WEBVTT - INTERVIEW 4: Lynne McNeil 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:04.760 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:16.960 Audience for full exposure, listen with headphones. Lynn McNeil is 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:20.320 an associate professor of folklore in the English Department at 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.360 Utah State University. She serves as the chair of the 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:28.400 Folklore Program. She is also a regular cast member on 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:32.400 the Travel Channel's Paranormal Caught on Camera. We had a 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:37.440 wide ranging conversation about contemporary folklore, the paranormal, and much more. 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:43.360 I'm Lynn McNeil. I am a folkloreist at Utah State University. 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.040 I run the folklore program there. I teach folklore there. 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:49.959 I work in the folklore archives that we have there, 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.600 which are really incredible. We are a great hub of 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:55.640 folklore studies. We have for a offer a master's program 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.000 and folklore and undergraduate minor. It's a good place to 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.480 be a folkloreist. I also am very lucky and that 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:03.880 I get to be a folklorist um in the media 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:06.840 fairly often, so I get to be a folklorist on 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.000 podcasts like this, on the radio, on television, and mainly 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:17.200 what I like doing is bringing the concepts of folklore 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:21.480 studies to a really broad audience because people don't always 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:25.000 think in terms of what folklore is doing in a culture. 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:30.199 We hear the word folklore, we tend to think untrue stories, 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:35.880 old stories, maybe rural, rustic, peasantee stories. We might have 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:38.640 sort of a brother's grim model in our minds of folklore. 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.720 And the reality is is that folklore is are really 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:46.000 contemporary form of cultural expression. Yes, it comes from the past, 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.840 but the whole point of it being folklore is that 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:55.480 it keeps itself relevant by adapting and changing dynamically so 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:59.000 that when it was relevant in the past, it can 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:03.040 adjust to be relevant now. So, yeah, folklore dies out, 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.960 folklore disappears. For a long time people thought of folklore 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.760 as the survivals of a past age. And what we 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.200 now know is that it's not so much that it's 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:15.640 dying out, it's that it's changing its face in order 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:18.800 to keep up. So the term actually that folklore has 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:21.680 use for this, which I love, is eco typification. It's 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:25.560 borrowed from botany, basically the study of plants and the 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:29.799 way that they emerge differently even though it's the same 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:36.720 species in two different climate and geological and geographical environments, 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.720 because it's being responsive to its context. And so folklore 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.480 is seen as operating in that same way, you can 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.880 have the same story, the same legend, the same fairy tales, 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:50.240 show up in two different places, and it's going to 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:54.480 be morphologically distinct because of the context of those two 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:57.160 different places. It's going to be meeting the needs of 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:00.440 a different time, maybe a different culture, and if region, 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.080 a different language, family, all those sorts of things. So 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.920 it's it's not that folklore is old. It's that folklore 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:11.560 is continuously adapting. That's what makes it relevant, and that's 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.840 not how people think of folklore. So that's what I 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:17.960 like to talk about with people, is that it's it's 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:23.639 this way more sort of psychological, communicative, symbolic form of interaction, 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.320 more than just the old stories model that we often 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:34.280 have exactly I mean, which you know is And it's 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.320 interesting too to think about the awareness people had of 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:41.720 stories like that. If we look at the Brothers Grimm's 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:48.000 um early draft of their eighteen twelve volume of Stories, 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.960 that story Hunsel and Gretel, the woman who's mean in 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:54.920 the story and pushes the kids out of the house 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.680 and sends them out into the woods to get rid 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:01.520 of them is originally their mother, and the grim brothers 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:05.440 themselves were like, oh, you know, we're collecting these stories 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.800 to be a reflection on you know, German culture and spirit. 