Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to goow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Bass.
Speaker 1: The holidays are upon us, so of course we're talking
Speaker 1: about the science of a couple of our favorite holiday entities.
Speaker 1: So we have an episode about Scrooge, and this episode
Speaker 1: is about the Grinch. That's right, You're a mean one,
Speaker 1: Mr Grinch. Is everybody familiar with that song? They should be.
Speaker 1: This is another one that I feel like I watched
Speaker 1: and read it so many times as a child, and
Speaker 1: then you know, and then it's just all over pop culture.
Speaker 1: And then they made that movie. The less that's said
Speaker 1: about the better, But still people are not that movie
Speaker 1: is old enough now that people are nostalgic about it.
Speaker 1: That's noting like that films like over a decade old
Speaker 1: now the gym Carey, But for me it was all
Speaker 1: ways the old animated version. The head boars karlof yeah
Speaker 1: in it and in the book itself by the good
Speaker 1: uh Dr Seuss, Yeah, The Grinch She Stole Christmas is
Speaker 1: a great literary classic. In the song You're Mean when
Speaker 1: Mr Grinch performed by Thorle ravens Croft. Yeah, not Boris
Speaker 1: Karlaf some people mistake did the voice of the and yeah,
Speaker 1: and in fact Thorle ravens Croft also did the voice
Speaker 1: for Tony the Tiger. But we bring it all up
Speaker 1: because this is just great fodder. Great, yes, great fodder
Speaker 1: to deconstruct the Grinch. That's our aim today, to find
Speaker 1: out what makes him tick mentally and physically, and also
Speaker 1: find out why he's so obsessed with stopping Christmas from
Speaker 1: coming to Ville. Indeed, you know, the basic scenario is, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's very much like Scrooge in a sense, you know,
Speaker 1: the commugon ly old critter who who learns the true
Speaker 1: meaning of Christmas and has a big change of heart.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a reduntion story and all that, um.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, can't be bothered with all those
Speaker 1: do goods and merrymakers right, and just can't stand can't
Speaker 1: stand the sound of them, can't stand the idea that
Speaker 1: they are down there, and decides, well, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: steal their Christmas. I'll take it away. I'll go down there,
Speaker 1: I'll dress the Santa Claus, I'll take everything out of
Speaker 1: their houses. Their presence, their food, there, the decorations on
Speaker 1: the walls, Like he just completely ravages their culture. That's his,
Speaker 1: his thing, and then he's going to destroy it all.
Speaker 1: But then something happens. He has an epiphany, and we'll
Speaker 1: get to that. There is another character that we're like,
Speaker 1: how did he get to that epiphany? Um? First though,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at what the Grinch looks like,
Speaker 1: I mean with his actual physical characteristics. As we're talking
Speaker 1: about a green fur clad primate. Yeah, yeah, some sort
Speaker 1: of bipedal critter. Now, I I do have questions about
Speaker 1: his primate status because the the world that we encounter
Speaker 1: in the Grinch, uh, the who despec is, is filled
Speaker 1: with creatures that are just run straight out of our world.
Speaker 1: There's a dog, you know, there are mice, but then
Speaker 1: you have the primary resident seemed to be the Who's
Speaker 1: who haven't who are bipeds as well, but they have antenna.
Speaker 1: The Grinch doesn't have antenna, but I will know that
Speaker 1: he has very animated eyebrows and these two kind of
Speaker 1: horns of hair, which leads me to believe that they
Speaker 1: might be antenna. They're simply covered in hair that's just
Speaker 1: a loose theory. That's true, it's hard to tell. I
Speaker 1: saw that little mop. I kept staring at that little
Speaker 1: mom trying to figure out because what could it be.
Speaker 1: In the animated version, there's that great scene where he
Speaker 1: gets the idea, uh, and he smiles and it's the
Speaker 1: most devious smile ever brought to the moving picture. Now,
Speaker 1: from the Whoville Wikipedia, it states that the grinch is
Speaker 1: known to be of a different species than the who's
Speaker 1: being stated as a what. And moreover, in the story,
Speaker 1: the grinch is described as being as strong as ten
Speaker 1: grinches plus two, implying that perhaps a grinch is its
Speaker 1: own species. To who's call him of what? How very how?
