacy
Speaker 1: to the evidence of our senses. So like, if I
Speaker 1: assume is a starting point that I'm sitting in a
Speaker 1: chair in a studio talking into a microphone, I could
Speaker 1: turn out to be completely wrong, because I already know.
Speaker 1: There have been thousands of times in my life when
Speaker 1: I was a hundred percent convinced that I was really
Speaker 1: physically in my elementary school lunchline next to Foghorn Leghorn,
Speaker 1: or on a boat headed to Greenland wearing a I
Speaker 1: don't know, a Superman cape or something, only to wake
Speaker 1: up and realize that I was actually asleep in my
Speaker 1: bed dreaming. And I was totally convinced in the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, it's it's it's west version of us
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, Like we there are things that
Speaker 1: we're not picking up on that we would otherwise pick
Speaker 1: up on a lot of the times, but within the
Speaker 1: context of the dream, we buy it as our reality. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things. So you say that, and
Speaker 1: I agree with you. There is a textural difference to dreams. Dreams,
Speaker 1: you know, are waking reality. Doesn't feel like a dream, right.
Speaker 1: Dreams are hazy and ethereal and and absurd in ways
Speaker 1: that we don't notice in the moment. And my surroundings
Speaker 1: right now feel very lucid and solid, right, And it
Speaker 1: feels like there's a qualitative difference, right, of course, until
Speaker 1: we start really looking at how we observe the world
Speaker 1: right exactly, Yes, there does seem to be a qualitative difference,
Speaker 1: But maybe dreams only seem hazy and ethereal in comparison
Speaker 1: in retrospect, because in the moment, doesn't a dream often
Speaker 1: feel exactly as solid and lucid as real life. I've
Speaker 1: actually had a number of dreams I recall that almost
Speaker 1: became a lucid dream, and the sequence goes pretty much
Speaker 1: like this. Every time in the dream, I think, wait
Speaker 1: a second, I'm dreaming, aren't I? And then I look
Speaker 1: around and I test my surroundings. Doesn't this seem like
Speaker 1: a dream? Doesn't anything seem out of place? Can I
Speaker 1: fly that kind of thing? And whenever this happens, I conclude,
Speaker 1: oh no, everything around me is normal. I can't fly
Speaker 1: totally real and lucid. This must be real and not
Speaker 1: a dream. I don't know if you've ever had this experience,
Speaker 1: mine is similar. But what happens with me is I'll
Speaker 1: realize it's a dream, and I'll be like this annoying,
Speaker 1: And generally it's an annoying dream. It's something that's it's
Speaker 1: not a full blown nightmare, but it's like it's annoying.
Speaker 1: I realize it's a dream, and then I just fall
Speaker 1: back into it anyway, like like as if it's just
Speaker 1: I don't know that, and that in itself is frustrating.
Speaker 1: It's like, I I woke from the dream, I could
Speaker 1: have why didn't I go lucid at that point? Now?
Speaker 1: Instead I just kind of shrugged and went right back
Speaker 1: into the same old crap. Well, this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that the studies of dreams have found is
Speaker 1: that our critical reasoning abilities are extremely limited in dreams.
Speaker 1: Dreams suppress certain kinds of brain function, especially the types
Speaker 1: of brain function that cause us to question our surroundings
Speaker 1: and think critically about sense data, which of course inherently
Speaker 1: makes us very prone to thinking dreams are reality even
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, it's hard to know how
Speaker 1: real they really seem in the moment, except for the
Speaker 1: fact that we feel like they're real right, like well,
Speaker 1: like one bit of sort of folk wisdom is often
Speaker 1: thrown around. It's like, oh, well, letters are backwards and
Speaker 1: dreams you can't read text in dreams or you know,
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't think that's true. I don't
Speaker 1: think so either. But I have had situations where I've
Speaker 1: been reading something in a dream and it's difficult. But
Speaker 1: my experience and then that is like, this is difficult
Speaker 1: to read. I must be dreaming. It's more, this is
Speaker 1: difficult to read. What's wrong? You know? I don't think
Speaker 1: about it about the dream answer being the solution, right.
