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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back with the second installment this year of our

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Speaker 1: anthology horror series. Uh. This, I guess is going to

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Speaker 1: be the fifth anthology episode overall. Yeah, I believet so

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Speaker 1: this should be episode or yeah, volume five. How do

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Speaker 1: you want to look at it? Um? Yes, always last year.

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Speaker 1: If it's a volume you have, it's a volume. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So basically this is just a continuing experiment we've been

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Speaker 1: doing where we look to the wonderful world of horror

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Speaker 1: and sci fi uh TV anthologies and uh and cinematic

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Speaker 1: anthologies and pick out little episodes, little uh audio visual

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Speaker 1: short stories. They generally have some horror or sci fi

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Speaker 1: or some sort of in some sort of weird h

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Speaker 1: and perhaps grotesque twist in them, and we use that

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Speaker 1: as a focal point for a discussion of science and culture.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we're having to really um read into the episode

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Speaker 1: a lot more than the creators anticipated. Other Times it's

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Speaker 1: just it's really baked into an already intelligent script. Um.

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Speaker 1: It just kind of varies from piece to piece. Well,

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Speaker 1: I got one to talk about first that is definitely

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Speaker 1: baked in some way. Okay, what what have you got

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Speaker 1: for us? Joe? Okay, today I wanted to start by

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Speaker 1: talking about a classic episode of Are You Afraid of

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Speaker 1: the Dark? Rob? Did you watch Are You Afraid of

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Speaker 1: the Dark? I? I did. I I can't remember what

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Speaker 1: channel came on. Maybe it was a Nickelodeon thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I remember catching episodes of it, and I remember it

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Speaker 1: as being occasionally like really creepy, like it was effective.

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Speaker 1: It was not uh you know, it wasn't. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it was a kid show, but it could really creepy

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Speaker 1: out a little bit. It was. It was well done.

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Speaker 1: Is that recall? Yeah, A lot of the episodes really are,

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Speaker 1: and I would say even the bad episode, going back

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Speaker 1: and watching them as an adult, it is an extremely fun,

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Speaker 1: nostalgic rewatch. Uh. A lot of the episodes that I

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Speaker 1: found very scary when I was young. You know, it

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Speaker 1: is a kid's show, so they don't quite have the

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Speaker 1: punch they did when I when I was eight or whatever,

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Speaker 1: but a few of them are are still kind of surprising,

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Speaker 1: and one of my favorite things about the show is

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Speaker 1: that it is just egregiously adorably Canadian. One of the

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Speaker 1: fun things about going back and watching it now is

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Speaker 1: that you frequently encounter child versions of Ryan Gosling or

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Speaker 1: Nev Campbell or somebody else you recognize from later work.

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Speaker 1: And when it comes to the older actors, they weren't

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Speaker 1: usually people who you'd recognize from big movies or anything,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of them have this powerful energy of

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Speaker 1: like a local character beloved in some town. Like you

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Speaker 1: often get the sense that when you meet Dr Venk

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Speaker 1: or somebody like that, it's like you're you're looking at

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Speaker 1: the r C. Baits of Toronto. Yeah. I the episode

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Speaker 1: I mostly remember from this show is, if I if

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Speaker 1: I'm remembering it correctly, is the Tale of the dead

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Speaker 1: Man's Float, which has to do with like a haunted

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Speaker 1: high school swimming pool that remember, I'm I don't know

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Speaker 1: if I'm remembering correctly. I may be misremembering that it's

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Speaker 1: somehow in the in the basement of the school, but

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Speaker 1: maybe not. Yeah, there's a swimming pool in the It's

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Speaker 1: like a cursed swimming pool that was on a cemetery

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Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, And I think this is the one

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Speaker 1: where like when I when it follows came out. There's

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Speaker 1: a sequence in it it follows a swimming pool, and

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Speaker 1: it it made me think back to this episode, you

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Speaker 1: are a thousand percent correct. I I think I made

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Speaker 1: that connection at a subconscious level, but the moment you

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Speaker 1: said that, you're you're totally right. But the episode I

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Speaker 1: want to talk about today is one I don't remember

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Speaker 1: actually which season it's from. I should have looked that up,

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Speaker 1: but anyway, it's called The Tale of the Super Specs,

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Speaker 1: and it's notable for being I think one of the

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Speaker 1: episodes with some legitimately scary imagery, which is achieved via

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Speaker 1: very low tech means. It's just it has some very

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Speaker 1: creepy images of people draped in black cloth. But it also,

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Speaker 1: I think, is the episode that introduces the fan favorite

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Speaker 1: recurring character Mr Sard, who is a vain sort of

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Speaker 1: scheming magic and novelty shop owner who gets angry when

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Speaker 1: people call him Mr sar Do and he always says

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Speaker 1: his catchphrase that's sar dough, no Mr accent on the dough.

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Speaker 1: That seems that seems very particular, like he's not an

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Speaker 1: added to calling him sar Do. Right, it's more than

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Speaker 1: that Yeah, he's been. He's being a little fussy about

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Speaker 1: this point. I think, I mean, you invite these problems

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Speaker 1: when you decide to be a single name guy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but okay. So the premise of this episode is that

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Speaker 1: there's a young man named Weeds who is kind of

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Speaker 1: a prankster, and he's browsing in Sardo's Magic and Novelty Shop.

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Speaker 1: That's the kind of place that's got masks and fake vomit,

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Speaker 1: but it's also got apparently legitimate spell books and referenced

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Speaker 1: homes on the occult, and real magical artifacts and objects.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure why they're all crammed together in this

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Speaker 1: one shop, but so he's sort of looking around for

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Speaker 1: things and he comes across a bag of magic dust,

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Speaker 1: which while simultaneously reading a spell out of an ancient tome,

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Speaker 1: he accidentally spills this magic dust over some plastic glasses

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Speaker 1: that are being sold as super specs, which are supposed

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Speaker 1: to grant X ray vision. I think I think the

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Speaker 1: original understanding is these are just novelty glasses, but they

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Speaker 1: get imbued with magic power when he says the spell.

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Speaker 1: Also there in the magic shop is Weeds his girlfriend

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Speaker 1: Mary Beth, and she decides to try out the super specs,

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Speaker 1: but when she does, she sees shadowy figures who are

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Speaker 1: draped in black cloth from head to toe, and they're

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Speaker 1: following her everywhere. And they are multiple occasions, you know,

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Speaker 1: like they go to school and she puts on the

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Speaker 1: glasses again and she sees the figures, and then she

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Speaker 1: goes home and she puts on the glasses again and

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Speaker 1: sees them another time. She also sees um elements of

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Speaker 1: alternative reality, so like she'll look at her fireplace and

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Speaker 1: without the glasses there's no fire, and with the glasses

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Speaker 1: there's there's a fire burning, so it's very they live

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Speaker 1: in a way now. Eventually, what happens is that Weeds

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Speaker 1: and Marybeth get convinced that there are invisible people from

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Speaker 1: another dimension who are stalking them, and they consult with

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Speaker 1: Sardo to try to figure out how to get rid

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Speaker 1: of these shadow people. And I won't spoil the ending

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Speaker 1: to this one, because I gotta admit the ending is

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Speaker 1: pretty good. But the basic premise is what I wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk about. It's the premise that there is a

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Speaker 1: realm of life that actually occupies the same general spaces us,

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Speaker 1: but that we go about our lives completely unaware of

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Speaker 1: and it's it's a take on the idea popular in

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Speaker 1: some like alien conspiracy theory architecture that aliens are somehow

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Speaker 1: already here. They're here on Earth, but they're are invisible

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Speaker 1: to us for some reason, or they're hiding in plain sight. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think. I think. I recorded an older episode of

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Speaker 1: the show with Ben Bolling and Matt Frederick uh guesting

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Speaker 1: where we talked about shadow people and uh particular study

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Speaker 1: that linked some of this phenomena to disruptions of the

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Speaker 1: body schema. So so basically, like like a situation where

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Speaker 1: you know, neurologically your idea of where your body is

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Speaker 1: and what your body is doing would be skewed in

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Speaker 1: a way that it would be perceived as some sort

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Speaker 1: of a shadow being that was close by. Oh, I

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Speaker 1: see you. Not to say that's a definitive answer for

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Speaker 1: for all of this, but it was. It was one

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Speaker 1: idea that was put forth by some researchers. Well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think we can be pretty safe in assuming that

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Speaker 1: they're not actually like people sized organisms that are walking

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Speaker 1: around unnoticed on Earth and our aliens of some guy,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you can't rule it out, but

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Speaker 1: I'm not aware of any kind of evidence that something

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Speaker 1: like that is possible. But I wanted to explore a

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Speaker 1: maybe more plausible, still unproven, but more plausible and very

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Speaker 1: interesting sort of parallel idea. And the place I want

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Speaker 1: to start here is I was reading the British astronaut

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Speaker 1: and chemist Helen Sharmon. It was actually the first British

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Speaker 1: astronaut ever. She was talking to the Observer, I think

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Speaker 1: earlier this year and saying that you know, it was

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Speaker 1: her opinion, and that just given the size of the universe,

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Speaker 1: the number of planets out there, the number of opportunities

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Speaker 1: for biochemistry to arise, that she's pretty convinced that there

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Speaker 1: must be aliens out there somewhere in the universe. And

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Speaker 1: then she adds, quote, will they be like you and me,

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Speaker 1: made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It's possible

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Speaker 1: they're here right now and we simply can't see them now.

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Speaker 1: I want to be clear that I'm not aware of

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Speaker 1: any evidence whatsoever this is actually the case, and I

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Speaker 1: don't think Sharmon was suggesting that we have evidence of

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Speaker 1: this being true, but it does raise the very intriguing

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Speaker 1: question of how would we know if aliens in some

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Speaker 1: sense or some kind of alternate organism, we're already here,

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Speaker 1: already somehow within range of our senses. Well, first, is

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Speaker 1: there any conceivable way that something like that could be true?