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:10.440 That doesn't make us look right, Let's make it a 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:12.880 step mom. And it's sort of like, hey, Alex, guys, 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:15.600 but we we read into that so much and we 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.520 now are left with this incredible trope of the wicked stepmother, 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.520 and it's like, yeah, that was a real conscious decision 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.600 made we assume so that German moms didn't look bad 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.799 by the editors of these stories, who, in their call 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.360 for collecting folklore, were like, hey, scholars of the world, 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.400 don't change anything about the stories you collect, because the 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.920 way they emerge from the mouths of the people is 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.400 the way that they are meant to represent culture. And 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:45.919 then here they are editing them the leaders. You know. 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:50.960 Oh wow, that's funny. I'm just thinking about trends in 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:55.440 folklore since like past World War two, you know, because 0:04:55.480 --> 0:05:00.560 I'm kind of looking starting in moving forward. I guess 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.479 what are the major trends are are there? Yeah, It's 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:08.600 it's hard to say because folklore is so big and 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:12.760 so encompassing that there's so many different genres of folklore. 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:15.680 I mean, we have the narrative genres of folklore like stories. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.359 We also have the customary genres of folklore like holiday 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.560 practices and gestures and ritual and and greetings and leave 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:25.240 takings and all that sort of stuff. And we have 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:29.440 belief based folklore, which might be entirely conceptual or steeped 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.680 in folk religion, or come out of superstition or the 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:36.680 supernatural or something like that. All of these things are 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:41.240 so big on one scale and then manifest so individually 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.880 within families, within communities, within cultural groups, that it can 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:51.080 be hard to point to big trends other than the 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:56.160 fact that folklore on the whole, especially the most up 0:05:56.160 --> 0:06:01.039 to the minute contemporary genres, which interestingly are usually urban 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:04.960 legends and jokes. Those are two forms of folklore. Um 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.400 so stories that we tell as true and you know, 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:14.400 humorous anecdotes that we make as commentary on things. Um 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:18.240 those forms of folklore are really really representative of the 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:20.600 time that they come from, and so there's some of 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:24.040 the most adaptable. We actually have studies of urban legends 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.240 that go back to ancient Rome, where we can see 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:31.000 the same legend type being told in like the first 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.719 century a d that is still being told now but 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.400 just about things relevant to us now rather than things 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.280 that were relevant to us then, and knowing that folklore 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:47.479 does equal work reflecting a culture and shaping that culture, 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:49.560 we see a lot of the same themes that we're 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:53.400 cropping up in, you know, post war, not just America 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:56.240 or the West, but the world. Um an increase of 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:59.200 visual media was a huge thing that was happening there. 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.880 Obviously DEO stayed big, but television was booming. So we 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.400 start to see people think in terms of images more 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:09.520 than words, and that of course has only grown thanks 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.239 to the Internet and our ability to now combine images 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:14.200 and words in all sorts of new ways. But we 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.920 see folklore reflect that. We suddenly start getting genres of 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:22.480 folklore that scholars referred to as xerox lore and facts lore, 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.560 and we get things like visual legends, so instead of 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.400 telling a story, we just get an image of something. 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:32.960 And you can see how something like UFOs, something that's 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:38.520 relying on visual input or photography or you know, mapping 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.080 and things like that. The ability to share that information, 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.560 the ability to pass around that evidence just gets that 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:46.440 much stronger. And we're also entering this period of time 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:50.880 where you know, where politics are booming, and there's bipartisan 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.440 support for anti communist efforts and the Cold War and 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:56.520 all of this, and we see that as well. We 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.120 see people develop this new relationship with the military with 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.920 their governments where, you know, we don't have an ongoing 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.320 international conflict to worry about, so we worry about what 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:11.520 we can't see. You know. The Cold War is it's 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:13.960 called cold for a reason, right, It's this freezing out 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.560 of each other. It's not hot, it's not engaged, it's 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.400 not blood boiling anger. It's silence. It's secrecy. And we 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.080 start to wonder, well, what are the secrets? What is 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:26.000 it that we don't know? And this fixation on things 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:30.400 like conspiracy and um the information that's out there that 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:36.280 we might be getting glimpses of an unsatisfactory explanations for 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:41.359 any time there's a vacuum of knowledge, things like legends, 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:45.320 things like superstition just rush in to fill that void. 