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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Today's Saturday, So once more we venture

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Speaker 1: into the vault and who This one originally published ten

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Speaker 1: thirty one, twenty twenty four, Halloween of last year. It's

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Speaker 1: Grimore of Horror, Volume one. This was the first in

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Speaker 1: a new tradition that we'll be continuing this year in

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Speaker 1: which Joe and I each select a horror short story

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Speaker 1: of note and then we discuss it and even maybe

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Speaker 1: get into some of its science and cultural content as

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Speaker 1: well on the show. So last year, in this episode

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Speaker 1: we discussed a Clark Ashton Smith story and a Stephen

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Speaker 1: Graham Jones story. What will we discuss this year, Well,

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Speaker 1: you'll have to tune in to find out. So let's

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Speaker 1: go ahead and listen to the episode from last year

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Speaker 1: right now.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: So over the years here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: we've done Halloween and Halloween adjacent episodes that pick from

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Speaker 1: us sorted tales of one sort or another, horrific tale,

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Speaker 1: scary tales, creepy tales, and then use them as sort

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Speaker 1: of a springboard to look at a particular scientific topic

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Speaker 1: or just look at that story through a scientific or

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Speaker 1: cultural lens. At one point we did a series of

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Speaker 1: episodes based on different creepypastas. Then Joe and I turned

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Speaker 1: to TV horror anthology episodes for a number of years,

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Speaker 1: and this year we're starting what I'm hoping we'll be

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Speaker 1: a new tradition, one that sticks to shorter horror works,

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Speaker 1: but also gets back into the written word, which I

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Speaker 1: know many of our listeners missed from the days when

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Speaker 1: we did summer reading episodes, so kind of meet me

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Speaker 1: halfway on that as well. Written horror fiction often does

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Speaker 1: come up on the show anyway, so it seems like

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Speaker 1: a solid direction to go in. Though this may be

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Speaker 1: in part because this is our first time out of

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Speaker 1: the gate with this particular series. It was kind of

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Speaker 1: a mad dash to put this episode together, and it's

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Speaker 1: going to be a mad dash as well for JJ

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Speaker 1: to get it edited and out there, but hopefully it'll

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Speaker 1: be worth it. I don't know about you, Joe, but

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Speaker 1: I had a number of trials and tribulations finding my selection.

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Speaker 1: I had like a list of stories I was considering,

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Speaker 1: and then I ended up not really using any of those,

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Speaker 1: and I had one that I thought was perfect, and

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Speaker 1: then it really took a turn halfway through the story

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Speaker 1: and went in a direction that I wasn't crazy about,

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Speaker 1: and only then I had to start from ground from

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Speaker 1: just ground zero on the whole thing. But I do

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Speaker 1: think I finally picked out a story that is going

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Speaker 1: to be fun to chat about here.

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Speaker 3: You know, frankly this, I always enjoyed doing our anthology

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Speaker 3: of horror episodes, but I had the same issue with

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Speaker 3: those when we were doing like TV or movie anthology things,

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Speaker 3: where I would just spend forever in the pre research phase,

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Speaker 3: where I'd just be like trying to find an appropriate

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Speaker 3: one that had some kind of hook of something to

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Speaker 3: talk about that we hadn't already covered extensively before. And

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Speaker 3: I gotta admit I'm having the same issue here. I

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Speaker 3: spent probably more time trying to find a story to

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Speaker 3: talk about than I did actually getting ready for the episode.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so we'll go ahead and put the call out

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Speaker 1: to listeners help us make up our minds in advance

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Speaker 1: next year Salloween. If you can think of a really

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Speaker 1: great horror, halloweeny, creepy short story that would benefit from

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Speaker 1: this treatment. Go ahead and write in and let us

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Speaker 1: know again months in advance, and that'll help us be

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Speaker 1: ready for next year. All right, well, let's go ahead

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Speaker 1: and jump in here. I'm going to start with my

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Speaker 1: selection here. I ended up going with a story titled

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Speaker 1: The Maker of Gargoyle by Clark Ashton Smith, who lived

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three through nineteen sixty one. Clark Ashton Smith

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Speaker 1: remains probably my favorite writer of weird fiction from the

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Speaker 1: pulp era, mainly for his exceedingly rich and textured dark

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Speaker 1: fantasy tales, often stories in which doomed wizards delve deep

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Speaker 1: into forbidden knowledge and brings some sort of disastrous curse

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Speaker 1: down upon their own heads. Sometimes there's a little twist

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Speaker 1: of gallows humor to the whole affair. Along these lines,

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Speaker 1: I highly recommend the tales The Double Shadow, the Seven Geeses,

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Speaker 1: and The Empire of the Necromancers. Those are three of

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Speaker 1: the finest dark fantasy short stories you could possibly hope

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Speaker 1: to read.

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Speaker 3: In my opinion is that last one, the one where

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Speaker 3: the two Necromancers are like wandering around in this terrible

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Speaker 3: landscape sort of arguing with each other.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and eventually they're like, well, we're going to

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Speaker 1: go to this ancient tomb city and we're going to

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Speaker 1: raise everyone from the dead and make them serve us eternally.

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Speaker 1: And you know, they're absolutely horrible, comedically evil characters. And

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Speaker 1: of course eventually the undead creatures that they summon rise

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Speaker 1: up against them and tear them to pieces. Of course,

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Speaker 1: now I have to stress I've never been a Clark

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Speaker 1: Ashton Smith completist, though you know, he wrote a number

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Speaker 1: of tales set in a very contemporary twentieth century weird

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Speaker 1: tales setting, even though one of them, Return of the Magician,

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Speaker 1: is often considered one of his best works and was

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Speaker 1: actually adapted into a Night Gallery episode feature featuring Vincent Price,

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Speaker 1: but I've never read it. I tend to steer more

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Speaker 1: towards his dark fantasy. There's a great deal of his

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Speaker 1: work along these lines that I've never read. So his

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Speaker 1: work is largely centered in a few different settings, mostly

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Speaker 1: within the fantastic realms of Hyperborea, Poseidonus, Avarn, and Zohaka.

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Speaker 1: Today's tale takes us to Avon. This is a fictional

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Speaker 1: French province and it depends on the story. The stories

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Speaker 1: may be set anywhere between the years four seventy five

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Speaker 1: CE and seventeen eighty nine see depending on the story

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Speaker 1: in question. I haven't read all of these, but I

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Speaker 1: do remember the Beast of avar On being quite good.

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Speaker 3: He generally, in the story you're about to talk about,

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Speaker 3: lays out kind of a landscape that hints at other

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Speaker 3: tales yet to be told elsewhere. Like he just mentions

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Speaker 3: this dark, haunted wood full of lou Garoo and other

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Speaker 3: kind of inhabitants.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, alluding to you know, we've had problems with

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Speaker 1: Succuby and Incubie in the past and that sort of thing,

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Speaker 1: you know. And I haven't read all the tales from

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Speaker 1: the Avaron cycle either, so he may be referring to

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Speaker 1: specific stories or possible stories, like you said. So. This

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Speaker 1: particular short story, The Maker of Gargoyles, was published in

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two and it's set in the year eleven

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Speaker 1: thirty eight. If you want to read it for yourself,

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Speaker 1: you can find it on the Clark Ashton Smith website

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Speaker 1: dark dot com, and it is also featured in the

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Speaker 1: collection The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, a Ventage

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Speaker 1: from Atlantis the Collected Fantasies, Volume three. It's long title,

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Speaker 1: but worth it. This is one of those authors whose

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Speaker 1: work is in the public domain, as I understand it,

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Speaker 1: So there are a lot of less than satisfying publications

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Speaker 1: of his work out there if you're looking for an

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Speaker 1: actual like high quality digital or a physical collection, so

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Speaker 1: I recommend this. I also recommend there's a Penguin edition

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Speaker 1: that also features some of his stories. But if you're

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Speaker 1: looking to do it on the cheap, yeah, it's all

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Speaker 1: apparently in the public domain, and you can find it

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Speaker 1: all at that website I just referenced, all right. So

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Speaker 1: in the story, Clark Ashton Smith establishes Avaron is a

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Speaker 1: medieval city on the edge of dangerous and evil wilds,

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Speaker 1: a province in quote a world where the devil and

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Speaker 1: his works were always more or less rampant. Here, the

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Speaker 1: walled city of Villon has suffered more than its share

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Speaker 1: of demonic cars. But everyone's pretty confident that this newly

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Speaker 1: constructed cathedral is going to really shore things up. It's

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Speaker 1: going to bring greater protection against the darkness. Everything's going

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Speaker 1: to be all right. But unfortunately this is a Gothic

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Speaker 1: world where supernatural evil is absolutely real, but who can

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Speaker 1: say for sure about supernatural good. It's kind of a

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Speaker 1: gambol on the latter. So it's definitely a demon haunted world.