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Speaker 1: And second, if it were true, would there be any

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Speaker 1: way to sort of put on the superspects, any way

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Speaker 1: to figure it out? So to further investigate this idea,

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Speaker 1: I was reading a great article from Astrobiology magazine from

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Speaker 1: two thousand six, So this is a little bit older,

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Speaker 1: and some of the science, the underlying science, might have

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Speaker 1: changed somewhat since then, but I think the basic question

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Speaker 1: still stands as posed. And this is by the UC

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Speaker 1: Boulder philosophy professor Carol Cleland, and the article is called

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Speaker 1: a shadow biosphere. Now, by a shadow biosphere she means

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Speaker 1: a rarely considered form of alternative life, not aliens from

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Speaker 1: another planet, but aliens from Earth, an unrecognized alternative biology

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Speaker 1: that may exist parallel to us, invisibly here on this planet.

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Speaker 1: And she asked the question, if something like that existed,

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Speaker 1: what would these alternative biologies entail in order to have

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Speaker 1: escaped our notice? So they could possibly include alternative forms

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Speaker 1: of information coding, so forms other than DNA or RNA,

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Speaker 1: or they could include different amino acids to build their proteins,

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Speaker 1: or quote any other means by which the chemistry of

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Speaker 1: early Earth could have combined to form life we are

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Speaker 1: not familiar with. And so there are there are a

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Speaker 1: few things we can probably rule out from you know,

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Speaker 1: any reasonable question, The first of which is the superspect

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Speaker 1: you know, the literal superspect scenario, where there are like

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Speaker 1: human sized organisms that are going unnoticed. She says, probably

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Speaker 1: if these shadow biological organisms were on the scale of

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Speaker 1: familiar plants or animals, we would have already noticed and

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Speaker 1: detected them, right, Yes, we would. Somebody would have figured

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Speaker 1: it out by now. So what we're probably talking about,

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Speaker 1: if there were such a thing, would be microscopic organisms.

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Speaker 1: But microscopic organisms can have big impacts, They do a lot,

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Speaker 1: and so the the impact of a microscopic shadow biosphere

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Speaker 1: could be enormous, and it would be very interesting to

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Speaker 1: discover that it had gone unnoticed this long. You know,

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Speaker 1: I can't help but be reminded of a a great

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Speaker 1: great end quotation marks here uh Saturday Night Live parody

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Speaker 1: commercial from I guess back in the nineties for the

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Speaker 1: fecal vision glasses. Did you ever see this one? No?

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Speaker 1: I didn't. Where everybody puts on the fecal vision glasses

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Speaker 1: and then like fecal matter glows bright green, and of

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Speaker 1: course they just they just show a ridiculous amount of it,

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Speaker 1: Like the entire room is basically covered in it. There's

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Speaker 1: a baby covered in it, that sort of thing. Um.

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Speaker 1: But in a way, you know, seeing the unseen um

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Speaker 1: world of life forms around us. I think that's an

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Speaker 1: excellent point of comparison. Keep keep that, keep that image

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Speaker 1: in mind as we move on. So one of the

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Speaker 1: first things, of course, you'd have to consider if you're

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Speaker 1: addressing this question of could there could there in fact

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Speaker 1: be a shadow by sphere is um? What counts is life?

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Speaker 1: You want to make sure you're defining your terms properly,

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Speaker 1: because you're if your definition of life is overly inclusive,

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Speaker 1: it could lose all meaning. Right, you don't want to

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Speaker 1: end up with the definition of life that includes like

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Speaker 1: volcanoes and waterfalls as life. But obviously there are lots

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Speaker 1: of different definitions of life that are in competition with

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Speaker 1: each other. I was reading an article by an astrobiologist

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Speaker 1: named Samantha Rolf and she points out there are probably

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Speaker 1: more than a hundred legit definitions of what constitutes a

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Speaker 1: life form. Most of them encounter some potential objections here

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Speaker 1: or they're just As one example, she points out that

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Speaker 1: that if you zero in on the definition of life

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Speaker 1: that centered on the ability to reproduce, you arrive at

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Speaker 1: a strange conclusion that like a three D printer that

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Speaker 1: can print and as symbol copies of itself is alive,

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Speaker 1: but a mule, which is sterile, is not alive, And

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Speaker 1: that doesn't quite seem right. Yeah. I think we've discussed

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Speaker 1: in the show before some arguments about viruses, but also

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Speaker 1: about fire, the degrees to which fire can be classified

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Speaker 1: up to a point as a as an organism. It's

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Speaker 1: not an organism, but but you can make an impassioned

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Speaker 1: argument of your feeling argumentative about it totally, or like

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Speaker 1: forms of crystals, things like that. I mean, you run

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Speaker 1: into a lot of difficulties actually, if you're trying to

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Speaker 1: come up with the definition of life that rules in

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Speaker 1: everything we want to think of his life and rules

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Speaker 1: out everything we don't. So in this two thousand six article,

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Speaker 1: Carol Cleveland zeros in on the following distinctions what what

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Speaker 1: she thinks is important is, first quote, the capacity of

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Speaker 1: a system to maintain itself as a self organized unit

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Speaker 1: against both internal and external perturbations. So basically that means

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Speaker 1: a life form has has some type of structural resiliency,

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Speaker 1: It sort of protects its own integrity and has some

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Speaker 1: form of resistance against just dissolution by external and internal forces.

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Speaker 1: And then the second thing she says is the ability

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Speaker 1: to reproduce and transmit to its descendants adaptive heritable modifications. Now,

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Speaker 1: all the life that we know of on Earth that

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Speaker 1: meets those two criteria is defined by a common chemistry.

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Speaker 1: We know what the primary types of molecules involved are,

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Speaker 1: and those molecules are proteins and nucleic acids. Nucleic Acids

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Speaker 1: of course would include DNA and RNA, and they store

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Speaker 1: hereditary information and they produce proteins. Proteins then make up

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Speaker 1: the structure and the machinery of cells and of the

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Speaker 1: life form as a whole, and the interface between these

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Speaker 1: two functions the hereditary function and the structural or mechanical

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Speaker 1: function of the of the protein. This is handled by

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Speaker 1: a very important structure known as the ribosome, which is

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Speaker 1: made of both proteins and RNA, and which translate the

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Speaker 1: hereditary information stored in nucleic acids into usable proteins. This

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Speaker 1: is how all the life we know of on Earth works.

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Speaker 1: And yet Cleveland says, we just don't know how different

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Speaker 1: life could be. Maybe that's the only chemistry in the

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Speaker 1: universe capable of producing the functions we usually attribute to life,

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Speaker 1: and maybe not, she writes, quote Moreover, we can't rule

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Speaker 1: out the possibility that the most important characteristics of life

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Speaker 1: have yet to be discovered. The functions traditionally attributed to

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Speaker 1: life maybe little more than symptoms of more fundamental but

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Speaker 1: as yet unknown properties. So, for example, at the time

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Speaker 1: she was writing this, all life on Earth built its

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Speaker 1: proteins out of the same twenty amino acids, which which

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Speaker 1: all of these amino acids in life forms share the

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Speaker 1: same chirality. Reality is something we talked about, I think

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Speaker 1: actually in a previous Horror Anthology episode when we were

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Speaker 1: talking about to Serve Man. Oh yes, yes we did.

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Speaker 1: That was a really fun one, uh about like how

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Speaker 1: would you the dangers of constructing, say, food for an

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Speaker 1: alien being exactly, and and the idea that aliens would

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Speaker 1: want to eat us we might be poisonous to them

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Speaker 1: if their molecular biology is somewhat different than ours. But

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Speaker 1: just as a brief refresher, chirality or the handedness of

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Speaker 1: molecules refers to like which way they're oriented in terms

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Speaker 1: of like a mirror image of each other. And Earth

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Speaker 1: life uses left handed molecules, but it maybe could use

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Speaker 1: right handed molecules. A biotic processes, like processes not associated

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Speaker 1: with life, are known to create all kinds of amino

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Speaker 1: acids that are not found in life forms. Cleveland references

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Speaker 1: more than a hundred known amino acids that are created

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Speaker 1: by a biotic processes, So why does life as we

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Speaker 1: know what not employ more of these amino acids or

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Speaker 1: different chirality of amino acids. Lab experiments show that you

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Speaker 1: can build proteins out of alternative amino acids and molecules

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Speaker 1: with right handed chirality. Likewise, with the exception of RNA viruses,

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Speaker 1: all life on Earth stores its genetic information in DNA,

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Speaker 1: but it's possible DNA could use different combinations of bases

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Speaker 1: and amino acids. So she's sort of asking the question

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Speaker 1: in general, why all these particular ers, why while these

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Speaker 1: particularities of Earth life that, as far as we can tell,

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Speaker 1: are totally contingent, and Cleveland thinks that the best explanation is, well,

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Speaker 1: this is just how it happened in the conditions of

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Speaker 1: the young Earth when life first arose, and these contingencies

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Speaker 1: of molecular biology have been recopied down the ages since then,

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Speaker 1: ever since these life forms have been reproducing quote. So

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Speaker 1: it is unlikely that the ribosomes found in the cells

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Speaker 1: of familiar life represent the only possibility for translating hereditary

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Speaker 1: information stored on nucleic acids into proteins, let alone the

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Speaker 1: original mechanism utilized by the first protocells. Had circumstances on

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Speaker 1: the early Earth been different, familiar life would also have

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Speaker 1: been different. But this raises a really interesting question if

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Speaker 1: these features of molecular biology as we know it are

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Speaker 1: really just contingencies. In other words, if it's just chemically

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Speaker 1: how things happened to shake out when the first life