Speaker 1: And so this whole dream problem is one way of
Speaker 1: getting to the position sometimes known as Cartesian skepticism, named
Speaker 1: after Descartes, and also affecting our our mail about Carnie Uh.
Speaker 1: Since dreams and also hallucinations such as the kind generated
Speaker 1: by a this figure, Decard imagines this evil demon who
Speaker 1: wants to deceive him with false visions of the world.
Speaker 1: Since they demonstrate that it's possible for us to be
Speaker 1: totally convinced of perceptions about the outside world while also
Speaker 1: being ad percent wrong. Descartes thinks, you know, we should
Speaker 1: doubt all of our perceptions unless we justify them in
Speaker 1: a logically airtight way, And of course, descartes ultimate justification
Speaker 1: for the evidence of his of his senses, invokes a
Speaker 1: benevolent God who wouldn't trick him. But is there any
Speaker 1: non theological way to get around this? And he tells
Speaker 1: or tests to separate dreaming life from waking life. There
Speaker 1: have been philosophers who have looked into this and tried
Speaker 1: to come up with here's how you tell the difference.
Speaker 1: The English philosopher John Locke thought he had one. He
Speaker 1: had one that was pain. Right. Blocke said, you can't
Speaker 1: feel pain in a dream like you can in waking life,
Speaker 1: and that's your easy way to tell the difference. Right.
Speaker 1: So maybe if you think you're in a dream, I
Speaker 1: don't know, poke your finger with a needle and see
Speaker 1: if it actually hurts, and if it does, you're awake,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, you're in a dream. But twentieth
Speaker 1: century psychology research has found this is not true. This
Speaker 1: is this before we get the whole pinch me situation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think it may very well be. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, pinch me.
Speaker 1: See if I'm dreaming. I think this would not actually
Speaker 1: due to the research though. I think this would not
Speaker 1: actually be a full proof test, because people do, in
Speaker 1: fact sometimes report the impression that they have felt pain
Speaker 1: in dreams. Just one example is a nine study in
Speaker 1: the journal Sleep by Nielsen at all uh and to
Speaker 1: read a couple of quotes from them, uh quote. Some
Speaker 1: studies indicate that pain is rare and it may be
Speaker 1: beyond the representational capability of dreaming. However, the present study
Speaker 1: describes experiences of dreamed pain that were reported incidentally in
Speaker 1: experiments on the effects of somato since restimulation administered during
Speaker 1: rapid eye movement sleep. The results indicate that although pain
Speaker 1: is rare in dreams, it is nevertheless compatible with the
Speaker 1: representational code of dreaming advantage Freddy Krueger, Right. And this
Speaker 1: actually comes out comes through in shadow play. Right. There's
Speaker 1: a part where uh, where Grant talks about going to
Speaker 1: the electric chair and how he doesn't want to be
Speaker 1: sent there to die again, and somebody's arguing with them.
Speaker 1: They say, if you're just dreaming, you won't feel it,
Speaker 1: but he says, no, Wait, I mean when you dream
Speaker 1: something bad, doesn't it doesn't it terrify you. Doesn't it
Speaker 1: hurt when it happens in the dream? Yeah? I mean
Speaker 1: I'm struggling to think of examples from my own remembered
Speaker 1: dreams in which I experienced physical pain, But but yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds completely possible. I'd be interested to hear from
Speaker 1: any listeners who have had dreams in which they have
Speaker 1: felt pain. Yeah. They also acknowledged that it might not
Speaker 1: be very common, but it does appear to happen. So
Speaker 1: I think it looks like the scientific research disproved lock here. Now,
Speaker 1: there was another test I came across, and it was
Speaker 1: that the American philosop of for Norman Malcolm wrote a
Speaker 1: couple of influential works about dreaming in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: in which he argued that dreams could be put to
Speaker 1: the test of quote a principle of coherence. So the ideas,
Speaker 1: do the events of your present circumstances connect logically with
Speaker 1: the preceding events and the rest of your life? So
Speaker 1: if you are currently having a sword fight with Christoph Lambert,
Speaker 1: why are you having that sword fight? How did you
Speaker 1: get there? Does the sequence of events make sense to you? Uh?