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Speaker 3: And I like how in this story, the one main

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Speaker 3: representative of the church that we get seems primarily concerned

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Speaker 3: with the exquisite sophistication of the representations of evil on

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Speaker 3: the cathedral.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and pretty much the only thing that the church

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Speaker 1: is able to do to stand against the evil is

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Speaker 1: they send to Rome for some high grade holy water. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it never shows up. It never actually features into

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Speaker 1: the story, but that's all they can really do. So

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Speaker 1: the cathedral here, as they describe it, pretty standard fair

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Speaker 1: Gothic medieval cathedral and so forth, except two of its

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Speaker 1: mini gargoyles are creations of Villonne's own artisan Blasse Reynard.

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Speaker 1: This is the titular maker of gargoyles. He's kind of

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Speaker 1: a coffin Joe character, you know. He's he's hated and

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Speaker 1: feared by the townspeople. He has a lot of like

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Speaker 1: obvious inner turmoil. Most people tend to just sort of

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Speaker 1: put up with him and ignore him the same way

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Speaker 1: that they put up with and ignore all of the

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Speaker 1: supernatural evil that is writhing in the world around them.

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Speaker 1: All Right, I'm going to read the description that Clark

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Speaker 1: Ashton Smith gives us of these gargoyles. Okay. The two

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Speaker 1: gargoyles were perched on opposite corners of a high tower

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Speaker 1: of the cathedral. One was a snarling, murderous, cat headed

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Speaker 1: monster with retracted lips revealing formidable things, and eyes that

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Speaker 1: glared intolerable hatred from beneath fearine brows. This creature had

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Speaker 1: the claws and wings of a griffin, and seemed as

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Speaker 1: if it were poised in readiness to swoop down on

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Speaker 1: the city of Villonne, like a harpie on its prey.

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Speaker 1: Its companion was a horned sadder with the vans of

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Speaker 1: some great bats, such as might roam the nether caverns,

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Speaker 1: with sharp clinching talons, and a look of satanically brooding lust,

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Speaker 1: as if it were gloating above the helpless object of

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Speaker 1: its unclean desire. Both figures were complete even to the

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Speaker 1: hind quarters, and were not mere conventional adjuncts of the roof.

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Speaker 1: One would have expected them to start at any moment

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Speaker 1: from the stone in which they were mortists. So some

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Speaker 1: terrifying looking gargoyles here, yes, like very detailed, like fine

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Speaker 1: works of art, but really hard to take in. We

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Speaker 1: learned that, quite unknown to Renard himself, he has just

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Speaker 1: poured all of his hatred for his hometown into one

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Speaker 1: gargoyle and all of his lust for the tavern owner's daughter,

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Speaker 1: Nicolette in the other one. Naturally know what's going to happen.

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Speaker 1: Hard soon descends on the city once more, as a

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Speaker 1: swooping demonic monster begins to slay people in the night.

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Speaker 1: The body count intensifies. Everyone's afraid, but the best anyone

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Speaker 1: can do is against sin for that special holy water. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: another demonic form, the lusty one, is creeping on women

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Speaker 1: all around the city, but leaving them untouched and unattacked,

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Speaker 1: as if it's not seeking any woman but one woman

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Speaker 1: in particular. All of this comes to a head at

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Speaker 1: the tavern one night, deep in his cups and himself

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Speaker 1: traumatized by the horror in the streets. Like It's important

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Speaker 1: to note that he's not like, oh, the agents of

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Speaker 1: my hatred and lust are running rampant, like he doesn't

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Speaker 1: really put one and two together here, but he's drinking

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Speaker 1: in the pub. He's watching a rival court fair Nicolette,

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Speaker 1: and eventually he just loses it. He causes this big

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Speaker 1: embarrassing scene, and that's when the windows implode with the

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Speaker 1: arrival of the two animate gargoyles. The first of the

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Speaker 1: two begins massacring everyone in sight, spilling blood, ripping open throats,

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Speaker 1: and the second one grabs Nicolette, and a heavy stone

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Speaker 1: wing of one of the two gargoyles catches Reynard in

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Speaker 1: the head and knocks him unconscious. The next morning, he

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Speaker 1: awakens in this blood drenched tavern, surrounded by dead men

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Speaker 1: and the lacerated but still living body of Nicolette. Horrified

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Speaker 1: and suddenly understanding more of the connection he has to

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Speaker 1: these monsters, he forces his way through the angry crowd.

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Speaker 1: He collects his hammer from his workshop and he heads

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Speaker 1: up to the cathedral roof. He finds his creations there,

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Speaker 1: and he notices that their mouths and their claws are bloodied,

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Speaker 1: and so he begins to strike at them with the hammer.

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Speaker 1: But then the gargoyle that he strikes, the wrathful one,

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Speaker 1: knocks him to the edge of the of the roof,

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Speaker 1: and then like sinks, one of its talons into his shoulder,

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Speaker 1: and I believe takes to the air with him and

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Speaker 1: he's striking at the talon foot that holds him. Eventually

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Speaker 1: shatters that foot, but he falls to his death in

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Speaker 1: the street. And then we end with the archbishop finding

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Speaker 1: his corpse and noting the talent limb now relaxed quote

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Speaker 1: as if like the paw of a living limb, it

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Speaker 1: had reached for something or had dragged a heavy burden

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Speaker 1: with its fearine talents.

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Speaker 3: I like that it's implied to me, at least that

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Speaker 3: the archbishop's response is when he finds this is like, oh,

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Speaker 3: my gargoyles, they're ruined. Yes, It's like as if, you know,

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Speaker 3: finding a murder scene where someone has been had their

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Speaker 3: head smashed with a vase and the person's like, my vase,

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Speaker 3: what happened?

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Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah. There are other points in the story too,

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Speaker 1: where you have more concern given for just the state

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Speaker 1: of the art concerning these gargoyles, as opposed to what

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Speaker 1: their horribleness means. You know, either you know physically or

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Speaker 1: just the idea of them. So this story doesn't deliver

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Speaker 1: or I think, aspire to the dizzyingly dark magic vibes

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Speaker 1: of other Clark Ashton Smith's stories. I think it's a

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Speaker 1: pretty solid little horror tale in its own way. It

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Speaker 1: delivers both a sinister physical monster as well as a

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Speaker 1: tale of twisted inner torment, you know, So you know,

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Speaker 1: those are great things to have in a horror tale.

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Speaker 1: And I think we can all imagine some version of

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Speaker 1: the story which the gargoyles are his intentional creations and

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Speaker 1: like conscious minions of his wrath and lust, but instead

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Speaker 1: he only really glimpses his connection to them at the

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Speaker 1: very end, finally realizing that he has poured all of

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Speaker 1: his own darkness into these works and that he has

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Speaker 1: to destroy them. And I think there's a lot to

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Speaker 1: potentially dig into their regarding a horror writer and his work.

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Speaker 1: And it's worth noting that Clark Ashton Smith himself largely

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Speaker 1: abandoned writing in favor of painting and sculpture in the

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Speaker 1: second half of his life, so, you know, bec I

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Speaker 1: think it's fair to assume a lot of those ideas

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Speaker 1: were on his mind when he wrote this tale. And

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Speaker 1: I think this one would I don't think this has

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Speaker 1: ever been adapted, but I think it would make a

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Speaker 1: pretty great horror anthology adaption, because who doesn't love a

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Speaker 1: great animate gargoyle story, right? Sure? Yeah, they're a staple

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Speaker 1: monster in Dungeons and Dragons. They're the subject of a

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Speaker 1: fan favorite nineteen nineties Disney animated series. Did you ever

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Speaker 1: watch that, Joe Gargoyles?

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Speaker 3: I was only a very little bit. I never like

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Speaker 3: followed the story. But I've actually heard good things about

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Speaker 3: it from people as an adult, Like, some people think

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Speaker 3: it was a really good cartoon.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I've heard. I think I may have

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Speaker 1: watched one or two episodes as a kid. I've looking

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Speaker 1: back on it, I see it had a tremendous vocal cast,

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Speaker 1: including Keith David in the lead. But I brought it up.

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Speaker 1: I showed an episode to my son. I was like, hey,

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Speaker 1: maybe this can be the new series we're watching together,

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Speaker 1: and he was like, no, thank you, So oh okay,

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Speaker 1: so fine. I'm not going to watch it on my own.

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Speaker 1: So it's not for me, but a lot of people

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Speaker 1: love it.

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Speaker 3: You know, thinking about movies with animated gargoyles and the

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Speaker 3: Stone comes to life, there's a great movie scene that's

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Speaker 3: actually the opposite process. And it's in Grimlins too, which

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Speaker 3: we covered on Weird House Cinema. I remember when there's

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Speaker 3: the joke where the Grimlin escapes the building, falls in

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Speaker 3: wet cement on the sidewalk, and then flies up to

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Speaker 3: the top of a building, perches, and then freezes in

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Speaker 3: the cement to become a gargoyle.

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Speaker 1: I'm so glad you brought that up. That had slipped

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Speaker 1: my mind. But that is one of the many wonderful

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Speaker 1: scenes in Grimlin's two Let's see. On the B movie front, there's,

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Speaker 1: of course the nineteen seventy two TV movie Gargoyles that

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Speaker 1: various listeners have suggested for Weird House Cinema, and it

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Speaker 1: remains on our short list.