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Speaker 1: forms were coming together, how do we know that other

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Speaker 1: life forms, other forms of molecular biology did not arise

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Speaker 1: at different times in places on Earth in the history

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Speaker 1: of Earth, with their own contingent chemical quirks making them

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Speaker 1: hard for us to recognize with tools that are honed

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Speaker 1: in the search for familiar forms of life. I mean,

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Speaker 1: in a way, what you can discover is sort of

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Speaker 1: determined or bounded by what kind of tools you use

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Speaker 1: and what you expect to be looking for. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean it reminds me a bit of recent discussions we've

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Speaker 1: had about, um, how you would just how you would

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Speaker 1: describe a sense that you have to a being that

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Speaker 1: is lacking that sense, you know, like it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: hard to to to to explain that, and like that

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Speaker 1: works in reverse, like looking for the thing that you

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Speaker 1: can't experience. Now, from here, Cleveland goes on to address

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Speaker 1: some objections that are usually raised to the idea that

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Speaker 1: there could be alternative forms of molecular biology on Earth. So,

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Speaker 1: first of all, there is the claim that quote any

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Speaker 1: variations in the earth eliest forms of life would have

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Speaker 1: been combined by lateral gene transfer into a single form

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Speaker 1: of life. Right, So that we've talked about horizontal gene

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Speaker 1: transfer on the show before, and the idea is that,

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Speaker 1: you know, there just would have been like sort of

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Speaker 1: a cross fertilization of genes that way, and they kind

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Speaker 1: of would have been absorbed into the dominant biosphere. But

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Speaker 1: she argues against this by saying, you know, we can't

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Speaker 1: assume compatibility and opportunity for lateral gene transfer between our

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Speaker 1: ancestral microbes, the microbes that became us, and whatever these

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Speaker 1: alternative critters are. There could be chemical and compatibility, there

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Speaker 1: could be geographic isolation, and so forth. And then there

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Speaker 1: is a second argument, which is that well, our single

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Speaker 1: celled ancestors would have wiped out these alternative biological organisms

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Speaker 1: in the competition for resources, and she argues against this

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Speaker 1: by saying, well, rare microbes that we know of tend

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Speaker 1: to occupy unique ecological niches, so they're not necessarily in

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Speaker 1: deadly competition the same resources. They might just kind of

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Speaker 1: have different needs, have established different niches, and they're just

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Speaker 1: writing it out as as sort of rare, unique and

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Speaker 1: isolated communities of organisms, or even within communities of of

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Speaker 1: conventional organisms. And then finally she talks about the argument

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Speaker 1: that if these things are still here, we should have

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Speaker 1: found evidence of them by now, and so against the

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Speaker 1: we should have found it by now, she argues that

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Speaker 1: given the tools we possessed at the time she was

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Speaker 1: writing this, it was very possible to miss things like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: you can look at microbes under a microscope, but that

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Speaker 1: can only take you so far because convergent evolution means

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Speaker 1: that a lot of different microbes will kind of look

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Speaker 1: superficially similar in structure, like archaia kind of look like bacteria.

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Speaker 1: And then we have other tools like lab cultures, but

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Speaker 1: lab cultures just might fail to grow them. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: then another option we have for detecting microbial life that's

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Speaker 1: difficult to culture is known as PCR amplification. That stands

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Speaker 1: for polymerase chain reaction. It's chemical process for multiplying genetic

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Speaker 1: material so that it can be detected. And PCR amplification

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Speaker 1: that relies on ribosomal RNA would not be able to

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Speaker 1: detect a microbe that didn't have ribosomes or that had

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Speaker 1: a different form of ribosomal RNA. So basically Cleveland's case

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Speaker 1: here is that our best tools for looking for chemical

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Speaker 1: signs of life, at least the time she was writing,

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Speaker 1: are kind of tuned to the kinds of life that

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Speaker 1: we know about, and they might completely pass over a

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Speaker 1: potential shadow biosphere if it existed. Now, there's another possible objection,

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Speaker 1: which is that wouldn't we have observed these microbes, the

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Speaker 1: shadow microbes, by the effect they have on their environment.

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Speaker 1: Of course, we observe the effects of common known microbes

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Speaker 1: on the environment all the time, She says, quote. Life

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Speaker 1: invariably modifies its environment, extracting energy, building structures, producing waste products.

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Speaker 1: So you know, all of the oxygen in the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: is a product of of microscopic life, or at least

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Speaker 1: was originally. Now I guess it's also the product of

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Speaker 1: macroscopic life. But she says, actually, you know, this is

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Speaker 1: a really good way to look for these things, to

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Speaker 1: look for the effects they have on their environments. And

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Speaker 1: Cleveland argues that it's possible that up until now their

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Speaker 1: effects have always blended in with the background noise of

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Speaker 1: effects produced by other microbes. So it's possible we just

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Speaker 1: haven't looked closely enough in the right places, or we've

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Speaker 1: been hindered by the bounds of an existing paradigm of

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Speaker 1: molecular biology. She writes, quote. Similar cases can be found

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Speaker 1: in biology, such as the discovery of Archaea, a new

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Speaker 1: variety of familiar microbial life that revolutionized biological taxonomy, and

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Speaker 1: so as background, our archaea is now considered one of

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Speaker 1: the three main domains or super kingdoms of life. You've

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Speaker 1: got eukaryotes, which includes all multicellular life bacteria, and then Archaea.

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Speaker 1: And Archaea used to be thought of as just a

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Speaker 1: type of bacteria. It's now recognized, has been recognized since

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. And think nineteen seventy seven that Archias

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Speaker 1: is a totally different domain, a different evolutionary history. But

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Speaker 1: she goes on, in hindsight, it's clear there were signs

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Speaker 1: that some prokaryotes are fundamentally different from others, despite their

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Speaker 1: remarkable similarities and sell morphology. But because biologists were working

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Speaker 1: under the prokaryote eukaryot paradigm, which used cellular morphology as

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Speaker 1: the guiding principle for understanding taxonomic relations, these signs went unrecognized.

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Speaker 1: So we were just looking at the shapes of cells

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Speaker 1: and thinking that would tell us everything we needed to know,

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Speaker 1: and it didn't. Actually and then finally, as she ends

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Speaker 1: the article by calling out a possible example of a

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Speaker 1: place to look for alternative microbiology or alternative molecular biology. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: she singles out an example known as desert varnish. And

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Speaker 1: this is a thin coating of discoloration, usually kind of

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Speaker 1: a red or dark discoloration that you see on exposed

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Speaker 1: rock faces in deserts and their dry areas. You've probably

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Speaker 1: seen it before if you looked at some desert rocks

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Speaker 1: that had a kind of dark red or black shiny surface.

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Speaker 1: And I've read that since this two thousand six s

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Speaker 1: a new discoveries have made desert varnish appear to be

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Speaker 1: very unlikely as a result of shadow biological processes. But

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean the question has gone away. I mean

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Speaker 1: the questions about a possible shadow biosphere remain. More recently,

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Speaker 1: I was reading an article about this in Science by

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Speaker 1: Emily Conover. This was in and Conover points out developments

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Speaker 1: since the original idea of a shadow biosphere have continually

431
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 1: been introduced. They make it more and more interesting. For example,

432
00:24:40,600 --> 00:24:43,960
Speaker 1: discoveries that make clear how our traditional definitions of Earth

433
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 1: life are just not quite inclusive enough. They don't necessarily

434
00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:51,119
Speaker 1: capture all the possibilities. For example, quote recently discovered giant

435
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: Amiba infecting viruses blur the line between life and non life,

436
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: although they rely on their hosts for essential biological functions,

437
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:02,960
Speaker 1: meaning you know they're not self sustaining the bacteria sized

438
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:07,080
Speaker 1: viruses have complex genomes. So the question would be, then,

439
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 1: how are scientists currently looking for signs of possible alternative

440
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:15,719
Speaker 1: biochemistry if there's a shadow biosphere on Earth. Uh And

441
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 1: she quotes the planetary scientist Carolin Porko of the Space

442
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 1: Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who says, you know, a

443
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:25,399
Speaker 1: really good way to look for these things is to

444
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 1: go back to the last point that Cleveland raised in

445
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 1: the article, look for disequilibriums in nature. Look for environments

446
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:36,199
Speaker 1: that are sort of out of balance or out of whack. Quote.

447
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: Life takes in and uses energy, altering its environment in

448
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:42,919
Speaker 1: the process. Without life, for example, our planet would not

449
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: have an oxygen rich atmosphere, as chemical reactions tend to

450
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: deplete oxygen. She also mentions some other interesting possibilities, such

451
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:54,680
Speaker 1: as the idea that this one is raised by David

452
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 1: Lynn of Emory University, who draws attention to the idea

453
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: of misfolded proteins representing a possible type of alternative life.

454
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: Says quote, they show some similarities to life, namely that

455
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,119
Speaker 1: they can generate diversity in the different ways that they fold,

456
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:14,240
Speaker 1: can undergo chemical evolution, in which those folded proteins are

457
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: selected not genetically but chemically, and this could be a

458
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: kind of precursor to some sort of of chemical network

459
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 1: that would be very different than what we're familiar with.

460
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: Uh And I was also reading an article this is

461
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: the one I mentioned earlier by Samantha Rolf, which is

462
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:35,320
Speaker 1: about the hypothetical option of a shadow biosphere based on

463
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 1: silicon molecules instead of carbon molecules. And silicon, of course

464
00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:42,680
Speaker 1: is not nearly as good at as as carbon doing

465
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: the kinds of things molecules need to do inside a cell,

466
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: But there have been experiments that created silicon bonds in

467
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:50,639
Speaker 1: bacteria that make it seem at least possible that some

468
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 1: kind of silicon based life form could exist. So in

469
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: the end, I want to be very clear that we

470
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 1: don't know that there is a shadow biosphere of some

471
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: kind on Earth. We don't have any strong evidence that

472
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,400
Speaker 1: there is, but we do know at least that if

473
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 1: it exists, it probably consists of microorganisms if it exists

474
00:27:08,359 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 1: at all. But some some science fiction I want to

475
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 1: see exploring that is, like the idea of big sort

476
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: of network effects created on the Earth by micro organisms

477
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 1: within a shadow microbial ecosystem, you know, if memory serves

478
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 1: me correctly. Uh, it's been several years since I read these.