Speaker 1: And this is kind of similar to the test used
Speaker 1: in the movie Inception, when you ask how did I
Speaker 1: get here? Right, the characters do that there to see
Speaker 1: if they're dreaming. If you find you can't recall how
Speaker 1: you got where you are, this allows you to realize
Speaker 1: that the present moment does not connect coherently with the
Speaker 1: rest of your past, and thus you're probably dreaming. But
Speaker 1: then again, I'm not sure this is a full proof test.
Speaker 1: It might be a sort of helpful test, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't get you to the right answer all the time.
Speaker 1: We know that the dreaming mind state, again, as we
Speaker 1: were saying earlier, greatly reduces critical reasoning capacity is and
Speaker 1: it often seems to short circuit logical inquiries with false answers. Right,
Speaker 1: So you might ask a question that would be a
Speaker 1: good question if you could really think it through to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of whether you're dreaming or not.
Speaker 1: But in your dreaming state, you don't think it through
Speaker 1: very well, right, You don't have full control of your
Speaker 1: critical thinking. So that's a self reflective question like that
Speaker 1: might not be helpful. Right, So, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, no one has introduced an airtight test to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between a dream and reality. Waking life
Speaker 1: of course seems real enough. It doesn't feel the way
Speaker 1: dreams feel in retrospect and our memories of them, but
Speaker 1: that still doesn't help us achieve certainty in the moment.
Speaker 1: And then this year gets us to one final thing,
Speaker 1: which I think is the weirdest place we might go
Speaker 1: about dreams. This is the crazy part of shadow play.
Speaker 1: Grant tells people around him that if he's sent to
Speaker 1: the electric chair, he's going to wake up from his nightmare,
Speaker 1: and if he wakes up, everybody in the world will die,
Speaker 1: because this entire world is nothing more than his dream.
Speaker 1: And this is my favorite part of the episode. So
Speaker 1: on one hand, you might think, well, what would it matter.
Speaker 1: You know the people that you imagine in your dream
Speaker 1: are not conscious. Of course, there are many different ways
Speaker 1: to fear death, but one common neurosis here is the
Speaker 1: anxiety of being snuffed out right, of no longer existing,
Speaker 1: of their being a permanent end your conscious experience. And
Speaker 1: if the people in Grants dream are not conscious, there's
Speaker 1: nothing for them to be afraid of, no experience to
Speaker 1: exist in the first place, and thus nothing to come
Speaker 1: to an end. But in the story they do seem afraid.
Speaker 1: The ones who start to doubt their reality. They don't
Speaker 1: want to be snuffed out. And this story seems to
Speaker 1: imply that they actually do have minds that they want
Speaker 1: to live on. They don't want to be blinked out
Speaker 1: of existence by alterations in Grant's brain activity. And this
Speaker 1: is also the only part of the story that's actually fantastical,
Speaker 1: because otherwise the story isn't even fantasy or science fiction, Like,
Speaker 1: it's just perfectly plausible, right that a man has the
Speaker 1: same night or over and over. Uh. And I want
Speaker 1: to take this idea seriously for just a moment, could
Speaker 1: you the conscious entity with a mind, the person you
Speaker 1: are now actually be a person in someone else's dream
Speaker 1: to spare some similarities to the simulation argument that we've
Speaker 1: discussed on the show in the past. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea that that the reality we're experiencing now is a
Speaker 1: simulation created by a far future society that's currently just
Speaker 1: really excited about the idea of the right um that
Speaker 1: we really want to simulate nineteen again. Oh thank god
Speaker 1: for that. Well, look at I mean, look at our
Speaker 1: cycles of nostalgia, right, I mean, look at some of
Speaker 1: our video games simulated worlds that we get into going
Speaker 1: back to you know, like an Old West setting or
Speaker 1: a hard boiled detective world or the nineteen eighties, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not impossible. But but just as Grant
Speaker 1: argues that the perfection of one's life is an argument
Speaker 1: for simulation, like this is too perfect, it's it's too
Speaker 1: you know, there's something wrong here. I believe there was
Speaker 1: a character in one of I. N. N. Banks culture
Speaker 1: novels who observed that the world is just too full
Speaker 1: of viciousness to be a simulation. That this must be
Speaker 1: the base reality, because who would dream it up otherwise. Now,
Speaker 1: I suppose that's kind of interesting, uh, to to think though,
Speaker 1: that these are the thoughts attributed to a character within
Speaker 1: a fictional sci fi novel. But still I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting point. Right. But then again, like what kind
Speaker 1: of frame of reference do we have if we have
Speaker 1: no memory or no understanding of the world outside of
Speaker 1: the simulation? Right? But I mean thinking about one way
Speaker 1: to think about the idea of being a simulation in
Speaker 1: a computer program is that you are being dreamed by
Speaker 1: the computer. Uh. Now, one hurdle to the simulation argument
Speaker 1: has always been is it possible for a computer to
Speaker 1: generate and host conscious minds. We don't know. It's impossible.