Speaker 1: How very alienating of them to do that to to
Speaker 1: who it's who? It's tied up with your identity, right
Speaker 1: and what? That's very dehumanizing. Well, keep a handle on that,
Speaker 1: because I feel like this will become important discussion fodder, uh,
Speaker 1: for when we talk about epiphanies. Now, the grinch is constitution,
Speaker 1: as we all know, super grumpy, antisocial, neurotic, aggressive, depressive,
Speaker 1: you could even say, vindictive, and possibly even fulfilling a
Speaker 1: neurotic need for power by exploiting his companion Max the dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the relationship between the Grinch and max Is is perhaps
Speaker 1: a little borderline abuse of at times. But but but
Speaker 1: he's a you know, it's a service animal. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's that's animal. Yeah. I don't see anything on there
Speaker 1: that says do not pet. Well, it's implied, you know,
Speaker 1: the horn on the head, positioning in the front of
Speaker 1: the sway like clearly. Uh, you know, the Grinch sees
Speaker 1: this as an animal that aids him in his endeavors.
Speaker 1: He makes a great foil, does now The image of
Speaker 1: the Grinch in that cave on a mantaintop really brings
Speaker 1: to mind a jetty or better yet another creature and
Speaker 1: I'm talking about from the epic tale bail Wolf. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is something I just keep thinking about
Speaker 1: this Christmas season. I never thought of it before, but
Speaker 1: it it's it comes up every now and then. We're
Speaker 1: not the first people to to talk about Grindel and
Speaker 1: Grinch as very similar entities, because you have one that's
Speaker 1: a cave dwelling monster that haunts the Danish moors, and
Speaker 1: the other lives within the microcosm of the hood despec
Speaker 1: one taliens in bloodshed, the other in Christmas Cheer. But
Speaker 1: both stories concern a loan outside or a to quote
Speaker 1: the words of authored John Gardner, who who wrote the
Speaker 1: book Grindel, which is the story of Baowulf and Grendel.
Speaker 1: From Grendel's perspective, uh, the creature is quote a shadow
Speaker 1: shooter and earth room roamer, a walker of the world's
Speaker 1: weird wall, a perpetual outsider that is uh, that's barely
Speaker 1: even a part of the the world of man, or
Speaker 1: in this case, the world of the Who's Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a sense of suffering there. And according to Courtney che
Speaker 1: writing for Humanities three sixty, she says the first and
Speaker 1: most apparent similarity between Grendel and the Grench other names
Speaker 1: both begin with a sound Grin the Online Etymology Dictionary
Speaker 1: states that the Old English word grenian means to show
Speaker 1: the teeth in pain or anger, and an old Norse
Speaker 1: the word crena means to howl indeed, uh And and
Speaker 1: you know, in both cases the creature is is just
Speaker 1: really irritated by the noise and the grinch and the noise,
Speaker 1: the noise, the noise, and in bow will fuh it
Speaker 1: is written, then the mighty war spirit endured for a season,
Speaker 1: bore it bitterly, he who bided in darkness. That lighthearted
Speaker 1: laughter aloud in the building greeted him daily. There was
Speaker 1: dulcet heart music, clear song of the singer. And uh.
Speaker 1: And so Grendel sets out to attack uh the mead
Speaker 1: hall of Herod and uh and it's important to know
Speaker 1: that the mead hall here is the center of Danish culture. Like,
Speaker 1: he's striking at the heart of the Dames. He's striking
Speaker 1: at their merriam. And he's starting at the He's striking
Speaker 1: at the glue that holds them together through the dark winter.
Speaker 1: Right and uh and and the Grinch is doing much
Speaker 1: the same thing. He is striking at their Christmas. He's
Speaker 1: striking at their their central belief and their central um,
Speaker 1: the very heart of their culture. Yes, there's a merriment, right,
Speaker 1: there's the feasting. And when he attacks them, Grendel, they
Speaker 1: are asleep from their feasting nuts, unlike the Who's who
Speaker 1: lay a snooze exactly. Um. But it had had Cindy,
Speaker 1: had Cindy lou Dane woken up and wandered into the
Speaker 1: meat hall, she would have met with a very different fate.