479
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: But Peter Watt's book Starfish involves a plot element that

480
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: it that it entails this. Uh, an ancient apocalyptic microbe

481
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:41,120
Speaker 1: called Behemoth think gets unleashed on the earth. It's been

482
00:27:41,359 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: like hiding out in the bottom of the ocean. That

483
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:46,480
Speaker 1: sounds good. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's quite good.

484
00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:48,640
Speaker 1: I don't know why I haven't read Starfish yet. Maybe

485
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:52,200
Speaker 1: they'll be next on my list. But you know, Peter

486
00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:55,439
Speaker 1: Watts aside, what does what does sar Do have to

487
00:27:55,440 --> 00:28:00,680
Speaker 1: say about this? You know sar Do unfortunately the Charlatan.

488
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: And this raises a question that is true of I

489
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: think many sort of I don't okay kind of fast

490
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:11,439
Speaker 1: and loose horror or or or supernatural properties, which is

491
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:14,920
Speaker 1: that it often appears that you are able to buy

492
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: real magical artifacts and serious tomes on the occult within,

493
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:23,120
Speaker 1: just like crank magic shops that have fake vomit in them.

494
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: Why why is that so common? I mean, part of

495
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 1: it's the hunter gatherer instinct, right, the idea that we

496
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:33,959
Speaker 1: could go into a junk store and find something of value,

497
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's why I will go into a

498
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 1: thrift store and I'll see if I can find a

499
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 1: copy of Jerry Maguire and VHS like It's it seems

500
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 1: unlikely that such treasures are still available, but I'm still

501
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 1: gonna look and occasionally I find one that's true magic.

502
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: Though Sardo is also contributing to the Pyramid in the Desert.

503
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: Yeah so, butter then, I also think another big part

504
00:28:56,360 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: of it is the kind of like small town magic

505
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: op and and God bless them where you can still

506
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: find them. Uh, you know, anytime I see one, I

507
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: have to I have to check it out. But but

508
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: shops like that too. We like the idea that they

509
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:14,480
Speaker 1: could have genuine u occult things in them because that

510
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:16,760
Speaker 1: means we have access to them. That means there is

511
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: a possible there a possible connection between ourselves and the

512
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: supernatural and the fantastic. I guess, for some reason, at

513
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: a gut level, I find it much more plausible to

514
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: find the occult tome or the real magical artifact in

515
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 1: a thrift shop or something that I do in the

516
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: in the novelty magic shop. I don't know, maybe that's

517
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: just me well, you know, strange sudden deaths are always

518
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: happening to legitimate wizards. And then who's going to sell

519
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: their stuff? And where are they going to sell their stuff?

520
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: It's gonna get pawned off to the local magic shop.

521
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 1: I guess that's it. You you combine them the thrift

522
00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:52,360
Speaker 1: shop and that they've got a secondhand element, and that

523
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: can then anything can happen. Yeah, now it's probably eBay.

524
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: It's the most of your monkey pops are being bought

525
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: on eBay these days. And then you get it and

526
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: you're like, all the fingers are still are folded on

527
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: this thing. I don't even get all the wishes. Here's

528
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: something I want to hear from listeners. What is the

529
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: creepiest like most cursed antique or artifact object you've ever

530
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: bought her or or somehow acquired. Yeah, I'd love to

531
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: hear that too. All Right, on that note, we're going

532
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 1: to take a break. But when we come back, more

533
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: horror anthology. Thank thank you, thank you. All right for

534
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: our next UH anthology selection this year, I'd like to

535
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 1: return to the crypt Tales from the crypt Uh the

536
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: the the the awesome HBO series that that was was

537
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 1: It was an adaptation of these older pre code horror

538
00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:43,400
Speaker 1: comic books, and as we said before, just does it

539
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: generally does a great job of creating these, at times

540
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 1: kind of trashy uh in nasty tales of often bad

541
00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 1: things happening to be happening to bad people, bad people

542
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:56,680
Speaker 1: getting their come upance in some sort of grizzly twisted manner.

543
00:30:57,200 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: This one that you picked for for today. This episode

544
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:05,719
Speaker 1: I watched last night and it has a spectacular intro

545
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: full of puns by the crypt Keeper. Can we share

546
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: some of these puns or do you already have them

547
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 1: written down? I do not have them written down, but

548
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: if you, if you have them just floating around your head,

549
00:31:15,560 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 1: let's see what were they? So? I can't do crypt

550
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: Keeper voice, but it has something to do with getting

551
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 1: a house, getting a little house on the scary a

552
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 1: tomb with the view, what are you afraid you can't

553
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: get a mortgage? Yes, So, the the intro to the

554
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: show was amazing, The crypt Keeper segments were amazing, and

555
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: then the the episodes themselves are often um. I mean

556
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,080
Speaker 1: it's rare that there's not something notable about them, either

557
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 1: a major star or someone who would become a major star,

558
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: just a great character actor is present, oftentimes big lead directors,

559
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: uh you know, slummed it up for Tales from the

560
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: Crypt or or likely just had like a really good

561
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: time with the series. And um yeah, I find my

562
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:03,520
Speaker 1: stuff returning to them time and time again. UM it's

563
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: I remember watching it often half scrambled on HBO when

564
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: I was like a middle schooler, and it was, you know,

565
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: this perfect cable TV nether world of titilation and gore

566
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:19,719
Speaker 1: to immerse yourself in. Um, and it's it's it's interesting

567
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: that you know back then that that that was the

568
00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: way to watch it, like sort of like pirated half

569
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 1: scrambled format. Uh. And nowadays, as of October, it looks

570
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: like the rights to the series are contested or something.

571
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't I don't know the precise

572
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 1: legal prison that it finds itself in. But you cannot

573
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: stream it anywhere. Um, you can't buy it digitally. Uh

574
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 1: So as of right now, the only place you can

575
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: watch these episodes are like on YouTube and daily motion

576
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:50,640
Speaker 1: unless you have like pre existing digital purchases, which I

577
00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:53,240
Speaker 1: have on some of the episodes but not all of them. Well,

578
00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:54,960
Speaker 1: I think what you're getting at is that it actually

579
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 1: feels appropriate with the low quality because it's like watching

580
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:00,239
Speaker 1: it through like a scrambled cable saying yeah, yeah, it's

581
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: actually better quality than uh than most of the time

582
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 1: when I was watching it when I was younger. Um,

583
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: but uh yeah. I keep hoping that it will come

584
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 1: back because you know, there's still other tales to tell,

585
00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: and they could retell others and create new ones in

586
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 1: the same vibe. I mean, clearly people have been doing

587
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: that over and over again across the decades. And also

588
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: John Cassier, the the voice of the of the crypt Keeper.

589
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: He is very much alive. Not only is he alive,

590
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: but he is on cameo. I found out I was

591
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: I was talking with my wife about a friend of

592
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 1: ours getting cameo videos for their their spouse for their birthday,

593
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, cameo just doesn't really interest

594
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: me unless it was the crypt Keeper. Maybe if it

595
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: was the crypt Keeper, I'd be interested. And sure enough, Uh,

596
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 1: he's on there seventy dollars a pop. Um. He holds

597
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 1: a crypt Keeper like mask over his face when he

598
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: does it, so you don't get the full puppet performance,

599
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 1: but still you get the voice. After you brought this

600
00:33:55,680 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: to my attention. I was investigating, and I found out

601
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 1: you can get cameo messages from Zordon from Power Rangers,

602
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 1: but not how about Sardo Sardo on there. Oh, it

603
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,319
Speaker 1: didn't look for sar Dough. I should have. All right,

604
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 1: we'll have to look for Sarto later. Um. Anyway, like

605
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: I said, a lot of these episodes of Tales from

606
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:18,040
Speaker 1: the Crypt are ghastly and grizzly, and there's a lot

607
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:21,520
Speaker 1: of blood in them. Um. But this one that we're

608
00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: going to discuss here is is a bit different. Uh.

609
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:29,360
Speaker 1: This one is titled Maniac at Large and it's uh,

610
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,879
Speaker 1: it's really a rather tasteful affair as far as Tales

611
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: in the Crypt goes. And it's directed by John Frankenheimer,

612
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: famous for such films with the Manurian Candidate. And it

613
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 1: stars Blithe Danner, a veteran of stage and screen that

614
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 1: you've probably you've almost certainly seen her in something before

615
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:48,760
Speaker 1: because she's been in everything. It also has Salomi Jen's,

616
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: who I found out was in a movie called Terror

617
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:55,759
Speaker 1: from the year five thousand, which was a I think

618
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 1: a double feature drive in double feature from the late

619
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: fifties with the brain Eaters, which is one of my

620
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: favorite movie posters of all time. That is a great

621
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 1: movie poster. Yeah, that's I've never seen it, but I've

622
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 1: seen the movie poster time and time again. I think

623
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 1: I've had it as a desktop wallpaper before. Um. It

624
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:15,359
Speaker 1: has a couple of other notable character actors in it, well,

625
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: one character actor in one kind of rock star celebrity.