Speaker 1: It's often assumed to be possible, but we just don't
Speaker 1: really know. The only thing we can be relative of
Speaker 1: least certain works to generate and host consciousness is a brain.
Speaker 1: We know for sure they can do that, because your
Speaker 1: brain is doing it right now, right. But here's where,
Speaker 1: in some respects, the possibility of living in someone else's
Speaker 1: stream becomes more plausible, maybe than living in a computer simulation.
Speaker 1: We know a brain can generate at least one conscious mind.
Speaker 1: Who says it can't generate more than one. There have
Speaker 1: been a number of experiments in fact and observations and
Speaker 1: neuroscience too, especially throughout the twentieth century, that have led
Speaker 1: some experts to believe it might be possible to have
Speaker 1: at least two distinct conscious minds occupying the same brain.
Speaker 1: One big example, of of course, is something we've covered
Speaker 1: on the show in the past. We did I think
Speaker 1: a two part episode about it that you can look up,
Speaker 1: and it's the split brain experiments. These were the originally
Speaker 1: experiments done by Roger's Ferry and Michael Gazaniga in the
Speaker 1: middle of the twentieth century, and they dealt with epilepsy
Speaker 1: patients of people who suffered really intense seizures and no
Speaker 1: other treatment worked, and so the treatment that they eventually
Speaker 1: went in for was known as a total corpus callistotomy,
Speaker 1: a severing of the corpus colossum, which is a bundle
Speaker 1: of nerve fiber that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
Speaker 1: And the procedure apparently worked pretty well. When you sever
Speaker 1: that the corpus colosum, it does help to stave off
Speaker 1: these these horrible seizures. But there were a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting side effects that made the people who underwent this
Speaker 1: procedure very valuable to neuroscience research. For example, to give
Speaker 1: a very short version, you could show in some experiments
Speaker 1: that the part of the brain that talks, which appears
Speaker 1: to be primarily in most people, the left hemisphere of
Speaker 1: the brain, which is capable of speech, could not explain
Speaker 1: what the right hemisphere was doing. And so if you
Speaker 1: show an image to only the part of the visual
Speaker 1: field that can next to the right hemisphere of the
Speaker 1: brain and controls only one of the hands, the hand
Speaker 1: controlled mostly by that hemisphere of the brain could do
Speaker 1: things like select an object that was associated with the
Speaker 1: image displayed in that part of the visual field. But
Speaker 1: then the person talking against speech is thought to be
Speaker 1: mostly generated by the left hemisphere, couldn't explain in a
Speaker 1: logical way why that object was chosen, and that in
Speaker 1: many experiments like it led some researchers to an obvious question.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that both hemispheres in split brain patients
Speaker 1: are conscious but separately conscious within the same skull In
Speaker 1: some sense, could there be two conscious minds within one brain? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the This is a total like real
Speaker 1: life Twilight Zone scenario we've we've thought about before on
Speaker 1: the show, Like maybe by virtue of once being one,
Speaker 1: like there's still like each one still thinks they are
Speaker 1: the one, but they are too. Yeah. Well, and another
Speaker 1: thing that would be very creepy is, again because of
Speaker 1: the localization of speech function in the brain, maybe only
Speaker 1: one of these can really talk to the outside world
Speaker 1: and the other one just can't really. It can still
Speaker 1: act with the body, but it can't generate complex sentences
Speaker 1: or anything, which would be an obvious asymmetry in which
Speaker 1: one of the conscious minds within the brain gets represented
Speaker 1: to the outside world. One of them has no mouth
Speaker 1: and cannot scream now. I definitely want to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: I think our picture of this has been somewhat complicated
Speaker 1: by more recent research. I think we do talk about
Speaker 1: the center split brain episodes if you want to go
Speaker 1: revisit those and and see more detail. But our picture
Speaker 1: on how information might or might not be shared between
Speaker 1: brain brain hemispheres, even in the cases of a full
Speaker 1: corpus calisotomy, seems to have been complicated by recent studies.