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Speaker 3: I believe it's one of those that we've never seen,

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Speaker 3: but we keep like five different movies have pinged back

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Speaker 3: to it for some reason. I don't know what are

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Speaker 3: those like nexus movies that are like kind of weird

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Speaker 3: and get our attention, but we never watched them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think I've seen part of

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Speaker 1: it maybe on A and E back in the day,

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Speaker 1: like on a Sunday afternoon, but yeah, I haven't watched

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Speaker 1: it in a full maybe one day, yeah, one day.

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Speaker 1: I'll also point out that the best sequence in nineteen

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Speaker 1: nineties Tales from the Dark Side. The movie retails the

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Speaker 1: classic Japanese ghost story a Yuki ownA The Snow Woman,

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Speaker 1: but with a with an urban setting and a killer gargoyle.

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Speaker 1: That's the one that stars James Ramar and Raydon Chong. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and more recently, there is a twenty fourteen film titled

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Speaker 1: I Frankenstein in which Frankenstein's monster battles gargoyles like CGI gargoyles.

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Speaker 1: And I have not seen that, but there's a part

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Speaker 1: of me that really wants to watch that. On an

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Speaker 1: airplane one day.

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Speaker 3: You included a screenshot from it. It looks dreadful, just terrible.

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Speaker 1: It's got some good people involved. I don't know. Maybe

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Speaker 1: it's good. I don't know. It looks like great airplane viewing.

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Speaker 3: Though, I'm just commenting on the CGI guardboy. No, I

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Speaker 3: know nothing about the movie.

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Speaker 1: Now. Curiously, this is one of the things that really

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Speaker 1: led me to select this story by Clark Ashton Smith

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Speaker 1: is that it apparently plays an important role in the

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Speaker 1: establishment of the animate gargoyle trope. Though I should note

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Speaker 1: that naturally, as we've discussed in the show before, myths

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Speaker 1: of sculptures coming to life. These go back to ancient times,

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Speaker 1: and we might well look too obvious influences from not

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Speaker 1: only Pygmalion, but also the Goloam of Prague and so forth. Still.

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Speaker 1: According to the Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters

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Speaker 1: by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, there are two key works, both

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Speaker 1: from nineteen thirty two, that seem to influence gargoyle fiction

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Speaker 1: to come. One is this story by Clark Ashton Smith,

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Speaker 1: and the other is a Lewis Spence tale titled The

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Speaker 1: Horn of Vapula or Vapula I'm not sure which, in

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Speaker 1: which a gargoyle is not an evil construct but a

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Speaker 1: vessel that a demon is bound to by a corrupt bishop.

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Speaker 1: He also cites the nineteen seventy two Gargoyles TV movie

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Speaker 1: as the first work to establish a gargoyle as a species.

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Speaker 3: Huh. As a species, you mean, like not just a

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Speaker 3: sculpture that comes to life, but as a type of

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Speaker 3: living being on its own.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, these are creatures, and we may have stone

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Speaker 1: versions of them that sort of thing, as opposed to

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Speaker 1: these are creatures that these are sculptures that we made

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Speaker 1: and then they in the case of these two nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty two stories, they either come alive because of the

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Speaker 1: dark magic we've put into them one way or another

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Speaker 1: from ourselves, or you know, we've summoned some demon out

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Speaker 1: of the abyss and placed it in the stone form.

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Speaker 3: Right, So, the idea of a gargoyle not as a

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Speaker 3: generic term for certain types of sculptures or architectural features,

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Speaker 3: but as like an orc with wings.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, essentially. Now, when it comes to the reality

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Speaker 1: of the gargoyle, we could probably do a whole invention

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Speaker 1: episode on these. There are a lot of ins and

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Speaker 1: outs here, with different time periods and different architectural styles,

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Speaker 1: and then resurgences of those styles and re explorations of

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Speaker 1: those styles. But the basics are that a gargoyle is

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Speaker 1: an architectural flourish, is a decorative water spout to drain

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Speaker 1: water away from the building. And the origins of the

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Speaker 1: word itself are often linked to the Old French word gargoui,

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Speaker 1: as well as the Greek gargarazine. If these words remind

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Speaker 1: you of the word gargyle, then right on, because that's

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Speaker 1: essentially what we're talking about here, a word used to

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Speaker 1: describe the clearing or washing of the throat. Again, these

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Speaker 1: were animal and or humanoid creatures depicted in stonework with

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Speaker 1: rain water draining out of their spout mouths. The basic

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Speaker 1: concept here apparently dates back to the ancient world, with

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Speaker 1: examples found even in ancient Egypt in ancient Greek architecture

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Speaker 1: as well, often taking the form of a lion. And

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Speaker 1: it's kind of a no brainer, right, We can't help

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Speaker 1: but anthropomorphize the world around us, So a drainage spout

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Speaker 1: essentially becomes a barfing mouth. You know, many of us

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Speaker 1: did the same thing during the height of the pandemic

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Speaker 1: with their Halloween candy shoots, like can I get candy

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Speaker 1: to a child fifteen feet away from me? And should

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Speaker 1: I make it a vomit monster mouth? Of course I

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Speaker 1: should make it a vomiting monster mouth.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you should.

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Speaker 1: Now. The term gargoyle itself really comes about during the

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Speaker 1: thirteenth century, still referring to water spout flourishes while the

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Speaker 1: various other non functional creatures I made out of stones,

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Speaker 1: so various little goblinoid creatures you know, and whatnot on

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Speaker 1: the outside or even the interiors of churches. These are

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Speaker 1: generally described as grotesques or grow teskeries generally apotropaic statues

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Speaker 1: to ward off evil, you know, getting down to the

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Speaker 1: basic Corgonian impulse that we see throughout human history, like

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Speaker 1: let me make a monster face to drive away the

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Speaker 1: evil vibes. The Catholic Church also sought to use these

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Speaker 1: statues at times as illustrative aids to reach illiterate masses.

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Speaker 1: But a lot of what we think about regarding gargoyles

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Speaker 1: today are really more properly these grotesques and growthesqueries as

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Speaker 1: pose to something that is actually spitting water away from

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Speaker 1: the church. You know, we tend to think more of

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Speaker 1: just sort of like corner of the building, monsters leering

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Speaker 1: out overlooking the empty space between the church and the

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Speaker 1: next building. And you know, and then we also, again

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Speaker 1: we have these different periods of like Gothic Revival and

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Speaker 1: even Art Deco. The Art Deco period ends up utilizing

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Speaker 1: gargoyles of one form or another, depending how stringently you

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Speaker 1: want to use that term. Like I've seen the iconic

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Speaker 1: like bird heads on the Chrysler building described as gargoyles

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Speaker 1: for example.

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Speaker 3: Oh interesting.

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Speaker 1: Now we love gargoyles in part because they seem counterintuitive,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's a church, one of their monsters all

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Speaker 1: over it, but it's also just part of it. It's

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Speaker 1: like if you see a fancy cathedral, you're like, show

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Speaker 1: me the gargoyles, right yeah, Yeah. There's a famous quote

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Speaker 1: a criticism that is attributed to a twelfth century and into ual.

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Speaker 1: This is Saint Bernard of Clervaux, who was apparently speaking

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Speaker 1: of interior sculptures in the church as opposed to stuff

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Speaker 1: on the outside, but it sometimes applied to gargoyles. And

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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna read the quote, I'm just going to

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Speaker 1: paraphrase him, but he was basically saying, hey, maybe we

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Speaker 1: shouldn't have any of these at all, but at the

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Speaker 1: very least maybe we shouldn't be paying for them. And

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Speaker 1: you know, I think Clark Ashton Smith's story kind of

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Speaker 1: like toys with this sentiment a little bit like, how

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Speaker 1: do how does the church feel about evil monster sculptures

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Speaker 1: on or in the church? Right?

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Speaker 3: Well, I made reference to the character I think is

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Speaker 3: the Archbishop Ambrosius, who's like into them, he thinks they're great.

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Speaker 3: But it's I think it stated that there are other

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Speaker 3: figures in the church who are like, I don't know

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Speaker 3: about these things seems like an extravagance.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, a quick note on monster lore. I looked

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Speaker 1: up gargoyles and Carol Rose's encyclopedia, as I often do

428
00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 1: from my monsters. She references a Eastern French legend in

429
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:05,200
Speaker 1: folkloric story regarding a kind of dragon known as the gargoil.

430
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:07,680
Speaker 1: She describes it as a kind of river dragon that

431
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:11,040
Speaker 1: would target fishermen. And there's apparently a legend that a

432
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:14,840
Speaker 1: seventh century saint by the name of Saint Romain finally

433
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:18,439
Speaker 1: baited the creature with two condemned criminals, transfixed it with

434
00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 1: the cross, and then marched the monster into town where

435
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 1: it was executed. Thus, the taming of the water beast

436
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:28,680
Speaker 1: leads to a tradition of tame beasts that redirect water

437
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:29,639
Speaker 1: away from our churches.