626
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,000
Speaker 1: Clarence Williams the Third is in it. He plays a

627
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: security guard. He's another actor. You look him up. You've

628
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 1: definitely seen something with Clarence. Clarence Williams the Third in it,

629
00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: and he gets He gets a fun role that it

630
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:31,720
Speaker 1: is at times kind of creepy. But then Adam Aunt

631
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: himself shows up as a mega creepy library patron. Adam

632
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: Aunt has strong ted Ramie vibes in this. Yeah, so

633
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:43,440
Speaker 1: again this this episode is extremely solid, quite reserved for

634
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:46,200
Speaker 1: a crip episode, but with some satisfying twists and turns.

635
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:49,919
Speaker 1: The basic plot here is that Danner's character, Margaret has

636
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 1: just started a job at a library in the big city.

637
00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: She's trying to navigate the environment, figure out you know,

638
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 1: who she can trust, who she doesn't, What do the

639
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: clientele like what's this creepy adamant dude all about um

640
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: uh and getting you're just getting used to the new job,

641
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: all while a serial killer remains at large in the city.

642
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 1: I would say this is very much part of the

643
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:15,799
Speaker 1: early nineties urban hell sub genre, which is the I

644
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a genre really, it's just sort

645
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: of a set of assumptions shared by it seems like

646
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 1: every movie made in like the late eighties early nineties,

647
00:36:23,360 --> 00:36:26,879
Speaker 1: which is just that like cities in general and New

648
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: York in particular are hell on Earth, and and uh,

649
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:33,400
Speaker 1: that you just don't want to be in the city,

650
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 1: and that it's associated with just like littering and crime

651
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: and traffic and and misery. But but anyway, yeah, it's

652
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: very much the idea that this is the city is

653
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:46,680
Speaker 1: a bad place, and the library is is not a

654
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 1: great place within the city. But she's doing the best

655
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 1: you can. Now, I will say there's some there's some

656
00:36:51,640 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: twist and turns that occur that turn some of these

657
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:56,920
Speaker 1: elements on their head. But this one's got a good twist.

658
00:36:56,960 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 1: I think this is a good twist. We're not gonna

659
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:00,719
Speaker 1: ruin it. Go check it out. A And as of

660
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: this recording. You can probably just find it on YouTube,

661
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 1: which is that you should be able to watch this

662
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: in a more pristine quality, but at any rate, several

663
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 1: elements worth pulling out for our discussion here. Adam Ants

664
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:14,759
Speaker 1: character Pipkin is obsessed with serial killers, so he keeps

665
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:17,720
Speaker 1: coming up to Margaret and just chatting her up about

666
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:20,640
Speaker 1: serial killers, saying just all sorts of creepy things, just

667
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 1: an overload of creepy serial killer obsession things. I just

668
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 1: remembered something. It was at the back of my mind

669
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: and then I pulled it up. There was a movie

670
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:33,360
Speaker 1: from n that I watched in a terrible VHS copy

671
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: many years ago called spell Caster that also has Adam

672
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 1: Ant in it. And Adam Aunt had a fairly extensive

673
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 1: film career. In this movie, I think he plays an

674
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: evil wizard. Well, he's good in this. I have to say.

675
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 1: His name is Dia Blow. All right. So you have

676
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:54,400
Speaker 1: adam Ants character Pipkin, just being obsessed with serial killers

677
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 1: and being very creepy and suspect. Also, Margaret herself has

678
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 1: become increasingly obsessed with the idea that she will be

679
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:05,160
Speaker 1: the killer's next victim. Creepy things keep happening, People keep

680
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: acting creepy um, and she keeps and she's clearly obsessing

681
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: over the fact that she could and perhaps will be next.

682
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: And it's this is sort of spurred on by Adamant's

683
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 1: character because he's like, who's the next victim going to be?

684
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 1: I think it'll be a woman this time? Yes, yes, yeah,

685
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: he said, slimy, it's wonderful. But then also she keeps

686
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:28,319
Speaker 1: she was bringing some of this up to the head

687
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: librarian Mrs Pritchard, and Miss Pritchard she tries to like

688
00:38:32,719 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 1: stamp this down a bit. She just largely dismisses the

689
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,759
Speaker 1: serial killer as being this inflated news story in a

690
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:41,319
Speaker 1: matter of mass hysteria. So I thought all of this

691
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:44,240
Speaker 1: would be a perfect reason to explore the question why

692
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 1: are we so obsessed with serial killers and true crime?

693
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: And you've you've probably noticed this already, but murder podcasts

694
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:56,319
Speaker 1: are big business. I feel like barely a week goes

695
00:38:56,360 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: by without a new announcement about some new ghoulish podcast.

696
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: Asked either it's either at least true crime, if not

697
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:07,320
Speaker 1: a serial killer podcast as well, Robert, I hate to

698
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: break it to you, but the call is coming from

699
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 1: inside the house because so we we we got quite

700
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: a number of these within our own family here. Oh yeah, well,

701
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: I mean it's a big it's an ever growing family,

702
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: so it encompasses all sorts of types of podcasts. Even

703
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 1: sports podcasts are around. Uh So, you know, I don't

704
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:27,400
Speaker 1: mean to be judging on that that fact, or just

705
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: judge you about true crime enthusiasm to begin with, because

706
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 1: I can. I can easily think of some great reads

707
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:35,319
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed that are about serial killers. I've enjoyed some

708
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: true crime content in the past, and and heck, we're

709
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: talking about a great episode of Tales from the Crypt

710
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 1: that concerned serial killers. Um. And as far as just

711
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,799
Speaker 1: more general true crime goes, I like a lot of

712
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 1: people grew up watching Unsolved Mysteries and scaring, you know,

713
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: the pants off of myself, not only about ghosts and aliens,

714
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 1: but also about just random acts of crime and madness.

715
00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:00,399
Speaker 1: I would say one of the most power are full

716
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 1: sounds in the entire world in terms of unlocking just

717
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 1: a host of creepy associations in my brain is the

718
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mysteries theme music. The moment that plays the trapdoor

719
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: in my brain opens and everything comes out. Now obviously,

720
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 1: when we're talking about your crime. There's a broad spectrum

721
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 1: of good and bad taste with it within the genre,

722
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 1: and it ranges greatly. I mean, there's the whole domain

723
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:28,960
Speaker 1: of police procedural true crime, which of course entails say that,

724
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: the work of David Simon and others. There's also the

725
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: grizzlier stuff that can border on just sort of creepy

726
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: serial killer obsession. And then there's there's the psychologically minded stuff,

727
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: you know, the mind of a killer type approach, which

728
00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: I guess can be a little on the creepy side

729
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,439
Speaker 1: at times, but also can just be very well put

730
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:51,240
Speaker 1: together and formulated and and and in many cases based

731
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 1: on actual psychology and the actual um uh, you know,

732
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:58,479
Speaker 1: the actual studies into the minds of serial killers. There's

733
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,200
Speaker 1: also highly journalistic stuff as well as the kind of

734
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 1: sort of citizen journalist and citizen investigator uh fair that

735
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:08,800
Speaker 1: has also proven highly popular. But it really does seem

736
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:12,319
Speaker 1: at times like our our appetite is just insatiable and

737
00:41:12,440 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: uh and it leads us at times to wonder like,

738
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: what does it all means? Where does this, where is

739
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:19,319
Speaker 1: this coming from? What is the the itch that it

740
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 1: is scratching? Uh? You know, and and is it some

741
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: sort of modern phenomenon or is it just an aspect

742
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: of of of the human experience. I'm interested in what

743
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 1: creates the difference between the tolerance for uh, fictional violence

744
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: versus the tolerance for true crime. Like just personally, I

745
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:41,240
Speaker 1: like a lot of, like, you know, violent, scary fictional

746
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: horror stuff, but I don't have much of an appetite

747
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 1: for true crime. And there are people who are totally

748
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:48,399
Speaker 1: the opposite, you know, like a monster movie to them

749
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:52,839
Speaker 1: would seem like gross and overwhelming and unpleasant, but they

750
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:56,520
Speaker 1: will just devour true crime. And obviously there's some kind

751
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:58,760
Speaker 1: of difference at play there, but I'm not sure exactly

752
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: what it is what it. Rocky Ericson have said about it.

753
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:05,440
Speaker 1: Didn't he have an insightful quote about different types of horror?

754
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 1: I think you might be thinking of where he says

755
00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 1: that today's movies prey on your inner feres and steady

756
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: your outer fears. And that's why I wrote the line,

757
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: don't slip in mud or you'll slip in blood tonight.

758
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:20,439
Speaker 1: Just the Night of the Vampire doesn't necessarily clarify a lot,

759
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:23,799
Speaker 1: but there there's some kind of obscure wisdom Yeah, yeah,

760
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:26,280
Speaker 1: I agree, it's worth keeping in mind as we move forward.

761
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 1: And even though again he's referring to just a division

762
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: within horror fiction as opposed to uh, fiction versus reality.

763
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:35,239
Speaker 1: So I think one thing to get out of the

764
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 1: way is that I think we can we can safely

765
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: dismiss the idea that this is a new phenomenon because

766
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: we've pretty much always had crime stories of one sort

767
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: or the other, and our fascination with it is to

768
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:50,840
Speaker 1: a large extent fueled by our fear of real crime.

769
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 1: But if you look back to a lot of of myths, uh,

770
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: you know, you find something interesting. You know, these are

771
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 1: stories of people who commit crimes off and now they're

772
00:43:00,560 --> 00:43:04,360
Speaker 1: committing crimes against the gods or some sort of you know,

773
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 1: celestial or infernal order in the world. Uh. But then likewise,

774
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:13,800
Speaker 1: what are modern laws and social norms but modern gods

775
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 1: of a sort? I think a lot of anthropologists of

776
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: religion would probably argue that what the gods were with

777
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:24,000
Speaker 1: some kind of embodiment of laws or norms. Yeah, and uh,

778
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:26,799
Speaker 1: I've also seen it it argued that if you want

779
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:30,400
Speaker 1: something more in line with a pure crime story, you

780
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 1: can look to the the Arabic go one thousand and

781
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: one Night's Tales, and that tradition uh to provide some

782
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 1: great examples of of what is essentially early crime fiction, uh,

783
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: the exploits of criminals, the come uppance of criminals, etcetera.