Speaker 1: I remember there was one we talked about by researcher
Speaker 1: named I think a Ya or Pinto who uh did
Speaker 1: research undercutting the idea that there could be two conscious
Speaker 1: minds within the same brain. Um. I feel like this
Speaker 1: is an issue that that's not fully settled and is
Speaker 1: still full of like weird mysteries that we don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on. Another example from neuroscience case history
Speaker 1: that has been taken as possible evidence that there could
Speaker 1: be multiple conscious minds within the same brain, as the
Speaker 1: the idea of alien hand syndrome, where you know, hands
Speaker 1: may interfere with one another's behaviors as if they're guided
Speaker 1: by different wills. So one hand tries to button up
Speaker 1: a shirt, the other hand, tries to unbutton the shirt. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to stress that there is by no means
Speaker 1: proof or even necessarily strong evidence that there are multiple
Speaker 1: consciousness is within the same brain, because again, you can't
Speaker 1: know for sure that there's consciousness anywhere unless somebody tells
Speaker 1: you that they have consciousness. Right, I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: inherent problem leading back to the solve sism issue to
Speaker 1: begin with. Right. But but again I also have to
Speaker 1: to throw in, you know, we we have to be
Speaker 1: careful about the idea of thinking about like the unity
Speaker 1: of self for the yes, yes, yes, is it? Is it?
Speaker 1: I think the more you look at it, this idea
Speaker 1: that there is one central unchanging you in there is
Speaker 1: a fallacy and one that we we still have a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble with when it seems like the more
Speaker 1: reasonable explanation is that first of all, you're an entity
Speaker 1: of perfessional change, but also there is kind of a
Speaker 1: chorus of of of of yourself in there. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: one interpretation that that brings together a lot of the
Speaker 1: sceneroscience is the interpreter theory and interpretation is the interpreter theory.
Speaker 1: The interpreter theory of Michael Kazaniga, one of the researchers
Speaker 1: involved in in the split brain experiments, where he's got
Speaker 1: this idea that there's sort of a region of your
Speaker 1: brain that's associated with the speech production parts of your
Speaker 1: brain that is there to unify brain phenomena you know,
Speaker 1: that are disparate in the beginning, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: its job is to tell one unified, coherent story to
Speaker 1: you about what's happening throughout your brain. So it takes
Speaker 1: all these disparate plot threads and says, here's how I'll
Speaker 1: finish up the story. Uh, and then and that creates
Speaker 1: the sense of you. Your sense of self is generated
Speaker 1: by this sort of like a concatenation process in the
Speaker 1: interpreter part of the brain. But to come back to
Speaker 1: the idea of multiple consciousness is in the same head
Speaker 1: and maybe the idea of being someone else's dream. I've
Speaker 1: had this idea before. Again, this is not something that
Speaker 1: I would argue is strongly indicated by evidence, just a
Speaker 1: very strange possibility that seems hard to rule out on
Speaker 1: the basis of any evidence I'm aware of. What if
Speaker 1: the process of imagining the workings of other minds involves
Speaker 1: the low resolution simulation of separate conscious minds. What if
Speaker 1: when you're trying to understand somebody else's behavior, you trying
Speaker 1: to understand, you know, why did Jeff say what he said,
Speaker 1: and so you imagine his thought processes, Or when you're
Speaker 1: trying to write dialogue for a fictional character. What if,
Speaker 1: in cases like this you're practicing theory of mind, the
Speaker 1: brain temporarily carves out a bit of its consciousness potential
Speaker 1: to devote to this imagined person in order to better
Speaker 1: simulate their behavior. Interesting, Yeah, yeah, I mean in many
Speaker 1: cases it would, especially if it's a perceived enemy. Right,
Speaker 1: It's probably gonna be a rather simple model. You know,
Speaker 1: it's you're you're reducing them to like, you know, cartoon
Speaker 1: villain levels of of impulse and desire. But I mean
Speaker 1: there's no limiting it just two enemies. I mean, in
Speaker 1: any case, whenever you try to imagine somebody, you don't
Speaker 1: know exactly everything your brain is doing to create that
Speaker 1: simulation of them within you. Right, Like even the people
Speaker 1: we know they the best in our lives. For instance,
Speaker 1: our you know, our our you know, uh, you know
Speaker 1: life partners, you know or you know, loved ones, family members,
Speaker 1: really close friends, we might have a more robust simulation
Speaker 1: of them in our theory VR theory of mind, but
Speaker 1: it is still just a model of how their mind
Speaker 1: works and what they want and how they think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's our best guess, it's our I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: their brain, it's our brain trying to do it. And
Speaker 1: if this were the case, you could be, in some
Speaker 1: sense creating separate conscious people in your head whenever you
Speaker 1: try to analyze a friend's behavior, or write a scene
Speaker 1: for a character in a story, or dream about a
Speaker 1: district attorney sitting across from you in a prison cell.
Speaker 1: Now you might say, well, if they're all generated by
Speaker 1: your brain, they're all you. I mean, anatomically, they are
Speaker 1: all you. They're all made by your body. The other
Speaker 1: side of this, too, is like when you read a novel,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, I mean, in any time you imagine a person.
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is possible, if there's any validity
Speaker 1: to some of these alternative theories of dual consciousness. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Michael Gazzaniga's left brain interpreter theory. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the part of your brain that talks and interprets and
Speaker 1: seems to be in charge makes meaning of the self
Speaker 1: is not aware that the same brain is also generating
Speaker 1: little conscious simulations of people partitioned from the interpreter and
Speaker 1: the rest of the self. Yeah, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: makes me think. For instance, I've read a fair amount
Speaker 1: of Carl Sagan. I love picking up a Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: book and reading it. Uh, you know, it gives me comfort.
Speaker 1: And as as such, I do kind of have like
Speaker 1: a tiny Carl Sagan in my brain, like an idea
Speaker 1: of Sagan that is kind of walking around in there
Speaker 1: or maybe summoned. But the really mind blowing idea is
Speaker 1: what if that little Carl Sagan has an experience? What
Speaker 1: if there's something that it's like to be that simulated
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan. What if he gets into an argument with
Speaker 1: the little Terence McKenna in my head? Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still your brain, it's still all the tissue in
Speaker 1: your head. But what if there's something in there that's
Speaker 1: a little Carl Sagan simulated by your mind sometimes that
Speaker 1: has its own wants, the desires, experiences. Now, again, I
Speaker 1: recognize that this is way out there and aculative territory,
Speaker 1: and I do not claim that there is strong evidence
Speaker 1: for this, but it is one of those strange things
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to think of reasons to rule it out,
Speaker 1: and I can't. Uh So, if this seemingly weird scenario
Speaker 1: were the case, would there be any way to know
Speaker 1: for sure that you weren't a conscious, low resolution simulation
Speaker 1: of a mind inside a brain ruled by the tyrannical
Speaker 1: dictator mind that could blink you in and out of
Speaker 1: existence by the whims of a dream or imagination. Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a theological model there. Yeah. Fortunately, again,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any strong evidence this is the case.
Speaker 1: Sleep tight. All right, Well, there you have it. That
Speaker 1: is uh Anthology of Horror volume two, And if you
Speaker 1: loved it, you don't have to wait an entire year.
Speaker 1: You just have to wait a couple of days for
Speaker 1: the next installment, because we're gonna be back with Anthology
Speaker 1: of Horror Volume three, in which show will look at
Speaker 1: an episode of The Outer Limits and an episode of
Speaker 1: the Simpson's Treehouse of Horror. I can't wait. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Bow your Mind, heading it over to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you will find them.
Speaker 1: And oh see, what else can you do? You can
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