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:50.520 We want to understand. There's actually a really cool, old 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.840 old study that was done by some psychologists looking at 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.120 rumor and how rumor works and folk cours know that 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:58.920 rumor and legend are really similar, and they came up 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:03.120 with what they uh called the rumor equation. And no, 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:07.000 this is not deeply scientific, but it's pretty revealing when 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:09.200 we think about it. What they said was that the 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.000 reach of any rumor, the power of a rumor, the 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:18.080 spread of it, is equal to the topics importance multiplied 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.440 by its ambiguity. So if we have a topic to 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:26.080 us that's incredibly important, but we have all the info, 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:28.560 but we're gonna talk about it. There's gonna be new 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:30.320 stories about it, but we're kind of gonna rest easy. 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:32.880 We're gonna be like, Okay, really important, Thank goodness, we 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:36.360 know everything. If we have a topic that's incredibly ambiguous 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.040 but we don't really care, then we're sort of like whatever, 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:42.040 I don't need to know, it doesn't matter to me. 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:47.160 The minute you start that multiplying, exponential growth of something 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.839 that is both unbelievably important. So of course we can 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:52.960 use this as a barometer for our culture. Right what 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.360 has always been important to us? Our military security, the 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:59.840 lives and safety of our children, our personal health and 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:04.880 die violence, anti crime, things like that, plus or multiplied 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.640 by this question of ambiguity. I don't have the answers. 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:11.520 I don't know the answers. It's possible someone is trying 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.120 to keep the answers from me. You put those things 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:19.520 together and you are just asking for a wildfire spread 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:24.360 of rumor of legend of conspiracy theory. So what would 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:30.360 be an example of that sort of apex? You know, 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.400 I think um one of the most recent examples that 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.360 we have a lot of good data on a lot 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.160 of good folklore data would be nine eleven. It's sort 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:44.560 of a peak example where if we think about the 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:47.840 rumors and the legends that spread immediately in the wake 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:52.000 of September eleventh, two thousand and one, we saw people 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:55.920 hinting at the idea that there were people in this 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.400 country who knew this was going to happen. So one 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:00.839 of the most popular legend cycle is that we saw 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:06.280 was that someone, usually a white American, would do some 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:10.439 sort of kindness for someone of Middle Eastern descent, would 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:14.240 be just a maybe a titch above normal levels of 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:19.120 thoughtful or tipping someone a little bit extra, helping someone 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:21.200 out in a way they didn't need to. And then 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:26.640 that person says to them, hey, you keep yourself and 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.600 your family away from the World Trade Center on September eleven, 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:34.200 and that person is like, whatever, WEIRDO, Okay, thanks, you know, 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.200 and then they go on and then after the event 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:42.360 they realized what had happened. Um, and that legend type 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.760 among folklorists is known as the grateful terrorist. It's horribly 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.800 xenophobic and racist, obviously, but it it does that thing 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:55.600 folklore does where it just encapsulates people's anxieties, people's fears, 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.920 the tenor of the moment, where what we see is 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:01.319 this suspen Asian and and these are I mean, it 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:06.640 sounds now, however many years we are out from September eleven, 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:11.040 twenty years almost um, it seems ridiculous. It seems like, 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:13.760 oh wow, that's an awful story to have told, Like 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.280 it almost seems like a bad joke. But at the 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:20.600 time when this thing of unbelievable importance and also just 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.679 unspeakable ambiguity, nobody had any idea what was going on. 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:29.200 I remember that morning, the general thinking was that it 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:32.800 was an accident, right, there's no way this happened on purpose, 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.679 until there was a second airplane involved, and suddenly that 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:40.240 vacuum opened up and all of these stories just got 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:44.599 sucked into this explanation and you could see that multiplication 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:49.240 of importance our personal safety and national safety and ambiguity. 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.080 Who the heck is doing this to us? What is happening? 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:54.000 How can we make sure it doesn't happen again? Who 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.079 can I trust? Who can't I trust? Leads to just this, 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:02.079 like you know, conflagration of rumor and legend, where any 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:06.640 story that seems to give me a spec of control, 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:09.800 who I know to trust, who I know not to trust, 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.000 is going to latch on because we want to start 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.440 a signing blame. We want to start constructing a future 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:19.440 where we're in control of this not happening again, or 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:21.240 if it's going to happen again, I'm not going to 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:25.600 be there. Um. So yeah, so we get these stories 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:27.800 that I mean and think we we can think about 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:31.040 so many more stories of people claiming to have witnessed 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:37.199 um people of certain ethnic backgrounds celebrating in the September eleven. Yeah, 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.240 and there were a lot of That was another one 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.640 where the legends were very visual. There were photographs that circulated. 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.320 Every one of those photographs was traced to an event 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.160 that had nothing to do with that date or that moment. 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:52.120 None of them were true, but they seemed to provide sense, 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.840 not good sense, not sense we liked very racist and 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:59.280 xenophobic sense. But it seemed to make sense out of 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.160 the the comprehensible, and that drive to make sense of 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:07.400 things is really what what pushes a lot of rumor 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:11.160 and legend in arenas like this. You know, one of 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.560 the things I'm kind of interested in is why do 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:19.920 you does UFO folklore seem to have this staying power? Yeah, 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:24.840 this is an awesome question, and the answer exists on 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.600 several levels, because there's staying power and then there's staying power. 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.280 If we want to look at the legend type of 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:37.400 the UFO visitor, where we have odd, often vaguely humanoid, 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:42.000 sometimes a little extra tall, slender creatures descending from the 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:45.760 sky or perhaps emerging from another dimension to interact with humans, 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.240 often to kidnap them, often to interfere with their bodies 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:53.960 in some way. We've just described centuries of fairy lore, 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:59.280 you know, other creatures, slender, humanoid, mysterious, powerful emerging from 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.400 the mists, taking us away. Being kidnapped by the fairies 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.520 and taken by the fairies is a longstanding tradition. Um 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:09.200 So if we want to call that UFO lore, we 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:13.880 could very very easily. But taking a shorter view of it, 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:18.240 where UFO really takes on these sort of technological pseudo 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:23.880 scientific ideas of space and space travel and extraterrestrial life. 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.480 The question of the staying power of that, I think 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:32.920 is really multifaceted just on its own, because we know 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.920 that belief doesn't stick around for no reason, and we 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:41.040 know that one straightforward, if hard to accept answer is 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:46.160 perhaps people keep talking about UFOs because people keep seeing them, 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.000 because they're there, they're real, people are having encounters. That 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.240 is a possibility that it does us no service to 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.480 discount when we wonder, wow, why do people keep talking 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.240 about this? It's like, wow, why do people keep talking 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.200 about Bigfoot? Maybe because they keep seeing him? You know, 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:05.680 that's one answer that we don't need to erase. But 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.600 let's say that we cannot confirm the existence of UFOs. 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.560 We don't have one that most of us know of, right, 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.480 We don't have one to look at to take apart 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:19.360 to dismantle, to analyze with what tools are available to us? 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.320 Why do we keep telling the story? Clearly there's some 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:31.160 other beneficial not meaning always positive, but meaning it serves 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.480 us in our psychological and you know, social needs. Some 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:40.320 beneficial outcome of believing in this possibility. I'm going to 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.280 make a quick detour just because I think it's important 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:46.960 to point out that legends, as a genre of folk 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:52.200 narrative are a legend about possibility. For a long time, 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:56.840 legends were defined by folklorists as stories told as true, 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:00.320 whereas fairy tales are stories told as fiction and myths 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.840 our stories told sort of as sacred revelation. Right, Legends 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.680 are the ones that we're told as literally true. We've 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.000 nuanced this since then to talk about the idea that 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:15.600 what legends do is they allow us to symbolically discuss possibility, 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.600 and the possibilities of reality are a thing that human 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:25.920 beings love to discuss. We really want to chew over 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:31.399 the potential boundaries of reality. Could this be? Could this 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:36.919 not be? Could this happen? Is this real? And UFOs 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:42.120 are something that clearly there's both ambiguity and importance in this. 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.400 It matters to us to not be alone in the universe, 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:47.919 and we aren't sure if it's going to be a 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:50.240 good thing or a bad thing when we get that answer. 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:55.000 So we see that combination of social and cultural import there, 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:59.320 and then we also see something that simply starts to 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.600 make more more sense I mean, it is an accepted 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:07.560 scientific principle that there's probably a planet out there in 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.880 our infinite universe that can sustain life as ours can. 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:15.840 It does not make sense that we would be unique. Um. 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.800 Then we start adding in not just the narratives, not 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.920 just the stories, but this digital additional media that comes 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:26.960 to us from this particular time in our culture, where 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:31.200 there's more everyday people out there with cameras, there's more 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.439 visual media than just textual. We're able to capture things 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:38.840 and share them with each other in unprecedented ways, and 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:41.159 that changes how we talk about this stuff. It's one 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.720 thing to trust your neighbor when he's like, I saw 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:47.159 some weird lights over my farm and then I lost 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:49.840 three hours of my day. I don't know what happened, 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:51.359 but I woke up in a ditch and I had 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.119 all these bruises. You know, you tell me what that means. 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.520 It's another thing when your neighbor tells you that same 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:58.879 story and then shows you a photo that he took, 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:03.080 and you're like, oh, yeah, I can't explain what those 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.080 lights are. They don't look like an airplane, they don't 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.119 look like anything I'm familiar with. You know, we just 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:09.920 start to start to get that that word of mouth 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:14.919 culture is now being bolstered by additional things, which of 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:18.199 course sort of conveniently takes us to even that next 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:23.040 level of authenticity or validation, which is, hey, this isn't 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.040 just your neighbor now, it's the government. Now, it's an 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:30.199 institutional element of our culture who we know isn't joking around, 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:35.560 and they're taking it seriously, and they're producing documents and 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.400 they're gathering photos, and you start to go okay, wait, hey, 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:43.760 wait a minute, Like like the authority that institutions lend 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.600 to the already powerful word of mouth consensus of folklore 0:19:49.240 --> 0:20:10.159 is really something that you can't underestimate. I brought up 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:14.560 Joe Nichols Roswell syndrome framework for the dynamic. The UFO 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:18.359 stories sometimes go through the thing that happens sort of 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:23.120 again and again in uphology is that like a case 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:27.879 will occur and it will pretty quickly be explained, and 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.399 then it will go dark, and then it will come 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.439 back a little while later, sort of armored. So in 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:38.560 the retelling, like these objections are sort of like pre 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.760 you know, you have a pre planned explanation for it, 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:47.280 and now everything can kind of make sense. Yes, absolutely, 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.800 and that that is part of that dynamism that we 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:53.160 see all folks are happening. Right. If someone had written 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:54.800 a book about this and published it, and it were 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:58.639 a copyrighted piece of work, it's it already exists. It 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:01.160 is what it is. You know, the novel, that book, 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.959 that newspaper article. Doesn't get to be updated. It's still exist. 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:08.800 You can print a new version with new information maybe 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:11.640 or something, but it's not dynamic in the way folk 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:14.200 culture is dynamic. And one of the things that folk 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.080 culture often does, especially in the genre of legend and belief, 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:23.639 is that there is a developing performance of rationality. People 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:30.320 know that being seen as a believer can automatically cast 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:33.520 doubt on people's stories. You know, we we talk about 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.800 belief in the supernatural or the paranormal as sort of 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:40.880 this black or white proposition. Do you believe in ghosts? Yes? 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:44.880 Or no? The average everyday person knows the correct answer 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:49.320 is no, because that makes you a rational, scientifically minded person. 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:54.440 For most people, though the real answer isn't necessarily yes. 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:57.439 The real answer is something along the lines of a story. 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:01.000 The real answer to do you believe in ghosts as well? No? 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.320 Of course not. I mean who would. But after my 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.280 grandpa died, there was like this one Christmas light and 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:09.520 it was totally the one that he was always into, 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:12.160 and it just started blinking like the day after he died, 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.880 and it never stopped blinking, and we all just sort 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:17.280 of knew, like that was Grandpa, you know, letting us 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:19.240 know that he was still there with us for the holidays. 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:20.880 So no, I don't believe in ghosts, but I mean, 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:24.960 my Grandpa's in that Christmas light, like that very paradoxical, 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:29.159 very contradictory answer, And that's never on the survey, you know, 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:30.920 when we send out the survey of do you believe 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:33.560 in ghosts? That's not an option, so everyone checks no. 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.920 But the truth is that when someone wants to speak 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:41.560 about a supernatural experience they've had, they grow I like 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:45.720 the word armor over their story in anticipation of people 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:48.600 who are going to say, okay, weirdo. You know I 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:52.680 you clearly are an irrational thinker. So we see this 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:59.480 performance of rationality, this intentional reality testing that takes place 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:01.720 that hums a part of the story to say, now 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:04.040 I thought it could be this, but then I realized 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:06.000 it couldn't. Because of this, And I also thought that 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:08.600 maybe it could be this, but that doesn't make any 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.600 sense because of X, Y, and Z. And what that 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:19.400 tells us is that people are actually being surprisingly rational 0:23:19.800 --> 0:23:22.760 when they talk about the paranormal or the supernatural, and 0:23:22.800 --> 0:23:25.840 that's not something we want to grant people always. When 0:23:25.880 --> 0:23:29.560 people are talking about things that we, in particular don't 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.240 believe in, it's very easy to be dismissive and assume 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:36.440 that they've jumped to supernatural conclusions. Oh, this person wants 0:23:36.440 --> 0:23:39.040 it to be a UFO. Oh, this person wants it 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:42.840 to be bigfoot. And the truth is is that most 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:47.200 people are going through this process of elimination and starting 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:49.119 with well could it have been the lighthouse, No, the 0:23:49.160 --> 0:23:51.680 lighthouse is over there, it's over here, Or you know, well, 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:53.800 could it have been a bear? No, I've seen bears, 0:23:53.800 --> 0:23:55.520 I've hunted bears, I know what bears look like. That 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:59.760 wasn't a bear, And then they end up at this 0:24:00.119 --> 0:24:04.680 supernatural or paranormal conclusion that, for all that it might 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:07.720 not be scientifically testable the way that we think of 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:12.440 the scientific process, it's a rational thought process that they've 0:24:12.480 --> 0:24:15.239 gone through. And this is something that any folklorist who 0:24:15.280 --> 0:24:19.280 has done ethnographic work with people on the subjects of 0:24:19.320 --> 0:24:23.600 belief in the supernatural sees right away is oftentimes these 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:28.240 are incredibly thoughtful, observant people who themselves don't want to 0:24:28.320 --> 0:24:32.080 have to have drawn that conclusion, and yet there's no 0:24:32.119 --> 0:24:36.600 other conclusion for them to draw. Sometimes the first episode 0:24:36.600 --> 0:24:39.359 of Strange Arrivals, like the first like three minutes or 0:24:39.400 --> 0:24:41.800 five minutes or whatever, is to be telling the story 0:24:41.840 --> 0:24:44.639 about how, you know, my best friend and his wife 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:48.200 and me and my wife, we're having dinner out on 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:51.640 a porch on this on this island, and we saw 0:24:51.680 --> 0:24:56.960 these lights, these red lights up is ways away. They 0:24:56.960 --> 0:24:58.800 were just there and they're moving a little bit. We 0:24:58.840 --> 0:25:01.600 went down the dock watching them, you know. We watched 0:25:01.600 --> 0:25:04.320 them probably for twenty minutes, and then they kind of disappeared. 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:07.359 And for the first season of Strange Arrivals, what I 0:25:07.400 --> 0:25:09.560 was kind of interested in was how our our memories 0:25:09.600 --> 0:25:12.359