784
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: So on one hand, perhaps we're just exaggerating to try

785
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 1: and make anything out of modern true crime interest as

786
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: if it's something new, But there is a lot of

787
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:55,960
Speaker 1: interesting insight out there into like what it means, where

788
00:43:56,000 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: where does this interest in crime fiction uh and and

789
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 1: and and true crime come from? And one particular expert

790
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:08,320
Speaker 1: that I was I've heard an NPR story UH featuring

791
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:10,760
Speaker 1: this is from two thousand nine and they were talking

792
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 1: with clinical and corporate psychologist Michael mantell Um and UH

793
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,320
Speaker 1: they pointed out that there are several key elements involved

794
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 1: in our enjoyment of true crime. First of all, there's

795
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 1: the not me elephant combined with psychological voyeurism. So it's

796
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:29,920
Speaker 1: if you're not watching a crime or you know, a

797
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:32,439
Speaker 1: murder or what have you that is affecting you, you're

798
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: watching something that affects somebody else, And we are engaging

799
00:44:37,160 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: in a certain amount of psychological voyeurism in that case,

800
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 1: On top of that, there's a catharsis in identifying with

801
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 1: the victim uh and this is uh. And we have

802
00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 1: like rehearsed anxiety in these cases over terrible occurrences. So

803
00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: it's almost like um uh, via our our our empathy,

804
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:00,399
Speaker 1: we're able to simulate these horrible things with out them

805
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:04,359
Speaker 1: actually happening to us. Now. The other the flip side

806
00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:06,240
Speaker 1: of that, of course, is that you can also engage

807
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: in compassion and empathy with the perpetrator, not necessarily to

808
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 1: the level of saying like, oh man, I wish I

809
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 1: was I wish I was like Charlie, but but more like,

810
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:18,359
Speaker 1: you know, what if I was like you know, I think,

811
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:19,920
Speaker 1: I think that's all. That's key to a lot of

812
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: our psychological fascination with serial murders, for instance, is that

813
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:29,319
Speaker 1: we know that, Okay, this individual, their brain is not

814
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:31,720
Speaker 1: exactly like our brain, but but a lot of things

815
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: are the same, and therefore it's tempting to analyze that

816
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: those comparisons and think, what if I, you know, it

817
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 1: was just a few degrees to the left free to

818
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: the right. Could I find myself in this kind of mindset?

819
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: Could I find myself having committed acts like this not

820
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 1: only as far as nature goes, but also as far

821
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:51,839
Speaker 1: as nurture goes as well. You know, if my life

822
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: conditions had been a little different, would I be you know,

823
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:58,880
Speaker 1: the figure on the television right now? Would I be

824
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:02,640
Speaker 1: the subject of this part cast episode. Yeah, I'd say

825
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 1: A variation on that is that people might sometimes just

826
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:08,959
Speaker 1: want to feel like they're getting a better idea of

827
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:12,920
Speaker 1: what to look out for in other people, because you know,

828
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 1: it's it's a cliche at this point that somebody commits

829
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:18,279
Speaker 1: a horrible act as a mass murderer, turns out to

830
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: be a serial killer or something, and you know, the

831
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:23,520
Speaker 1: the news camera interviews their their neighbor, and it's like, oh,

832
00:46:23,600 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 1: he seemed like a really nice guy. I wouldn't have

833
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 1: known it. And you know, sometimes that is the case.

834
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: People want to be able to think like I could

835
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 1: figure out I could figure out who was the sick. Oh,

836
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:36,279
Speaker 1: I could figure out who was the bad guy. And

837
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,839
Speaker 1: maybe there's a sort of feeling, at least a subconscious level,

838
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:42,600
Speaker 1: that by consuming a lot of true crime you could

839
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 1: somehow you can discern a pattern. You can figure out Okay,

840
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 1: here's how I could sniff out the Jeffrey Dahmer. Yes, yeah, absolutely,

841
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 1: And I want to come back to to some of

842
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:53,920
Speaker 1: that in a minute. But but it's also worth keeping

843
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 1: in mind all of this in considering the essential Essentially,

844
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 1: there are two types of crime stories, right, there's the

845
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,760
Speaker 1: case closed crime story, uh, and then there's also, uh,

846
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:07,719
Speaker 1: the the open case. So on one hand, we love

847
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:11,359
Speaker 1: a good, uh you know, structurally complete tale. We love

848
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 1: a story in which the bad guy is apprehended, the

849
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:17,560
Speaker 1: right bad guy is apprehended and uh and and the

850
00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 1: case is closed. And you see a lot of that

851
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: in um in true crime, you know, people, especially if

852
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 1: it's a you know, very oh you know, a lot

853
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:28,279
Speaker 1: of the police procedural stuff, for example, is about that,

854
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:30,200
Speaker 1: like how do they catch the batties? What can I

855
00:47:30,200 --> 00:47:33,760
Speaker 1: remember the series the New Detectives, What kind of really

856
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: cool technology are they using to catch the batties? But

857
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:40,640
Speaker 1: on the other hand, the open cases, the unsolved mysteries

858
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: like that stantalizing as well, because, uh, you know, on

859
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: some level, even if it's it's just a slim chance,

860
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 1: you could you could watch that and think I might

861
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: be the next victim, or I might be the one

862
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: to solve this, you know, I could I could be

863
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,839
Speaker 1: the one. I could notice this thing, I could learn,

864
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:00,879
Speaker 1: I know what to look for and and if this

865
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:03,280
Speaker 1: fellow comes limping up to me with a fake cast,

866
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:05,560
Speaker 1: I can call him on it and I'll be the hero.

867
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 1: I think that's right. But actually another thing just occurred

868
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: to me. And this is based on your earlier point

869
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 1: about psychological voyeurism, which is the idea of in a way,

870
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:19,359
Speaker 1: watching like a serial killer story where they ultimately get

871
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:23,879
Speaker 1: caught is kind of like just another form of the

872
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 1: watching somebody fail spectacularly thing where you like to see

873
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: somebody who you know, who's in control of things like

874
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:36,759
Speaker 1: lose control and and spiral out and all that. Uh,

875
00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:40,240
Speaker 1: the just a morbid version of it might be Okay,

876
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:42,719
Speaker 1: here's the serial killer. They've got a system, they've got

877
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: a method for not getting caught, but then they get

878
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: sloppy and it all spirals out of control and they

879
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,480
Speaker 1: fail and they go to jail. Yeah, this is kind

880
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: of I would say. The lesson is sort of committing

881
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:56,920
Speaker 1: crime is hard, and it's it can be a weird

882
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: positive experience too, to encounter on or that because it

883
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: can make you feel comfortable and the fact that like, oh, well,

884
00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 1: you know, if you commit a crime, you're probably gonna

885
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: get caught. It can give you, at times even an

886
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:14,759
Speaker 1: inflated sense of of of the competency of of police investigations. UM.

887
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it can be kind of like

888
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: a like, who, I guess I'm not going to commit

889
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:22,080
Speaker 1: crime because it looks really hard. You know, if it

890
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 1: were easy, I guess I'd give it a shot, but

891
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:25,919
Speaker 1: I'd probably get caught, so I better not. I wasn't

892
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 1: gonna do it anyway, but now I know that I'm

893
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 1: definitely not going to do it. Actually, now that I

894
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:31,880
Speaker 1: think about it, this might be even more the case

895
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: in I don't know less grizzly true crime, not just

896
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 1: in serial killers, but really in stuff where like there's

897
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:40,759
Speaker 1: a con artist or somebody executing massive financial crime or

898
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:44,920
Speaker 1: something like that, where there's an element of the hot

899
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 1: mess allure that you you know, like it's really exciting

900
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:52,239
Speaker 1: to to see somebody on social media who's just like

901
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: a hot mess and they're flaming out and really making

902
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:57,840
Speaker 1: things bad for themselves. I think there's a there's a

903
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: strong element of that in a lot of these things,

904
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 1: like you're reading about Bernie made Off or something. Yeah, yeah,

905
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:06,759
Speaker 1: and and again it's also yeah, it's it's about bad

906
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:09,160
Speaker 1: people getting their come Uppan's right, all right, time for

907
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:14,319
Speaker 1: a quick break. We'll be right back with more, and

908
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 1: we're back now. One thing that when when Mentell was

909
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:22,240
Speaker 1: asked in this NPR piece about about about different gender

910
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: demographics in the consumption of true crime now, Mantell said

911
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:29,960
Speaker 1: that that he didn't see any kind of, you know,

912
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 1: notable demographic differences, uh. And he he suspected that there's

913
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,239
Speaker 1: still likely there's still likely differences in the sort of

914
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:41,520
Speaker 1: crime stories that interested different demographics. However, I think most

915
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:44,759
Speaker 1: of me listening out there, you've probably heard quite the opposite.

916
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:47,799
Speaker 1: And I know that I've heard this multiple times in

917
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:53,480
Speaker 1: meetings about podcast listener demographics, that the true crime audience

918
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:56,239
Speaker 1: use female. And I have to be honest, I don't

919
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 1: think I was really aware of this until it started

920
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: coming up in podcast meetings. I just, you know, maybe

921
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:03,719
Speaker 1: I can look back and find some sort of uh,

922
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 1: some memories and be like, oh, well, that kind of

923
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:08,920
Speaker 1: lines up with this alleged statistic, But I don't think

924
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 1: I had really thought about it before then. I don't

925
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: know if there's any evidence to that gender divide or not.