438
00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:33,520
Speaker 3: Okay, feels like kind of a loose fit, but I

439
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 3: can see it.

440
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, there's much more we could say about

441
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: the history of gargoyles, perhaps deserving a full inventioned episode.

442
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 1: But it's interesting to think about all of this, and

443
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 1: in connection with the story, you know, when we channel

444
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:48,359
Speaker 1: the dark creative spirit into an act of creation, what

445
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:51,680
Speaker 1: is the result. Can a vessel intended to ward away

446
00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:55,879
Speaker 1: darkness actually aggregate it. Do such creations take on a

447
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:56,680
Speaker 1: life of their own?

448
00:24:57,359 --> 00:24:59,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think there's a lot to

449
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:04,199
Speaker 3: be said about the history of creating imagery that is

450
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,120
Speaker 3: supposed to be a depiction of evil and is supposed

451
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 3: to be revolting or scary or something like that, but

452
00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 3: in fact it becomes an object of interest to people.

453
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:15,520
Speaker 3: People instead they're kind of like, oh, I like that,

454
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 3: I want more of that.

455
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Or in the Clark Ashton Smith story, you

456
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:23,440
Speaker 1: also get a sense of perhaps here is a horror

457
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: writer suddenly realizing that he recognizes more of his own

458
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 1: inner darkness in these external works of darkness than he

459
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:35,920
Speaker 1: perhaps intended on, you know, or at least it's a

460
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: meditation on that possibility. So it's a yeah, it's I

461
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 1: think it's a It's a juicy little story to bite into. Again.

462
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: Maybe not on the same level, certainly in my opinion,

463
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:49,440
Speaker 1: not on the same level as some of his more

464
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:54,719
Speaker 1: almost darkly psychedelic works, but still a solid little monster story.

465
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 1: Nice by the way. Jackie Craven, an author, has a

466
00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:01,919
Speaker 1: great article about Gargoyle for thought dot Co titled The

467
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:04,880
Speaker 1: Real Story of the Gargoyle. I recommend checking that out.

468
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:07,399
Speaker 1: She goes into a lot more detail, and I also

469
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 1: I turned to that in researching this, in addition to Winstock, Websters,

470
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:13,439
Speaker 1: and Rows.

471
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 3: Well, is it time for my selection?

472
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:18,920
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I'm excited for this one because you picked

473
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:21,879
Speaker 1: a story by an author that I've long admired, but

474
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 1: I have not read much of in recent years. So

475
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: this was a nice return for me.

476
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 3: Oh cool, Well, I'm excited to hear what you think

477
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 3: about the story. So I wanted to pick not just

478
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 3: a horror story, but because today is Halloween, I wanted

479
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 3: to pick specifically a story that had a Halloween theme

480
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 3: or Halloween as a setting. It took me a while

481
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 3: to find one, find just the right one, but I

482
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 3: eventually settled on a story by the author Stephen Graham Jones,

483
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:48,919
Speaker 3: who has come up on the show several times before.

484
00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:51,680
Speaker 3: I think I talked about one of his horror fiction

485
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:54,360
Speaker 3: collections on a summer reading episode we did years ago,

486
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 3: and Rob, I think you actually might have recommended one

487
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 3: of his novels. Was it Mongrels? The where novel from

488
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen.

489
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:04,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really great novel. I hadn't thought about

490
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:07,440
Speaker 1: this one recently, but it's a coming of age story

491
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 1: with were wolves lovingly crafted, and I think we see

492
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: a similar sentiment in this story. Maybe this just runs

493
00:27:14,520 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 1: through all of his writing, but like these aren't just

494
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:20,760
Speaker 1: tales of horror and or monsters. There's a lot of

495
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:24,359
Speaker 1: like deep personal connection there, you know.

496
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 3: Yes, the story we're going to talk about today, I

497
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 3: think it is a great You can take it as

498
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:33,679
Speaker 3: just a great spooky tale of the weird, but you

499
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:35,879
Speaker 3: can also find a lot of feeling in it, Like

500
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 3: I found it a strangely moving story. Yeah, So just

501
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 3: brief rundown on Stephen Graham Jones. From my point of view,

502
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:45,920
Speaker 3: Jones is a prolific and really interesting writer who dives

503
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:48,919
Speaker 3: into a lot of different genres, but much of his

504
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 3: work is horror and generally what you might call weird fiction.

505
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,920
Speaker 3: So with his fiction, I like the kind of the

506
00:27:57,040 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 3: variety and range of authorial sensibility that you can find

507
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 3: all wrapped up in the same piece. Like a Stephen

508
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:08,919
Speaker 3: Graham Jones story can be sweet and thoughtful and even sentimental,

509
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 3: but also brutal, grizzly and cruel. It can kind of

510
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 3: plow straight into very familiar horror tropes in a way

511
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 3: that does not feel too you know, meta or screamy,

512
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 3: you know, not overly self conscious. But it can also

513
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 3: be like fresh and full of new ideas and bring

514
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 3: a lot of intellectual curiosity, scary but also funny, etc.

515
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 3: So I really like that variety you get within his writing.

516
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 3: And I also really like that while some of his

517
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 3: horror stories do have a very explicit monster or villain

518
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 3: like a you know, a cursed item or just a

519
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:47,920
Speaker 3: straight up vampire, in the same collection that this story

520
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 3: is in, there is a pretty awesome messed up vampire

521
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 3: story called Welcome to the Reptile House. Have you read

522
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 3: that one?

523
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:58,120
Speaker 1: Rob? I haven't, but I picked up this collection of

524
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: short stories for this episode. That'll have to be the

525
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 1: one I read next.

526
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I don't want to spoil too much, but

527
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 3: it involves a tattoo artist who practices a beginning tattoo

528
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 3: artist who practices his craft on dead bodies at a

529
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 3: morgue and then happens to in doing so, irritate a vampire.

530
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 3: Oh but anyway, coming back to my point. So, while

531
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 3: some of the stories have a more explicit or classical monster,

532
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 3: you know, he writes werewolf tales and stuff. I also

533
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:30,600
Speaker 3: really like his stories that have ambiguous, strange, unexplained situations

534
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 3: that just create this thematically loaded atmosphere of dread without

535
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 3: a specific monster, or at least not one that we

536
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 3: ever meet directly. I'm a big fan of that kind

537
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 3: of story, you know. I like ambiguous horror, the kind

538
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 3: that does not tell you the full solution to the puzzle,

539
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 3: that gives you some tantalizing details but leave some of

540
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 3: the mystery alive.

541
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, we don't really know what the rules are

542
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: with this thread. We don't even know exactly what it is,

543
00:29:57,560 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 1: but here it is pushing against the limits of our world.

544
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I like that.

545
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:02,600
Speaker 1: So.

546
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 3: Jones is currently a professor at UC Boulder, and I

547
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 3: don't know when he last updated his faculty page on

548
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 3: the university website. I know those can go untouched for eons,

549
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 3: but as of when I last checked, the final sentence

550
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 3: of that page reads. Jones' current projects are a paleoanthropological

551
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 3: thriller set in Boulder, a slasher, and another slasher, God Willing.

552
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 3: I do know several of his recent novels have been

553
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 3: described as slashers, and I haven't gotten to those yet,

554
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 3: but I would like to anyway, all that aside, The

555
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 3: story that I wanted to talk about today is called thirteen,

556
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 3: and it's the first piece in the twenty fourteen collection,

557
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:44,520
Speaker 3: After the People Lights Have Gone Off. I have a

558
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 3: print copy of this book. I was looking around and

559
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 3: it seems like maybe the physically it is out of print,

560
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 3: I think because I was only finding used copies to buy.

561
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 3: But maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. I

562
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 3: don't know, but I think you can get a digital edition, right.

563
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. I bought it on Kindle for a dollar ninety nine,

564
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: and that is that is a steal for an award

565
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: winning collection from an author of this caliber. So yeah,

566
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 1: no reason not to pick it up.

567
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 3: So warning that I am, I am going to go

568
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 3: ahead and summarize this story. If you want to look

569
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 3: it up, you know, get the collection for yourself and

570
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 3: read it without any spoilers. Maybe you could go ahead

571
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 3: and do that. And I also want to say that,

572
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 3: of course, it's always the case that you cannot communicate

573
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 3: the full effect of a piece of literature by summarizing it.

574
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 3: But I after I tried to summarize it, I found,

575
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 3: in particular with this story it is hard to give

576
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 3: a sense of the feeling and the way that it

577
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 3: works as horror with a synopsis. So a lot of

578
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 3: it just kind of depends on little phrasings and the

579
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 3: way a kind of pyramid of details is built piece

580
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 3: by piece. So you know, you'll be missing some of

581
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 3: the effect just through a synopsis. But I will do

582
00:31:57,680 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 3: my best.

583
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And that that holds for everything I

584
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: just did with Clark Ashton Smith's story as well. You know,

585
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:08,000
Speaker 1: you can summarize it, but you can't really create the

586
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 1: sort of blow for blow build that is present in

587
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: a good horror story.

588
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 3: So the story thirteen begins, like a lot of Jones's fiction,

589
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 3: with a kind of frisky sentence. It says, here's how

590
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 3: you do it, if you're brave enough. You know, a

591
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 3: lot of his stories have a very a voice, kind

592
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 3: of speaking directly to the reader's style. Opening and the

593
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 3: narrator of this story is presumably an adult or a

594
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,880
Speaker 3: young man recounting a series of memories from his childhood,

595
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 3: specifically when he was in middle school around the eighth

596
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 3: grade or around the age of thirteen. The title of

597
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:46,560
Speaker 3: the story the narrator remembers in his hometown. There was

598
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:50,600
Speaker 3: a movie theater called the Big Chief, kind of a

599
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 3: low effort movie theater because it had only two screens,

600
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:56,280
Speaker 3: and they were in fact right next to each other.

601
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 3: And in fact, originally the two theaters were just one

602
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 3: big room, now separated only by a heavy curtain, so

603
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 3: that sound from one movie would always bleed through and

604
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 3: become audible to the audience for the other movie. So

605
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 3: there's kind of a loudness war the soundtrack from a

606
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:15,720
Speaker 3: war movie with machine guns and mortar shells encroaches on

607
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 3: the quieter movie next door.

608
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: I've never been to a movie theater like this. I've

609
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: been to some that have you know, that are a

610
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: little you know, KOOKI ear and a little bit d

611
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: I y to a certain extent, but never one quite

612
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:33,479
Speaker 1: like this. There was a was a really good one

613
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: in Asheville called the gray Ol Movie House, and I

614
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 1: think there will be again, but it was sadly heavily

615
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: damaged during the flooding there recently. Oh that is sad,

616
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: so look for it in its next incarnation. I think

617
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 1: that those guys really love cinema. It's a great place.

618
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 3: Certainly, Best of luck to them. So the narrator of

619
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 3: this story sort of relates to this theater personally in

620
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 3: a number of ways. But one interesting detail he gives

621
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,000
Speaker 3: early on is that the theater is right next to

622
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 3: the pizzeria where his father worked when he was in

623
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 3: high school. And he thinks about the smooth scars on

624
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 3: the tops of his father's forearms, which are I guess

625
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 3: burns from working with the ovens, which he says, yawn

626
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 3: with fire like mouths to hell. And it's a lot

627
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:19,640
Speaker 3: of details like this in the story that just kind

628
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:22,959
Speaker 3: of add up to create the full effect of the thing. Again,

629
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:25,839
Speaker 3: I can't communicate all of these details in my synopsis,

630
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 3: but I love that kind of stuff.

631
00:34:29,360 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, these little just sort of fragments of memory that

632
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 1: he brings up that may not even be too closely

633
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 1: connected to the plot and the story that he is

634
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 1: laying out, but they are a vital part of the

635
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 1: vibe that he is building and ultimately that tension of horror.

636
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,840
Speaker 3: That's right, So the story is about the movie theater.

637
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 3: It's not only notable because it's old and kind of

638
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 3: shoddily built. There is something special about this place. There

639
00:34:57,120 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 3: is a power in it which is hard to explain,

640
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 3: but everybody seems to know about, or at least all

641
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 3: the kids do. There are weird rumors and stories that

642
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 3: attach themselves to it. Who knows if they're true. There's

643
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 3: one very grizzly story that fifteen years ago, somehow a

644
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:18,320
Speaker 3: guy mysteriously got castrated in one of the bathroom stalls.

645
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 3: The narrator's friend's uncle heard all about it. There's no

646
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 3: further detail on this story. It's just that kind of

647
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 3: weird detail you'd hear about when you're a kid. It'd

648
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:26,839
Speaker 3: be like.

649
00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:31,080
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, and no additional real explanation is provided, which

650
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:32,720
Speaker 1: keeps it cryptic and strange.

651
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 3: But then he gets to the real point of the story,

652
00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:39,360
Speaker 3: which is what should we call it? The game? Maybe

653
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:39,760
Speaker 3: the game?

654
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah.

655
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 3: So one of the urban legends that all of the

656
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 3: kids know about this movie theater is the following. You

657
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,120
Speaker 3: get your ticket, your popcorn, you settle in to watch

658
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 3: a scary movie. It needs to be a horror movie.

659
00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 3: And when it gets to the scariest part, maybe when

660
00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 3: the vampire is approaching the heroine's bedside to drink her blood,

661
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:01,279
Speaker 3: or the killer is raised up the knife, whatever, is

662
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 3: the really scary part that makes you want to close

663
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 3: your eyes because you can't bear to see what's next.

664
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 3: You give in and you do close your eyes, but

665
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 3: you don't stop there. You also plug your ears and

666
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 3: hum so that you can't hear what's happening. And then, finally,

667
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 3: and this is crucial, you suck in your breath and

668
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 3: you hold it and you count to one hundred and twenty.

669
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 3: So you've got to hold it for two straight minutes.

670
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:28,719
Speaker 3: And if you can keep your eyes shut and keep

671
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 3: the sound out and hold your breath for the two

672
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:37,040
Speaker 3: full minutes, something happens, something dangerous. Now, apparently, in the

673
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 3: world of this story, kids are trying this all the time.

674
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 3: Everybody tells the story and they all practice it, and

675
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:45,840
Speaker 3: they do it, but basically nobody ever makes it the

676
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:49,359
Speaker 3: full two minutes. They let their breath out early, you know,

677
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 3: they start laughing or something. They look back up at

678
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 3: the screen, and when they do look back at the screen,

679
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 3: they find themselves relieved, giddy, in fact, to see nothing

680
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 3: but the same movie they were so scared. Look at

681
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 3: a moment before, and the narrator says that your friends

682
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 3: sitting next to you will be looking at you, wanting

683
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 3: to know if it worked. So, how is it supposed

684
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 3: to work. Well, you get the feeling that nobody really knows.

685
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 3: It's just a ritual. We don't know why we do it.

686
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 3: It just gets passed on. But there is an attempt

687
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 3: to explain it that feels kind of back engineered from

688
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 3: the minds of kids trying this out. The narrator says, quote,

689
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 3: how it works is that when you're not looking or

690
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,759
Speaker 3: listening or breathing. It's like how you're supposed to hold

691
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 3: your breath when your parents are driving by the cemetery.

692
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 3: If you don't, then you can accidentally breathe in a ghost.

693
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 3: That's sort of how it works at the Big Chief.

694
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 3: With you not breathing, playing dead like you are, it

695
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:46,600
Speaker 3: makes like a road or a door, and the movie

696
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 3: seeps in. And then a little later it goes on

697
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:53,759
Speaker 3: quote it's there because you invited it, because you left

698
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:56,319
Speaker 3: a crack it could come through because you made a

699
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 3: sound like a wish, and the darkness just washed up

700
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 3: in that direction to cover it up. Oh, and I

701
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:06,279
Speaker 3: love the ambiguity of the lore here, like, how does

702
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:09,279
Speaker 3: it connect to the guy who supposedly got castrated in

703
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 3: the bathroom stall? Unclear, but it suggested he must have

704
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:16,879
Speaker 3: done this game. Something from the movie came out and

705
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:17,439
Speaker 3: got him.

706
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:19,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the.

707
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 3: Narrator goes on to tell the stories of two people

708
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:24,799
Speaker 3: he knows who enacted the ritual to let the movie in.

709
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 3: One was a boy in his class named Marcus, who

710
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:31,880
Speaker 3: was the new kid in school. He's very handsome, popular,

711
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 3: full of bravado, and he's on the swim team, so

712
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 3: he is good at holding his breath. His new friends

713
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 3: tell him about the movie theater, they tell him about

714
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 3: the game, so he does it. He plays dead for

715
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 3: two minutes at the climax of a horror movie with

716
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 3: this writhing, horrible, tentacled monster. They don't say what the

717
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 3: movie is, but I was imagining like some kind of

718
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 3: Cronenberg thing. And then it seems that nothing has happened

719
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 3: to him. He's fine at first, until a few months

720
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 3: later when Marcus suddenly gets sick and dies from the

721
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 3: growth of an aggressive tumor. And the kids who know

722
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 3: what happened. They're in a life sciences class and they

723
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 3: see images of tumors and the shapes look familiar to them,

724
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 3: and the ones who were there that night agreed. They

725
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 3: think somehow the monster from the movie got inside his body. Next,

726
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 3: we learn about a character named Grace, and this is

727
00:39:23,160 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 3: a character the narrator cares about a lot. They've been

728
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 3: friends since they were young, and now they're in middle

729
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:30,720
Speaker 3: school and it seems like they're in that awkward phase

730
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:33,440
Speaker 3: where they're trying to figure out if their boyfriend girlfriend

731
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 3: or not. But the narrator he is in love with her,

732
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 3: and Grace's family has been through troubles. Her father recently

733
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 3: moved away and her parents separated, and her mother seems

734
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 3: to be from clues we get suffering from depression, and

735
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:51,879
Speaker 3: the narrator plans to take Grace to a homecoming game

736
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:54,359
Speaker 3: at school, but he ends up sick and unable to go,

737
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:58,280
Speaker 3: and so he stays home by himself. In having fear

738
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 3: related to what happened to Marcus. He's obsessed with the

739
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 3: idea that he has a monster tumor inside him as well,

740
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:06,640
Speaker 3: because he was sitting close to Marcus the night of

741
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:10,879
Speaker 3: the game. Could it be contagious? But nothing happens there,

742
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 3: So to make up for the failed homecoming date, the

743
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 3: narrator and Grace decide to go see a movie at

744
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 3: the theater, not a horror movie this time. They're done

745
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 3: with the horror. Instead, they go see a romantic comedy

746
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 3: about a young woman who gets her heart broken and

747
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 3: then her well meaning but bumbling father tries to set

748
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:31,360
Speaker 3: her up with the perfect guy, and it's a comedy

749
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 3: of errors. By the way, there's a detail that while

750
00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 3: they're watching this movie, they hear screams and clanking metal

751
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:41,919
Speaker 3: bleeding over from the theater next door. And the movie

752
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 3: date is going well, but at one point during the film,

753
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:46,719
Speaker 3: the narrator leaves to get some more snacks from the

754
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 3: lobby and sneaks a look into the theater next door,

755
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 3: and Jones writes, quote, it was mayhem in there, chainsaws

756
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 3: and were wolves. It looked like no wear wolves with chainsaws,

757
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 3: the chocolate and peanut butter of the horror world. Very

758
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 3: good line.

759
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure this is not a real movie

760
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:09,239
Speaker 1: he's allitting to. This is something made up. But I

761
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,839
Speaker 1: love the idea of the just pure excess of this.

762
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 3: I mean he has written novels that invoke both wear

763
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:17,360
Speaker 3: wolves and chainsaws. That one of his recent novels was

764
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:18,800
Speaker 3: called My Heart as a Chainsaw.

765
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:20,399
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I don't know about them.

766
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 3: Anyway, The narrator in the story comes back to Grace,

767
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 3: and he finds her having a strangely emotional experience with

768
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:30,279
Speaker 3: the romantic comedy. He says that he could see that

769
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 3: her cheeks were shiny and wet and that she had

770
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 3: her eyes closed, and then when he brushes against her arm,

771
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:39,960
Speaker 3: she suddenly gets very startled and she starts coughing like

772
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:42,840
Speaker 3: she's going to vomit, so she runs to the bathroom.

773
00:41:43,719 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 3: Narrator doesn't know what's going on, but then she comes

774
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 3: out later after the movie and they go home without

775
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 3: discussing what happened. Then the final setting of the story

776
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 3: comes a couple of weeks later on Halloween night. So

777
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 3: here's the Halloween tie in. The narrator has plans to

778
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:01,279
Speaker 3: sneak off and smoke cigarettes with the bad kids in

779
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 3: the graveyard behind a condemned convent building. Perfect. And there

780
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 3: are more urban legends, I mean they're urban legends throughout

781
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 3: the story. One is the story that the kids tell

782
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 3: about the abandoned convent. They say it's haunted by a

783
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,080
Speaker 3: zombie nun who wanders at night carrying a candle in

784
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:21,359
Speaker 3: front of her, and when she sees you, she comes

785
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 3: closer and closer, and just when she draws right up

786
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 3: to you. The candle goes out. The narrator and his

787
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:29,239
Speaker 3: middle school friends are out in the cemetery behind the

788
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 3: you know, the haunted graveyard, and they are engaging in

789
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 3: a performance of courage. You know, they're breaking rules, doing

790
00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 3: what they're not supposed to. They are treading where the

791
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 3: ghost thread is high. And at one point the narrator

792
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 3: steps aside from the group. I think to be sick

793
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 3: because he smoked a cigarette and he shouldn't have and

794
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 3: he's going to be sick. And he goes to the

795
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 3: edge of a small cliff looking out over a neighborhood

796
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:53,840
Speaker 3: where kids are trick or treating below. He knows that

797
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 3: Grace is out there because she apparently volunteered to chaperone

798
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:01,320
Speaker 3: elementary school kids for the while they're trick or treating.

799
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 3: The narrator called her mother earlier to try to call

800
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:06,759
Speaker 3: her house to try to make plans, but her mother

801
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 3: answered the phone, said where she was going to be,

802
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:12,359
Speaker 3: and just said look for bo Peep. So looking out

803
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:14,839
Speaker 3: over the children wandering the neighborhoods in the dark, he

804
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 3: does see her in the bo Peep costume with a

805
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 3: shepherd's crook, escorting a second grader in a robot costume,

806
00:43:22,640 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 3: and they're just coming up to a house that the

807
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 3: narrator knows it's his former English teacher, who would always

808
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 3: write out verses of poetry on little strips of paper

809
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 3: and tie them to the candy she handed out on Halloween,

810
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 3: and the narrator remembers once getting a candy bar from

811
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 3: her that told him the fields are white, the fields

812
00:43:41,160 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 3: are long, the fields are waiting. He never knew what

813
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 3: that meant. And frankly, I tried to look this up,

814
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure I might have just missed the

815
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 3: reference somewhere, but it could be referring to a verse

816
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 3: in the Gospel of John where Jesus talks about the

817
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 3: fields being white, meaning essentially, you think that they're not

818
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:01,240
Speaker 3: ready for harvest, but they are. Is time for the harvest?

819
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:05,320
Speaker 3: And now who Anyway, What happens next in the story

820
00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:09,200
Speaker 3: is so strange. The narrator sees Grace he's looking down

821
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 3: from the cliff, and he tries to wave and get

822
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 3: her attention, but she doesn't see him. Instead, he watches

823
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:17,280
Speaker 3: as she begins to talk to someone in a car

824
00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 3: that's been driving around the neighborhood. Then, for some reason.

825
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 3: She just abandons the kid that she's been chaperoning and

826
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:26,520
Speaker 3: gets into the car and it starts to drive away,

827
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 3: and the narrator is very confused. He runs along the

828
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 3: cliff until he finds a place he can climb down.

829
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 3: He chases through the neighborhood looking for the car, and

830
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 3: finally he sees it just before it it leaves the

831
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 3: town and pulls out onto the highway. When he sees it,

832
00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 3: he sees the driver and he is sure he recognizes

833
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 3: the face. It's the face of a movie character, the

834
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 3: father from the romantic comedy movie they saw in the theater,

835
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:54,799
Speaker 3: with what the narrator characterizes as a wide, sharp and

836
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 3: trustworthy smile. He sees them in a flash, and the

837
00:44:58,239 --> 00:45:01,720
Speaker 3: car drives away, and then nobody ever sees Grace again.

838
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 3: So the implication is that Grace played the summoning game two.

839
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 3: In the interval when the narrator was out looking in

840
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:11,720
Speaker 3: on the Werewolves and Chainsaws movie, she must have closed

841
00:45:11,760 --> 00:45:14,279
Speaker 3: her eyes and held her breath. But it wasn't a

842
00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 3: horror movie. There was no monster, so what did she summon? Later,

843
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 3: having swirling emotions about this whole series of events, the

844
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 3: narrator sneaks out one night and he sets fire to

845
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,160
Speaker 3: the movie theater. He burns it down. He never gets

846
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:30,799
Speaker 3: caught for the arson. His friends come and meet him

847
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 3: there and they sort of give him an alibi, and

848
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 3: they never tell on him, so he gets away with it.

849
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:37,879
Speaker 3: But in the fire that night, he sees shapes moving

850
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:40,800
Speaker 3: around in the flames, including a boy covered in blood,

851
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 3: and Marcus and his swim goggles. And then finally it

852
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:47,359
Speaker 3: says quote, and I saw a pale white shepherd's crook

853
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:51,200
Speaker 3: ahead of them, leading them through, leading them on, And

854
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:53,439
Speaker 3: he ends the story saying that he's waiting to meet

855
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 3: her again. So oh, as I said earlier, I love

856
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 3: this story. But I think it's kind of hard to

857
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:03,239
Speaker 3: convey the force of the story in summary, because so

858
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 3: much of it comes from this careful stacking up of

859
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 3: these only vaguely related details, but you can't tell all

860
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:13,840
Speaker 3: of them without just reading the text in full. But

861
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,279
Speaker 3: this is my favorite kind of horror story, one that's

862
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,680
Speaker 3: both evocative and full of all these little observations, but

863
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 3: also with an original mythology and also just ambiguous enough

864
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 3: about what it all means. Like I was thinking, like,

865
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 3: how are we supposed to interpret the way the summoning

866
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:34,480
Speaker 3: game works, especially since it's presented as just one of

867
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 3: many silly urban legends that the kids in the story

868
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 3: make up and repeat. Where does the power come from? Also,

869
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,560
Speaker 3: how are we supposed to interpret what happens to Grace

870
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 3: when she tries it? Is it more benign or more sinister?

871
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:52,240
Speaker 3: I feel like that's kind of left open. Has Grace

872
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 3: transcended the mundane world and become a kind of shepherding

873
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 3: angel for the lost? Or has she been like murdered

874
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 3: by a demon that she invited onto our plane and

875
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:04,480
Speaker 3: become a ghost ready to reap a harvest of souls?

876
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 3: And the shepherd's crook is such a wonderful image because

877
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:11,400
Speaker 3: it adds to the ambiguity there. If you're the sheep,

878
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 3: the crook could be seen either as your protection, keeping

879
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 3: you in the flock and away from predators, or it

880
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 3: could be your doom, pulling you in for the mutton slaughter.

881
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so good. I too love the ambiguity here.

882
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:28,880
Speaker 1: I also loved the completely accidental synergy with the Clark

883
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:31,760
Speaker 1: Ashton Smith story and that both to some degree deal

884
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 1: with the idea of a channeling of dark energy and

885
00:47:35,960 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: works of art, yes, in this case cinema, So it's

886
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: a nice to a certain degree. This story meditates on

887
00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 1: the power of cinema and the importance of cinema in

888
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: our life. And then it has this wonderful coming of

889
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 1: age energy to it, like young a young character trying

890
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: to sort of figure out how he works as a

891
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 1: human and how he fits into the world, how the

892
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:05,239
Speaker 1: world works. It's just so beautifully put together, and again,

893
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:08,360
Speaker 1: to your point, almost completely defies any kind of an

894
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 1: elevator pitch, because you can't make a statement like, oh,

895
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 1: this is a movie about a monster that's X or

896
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:16,360
Speaker 1: about a haunting. That's why. No, it's You've got to

897
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:18,279
Speaker 1: take in all the pieces in order to get the

898
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: full mosaic.

899
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,360
Speaker 3: I feel it took me great length to explain it,

900
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 3: and I feel like I still didn't fully get it,

901
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:36,320
Speaker 3: Like you cannot summarize this story in a sentence. Another

902
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:38,319
Speaker 3: thing I really love about the story is that it

903
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 3: creates an original urban legend. And it's not just a

904
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 3: descriptive legend one that tells a story, but it's the

905
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 3: kind of legend that has an enacted ritual. So with

906
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,360
Speaker 3: this kind of urban legend, you you can go through

907
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:58,359
Speaker 3: the steps of a specified behavioral algorithm, and in doing so,

908
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 3: you can experience the object of the legend directly in

909
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:05,439
Speaker 3: some kind of paranormal encounter. I was trying to figure

910
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:07,680
Speaker 3: out if there is a standard term for this type

911
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 3: of ritual summoning game in the anthropology, in folklore literature.

912
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 3: Maybe there is. If so, I couldn't identify what that

913
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 3: term is, but a well known example from American culture

914
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:22,319
Speaker 3: would be the Bloody Mary game, where you stand in

915
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 3: front of a mirror in a dark room, perhaps on

916
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 3: Halloween night in some versions, and you recite an incantation.

917
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 3: Often it's just the name Bloody Mary a specified number

918
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:35,239
Speaker 3: of times, maybe you say three times or thirteen times,

919
00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:39,760
Speaker 3: and according to the legend, you will have a supernatural encounter.

920
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:42,680
Speaker 3: Maybe you will see a witch standing behind you in

921
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 3: the mirror, or maybe you'll see a woman covered in

922
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 3: blood who screams at you, or maybe a ghost that

923
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:50,759
Speaker 3: reaches out of the mirror and tries to harm you,

924
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:54,399
Speaker 3: tries to attack your eyes or something. And though I'm

925
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,920
Speaker 3: less familiar with these, apparently ritual ghost summoning games are

926
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 3: very popular in multiple East Asians cultures as well. For example,

927
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 3: there's something known as the I think the Corner game

928
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:08,280
Speaker 3: in Korea or the Square game in Japan, which involved

929
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:10,880
Speaker 3: four participants, and it's a similar kind of thing. You

930
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 3: do a sequence of activities and it's supposed to summon

931
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 3: a ghost.

932
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, this weird connection between thought and action and ideas

933
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 1: of the supernatural. And if you put thought and action

934
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 1: in motion, like what does that? What does that do?

935
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:31,720
Speaker 1: You know? It's weird because that also sounds like completely simple,

936
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 1: like I'm making them ount out of a molehile here,

937
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:38,359
Speaker 1: But there is there's something strange going on. I think

938
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:42,600
Speaker 1: we we sometimes interact with this in a like non

939
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:48,279
Speaker 1: game even almost subconscious level, you know, like choosing not

940
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 1: to think about the thing that you know isn't real

941
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 1: lest it become real.

942
00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:56,320
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, totally, No, I think we do, even even

943
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:59,720
Speaker 3: people who you know, at the rational level, you don't

944
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 3: think that your activities it will become a kind of

945
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,400
Speaker 3: spell to summon spirits. You know, there's a part of

946
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 3: you that wonders and you just kind of shy away

947
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:10,279
Speaker 3: from it. And it does require I would say, like

948
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 3: I am not a person who believes in ghosts. I

949
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 3: don't literally believe in ghosts, but I think it would

950
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:19,320
Speaker 3: take some real bravery for me to play a ghost

951
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 3: summoning game, because like, there's a difference between what you

952
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:27,239
Speaker 3: consciously assent to believing and what kind of scares you

953
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 3: in theory.

954
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,200
Speaker 1: My family and I we've been watching Agatha all along,

955
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 1: which is a witch based show on Disney about the

956
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:39,400
Speaker 1: witch Agatha or Coven, and there's a scene with the

957
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: Wiji board, and so we had to explain to our

958
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:43,319
Speaker 1: son what a Ouiji board is because they just had

959
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:46,400
Speaker 1: not been exposed to it. And it's weird to explain

960
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,720
Speaker 1: this as like, oh, yeah, it's like a supernatural summoning

961
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:53,480
Speaker 1: game that as children growing up in you know, predominantly

962
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 1: you know, these very you know, Christian environments, you were

963
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 1: totally not supposed to do it. Would witchcraft, stay away

964
00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 1: from it. But at the same time, you could buy

965
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:04,280
Speaker 1: it at Walmart.

966
00:52:05,480 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, made by Parker Brothers. Yeah, so I don't know.

967
00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:16,080
Speaker 3: This story got me thinking about these kinds of summoning games.

968
00:52:17,160 --> 00:52:20,360
Speaker 3: Scholars studying the history of the Bloody Mary game, in fact,

969
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 3: they relate it back to earlier summoning games. I think

970
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:25,680
Speaker 3: there were a lot around the turn of the twentieth

971
00:52:25,719 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 3: century which were sometimes practiced by young women with the

972
00:52:29,680 --> 00:52:32,720
Speaker 3: goal of seeing the face of their future husband.

973
00:52:32,880 --> 00:52:35,200
Speaker 1: This is a oh my god, that's like gets into

974
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:36,960
Speaker 1: a whole other realm of board games, right like this,

975
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:38,320
Speaker 1: yeah street dight stuff.

976
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:39,280
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.

977
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:39,759
Speaker 1: So you know.

978
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:42,360
Speaker 3: A version of this is you like get a candle

979
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 3: and a handheld mirror and you walk backwards up or

980
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 3: down a staircase holding the candle in the mirror. Don't

981
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 3: please people, no one listening try this because you heard

982
00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:56,000
Speaker 3: it here. That sounds so dangerous. But you do this,

983
00:52:56,160 --> 00:52:58,680
Speaker 3: and then you look in the mirror and you are

984
00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:01,640
Speaker 3: supposed to see a glimpse of future either your future

985
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 3: husband's face or you see the grim face of death,

986
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:09,319
Speaker 3: which means you'll die instead. And other versions of this

987
00:53:09,360 --> 00:53:11,680
Speaker 3: don't rely on a staircase, just a dark room and

988
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:16,000
Speaker 3: a mirror, some kind of ritual rabbi attached here for

989
00:53:16,080 --> 00:53:17,640
Speaker 3: you to look at. Some just like one hundred year

990
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:20,960
Speaker 3: old Halloween postcards that are like again to come back to,

991
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:23,320
Speaker 3: like the Parker Brothers thing. These are just like mass

992
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 3: produced postcards that are like, here's how you look in

993
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 3: the mirror and see the ghost. But I guess it's

994
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 3: a little more benign because it's giving you this supposedly

995
00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:33,920
Speaker 3: happy information about like Ooh, look at the handsome face

996
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:35,080
Speaker 3: of your future husband.

997
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:37,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at the cute cartoon cat in the background. Yeah.

998
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:39,520
Speaker 1: I love old timy Halloween stuff like this.