Speaker 1: She would just be gulped down. There will be no discussion.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, torn apart. Now, the biggest difference, of course,
Speaker 1: is that Grenville's vengeance and hatred makes them incapable of
Speaker 1: connecting with anyone else. Right, He's got different motivations too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some other issues I think too, don't we all Yeah,
Speaker 1: And also I'm you know, theo Wolf is a bit
Speaker 1: of a jerk. Well, yeah, so it's not like the
Speaker 1: Danes are not doing a great job of reaching out
Speaker 1: to Grenville, right, and so he's not going to have
Speaker 1: that epiphany like the Grinch. R. Yeah. But nonetheless, there
Speaker 1: are so many similarities between the two you can't help
Speaker 1: but mention them. Indeed, Yes, and I would love to see, uh,
Speaker 1: some sort of adaptation that combines these two in a
Speaker 1: in a more festive manner. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break on that note, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss the physiology of the because we
Speaker 1: know at least one crucial thing about it. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. We're back. And one of the distinguishing physiological
Speaker 1: features of the Grinch is of course that his heart
Speaker 1: is two sizes too small. Yes, and this seems to
Speaker 1: be both a physical and figurative situation. For the most part,
Speaker 1: from what we can tell, we have a little X
Speaker 1: ray that comes into frame and shows you that the
Speaker 1: heart is is literally too small, and also his love
Speaker 1: for his uh, his fellow creature seems to be somewhat
Speaker 1: lacking as well. Indeed, so we look to the human
Speaker 1: world to try to explain some of the reasons why
Speaker 1: this may be so, at least on the physical level. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: I do want to say one quick thing about why
Speaker 1: it is definitely a problem. Because the grinch is living
Speaker 1: at a very high altitude, right and uh, and so
Speaker 1: he's living in a glow oxygen environment. So if he
Speaker 1: if his species, if you will truly evolve to throw
Speaker 1: I have at high altitudes, then that species would boast
Speaker 1: slower development, delayed maturity, greater lung volume, and a larger heart.
Speaker 1: Has pointed out in the book Essentials of Physical Anthropology,
Speaker 1: we find all four of these attributes in lifelong high
Speaker 1: altitude human residents. So his heart is too small for
Speaker 1: his environment. Well, especially if you consider that the grinch
Speaker 1: and the Who's evolved convergently with one another, as possible
Speaker 1: that the grinch has a heart that is really better
Speaker 1: adapted to um higher levels of oxygen, which would find
Speaker 1: on the ground right right, So it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: tell where this is coming from. It could be maybe
Speaker 1: the Grinch is actually at lower levels of altitude, but
Speaker 1: now as an outsider has decided to live on this
Speaker 1: mountaintop and therefore doubt by the Who's, Yes, he's been
Speaker 1: excommunicated by the Who's and now here he is with
Speaker 1: his heart. She size is too small to deal with
Speaker 1: a lack of oxygen the high altitudes. It's okay, I
Speaker 1: like this theory, and it plays into some other arguments
Speaker 1: they're gonna make later in the podcast concerning the origins
Speaker 1: of the Grinch. But another idea, maybe that's not a
Speaker 1: Grench heart in his chest. Maybe it is a whole heart.
Speaker 1: Because in in, indeed, when it comes to you a
Speaker 1: human heart transplant, transplantation UM underside replatement, replacements are are
Speaker 1: certainly an issue of concern because you you know, when
Speaker 1: it when it comes to heart availability, you're not always
Speaker 1: able to match up everything perfectly. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: matching across genders, um, you know, ultimately across different people.
Speaker 1: So sometimes the heart is a is a bit smaller
Speaker 1: than it would ideally be for that chest cavity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what you're describing is actually called the Grinch syndrome.
Speaker 1: In some cases it is a postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like one of the things that Who
Speaker 1: gets on Christmas Morning one of the instruments. It is
Speaker 1: actually um and most patients have a heart that is
Speaker 1: indeed two sizes too small. And this effects about five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand Americans, primarily young women. So again, this is
Speaker 1: something that is really taken into consideration when you are
Speaker 1: looking at donors. So if this were the case, Uh,
Speaker 1: you could imagine that in all that junk up there
Speaker 1: in the mountain, on the top of Mount Crumpet. Uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps the Grinch has some sort of automated surgical theater
Speaker 1: that performed this procedure once upon a time. And why not,
Speaker 1: I mean, he has a sewing machine. It's true. It's true.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Max has has a skill set that we were
Speaker 1: just not privy to in the book or in the film,
Speaker 1: or or perhaps the Who's did it themselves before they
Speaker 1: shunned him and pushed him up to the top of
Speaker 1: a mountain. In any case, you put someone up there
Speaker 1: with a heart that's much too small for that altitude.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get some dizziness, You're gonna get some very
Speaker 1: unclear thinking, You're gonna get a lot of crappiness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's going to definitely, I think contribute to his his
Speaker 1: ill demeanor. Indeed, now not laud is known about his
Speaker 1: actual ears. Um. Perhaps they're situated underneath all of that
Speaker 1: that for the cladding his body. But it could be
Speaker 1: that he's just highly sensitive to noise. And we know
Speaker 1: that the human ear canal actually amplifies noises in the
Speaker 1: range of two thousand to five thousand hurts um. So
Speaker 1: that's why I like things like knives, scraping plates, or
Speaker 1: nails on a chalkboard are so terrible sounding, because they
Speaker 1: inhabit that range and they kind of ricochet around in
Speaker 1: the ear canal. So could it be that all that merriment,
Speaker 1: all all of that singing is occupying that same space.
Speaker 1: It could be it's hitting the sweet spot for him,
Speaker 1: or the spot as it were. Well, the noise, noise, noise,
Speaker 1: that's the one thing he hated. Yeah, yeah, and that's ultimately,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what makes him decide, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go down there and I'm going to cut this
Speaker 1: noise out, all those fancy bells and whistles they get
Speaker 1: Christmas morning, I'm going to take rid of to take
Speaker 1: care of that. And that's ing may do. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be no cause for that either, because I'm stealing everything
Speaker 1: that's right. Because when I am perched atop my mountain,
Speaker 1: particularly on the edge, and I'm really like leaning down
Speaker 1: to here, I know that sound is reflecting off of
Speaker 1: really hard surfaces like rock, water, or ice. And I'm
Speaker 1: that grinch and I'm mad about this. And that's to
Speaker 1: say nothing about what's going on inside that cave. Indeed,
Speaker 1: if you think of the ear canal as as amplifying sound,
Speaker 1: essentially the cave that the that the Grinch is in
Speaker 1: is another ear canal. It is, I mean, because if
Speaker 1: you you look at it, there's hard surfaces that are
Speaker 1: surrounding the Grinch, perfect for amplifying sounds, since any noise
Speaker 1: that would appear to enter the cave or that was
Speaker 1: made inside of it would bounce off the cave walls
Speaker 1: and it would be picked up by the ears. And
Speaker 1: in this sense, there's a twin to each noise a
Speaker 1: kind of shadow noise, and this gets into a really
Speaker 1: interesting area of research called arco acoustics. UM. One of
Speaker 1: the main guys behind all of this is a US researchers,
Speaker 1: Steven Waller, Uh, and he's looked extensively at at Lascaux
Speaker 1: caves in France, these ancient caves, cave art on the sides,
Speaker 1: you know, animals, that that kind of thing, and he
Speaker 1: believes that the echoes of ritual clapping outside of those
Speaker 1: caves would have sounded like hundreds of hoofs drumming on
Speaker 1: the ground. So he thinks that the the the design
Speaker 1: of the caves, the positioning of the art, all of that,
Speaker 1: um is orchestrated with the sound amplification in mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these kind of sound illusions that come from it. And
Speaker 1: we were talking earlier, You think that perhaps the hooves
Speaker 1: might be behind this. Yes, yeah, it does make me
Speaker 1: think that. Um. You know, Weller pointed out quote ancient
Speaker 1: mythology explains echoes from the mouths of caves as replies
Speaker 1: from spirits. Our ancestors may have made cave paintings in
Speaker 1: response to these echoes and their belief that echo spirits
Speaker 1: inhabited rocky places such as caves or canyons. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: taking this thinking about the Grinch, thinking about the Grinch
Speaker 1: is a creature that has been shunned and even placed
Speaker 1: there by the Who's Perhaps they also created this cave
Speaker 1: so that whoever's occupying that create that cave, whoever is
Speaker 1: the Grinch, will steadily be driven mad by the amplified
Speaker 1: sounds of merriment far below. Um and and i'll and i'll,
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about this as we we progress, but
Speaker 1: it's all part of my theory that the grinch um
Speaker 1: has an important, crucial even role to play, uh annual
Speaker 1: role to play in the culture of the Who's Well.
Speaker 1: And in this sense, he's kind of like the cramp
Speaker 1: Us that the anti clause, right, So we'll talk about
Speaker 1: this a little bit more in the epiphanes Um discussion.
Speaker 1: But what I think is interesting is here he is
Speaker 1: sequestered away, completely isolated. Perhaps um he is experiencing these
Speaker 1: sound illusions and going a little bit mad from it. Now,
Speaker 1: the isolation aspect of this, I think is a really
Speaker 1: big deal. Um, we should take a quick break, and
Speaker 1: when we get back, we're going to talk about Grinch
Speaker 1: on his only mountain top. All right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: there's the Grinch up in his cave up the mount Crumpet,
Speaker 1: far far, far from the who civilization down below. Um,
Speaker 1: it would seem that he isn't you know, he would
Speaker 1: be in a very splendid uh area of isolation, that
Speaker 1: he would be far from from any of the sounds
Speaker 1: that might bother him. No, not at all. We we
Speaker 1: tend to think that we talked about this in our
Speaker 1: episode Splendid Isolation, this idea that if you could just
Speaker 1: get some quiet and isolation, and maybe you could even
Speaker 1: live like one year completely isolated, that you could finally
Speaker 1: sort of unwind and let you the flowers of your
Speaker 1: brain bloom. But no, what happens is that those flowers
Speaker 1: get all sort of choked together and die off because
Speaker 1: you're not having those sort of connections with people and
Speaker 1: associations that you need that your brain craves. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you end up talking to a dog, dressing like Santa
Speaker 1: Claus and and breaking into houses. Indeed, according to researcher
Speaker 1: John Caciopo at the University of Chicago, of all people
Speaker 1: are unhappy because of social isolation at any given moment.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to know, Hey, what's going on in
Speaker 1: the minds of these folks who are isolated and they're unhappy,
Speaker 1: And he recruited volunteers to look at some photos while
Speaker 1: undergoing f m R I. Now this is this has
Speaker 1: such an interesting twist to it. Um Some of the
Speaker 1: participants have been identified as having an acute sense of
Speaker 1: social isolation and some were just you know, healthy volunteers
Speaker 1: that they had screened. Now, both groups viewed a series
Speaker 1: of images, some with positive connotations like happy couple doing
Speaker 1: funhappy things, and others with negative associations, such as scenes
Speaker 1: of human conflict. Now, when the two groups watched pleasant imagery,
Speaker 1: the area of the brain that recognizes rewards showed a
Speaker 1: significantly greater response non lonely people than in lonely people. Similarly,
Speaker 1: the visual cortex of lonely subjects responded much more strongly
Speaker 1: to unpleasant images of people than to unpleasant images of objects.
Speaker 1: This suggests that the intention of lonely people maybe especially
Speaker 1: drawn to human conflict, and that what's interesting about this
Speaker 1: is that the nominally subject showed no difference here, So
Speaker 1: it was the lonely subjects who were particularly taken with
Speaker 1: these scenes of conflict, and this this instantly brings to
Speaker 1: mind an image of someone who's isolated themselves inside of
Speaker 1: their apartment and they're just watching nothing but but cable
Speaker 1: news over and over again and yelling at it yea,
Speaker 1: and yelling at it, just glutting themselves on conflict and
Speaker 1: engaging with the conflict and really feeling a lot of stress. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand seven study from the University of
Speaker 1: Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and they reported that
Speaker 1: the anxiety and aggression that results from social isol a
Speaker 1: trace to altered levels of an enzyme that controls the
Speaker 1: production of a brain hormone. The in the two enzymes
Speaker 1: in this case are needed for the production of allo pregnantoline,
Speaker 1: a brain hormone that acts to reduce stress through regulation
Speaker 1: of gabba uh, an important neuro transmitter. So the suggestion
Speaker 1: here is that increased levels of isolation, it's going to
Speaker 1: impact your ability to roll with stress and regulate your
Speaker 1: own stress on a on a on a on a
Speaker 1: neurological scale. Right, and um, one of the ways that
Speaker 1: you might deal with stress is to communicate with others. Right,
Speaker 1: to unburden yourself. And again he does not have that luxury.
Speaker 1: Yes Max, Yes, Max, But Max seems and and and
Speaker 1: rightly so a bit reserved. Yes, Max does not speak
Speaker 1: despite being a cartoon storybook dog. He merely just rolls
Speaker 1: with the punches. Yeah. And you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: the dysfunctional families. Just would be the lost child, right,
Speaker 1: and one that receives to the shadows because he's like,
Speaker 1: forget it. I don't want to raise the hackles of
Speaker 1: the Grinch, but you know, I think the stage is
Speaker 1: pretty well set here that you have this, this creature
Speaker 1: who is tormented UM, auditorially fermented UM and psychologically tormented
Speaker 1: and as a result, perhaps having a mental breakdown. Now,
Speaker 1: in the BBC documentary alone The Brain Century, Deprivation and Isolation,
Speaker 1: six people were deprived of sensory input. They were essentially
Speaker 1: put in solitary confinement for about forty eight hours, and
Speaker 1: one of the findings is that at around our thirty
Speaker 1: people began to pace back and forth, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people who were looking at the footage said, this
Speaker 1: is a lot like animals in captivity. And perhaps one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why they're doing this is that they're
Speaker 1: trying to create some sort of sensory input for their brains.
Speaker 1: Because we've talked about this before. This is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why you can't be isolated for a long time.
Speaker 1: Your brain needs something to a non it needs a bone,
Speaker 1: and a lot of time other people are those bones.
Speaker 1: And again, if you if you have someone who has
Speaker 1: sequestered themselves in your brain, isn't getting this sort of
Speaker 1: input that it would normally get. The unconscious has very
Speaker 1: little information to play with and to mold into a story.
Speaker 1: And that story of I. You know, we've talked about this,
Speaker 1: the me, the who I am, And that's when you
Speaker 1: begin to see some some aspects of mental breakdown sometimes
Speaker 1: because there isn't that cohesive, uh, sense of self that's
Speaker 1: bolstered by others or even mirrored by other people around you.
Speaker 1: All Right, So the Grinch, this uh, this miserable creature,
Speaker 1: driven half mad by the merriment of the who's, finally breaks,
Speaker 1: finally snaps stresses up like Santa Claus descends down on
Speaker 1: Christmas night while the Who's are asleep in their beds,
Speaker 1: steals just about everything, even raid the refrigerator packs it
Speaker 1: all up on the sleigh, he takes it up and
Speaker 1: he's about to dump it, right, He's about to just
Speaker 1: throw it into the abyss and u and wish him
Speaker 1: a merry Christ. But he's waiting, Remember, he's waiting on
Speaker 1: that ledge. He's waiting for them to wake up and
Speaker 1: realize that all of their little goodies have been stolen
Speaker 1: from them. Right, that's the ultimate reward, more so than
Speaker 1: just the material theft involved here. He wants to break them,
Speaker 1: to break who culture itself, and just send them into despair.
Speaker 1: The problem is, of course, is that when he's he's
Speaker 1: got his hand up to his ear and he's listening
Speaker 1: really hard, he doesn't hear sobbing. He doesn't hear this
Speaker 1: is terrible wretching noises of broken Who's he hears his
Speaker 1: unified chorus, this beautiful lilting song that that comes up
Speaker 1: to him and makes him realize that all of his
Speaker 1: expectations have been violated. And this is what allows him,
Speaker 1: at this very moment to go in one of two ways.
Speaker 1: Either he can have this sort of cognitive dissonance right
Speaker 1: in which his violations or his expectations are violated, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what to do with that, and so
Speaker 1: he doubles down on a sort of cognitive bias and
Speaker 1: tries to explain it away and say, oh no, they're
Speaker 1: still materialists, they're still terrible. Or he can accept that
Speaker 1: there's cognitive dissonance and he can accept that there's an
Speaker 1: alternate take to the Who's and to Christmas that is
Speaker 1: not just about materialism but perhaps something more m and
Speaker 1: that makes all the difference. He has this change of heart.
Speaker 1: He brings everything back to them, He celebrates with him, He's, He's,
Speaker 1: He's brought into who culture. He's no longer an outsider,
Speaker 1: or at least for this one night, he's not an outsider,
Speaker 1: and he joins in the feast. He cuts the roast
Speaker 1: beast for crying out loud. He does. And again, this, this,
Speaker 1: this sort of see change is all predicated on his
Speaker 1: epiphany moment that it's connections with people that matter, and
Speaker 1: that's what the Who's, uh we're celebrating when it came
Speaker 1: to Christmas. Not necessarily their stuff, but these guys Who's
Speaker 1: do not get out of this unscathed. Right, It's easy
Speaker 1: to look at the story and say, oh, well, the
Speaker 1: Who's are such a noble people that even though all
Speaker 1: their presence and their food was gone, they still went
Speaker 1: out there, and we're happy because they're ultimately happy and
Speaker 1: good at heart. But we would argue that they felt this,
Speaker 1: they made this. This is a realization for the Who's
Speaker 1: because the Grinch told all their stuff, because the Grinch
Speaker 1: took away all the material possessions, of which they had
Speaker 1: way too many to begin with. Yeah. According to Chad
Speaker 1: or Zell in his article on Science Blogs, how strong
Speaker 1: was the Grinch each of the thirty three who's in Whoville?
Speaker 1: We're getting about three thousand or about six thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of stuff on Christmas and Orizel basis calculations on pixels
Speaker 1: and what they might represent in terms of real world
Speaker 1: dimensions and mass, including that that slayh um. So that
Speaker 1: would lead us to believe that maybe those who's we're
Speaker 1: just empty husks trying to stuff themselves with things before
Speaker 1: the Grinch came along and delivered uh an epiphany to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean it, you know, clearly their
Speaker 1: way over doing it. They're indulging in just rampant materialism,
Speaker 1: and then the Grinch comes takes it away and gives
Speaker 1: them the space to realize what's important. Most So in
Speaker 1: this I would I would argue that the Grinch plays
Speaker 1: a crucial role in the Who's if not for that
Speaker 1: that Christmas, but perhaps every Christmas. Perhaps the Grinch comes
Speaker 1: every Christmas to the Who's and it's part of their
Speaker 1: their winter festival, you know, the great green god on
Speaker 1: the mountain that it comes down and takes away your
Speaker 1: your your material possessions so that you may see what's
Speaker 1: most important. So this is like the passion play for
Speaker 1: the Who's. Yeah, like maybe, yeah, And I think so
Speaker 1: if the if the Grinch doesn't come, then you end
Speaker 1: up just drowning in your own materialism and you're you know,
Speaker 1: freezing through the winter. And the Grinch himself might say, yes,
Speaker 1: I will participate in these festivities and pretend to be
Speaker 1: terrible and awful and and and I can recreate that
Speaker 1: epiphany that or or you take a creature and you
Speaker 1: replace its heart and you stick it into a specially
Speaker 1: designed cave on the top of the mountain so that
Speaker 1: it will play a role in your your necessary festival
Speaker 1: year after year after year. Wow, maybe the Grinch isn't
Speaker 1: even real, Like maybe that's a Grinch costume that one
Speaker 1: of the Who's has to wear as sort of like
Speaker 1: the sacrificial Grinch for the year. Yeah, it's just kind
Speaker 1: of the supernatural entity that everyone believes in and you
Speaker 1: sort of you partake in the passion play of the
Speaker 1: thing that is somehow more believable than um. Then positing
Speaker 1: that the whose heart grew two sizes that day when
Speaker 1: you have the epiphany simply be has some sort of
Speaker 1: genetic switch went off between the who's and the what. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have no explanation for why his heart would literally
Speaker 1: grow two sizes and allow you know, better sourcing of oxygen,
Speaker 1: but that just reminded me too. Uh. Now, he's more
Speaker 1: of a who and than a what, which is sort
Speaker 1: of a whole underlying basis of what we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, like how how terrible to be a what
Speaker 1: instead of a who? And he made his way back
Speaker 1: to his unness by connecting with his fellow species. Now
Speaker 1: that's that's some rich stuff there. That's sus you really
Speaker 1: knows who knew what he was doing? An intuitive psychologist?
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah. Alrighty guys, we hope that you
Speaker 1: enjoyed our presentation of the Grinch as well as Scrooge.
Speaker 1: And if you want to check out more of what
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