926
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 1: I assume you'll tell me in a minute. But but

927
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:17,920
Speaker 1: one thing I would suspect is, even if there is,

928
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: it probably depends on what you define as crime. Yeah. Yeah, um,

929
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure there is a true, definitive answer

930
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:28,480
Speaker 1: on that. Like I said the podcast, number of crunchers

931
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: seem pretty sure about it. They're certainly willing to, you know,

932
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:34,840
Speaker 1: to invest money behind the idea. But one paper I

933
00:51:34,880 --> 00:51:37,760
Speaker 1: did look at was one title captured by true crime.

934
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 1: Why are Women Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder and

935
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 1: Serial Killers? By Amanda M. Vickery and are Chris Freeley,

936
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:48,320
Speaker 1: published in two thousand ten by Social Psychological and Personality Science.

937
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 1: So exploring this reported demographic divide here, the authors looked

938
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:57,359
Speaker 1: at Amazon book reviews and found that men seemed more

939
00:51:57,440 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 1: likely to review war books and women were more likely

940
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:03,839
Speaker 1: to review crime books. Uh, they had research subjects than

941
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: read crime fiction synopsises and report and they found that

942
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: women were more drawn to the psychological content of true crime,

943
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 1: and they were more likely to read true crime books

944
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 1: if the victim was female. Okay, so that's not a

945
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:20,960
Speaker 1: perfect measure of actual reading habits in the wild, but

946
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: that is but it's at least an interesting datum to

947
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:27,200
Speaker 1: begin with, right, Yeah, if you're gonna start somewhere. Again,

948
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 1: it's not the most robust um study. I don't think

949
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 1: they're putting it up is that, but it's a good

950
00:52:32,880 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: place to start. So um Vicari's take is, ultimately is

951
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:40,840
Speaker 1: that it all comes down to survival, kind of touching

952
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 1: on we were discussing earlier. True crime tends to revolve

953
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:47,720
Speaker 1: in some way around the challenges of surviving a crime.

954
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 1: It's either just an obvious survival story or it's a

955
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:55,319
Speaker 1: tale from which one might draw survival ideas. What did

956
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 1: the doomed character do that that doomed them? You know,

957
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 1: what can I do differently to avoid said doom And

958
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:06,160
Speaker 1: so even on a subconscious level, it's about learning how

959
00:53:06,160 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 1: to avoid and survive crimes. And this makes sense to

960
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,640
Speaker 1: UH that the authors point out because women tend to

961
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:16,040
Speaker 1: fear crime more than men and are statistically more likely

962
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:18,960
Speaker 1: to be the victim of crime. According to the U.

963
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 1: S Department of Justice in two thousand eight, females aged

964
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:24,320
Speaker 1: twelve or older were five times more likely than males

965
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 1: aged twelve or older to be victims of intimate partner violence,

966
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:32,320
Speaker 1: and additionally, in two thousand seven, intimate partners committed fourteen

967
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 1: percent of all homicides in the US. And those are

968
00:53:35,600 --> 00:53:39,479
Speaker 1: some pretty sobering statistics. By the way, October is also

969
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:43,760
Speaker 1: National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the US. Just a reminder,

970
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 1: the National Domestic Violence Hotline is one eight hundred seven

971
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:50,759
Speaker 1: nine nine safe or one eight hundred seven nine nine

972
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,480
Speaker 1: seven to three three. But let's get back to this

973
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 1: idea of of survival. Um. Uh So, as engaging with

974
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,480
Speaker 1: these crime stories is kind of like a rehearsal for survival,

975
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:04,920
Speaker 1: learning experience for the survival of crime. Uh, it seems

976
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:08,560
Speaker 1: implied that the reverse would be the same for these uh,

977
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: these these male readers who are then reading all of

978
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:14,239
Speaker 1: this war, that it's also about survival. Uh, you know,

979
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: processing the riddle of survival in the brain. And I

980
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:18,759
Speaker 1: feel like that makes sense Without getting into the the

981
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:21,440
Speaker 1: idea of the gender divide, I know that that I've

982
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:24,879
Speaker 1: personally dealt with the stresses of by in part thinking

983
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 1: a lot about say, war games, clone wars, the galactic

984
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 1: Civil war, the wars of ants, that sort of thing.

985
00:54:32,040 --> 00:54:33,880
Speaker 1: And and but then likewise, I can think back to

986
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 1: times in my life where I found similar solace in

987
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:40,799
Speaker 1: crime fiction where um, you know, I distinctly remember a

988
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:43,359
Speaker 1: time where there's a fair amount of stress in my

989
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 1: life and I was watching some these were these were

990
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 1: fictional accounts, but they're basically like slasher films, and I

991
00:54:50,239 --> 00:54:51,960
Speaker 1: remember even thinking at the time, like, this is a

992
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:54,359
Speaker 1: weird way to feel chilled out by watching a film

993
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: about a slasher, Like this should be this should on

994
00:54:57,719 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: some level be making me more anxiou. So they're making

995
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 1: me feel you know, you know, and more nervous, but

996
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:05,319
Speaker 1: it's not. It's somehow making me feel better. Yeah. My

997
00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:07,520
Speaker 1: hunch is that there are two different ways that can work.

998
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:10,160
Speaker 1: One is that if it's an effective slasher movie, then

999
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:13,680
Speaker 1: there is actually sort of an endorphin you know, emotional

1000
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:16,880
Speaker 1: catharsis thing of like being afraid but then not actually

1001
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:19,560
Speaker 1: being in a threat. You know, once the once the

1002
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:22,600
Speaker 1: fear passes, you kind of get an endorphin release and

1003
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, okay, and that can be kind of calming. Um,

1004
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:28,880
Speaker 1: it can give you a sense of control to have

1005
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:32,160
Speaker 1: the ironic distance and like watch something that is actually

1006
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:35,399
Speaker 1: scary but then know that it's not real. And then

1007
00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:37,360
Speaker 1: on the other end, if you're watching like a bad

1008
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:40,080
Speaker 1: slasher movie. I think there's a different there's a similar

1009
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 1: and simultaneously different thing at work, which is there's still

1010
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: the ironic difference, but the ironic difference element is played

1011
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:49,319
Speaker 1: up to the point where like watching something that is

1012
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:52,680
Speaker 1: supposed to be scary but is in fact funny is

1013
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:55,359
Speaker 1: very reassuring. You know, it makes you feel like there's

1014
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:58,200
Speaker 1: maybe not that much to worry about. Well, just thinking

1015
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 1: of bad slasher films, like how many of us have

1016
00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:04,920
Speaker 1: watched the slasher films and really harped on on the

1017
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:06,880
Speaker 1: the idea of what to do when you get this

1018
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:10,080
Speaker 1: the killer down right, Like, obviously the thing to do

1019
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: within the context of the films is if you knock

1020
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:15,319
Speaker 1: the killer out, you slowly approach them and take their

1021
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 1: mask off. You don't say, grab their weapon and stab

1022
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:21,040
Speaker 1: them a million times in the torso to make sure

1023
00:56:21,080 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: they're debt um. But we love so at times even

1024
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:26,799
Speaker 1: just yelling at the screen because they are doing the

1025
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:29,920
Speaker 1: wrong thing. You are not practicing good survival. But I

1026
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: at the same time am contemplating survival, and to some degree,

1027
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:37,560
Speaker 1: I feel like you feel like you're learning about survival. Yeah,

1028
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:39,919
Speaker 1: this is a good point. A lot of slasher movies.

1029
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:42,719
Speaker 1: I think could could be effective and could be enjoyable

1030
00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:46,680
Speaker 1: to people because there are at least implied rules, like

1031
00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:49,359
Speaker 1: there's a there's a system of rules that you can

1032
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:53,000
Speaker 1: suss out, and the fact that they're not announced explicitly

1033
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:55,719
Speaker 1: makes it seem a little bit more interesting and fun

1034
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:57,960
Speaker 1: that you have figured them out. You kind of know

1035
00:56:58,040 --> 00:56:59,800
Speaker 1: what a lot of the you know, the mistakes that

1036
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:02,040
Speaker 1: aaracters are going to make ahead of time, and you

1037
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:04,880
Speaker 1: can think that, uh, you know, uh, Dewey here is

1038
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:07,000
Speaker 1: very stupid for having done that. I would have not

1039
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: done that. I know better by the way of that

1040
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:15,359
Speaker 1: Vicary and Freeley paper. Uh. They also point out that

1041
00:57:15,840 --> 00:57:18,439
Speaker 1: neither female nor male subjects in their study were drawn

1042
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:21,960
Speaker 1: to stories with explicitly emotional or sexual content, but it

1043
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:27,360
Speaker 1: was the psychological content that interested female test subjects. Um So,

1044
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:29,720
Speaker 1: I guess I suppose the idea there is it's coming

1045
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:33,400
Speaker 1: down to um uh again survival, but but on a

1046
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:37,200
Speaker 1: psychological level, like how do you tell which character is

1047
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:39,360
Speaker 1: the creepy killer? Kind of coming back to our tales

1048
00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:41,919
Speaker 1: from the crypt episode, like is it is it adam Ant?