999
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 3: So the technical term for divination specifically with the use

1000
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:49,240
Speaker 3: of a mirror is catoptromancy from catoptron Greek for mirror,

1001
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:52,080
Speaker 3: and in a more general sense, as a type of

1002
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 3: divination practice, this has been documented since ancient times in

1003
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:59,680
Speaker 3: many cultures. The treatment of it more like a scary

1004
00:54:00,200 --> 00:54:04,200
Speaker 3: game allah bloody Mary, played by young people to conjure

1005
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 3: a supernatural encounter, I'd say, primarily for fun and to

1006
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 3: test one's bravery. That's something I would be really interested

1007
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 3: in finding evidence of going farther back in history, but

1008
00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:18,480
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I wasn't able to turn up anything explicitly

1009
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:21,440
Speaker 3: of that sort. It seems like the most ancient references

1010
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:26,759
Speaker 3: to catoptromancy are about sincere attempts at divination, genuine desires

1011
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 3: to get hidden information from the gods or from the

1012
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:33,160
Speaker 3: spirit world, or to commune with the souls of the dead.

1013
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 3: So obviously the lack of evidence doesn't rule out that

1014
00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:39,920
Speaker 3: there were games of this sort going back hundreds or

1015
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:43,640
Speaker 3: thousands of years. I just haven't come across that documentation

1016
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 3: of that anyway, whether it's for sincere attempts to get

1017
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 3: hidden information, or just as a game you play to

1018
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:54,160
Speaker 3: scare yourself for fun, it's interesting to think about the

1019
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:59,000
Speaker 3: phenomenon of seeing faces in mirrors. I don't have space

1020
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 3: to rehash everything, but in our series on the Invention

1021
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 3: of the mirror, we extensively got into research on something

1022
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:09,319
Speaker 3: known as the strange face in the mirror effect, which

1023
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:14,319
Speaker 3: is a documented psychological phenomenon where people with typical psychological

1024
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 3: histories will often report hallucinating strange faces if they simply

1025
00:55:20,400 --> 00:55:23,040
Speaker 3: stare into a mirror for a long period of time

1026
00:55:23,200 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 3: in low light conditions. I think the rough numbers were

1027
00:55:26,640 --> 00:55:29,439
Speaker 3: that if you just like dark in a room look

1028
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:32,680
Speaker 3: in a mirror for ten minutes, roughly two thirds of

1029
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:37,640
Speaker 3: people reported seeing weird stuff. This was largely explored in

1030
00:55:37,680 --> 00:55:41,360
Speaker 3: some papers by a researcher whose name is Giovanni Caputo,

1031
00:55:42,120 --> 00:55:45,480
Speaker 3: and there are a number of interesting perceptual and neurological

1032
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:48,719
Speaker 3: explanations that might contribute to it. But the strange face

1033
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 3: in a mirror effect has been postulated as contributing to

1034
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:56,640
Speaker 3: the popularity of ca toptromancy games and things like Bloody Mary.

1035
00:55:56,760 --> 00:55:59,480
Speaker 3: Due to this common quirk in our brains. It's apparently

1036
00:55:59,560 --> 00:56:02,920
Speaker 3: just not unusual to actually see weird stuff if you

1037
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:05,239
Speaker 3: stare into a mirror in a darkened room, and it

1038
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:08,680
Speaker 3: doesn't take drugs, it doesn't take a history of hallucinations.

1039
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:11,279
Speaker 3: It's just a normal thing that happens. So if you

1040
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:13,319
Speaker 3: want to hear all the details about that research, go

1041
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 3: look up our episodes on the invention of the mirror.

1042
00:56:15,680 --> 00:56:18,120
Speaker 3: We go in depth there. But to bring it back

1043
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:21,160
Speaker 3: to the Stephen Graham Jones story, I'm interested that this

1044
00:56:21,360 --> 00:56:26,440
Speaker 3: invented ritual, this invented summoning game involves it like there

1045
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:28,520
Speaker 3: are a lot of parallels with the Bloody Mary thing,

1046
00:56:28,560 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 3: but it involves not a mirror but a movie screen,

1047
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:38,760
Speaker 3: and not prolonged staring, not prolonged stimulus relating to the surface,

1048
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:42,360
Speaker 3: but actually the opposite, completely cutting yourself off from the

1049
00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:47,080
Speaker 3: stimulus while everyone around you is still watching. So by

1050
00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 3: playing dead and not watching, the scariest part of the movie.

1051
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:54,719
Speaker 3: This is actually what quote lets the movie in. It

1052
00:56:54,840 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 3: conjures the most terrifying or powerful aspect of it into

1053
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 3: our world. I love this variation and I love how

1054
00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 3: it interacts with the standard lore. And again, I don't

1055
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 3: know exactly what to say about what it means, but

1056
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:08,600
Speaker 3: it feels so potent.

1057
00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:12,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, this reminds me of something my

1058
00:57:12,680 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 1: friend David Streepy does or used to do, where he

1059
00:57:16,840 --> 00:57:18,440
Speaker 1: said that if he was watching a scary movie and

1060
00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 1: there's a scary part, he didn't necessarily want to watch

1061
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:24,120
Speaker 1: the scary part and he would like squint his eyes,

1062
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:27,240
Speaker 1: blur out his vision during that portion. You know. So

1063
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:29,880
Speaker 1: maybe it is rooted in sort of especially a you know,

1064
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:35,440
Speaker 1: a childhood attempt to sort of save face but make

1065
00:57:35,520 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: it through the scary parts of the movie without actually

1066
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 1: watching them. And yeah, it kind of turns that on

1067
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:44,800
Speaker 1: its head. What if by not watching you're allowing it

1068
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:48,640
Speaker 1: to seep into you in other ways? But again, it's

1069
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 1: very ambiguous here, and that's kind of the beauty of

1070
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:54,560
Speaker 1: the Stephen Graham Jones story. You know, what actually is

1071
00:57:54,600 --> 00:57:57,920
Speaker 1: going on here? What am I doing or doing wrong

1072
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: that allows the darkness seep in at least at this

1073
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:05,160
Speaker 1: one theater, you know, wherever it is and whatever its

1074
00:58:05,240 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: dark history may.

1075
00:58:06,080 --> 00:58:09,720
Speaker 3: Be Yeah, so I love that story. I love a

1076
00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:12,520
Speaker 3: lot of Stephen Graham Jones's work, and if you want

1077
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 3: to pick up that collection, you look for after the

1078
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:17,560
Speaker 3: People Lights Have Gone Off in twenty fourteen.

1079
00:58:17,720 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, I noticed that Joe R. Lansdale wrote the introduction

1080
00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:23,880
Speaker 1: to that collection, which I think is fitting because I mean,

1081
00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:26,320
Speaker 1: these are both authors of sort of the same era,

1082
00:58:26,480 --> 00:58:29,520
Speaker 1: I believe, and their work kind of reminds me of

1083
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: each other's work. You know, both have a often have

1084
00:58:32,840 --> 00:58:36,360
Speaker 1: a great sense of sort of in a way, something

1085
00:58:36,400 --> 00:58:38,040
Speaker 1: that Stephen King did a lot. I mean, Stephen King

1086
00:58:38,040 --> 00:58:42,000
Speaker 1: wrote a lot about author about professional writers dealing with

1087
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:44,600
Speaker 1: you know, darkness, but also a lot of like working

1088
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: class blue collars sort of characters encountering a very you know,

1089
00:58:51,680 --> 00:58:57,120
Speaker 1: unpaved road level version of horror. And I get that

1090
00:58:57,240 --> 00:58:58,959
Speaker 1: in these two authors as well.

1091
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm gonna have to look and figure out

1092
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:07,720
Speaker 3: if Stephen Graham Jones's pale anthropological thriller and Slasher and

1093
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:12,720
Speaker 3: Other Slasher are already out, so I'm gonna try to read.

1094
00:59:12,600 --> 00:59:16,480
Speaker 1: Them all Right, Well, there we have a couple of

1095
00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 1: I think solid Halloween stories for you to potentially read,

1096
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:23,640
Speaker 1: or maybe you have read them, or maybe you feel like, Okay,

1097
00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:25,080
Speaker 1: I got enough, I don't need to read them, but

1098
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:27,960
Speaker 1: you have thoughts about them, you know, write in. We

1099
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. If you have ideas

1100
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:32,520
Speaker 1: for next year, If you want us to continue this series,

1101
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:35,360
Speaker 1: ride in and let us know. Just a reminder that

1102
00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:37,240
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

1103
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:40,320
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but

1104
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:42,840
Speaker 1: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just

1105
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:45,800
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film on weird Houses cinema. If

1106
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 1: you're on Instagram, follow us. We are stb ym podcast

1107
00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:52,240
Speaker 1: and that's a good way to just stay abreast of

1108
00:59:52,280 --> 00:59:54,400
Speaker 1: whatever's coming out in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1109
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:55,320
Speaker 1: podcast feed.

1110
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:59,720
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1111
01:00:00,120 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1112
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,040
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1113
01:00:04,080 --> 01:00:06,040
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1114
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:09,040
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1115
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:17,640
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1116
01:00:17,720 --> 01:00:20,680
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1117
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,520
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1118
01:00:23,680 --> 01:00:40,680
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,