1049
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:45,160
Speaker 1: Is it his character? He's sure is acting creepy uh,

1050
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:48,800
Speaker 1: am I able to psychologically analyze him in a way

1051
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 1: where I can guess that he's the killer or is

1052
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 1: it Clance Williams the third or is it Salomi Gen's Yeah,

1053
00:57:55,640 --> 00:57:57,840
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's one of those episodes where all

1054
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: possibilities are on the table. Now, a couple of a

1055
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: couple other just short references to to uh some write

1056
00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:06,680
Speaker 1: ups that I found insightful and all of this. As

1057
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:10,400
Speaker 1: Sarah Watts points out in her Forbes coverage of the

1058
00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:14,320
Speaker 1: aforementioned study, all of this lines up with psycholopsychologist Dr

1059
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: John Mayer's view that perfectly ex purposely exposing oneself to

1060
00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:23,200
Speaker 1: violence in these um uh, these forms can serve as

1061
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:27,320
Speaker 1: an inoculation against fear. But we also have to consider

1062
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:29,680
Speaker 1: individual differences in all of this. So some of us

1063
00:58:29,720 --> 00:58:34,200
Speaker 1: are drawn uh into into say true crime or horror

1064
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:37,240
Speaker 1: movies because of thrill seeking personalities, but it could be

1065
00:58:37,240 --> 00:58:40,000
Speaker 1: more about interest in the taboo or an interest in

1066
00:58:40,120 --> 00:58:44,200
Speaker 1: dark subject matter. Uh So it's it's ultimately very difficult

1067
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:46,920
Speaker 1: to create like a one size fits all rule for

1068
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 1: why people like true crime or horror or whatever the

1069
00:58:51,320 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 1: particular piece of media. Maybe you know it's funny I

1070
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:57,440
Speaker 1: feel like I still haven't, even in this discussion, figured

1071
00:58:57,440 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: out the answer to that question. I was asking about

1072
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 1: true crime versus fictional horror, like both both deal with

1073
00:59:03,640 --> 00:59:07,960
Speaker 1: violence and fear and threats, but people have extremely different

1074
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:12,360
Speaker 1: reactions to them. I noticed that usually, like horror movies

1075
00:59:12,760 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: are fun, they make me feel good, and true crime

1076
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:18,680
Speaker 1: just kind of usually makes me feel bad. But there

1077
00:59:18,720 --> 00:59:21,240
Speaker 1: are people for whom it's entirely the reverse, And I'm

1078
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:24,920
Speaker 1: still not sure why. Yeah, um, and and then I

1079
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:26,920
Speaker 1: don't know. Sometimes it's about how it's presented, right, Like

1080
00:59:26,960 --> 00:59:30,840
Speaker 1: I instantly think to how both the Texas Chainsaw massacre

1081
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,880
Speaker 1: and Fargo both have the introductions at the beginning to

1082
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:37,640
Speaker 1: try and cast them as legitimate occurrences. You know, this

1083
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:43,480
Speaker 1: really happened, even though both are pure fiction. Um but

1084
00:59:43,480 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: but yet, I guess a lot of it comes down

1085
00:59:45,240 --> 00:59:48,400
Speaker 1: to the fact that I often find that the true crime,

1086
00:59:48,680 --> 00:59:52,840
Speaker 1: like that's definitely true and not you know, fictionalized to

1087
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:55,520
Speaker 1: a large degree, has a tendency to feel yeah, just

1088
00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 1: more just feel sadder, feel like more of a tragedy

1089
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:03,520
Speaker 1: as opposed to a you know, violent romp. But one

1090
01:00:03,560 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: area where we see, um, this this is interesting and

1091
01:00:06,600 --> 01:00:09,240
Speaker 1: talking about where the fiction meets the reality. UM. I

1092
01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:13,240
Speaker 1: was reading from a book titled Blood Obsession, Vampire, serial Murder,

1093
01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:17,880
Speaker 1: and the Popular Imagination by Jorgo Walch, Assistant Professor of

1094
01:00:17,880 --> 01:00:20,400
Speaker 1: Modern Languages and director of the Language Resource Center and

1095
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 1: at Ohio University in Athens Um. In this book, one

1096
01:00:24,840 --> 01:00:26,880
Speaker 1: of the many points that they're making is that they

1097
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:31,200
Speaker 1: draw this connection between serial murderers, certainly in the modern sense,

1098
01:00:31,600 --> 01:00:35,960
Speaker 1: and the vampire myths of old, uh, seeing the modern

1099
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:40,000
Speaker 1: serial murder as the vampire myth uh in real life.

1100
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: So you could you could argue that the modern serial

1101
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:48,160
Speaker 1: murder um either in their their stark reality or they're

1102
01:00:48,200 --> 01:00:51,720
Speaker 1: sort of presumed reality, you know, they're slightly fictionalized. Uh,

1103
01:00:51,800 --> 01:00:54,040
Speaker 1: you know, the view of their being one around every corner,

1104
01:00:54,320 --> 01:00:58,400
Speaker 1: that we're still dealing with a solitary humanoid hunter of

1105
01:00:58,440 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 1: other human beings that we can obsess over, and the

1106
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 1: vampire is kind of the purely supernatural reflection of that

1107
01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:07,440
Speaker 1: same idea. And I think part of this comes back

1108
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:09,440
Speaker 1: to what you said earlier about rules. We like that

1109
01:01:09,480 --> 01:01:13,600
Speaker 1: there are rules, and in both vampire fiction and it's

1110
01:01:13,600 --> 01:01:16,400
Speaker 1: certainly serial killer fiction, and to a certain extent, true

1111
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:19,520
Speaker 1: crime is often about the rules that they will by

1112
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:22,160
Speaker 1: by anyway, I think I think the distinction is not

1113
01:01:22,160 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 1: not only you know, fascinating, but also it's worth keeping

1114
01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:27,640
Speaker 1: in mind, especially during Halloween. So you can't you can't

1115
01:01:27,640 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: really go all in on Halloween and vampires and all

1116
01:01:30,880 --> 01:01:33,360
Speaker 1: and say that you don't get true crime fascination because

1117
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:36,840
Speaker 1: I think ultimately there's a lot of crossover between the two. Uh,

1118
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, Ultimately, do you want your you know,

1119
01:01:39,800 --> 01:01:41,920
Speaker 1: the bad guy turning into a bat, or do you

1120
01:01:41,960 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 1: want the bad guy you know, limping around with a

1121
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:46,120
Speaker 1: fake cast or what have you? Do you want to

1122
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:47,880
Speaker 1: set to Swan Lake or do you want to set

1123
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 1: to the Unsolved Mysteries theme? I would take Swan Lake,

1124
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:55,680
Speaker 1: Uh any time. Yeah, I'm I'm with you. That that

1125
01:01:55,760 --> 01:02:00,080
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mystery theme song kind of stirs, uh, just an

1126
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:02,080
Speaker 1: innate feeling of fear. I mean, much like the Tales

1127
01:02:02,120 --> 01:02:05,640
Speaker 1: from the Dark Side theme song, the Man that Unsolved

1128
01:02:05,680 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 1: Mystery song. It's that it's that one like expansive bending note,

1129
01:02:09,600 --> 01:02:13,960
Speaker 1: you know, the brandy before the before the beat kicks in.

1130
01:02:14,160 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 1: It's so powerful and then here comes Robert Stack walking

1131
01:02:18,840 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 1: out of the mist. The light behind in ghosts? Do

1132
01:02:22,840 --> 01:02:25,600
Speaker 1: they exist? Or is this another hoax? Let's watch a

1133
01:02:25,680 --> 01:02:30,520
Speaker 1: recreation starring Matthew McConaughey. You know, Unsolved Mysteries gets a

1134
01:02:30,560 --> 01:02:34,040
Speaker 1: lot funnier after you've recently rewatched Beavis and butt Head

1135
01:02:34,040 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 1: do America because Robert Staff agent on that. Yes, yes,

1136
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:42,560
Speaker 1: that was that was good. I remember that. Now. All right, Well,

1137
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:45,160
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close it up for now,

1138
01:02:45,480 --> 01:02:49,000
Speaker 1: but I think we're coming back for a third episode

1139
01:02:49,040 --> 01:02:53,560
Speaker 1: this year. What it would be volume six seven six,

1140
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:58,120
Speaker 1: I think so Navy volume six six six be on

1141
01:02:58,160 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 1: the lookout. Basically, the situation is going to be, uh,

1142
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 1: we will We're gonna be recording episodes during the week

1143
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:07,080
Speaker 1: of Halloween for the week after Halloween, and we don't

1144
01:03:07,080 --> 01:03:10,200
Speaker 1: really want to record non Halloween episodes during the week

1145
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: of Halloween, so you're gonna get a little extra Halloween

1146
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:16,920
Speaker 1: this year. Um, so hopefully you're okay with that. But

1147
01:03:17,000 --> 01:03:19,280
Speaker 1: then then we'll move on to some other topics if

1148
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:24,360
Speaker 1: we feel like it. Yes, all right, If you want

1149
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind,

1150
01:03:26,160 --> 01:03:28,600
Speaker 1: you know where to find us, and that's everywhere. Anywhere

1151
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:31,480
Speaker 1: you get a podcast, you can find us and if

1152
01:03:31,520 --> 01:03:36,320
Speaker 1: they let you leave feedback and stars and so forth,

1153
01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:39,360
Speaker 1: if they let you subscribe, we ask that that you

1154
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:41,240
Speaker 1: do that because that that helps the show out. We're

1155
01:03:41,240 --> 01:03:43,920
Speaker 1: told likewise, if you want to find us really quickly,

1156
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: you can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1157
01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 1: That will shoot you over to the I Heart listening

1158
01:03:47,680 --> 01:03:50,439
Speaker 1: for this show. And hey, there's a little store um

1159
01:03:51,200 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: listing there. You can click on that and I'll take

1160
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:55,080
Speaker 1: us to the t public store for our show. You

1161
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:56,680
Speaker 1: can get something with our logo on it, and get

1162
01:03:56,680 --> 01:03:59,040
Speaker 1: a face mask with our logo on it, or various

1163
01:03:59,080 --> 01:04:02,120
Speaker 1: monster shirts that have put out over the years. Huge

1164
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:05,600
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

1165
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:07,360
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1166
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest

1167
01:04:09,880 --> 01:04:11,960
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can

1168
01:04:12,040 --> 01:04:14,800
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

1169
01:04:14,920 --> 01:04:24,760
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of

1170
01:04:24,760 --> 01:04:27,400
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,

1171
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:30,440
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're

1172
01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows.