Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today
Speaker 1: it's a vault episode. This is another one of our
Speaker 1: older Anthology of Horror episodes. I believe this was volume six,
Speaker 1: which originally published on October twenty nine. Wait, or is
Speaker 1: it volume five? Honestly I lose track of the volumes.
Speaker 1: It's another one, volume five. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: volumes there are at this point. Yeah, maybe it's five. Okay.
Speaker 1: I think we started out doing like one a year,
Speaker 1: and then we did like two in one year. So, um,
Speaker 1: the you know, the numbering system, it becomes less important.
Speaker 1: As with any like horror franchise, the long grade goes,
Speaker 1: the numbers just become redundant. Right, Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind? Production of My Heart Radio. Hey are
Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back
Speaker 1: with the second installment this year of our anthology horror series. Uh,
Speaker 1: this I guess is going to be the fifth anthology
Speaker 1: episode overall. Yeah, I believest so this should be episode
Speaker 1: or yeah, volume five however you want to look at it. Um, Yes,
Speaker 1: last year. If it's a volume you have, it's a volume. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So basically this is just a continuing experiment we've been
Speaker 1: doing where we look to the wonderful world of horror
Speaker 1: and sci fi UH TV anthologies and UH and cinematic
Speaker 1: anthologies and pick out little episodes, little UH audio visual
Speaker 1: short stories. They generally have some horror or sci fi
Speaker 1: or some sort of uh in, some sort of weird
Speaker 1: h and perhaps grotesque twist in them, and we use
Speaker 1: that as a focal point for a discussion of science
Speaker 1: and culture. Sometimes we're having to really um read into
Speaker 1: the episode a lot more than the creators anticipated. Other
Speaker 1: times it's just it's really baked into an already intelligent script. Um.
Speaker 1: It just kind of varies from piece to piece. Well,
Speaker 1: I got one to talk about first that is definitely
Speaker 1: baked in some way. Okay, what what have you got
Speaker 1: for us, Joe? Okay, today I wanted to start by
Speaker 1: talking about a classic episode of Are You Afraid of
Speaker 1: the Dark? Rob Did you watch Are You Afraid of
Speaker 1: the Dark? Because I I did. I I can't remember
Speaker 1: what channel came on. Maybe it was a Nickelodeon thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember catching episodes of it, and I remember it
Speaker 1: as being occasionally like really creepy, like it was effective.
Speaker 1: It was not uh, you know, it wasn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a kid show, but it could really creepy
Speaker 1: out a little bit. It was it was well done,
Speaker 1: is our call. Yeah. A lot of the episodes really
Speaker 1: are and I would say even the bad episodes, going
Speaker 1: back and watching them as an adult, it is an
Speaker 1: extremely fun, nostalgic rewatch. Uh. A lot of the episodes
Speaker 1: that I found very scary when I was young. You know,
Speaker 1: it is a kid's show, so they don't quite have
Speaker 1: the punch they did when I when I was eight
Speaker 1: or whatever, but a few of them are are still
Speaker 1: kind of surprising. And one of my favorite things about
Speaker 1: the show is that it is just egregiously adorably Canadian.
Speaker 1: One of the fun things about going back and watching
Speaker 1: it now is that you frequently encounter child versions of
Speaker 1: Ryan Gosling or Nev Campbell or somebody else you recognize
Speaker 1: from later work. And when it comes to the older actors,
Speaker 1: they weren't usually people who you'd recognize from big movies
Speaker 1: or anything, but a lot of them have this powerful
Speaker 1: energy of like a local character beloved in some town.
Speaker 1: Like you often get the sense that when you meet
Speaker 1: Dr Vink or somebody like that, it's like you're you're
Speaker 1: looking at the rc Bates of Toronto. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: the episode I mostly remember from this show is, if
Speaker 1: I if I'm remembering it correctly, is the Tale of
Speaker 1: the dead Man's Float, which has to do with like
Speaker 1: a haunted high school swimming pool that remember, I'm I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm remembering correctly. I may be misremembering
Speaker 1: that it's somehow in the in the basement of the school,
Speaker 1: but maybe not. Yeah, there's a swimming pool in the
Speaker 1: It's like a cursed swimming pool that was on a
Speaker 1: cemetery or something. Yeah. And I think this is the
Speaker 1: one where, like when I when It Follows came out,
Speaker 1: there's a sequence in it it follows swimming pool and
Speaker 1: it it made me think back to this episode. You
Speaker 1: are a thousand percent correct. I I think I made
Speaker 1: that connection at a subconscious level. But the moment you
Speaker 1: said that, you're you're totally right. But the episode I
Speaker 1: want to talk about today is one I don't remember
Speaker 1: actually which season it's from. I should have looked that up.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's called The Tale of the Super Specs,
Speaker 1: and it's notable for being, I think one of the
Speaker 1: episodes with some legitimately scary imagery which is achieved via
Speaker 1: very low tech means. It's just it has some very
Speaker 1: creepy images of people draped in black cloth. But it also,
Speaker 1: I think, is the episode that introduces the fan favorite
Speaker 1: recurring character Mr. Sardo, who is a en uh sort
Speaker 1: of scheming magic and novelty shop owner who gets angry
Speaker 1: when people call him Mr sar Do and he always
Speaker 1: says his catchphrase that's sar dough, no Mr accent on
Speaker 1: the dough. That seems that seems very particular, like he's
Speaker 1: not an added to calling him sar Do. Right, it's
Speaker 1: more than that. Yeah, he's been he's been a little
Speaker 1: fussy about this point, I think. I mean, you invite
Speaker 1: these problems when you decide to be a single name guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but okay, So the premise of this episode is that
Speaker 1: there's a young man named Weeds who is kind of
Speaker 1: a prankster, and he's browsing in Sardo's magic and Novelty shop.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of place that's got masked and fake vomit,
Speaker 1: but it's also got apparently legitimate spell books and referenced
Speaker 1: homes on the occult, and real magical artifacts and objects.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why they're all crammed together in this
Speaker 1: one shop, but so he's sort of looking around for things,
Speaker 1: and he comes across a bag of magic dust, which
Speaker 1: while simultaneously reading a spell out of an ancient tome,
Speaker 1: he accidentally spills this magic dust over some plastic glasses
Speaker 1: that are being sold as super Specs, which are supposed
Speaker 1: to grant X ray vision. I think I think the
Speaker 1: original understanding is these are just novelty glasses, but they
Speaker 1: get imbued with magic power when he says the spell.
Speaker 1: Also there in the magic shop is Weeds, his girlfriend
Speaker 1: Mary Beth, and she decides to try out the super specs,
Speaker 1: but when she does, she sees shadowy figures who are
Speaker 1: draped in in black cloth from head to toe, and
Speaker 1: they're following her everywhere. And there are multiple occasions, you know,
Speaker 1: like they go to school and she puts on the
Speaker 1: glasses again and she sees the figures, and then she
Speaker 1: goes home and she puts on the glasses again and
Speaker 1: sees them another time. She also sees um elements of
Speaker 1: alternative reality, so like she'll look at her fireplace and
Speaker 1: without the glasses there's no fire and it, but with
Speaker 1: the glasses there's there's a fire burning, so it's very
Speaker 1: they live in a way. Now. Eventually, what happens is
Speaker 1: that Weeds and Marybeth get convinced that there are invisible
Speaker 1: people from another dimension who are stalking them, and they
Speaker 1: consult with Sard to try to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get rid of these shadow people. And I won't spoil
Speaker 1: the ending to this one, because I gotta admit the
Speaker 1: ending is pretty good, But the basic premise is what
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about. It's the premise that there
Speaker 1: is a realm of life that actually occupies the same
Speaker 1: general space as us, but that we go about our
Speaker 1: lives completely unaware of. And it's it's a take on
Speaker 1: the idea popular in some like alien conspiracy theory architecture,
Speaker 1: that aliens are somehow already here. They're here on Earth,
Speaker 1: but they're invisible to us for some reason, or they're
Speaker 1: hiding in plain sight. Yeah. I think I think I
Speaker 1: recorded an older episode of the show with um Ben
Speaker 1: Belling and that Frederick uh guesting where we talked about
Speaker 1: shadow people and uh particular study that linked some of
Speaker 1: this phenomenon too disruptions of the body schema. So so
Speaker 1: basically like like a situation where um, you know, neurologically
Speaker 1: your idea of where your body is and what your
Speaker 1: body is doing would be skewed in a way that
Speaker 1: it would be perceived as some sort of a shadow
Speaker 1: being that was close by. Oh, I see. Not to
Speaker 1: say that's a definitive answer for for all of this,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was one idea that was put
Speaker 1: forth by some researchers. Well, I mean, I think we
Speaker 1: can be pretty safe in assuming that they are not
Speaker 1: actually like people sized organisms that are walking around unnoticed
Speaker 1: on Earth and our aliens of some guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you can't rule it out, but I'm not
Speaker 1: aware of any kind of evidence that something like that
Speaker 1: is possible. But I wanted to explore a maybe more plausible,
Speaker 1: still unproven, but more plausible and very interesting sort of
Speaker 1: parallel idea. And the place I want to start here
Speaker 1: is I was reading the British astronaut and chemist Helen Sharman.
Speaker 1: It was actually the first British astronaut. Ever, uh, she
Speaker 1: was talking to the observer I think earlier this year
Speaker 1: and saying that, you know, it was her opinion, and
Speaker 1: that just given the size of the universe, the number
Speaker 1: of planets out there, the number of opportunities for biochemistry
Speaker 1: to arise, that she's pretty convinced that there must be
Speaker 1: aliens out there somewhere in the universe. And then she adds, quote,
Speaker 1: will they be like you and me, made up of
Speaker 1: carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It's possible they're here right
Speaker 1: now and we simply can't see them now. I want
Speaker 1: to be clear that I'm not aware of any evidence
Speaker 1: whatsoever this is actually the case, and I don't think
Speaker 1: Sharman was suggesting that we have evidence of this being true.
Speaker 1: But it does raise the very intriguing question of how
Speaker 1: would we know if aliens, in some sense or some
Speaker 1: kind of alternate organism, we're already here, already somehow within
Speaker 1: range of our senses. Well, first, is there any conceivable
Speaker 1: way that something like that could be true? And second,
Speaker 1: if it were true, would there be any way to
Speaker 1: sort of put on the superspects, any way to figure
Speaker 1: it out? So further investigate this idea. I was reading
Speaker 1: a great article from Astrobiology magazine from two thousand six.
Speaker 1: So this is a little bit older, and some of
Speaker 1: the science, the underlying science, might have changed somewhat since then,
Speaker 1: but I think the basic question still stands as posed.
Speaker 1: And this is by the UC Boulder philosophy professor Carol Cleland,
Speaker 1: and the article is called a shadow biosphere. Now, by
Speaker 1: a shadow biosphere she means a rarely considered form of
Speaker 1: alternative life, not aliens from another planet, but aliens from Earth,
Speaker 1: an unrecognized alternative biology that may exist parallel to us,
Speaker 1: invisibly here on this planet. And she asked the question,
Speaker 1: if something like that existed, what would these alternative biologies
Speaker 1: entail in order to have escaped our notice? So they
Speaker 1: could possibly include alternative forms of information coding, so forms
Speaker 1: other than DNA or RNA, or they could include different
Speaker 1: amino acids to build their pro teens, or quote any
Speaker 1: other means by which the chemistry of early Earth could
Speaker 1: have combined to form life we are not familiar with.
Speaker 1: And so there are there are a few things we
Speaker 1: can probably rule out from you know, any reasonable question,
Speaker 1: The first of which is the superspect you know, the
Speaker 1: literal superspect scenario where there are like human sized organisms
Speaker 1: that are going unnoticed. She says, probably if these shadow
Speaker 1: biological organisms were on the scale of familiar plants or animals,
Speaker 1: we would have already noticed and detected them, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: we would. Somebody would have figured it out by now.
Speaker 1: So what we're probably talking about, if there were such
Speaker 1: a thing, would be microscopic organisms. But microscopic organisms can
Speaker 1: have big impacts. They do a lot, and so the
Speaker 1: impact of a microscopic shadow biosphere could be enormous, and
Speaker 1: it would be very interesting to discover that it had
Speaker 1: gone unnoticed this long. You know, I can't help but
Speaker 1: be reminded of a a great great end quotation marks
Speaker 1: here uh Saturday Night Live parody commercial from I guess
Speaker 1: back in the nineties. But for the fecal vision glasses.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see this one? No? I didn't. Where
Speaker 1: everybody puts on the fecal vision glasses and then like
Speaker 1: fecal matter glows bright green, and of course they just
Speaker 1: they just show a ridiculous amount of it, Like the
Speaker 1: entire room is basically covered in it, there's a baby
Speaker 1: covered in it, that sort of thing. Um, But in
Speaker 1: a way, you know, seeing the unseen um world of
Speaker 1: life forms around us. I think that's an excellent point
Speaker 1: in comparison. Keep keep that, keep that image in mind
Speaker 1: as we move on. So one of the first things,
Speaker 1: of course, you'd have to consider if you're addressing this
Speaker 1: question of could there could there in fact be a
Speaker 1: shadow biosphere is um? What counts is life? You want
Speaker 1: to make sure you're defining your terms properly, because you're
Speaker 1: if your definition of life is overly inclusive, it could
Speaker 1: lose all meaning. Right, you don't want to end up
Speaker 1: with the definition of life that includes like volcanoes and
Speaker 1: waterfalls as life. But obviously there are lots of different
Speaker 1: definitions of life that are in competition with each other.
Speaker 1: I was reading an article by an astrobiologist named Samantha Rolf,
Speaker 1: and she points out there are probably more than a
Speaker 1: hundred legit definitions of what constitutes a life form. Most
Speaker 1: of them encounter some potential objections here or they're just
Speaker 1: As one example, she points out that that if you
Speaker 1: zero in on the definition of life that centered on
Speaker 1: the ability to reproduce, you arrive at a strange conclusion
Speaker 1: that like a three D printer that can print and
Speaker 1: a symbol copies of itself is alive, but a mule
Speaker 1: which is sterile is not alive, and that doesn't quite
Speaker 1: seem right. Yeah. I think we've discussed in the show
Speaker 1: before some arguments about viruses, but also about fire that
Speaker 1: agrees to which fire can be classified up to a
Speaker 1: point as a as an organism. It's not an organism,
Speaker 1: but but you can make an impassioned argument of your
Speaker 1: feeling argumentative about it totally, or like forms of crystals,
Speaker 1: things like that. I mean, you run into a lot
Speaker 1: of difficulty is actually if you're trying to come up
Speaker 1: with the definition of life that rules in everything we
Speaker 1: want to think of his life and rules out everything
Speaker 1: we don't. So in this two thousand six article, Carol
Speaker 1: Cleveland zeros in on the following distinctions. What what she
Speaker 1: thinks is important is, first quote, the capacity of a
Speaker 1: system to maintain itself as a self organized unit against
Speaker 1: both internal and external perturbations. So basically that means a
Speaker 1: life form has has some type of structural resiliency, It
Speaker 1: sort of protects its own integrity and has some form
Speaker 1: of resistance against just dissolution by external and internal forces.
Speaker 1: And then the second thing she says, is the ability
Speaker 1: to reproduce and transmit to its descendants adaptive heritable modifications. Now,
Speaker 1: all the life that we know of on Earth, uh
Speaker 1: that meets those two criteria is defined by a common chemistry.
Speaker 1: We know what the primary types of molecules involved are,
Speaker 1: and those molecules are proteins and nucleic gas. Sid's Nucleic acids,
Speaker 1: of course, would include DNA and RNA, and they store
Speaker 1: hereditary information and they produce proteins. Proteins then make up
Speaker 1: the structure and the machinery of cells and of the
Speaker 1: life form as a whole. And the interface between these
Speaker 1: two functions the hereditary function and the structural or mechanical
Speaker 1: function of the of the protein. This is handled by
Speaker 1: a very important structure known as the ribosome, which is
Speaker 1: made of both proteins and RNA, and which translate the
Speaker 1: hereditary information stored in nucleic acids into usable proteins. This
Speaker 1: is how all the life we know of on Earth works,
Speaker 1: and yet Cleveland says, we just don't know how different
Speaker 1: life could be. Maybe that's the only chemistry in the
Speaker 1: universe capable of producing the functions we usually attribute to life,
Speaker 1: and maybe not she writes, quote Moreover, we can't rule
Speaker 1: out the possibility that the most important characteristics of life
Speaker 1: have yet to be discovered. The functions traditionally attributed to
Speaker 1: life maybe little more than symptoms of more fundamental but
Speaker 1: as yet unknown properties. So, for example, at the time
Speaker 1: she was writing this, all life on Earth built its
Speaker 1: proteins out of the same twenty amino acids, which which
Speaker 1: all of these amino acids in life forms share the
Speaker 1: same chirality. Chirality is something we talked about, I think
Speaker 1: actually in a previous Horror Anthology episode when we were
Speaker 1: talking about to serve Man. Oh, yes, yes we did.
Speaker 1: That was a really fun one about like how would
Speaker 1: you the dangers of constructing, say, food for an alien
Speaker 1: being exactly, and and the idea that aliens would want
Speaker 1: to eat us. We might be poisonous to them if
Speaker 1: their molecular biology is somewhat different than ours. But just
Speaker 1: as a brief refresher, chirality or the handedness of molecules,
Speaker 1: refers to like which way they're oriented in terms of
Speaker 1: like a mirror image of each other. And Earth life
Speaker 1: uses left handed molecules, but it maybe could use right
Speaker 1: handed molecules. A biotic processes, like processes not associated with life,
Speaker 1: are known to create all kinds of amino acids that
Speaker 1: are not found in life forms. Cleveland references more than
Speaker 1: a hundred known amino acids that are created by a
Speaker 1: biotic processes. So why does life as we know it
Speaker 1: not employ more of these amino acids or different chirality
Speaker 1: of amino acids. Lab experiments show that you can build
Speaker 1: proteins out of alternative amino acids and molecules with right
Speaker 1: handed chirality. Likewise, with the exception of RNA viruses, all
Speaker 1: life on Earth stores its genetic information in DNA, but
Speaker 1: it's possible DNA could use different combinations of bases and
Speaker 1: amino acids. So she's sort of asking the question in general,
Speaker 1: why all these particulars, Why why all these particularities of
Speaker 1: of Earth life that, as far as we can tell,
Speaker 1: are totally contingent. And Cleveland thinks that the best explanation is, well,
Speaker 1: this is just how it happened in the conditions of
Speaker 1: the young Earth when life first arose, and these contingencies
Speaker 1: of molecular biology have been recopied down the ages since then.
Speaker 1: Ever since, these life forms have been reproducing quote. So
Speaker 1: it is unlikely that the ribosomes found in the cells
Speaker 1: of familiar life represent the only possibility for translating hereditary
Speaker 1: information stored on nucleic acids into proteins, let alone, the
Speaker 1: original mechanism utilized by the first protocells. Had circumstances on
Speaker 1: the early Earth been different, familiar life would also have
Speaker 1: been different. But this raises a really interesting question if
Speaker 1: these features of molecular biology as we know it are
Speaker 1: really just contingencies. In other words, if it's just chemically
Speaker 1: how things happen to shake out when the first life
Speaker 1: forms were coming together, how do we know that other
Speaker 1: life forms, other forms of molecular biology did not arise
Speaker 1: at different times in places on Earth in the history
Speaker 1: of Earth, with their own contingent chemical quirks, making them
Speaker 1: hard for us to recognize with tools that are honed
Speaker 1: in the search for familiar forms of life, I mean,
Speaker 1: in a way, what you can discover is sort of
Speaker 1: determined or bounded by what kind of tools you use
Speaker 1: and what you expect to be looking for. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it reminds me a bit of recent discussions we've
Speaker 1: had about um, how you would just how you would
Speaker 1: describe a sense that you have to a being that
Speaker 1: is lacking that sense, you know, like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to to to to explain that, and like that
Speaker 1: works in reverse, like looking for the thing that you
Speaker 1: can't experience. Now, from here, Cleveland goes on to address
Speaker 1: some objections that are usually raised to the idea that
Speaker 1: there could be alternative forms of molecular biology on Earth. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, there is the claim that quote, any
Speaker 1: variations in the earliest forms of life would have been
Speaker 1: combined by lateral gene transfer into a single form of life. Right,
Speaker 1: so that we've talked about horizontal gene transfer on the
Speaker 1: show before, and the idea is that, you know, there
Speaker 1: just would have been like sort of a cross fertilization
Speaker 1: of genes that way, and they kind of would have
Speaker 1: been absorbed into the dominant biosphere. But she argues against
Speaker 1: this by saying, you know, we can't assume compatibility and
Speaker 1: opportunity for lateral gene transfer between our ancestral microbes, the
Speaker 1: microbes that became us, and whatever these alternative critters are.
Speaker 1: There could be chemical and compatibility, there could be geographic
Speaker 1: isolation and so forth. And then there is a second argument,
Speaker 1: which is that well, our single celled ancestors would have
Speaker 1: wiped out these alternative biological organisms in the competition for resources,
Speaker 1: and she argues against this by saying, well, rare microbes
Speaker 1: that we know of tend to occupy unique ecological niches,
Speaker 1: so they're not necessarily in deadly competition for the same resources.
Speaker 1: They might just kind of have different needs, have established
Speaker 1: different niches, and they're just riding it out as as
Speaker 1: sort of rare, unique and isolated communities of organisms, or
Speaker 1: even within communities of of conventional organisms. And then finally
Speaker 1: she talks about the argument that if these things are
Speaker 1: still here, we should have found evidence of them by now,
Speaker 1: and so against the we should have found it by now,
Speaker 1: she argues that given the tools we possessed at the
Speaker 1: time she was writing this, it was very possible to
Speaker 1: miss things like, Okay, you can look at microbes under
Speaker 1: a microscope, but that can only take you so far,
Speaker 1: because convergent evolution means that a lot of different microbes
Speaker 1: will kind of look superficially similar in structure, like our
Speaker 1: chea kind of look like bacteria. And then we have
Speaker 1: other tools like lab cultures, but lab cultures just might
Speaker 1: fail to grow them. Uh. And then another option we
Speaker 1: have for detecting microbial life that's difficult to culture is
Speaker 1: known as pcr amplification. That stands for polymerase chain reaction.
Speaker 1: It's chemical process for multiplying genetic material so that can
Speaker 1: be detected. And PCR amplification that relies on ribosomeal rn
Speaker 1: A would not be able to detect a microbe that
Speaker 1: didn't have ribosomes or that had a different form of
Speaker 1: ribosomel RNA. So basically Cleland's case here is that our
Speaker 1: best tools for looking for chemical signs of life, at
Speaker 1: least at the time she was writing, are kind of
Speaker 1: tuned to the kinds of life that we know about,
Speaker 1: and they might completely pass over a potential shadow biosphere
Speaker 1: if it existed. Now there's another possible objection, which is
Speaker 1: that wouldn't we have observed these microbes, the shadow microbes,
Speaker 1: by the effect they have on their environment. Of course,
Speaker 1: we observe the effects of common known microbes on the
Speaker 1: environment all the time. She says, quote life invariably modifies
Speaker 1: its environment, extracting energy, building structures, producing waste products. So
Speaker 1: you know, all of the oxygen in the atmosphere is
Speaker 1: a product of of microscopic life, or at least was originally.
Speaker 1: Now I guess it's also the product of macroscopic life.
Speaker 1: But she says, actually, you know, this is a really
Speaker 1: good way to look for these things, to look for
Speaker 1: the effects they have on their environments. And Cleveland argues
Speaker 1: that it's possible that up until now their effects have
Speaker 1: always blended in with the background noise of effects produced
Speaker 1: by other microbes. So it's possible we just haven't looked
Speaker 1: closely enough in the right places, or we've been hindered
Speaker 1: by the bounds of an existing paradigm of molecular biology,
Speaker 1: she writes, quote. Similar cases can be found in biology,
Speaker 1: such as the discovery of Archaea, a new variety of
Speaker 1: familiar microbial life that revolutionized biological taxonomy. And so it's
Speaker 1: background our Archaea is now considered one of the three
Speaker 1: main domains or super kingdoms of life. You've got eukaryotes,
Speaker 1: which includes all multicellular life bacteria, and then Archaea and
Speaker 1: Archaia used to be thought of as just a type
Speaker 1: of bacteria. It's now recognized has been recognized since the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, I think nineteen seventy seven that archias is
Speaker 1: a totally different domain, a different evolutionary history. But she
Speaker 1: goes on, in hindsight, it's clear there were signs that
Speaker 1: some prokaryotes are fundamentally different from others, despite their remarkable
Speaker 1: similarities and sell morphology. But because biologists were working under
Speaker 1: the prokaryot you carry a paradigm which use cellular morphology
Speaker 1: as the guiding principle for understanding taxonomic relations, these signs
Speaker 1: went unrecognized. So we were just looking at the shapes
Speaker 1: of cells and thinking that would tell us everything we
Speaker 1: needed to know, and it didn't. Actually, and then finally,
Speaker 1: as she ends the article by calling out a possible
Speaker 1: example of a place to look for alternative microbiology or
Speaker 1: alternative molecular biology. Sorry, she singles out an example known
Speaker 1: as desert varnish. And this is a thin coating of discoloration,
Speaker 1: usually kind of a red or dark discoloration that you
Speaker 1: see on exposed rock faces in deserts and other dry areas.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen it before if you looked at some
Speaker 1: desert rocks that had a kind of dark red or
Speaker 1: black shiny surface. And I've read that since this two
Speaker 1: thousand six s a new discoveries have made desert varnish
Speaker 1: appear to be very unlikely as a result of shadow
Speaker 1: biological processes. But that doesn't mean the question has gone away.
Speaker 1: I mean the questions about a possible shadow biosphere remain.
Speaker 1: More recently, I was reading an article about this in
Speaker 1: Science by Emily Conover. This was in and Conover points
Speaker 1: out developments since the the original idea of a shadow
Speaker 1: biosphere have have continually been introduced. They make it more
Speaker 1: and more interesting. For example, discoveries that make clear how
Speaker 1: our traditional definitions of Earth life are just not quite
Speaker 1: inclusive enough. They don't necessarily capture all the possibilities. For example,
Speaker 1: quote recently discovered giant amiba infecting viruses blur the line
Speaker 1: between life and non life, although they rely on their
Speaker 1: hosts for essential biological functions, meaning you know, they're not
Speaker 1: self sustaining. The bacteria sized viruses have complex genomes. So
Speaker 1: the question would be, then, how are scientists currently looking
Speaker 1: for signs of possible alternative biochemistry if there's a shadow
Speaker 1: biosphere on Earth? Uh? And she quotes the planetary scientist
Speaker 1: Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado,
Speaker 1: who says, you know, a really good way to look
Speaker 1: for these things is to go back to the last
Speaker 1: point that Cleveland raised in the article, look for disequilibriums
Speaker 1: in nature. Look for environments that are sort of out
Speaker 1: of balance or out of whack. Quote. Life takes in
Speaker 1: and uses energy, altering its environment in the process. Without life,
Speaker 1: for example, our planet would not have an oxygen rich atmosphere,
Speaker 1: as chemical reactions tend to deplete oxygen. She also mentions
Speaker 1: some other interesting possibilities, such as the idea that this
Speaker 1: one is raised by David Lynn of Emory University, who
Speaker 1: draws attention to the idea of misfolded proteins representing a
Speaker 1: possible type of alternative life. Says quote, they show some
Speaker 1: similarities to life, namely that they can generate diversity in
Speaker 1: the different ways that they fold, can undergo chemical evolution
Speaker 1: in which those folded proteins are selected not genetically but chemically.
Speaker 1: And this could be a kind of precursor to some
Speaker 1: sort of of chemical network that would be very different
Speaker 1: than what we're familiar with. Uh And I was also
Speaker 1: reading an article this is the one I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: by Samantha Rolf, which is about the hypothetical option of
Speaker 1: of a shadow biosphere based on silicon molecules instead of
Speaker 1: carbon molecules, and silicon, of course is not nearly as
Speaker 1: good at as as carbon doing the kinds of things
Speaker 1: molecules need to do inside a cell. But there have
Speaker 1: been experiments that created silicon bonds in bacteria that make
Speaker 1: it seem at least possible that some kind of silicon
Speaker 1: based life form could exist. So in the end, I
Speaker 1: want to be very clear that we don't know that
Speaker 1: there is a shadow biosphere of some kind on Earth.
Speaker 1: We don't have any strong evidence that there is, but
Speaker 1: we do know at least that if it exists, it
Speaker 1: probably consists of microorganisms, if it exists at all. But
Speaker 1: some some science fiction I want to see exploring that
Speaker 1: is like the idea of big sort of network effects
Speaker 1: create it on the Earth by micro organisms within a
Speaker 1: shadow microbial ecosystem, you know, if memory serves me correctly. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's been several years since I read these, but Peter
Speaker 1: Watts's book Starfish involves a plot element that it that
Speaker 1: it entails this uh, an ancient apocalyptic microbe called Behemoth
Speaker 1: that gets unleashed on the Earth. It's been like hiding
Speaker 1: out in the bottom of the ocean. That sounds good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's quite good. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I haven't read Starfish yet. Maybe they'll be next on
Speaker 1: my list. But you know, Peter Watts aside, what does
Speaker 1: what does sar Do have to say about this? You
Speaker 1: know Sardo unfortunately as a Charlatan. And this raises a
Speaker 1: question that is true of I think many sort of
Speaker 1: I don't know, okay, kind of fast and loose horror
Speaker 1: or or or supernatural properties, which is that it often
Speaker 1: appears that you are able to buy real magical artifacts
Speaker 1: and sears tomes on the occult within, just like crank
Speaker 1: magic shops that have fake vomit in them. Why why
Speaker 1: is that so common? I mean, part of it's the
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer instinct, right, the idea that we could go
Speaker 1: into a junk store and find something of value, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's why I will go into a thrift store
Speaker 1: and I'll see if I can find a copy of
Speaker 1: Jerry McGuire and VHS like It's it seems unlikely that
Speaker 1: such treasures are still available, but I'm still gonna look
Speaker 1: and occasionally I find one that's true magic though Sardo
Speaker 1: is also contributing to the pyramid in the desert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so better than I also think. Another big part of
Speaker 1: it is the kind of like small town magic shop
Speaker 1: and and God bless them where you can still find them. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, anytime I see one, I have to I
Speaker 1: have to check it out. But but shops like that too.
Speaker 1: We like the idea that they could have genuine occult
Speaker 1: things in them because that means we have access to them.
Speaker 1: That means there is a a possibly there a possible
Speaker 1: connection between ourselves and the supernatural and the fantastic. I
Speaker 1: guess for some reason, at a gut level, I find
Speaker 1: it much more plausible to find the occult tome or
Speaker 1: the real magical artifact in a thrift shop or something
Speaker 1: that I do in the in the novelty magic shop.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe that's just me. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: strange sudden deaths are always happening to legitimate wizards, and
Speaker 1: then who's going to sell their stuff? And where are
Speaker 1: they going to sell their stuff? It's gonna get pawned
Speaker 1: off to the local magic shop. I guess that's it.
Speaker 1: You you combine them the thrift shop, and that they've
Speaker 1: got a second hand element, and that can then anything
Speaker 1: can happen. Yeah, now it's probably eBay. It's the most
Speaker 1: of your monkey pods are being bought on eBay these days.
Speaker 1: And then you get it and you're like, all the
Speaker 1: fingers are still are folded on this thing. I don't
Speaker 1: even get all the wishes. Here's something I want to
Speaker 1: hear from listeners. What is the creepiest like most cursed
Speaker 1: antique or artifact object you've ever bought her or or
Speaker 1: somehow acquired. Yeah, I'd love to hear that too. All right,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a break, but
Speaker 1: when we come back more horror anthology. Thank alright for
Speaker 1: our next uh anthology selection this year, I'd like to
Speaker 1: return to the crypt Tales from the crypt Uh, The
Speaker 1: The the the awesome HBO series that that was was
Speaker 1: It was an adaptation of these older pre code horror
Speaker 1: comic books and as we said before, just does it
Speaker 1: generally does a great job of creating these, at times
Speaker 1: kind of trashy uh in nasty tales of often bad
Speaker 1: things happening to be happening to bad people, bad people
Speaker 1: getting their come uppance in some sort of grizzly twisted manner.
Speaker 1: This one that you picked for for today's episode. I
Speaker 1: watched last night and it has a spectacular intro full
Speaker 1: of puns by the crypt Keeper. Can we share some
Speaker 1: of these puns or do you already have them written down?
Speaker 1: I do not have them written down, but if you,
Speaker 1: if you have them just floating around your head, let's
Speaker 1: see what were they? So? I can't do crypt Keeper voice,
Speaker 1: but it has something to do with getting a house,
Speaker 1: getting a little house on the scary a tomb with
Speaker 1: the view, what are you afraid you can't get a mortgage? Yes? So,
Speaker 1: the the intro to the show was amazing, The crypt
Speaker 1: Keeper segments were amazing, and then the the episodes themselves
Speaker 1: are often. Um I mean it's rare that there's not
Speaker 1: something notable about them, either a major star or someone
Speaker 1: who would become a major star, just a great character.
Speaker 1: Actors present, oftentimes big league directors, uh you know, slummed
Speaker 1: it up for Tales in the Crypt or or likely
Speaker 1: just had like a really good time with the series,
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I find myself returning to them time
Speaker 1: and time again. Um it's I remember watching it often
Speaker 1: half scrambled on HBO when I was like a middle schooler,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, this perfect cable TV nether
Speaker 1: world of titilation and gore to immerse yourself in. Uh. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's interesting that you know the back
Speaker 1: then that that that was the way to watch it,
Speaker 1: like sort of like pirated half scrambled format. Uh And nowadays,
Speaker 1: as of October, it looks like the rights to the
Speaker 1: series are contested or something. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know the precise legal prison that it finds
Speaker 1: itself in. But you cannot stream it anywhere. Um, you
Speaker 1: can't buy it digitally. Uh So as of right now,
Speaker 1: the only place you can watch these episodes are like
Speaker 1: on YouTube and daily motion unless you have like pre
Speaker 1: existing digital purchases, which I have on some of the
Speaker 1: episodes but not all of them. Well, I think what
Speaker 1: you're getting at is that it actually feels appropriate with
Speaker 1: the low quality, because it's like watching it through like
Speaker 1: a scrambled cable saying yeah, yeah, it's actually better quality
Speaker 1: than uh than most of the time when I was
Speaker 1: watching it when I was younger. Um. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: keep hoping that it will come back because you know,
Speaker 1: there's still other tales to tell. And they could retell
Speaker 1: others and create new ones in the same vibe. I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly people have been doing that over and over again
Speaker 1: across the decades. And also John Cassiar the the voice
Speaker 1: of the of the crypt Keeper. He is very much alive.
Speaker 1: Not only is he alive, but he is on cameo.
Speaker 1: I found out I was I was talking with my
Speaker 1: wife about a friend of ours getting cameo videos for
Speaker 1: their their spouse for their birthday, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: cameo just doesn't really interest me unless it was the
Speaker 1: crypt Keeper. Maybe if it was the crypt Keeper, I'd
Speaker 1: be interested. And sure enough, Uh, he's on there, seventy
Speaker 1: dollars a pop. Um. He holds the crypt Keeper like
Speaker 1: mask over his face when he does he so you
Speaker 1: don't get the full puppet performance, but still you get
Speaker 1: the voice. After you brought this to my attention, I
Speaker 1: was investigating and I found out you can get cameo
Speaker 1: messages from Zordon from Power Rangers, but not about Sardo.
Speaker 1: Sardo on there. Oh, I didn't look for sar Dough.
Speaker 1: I should have. All right, we'll have to look for
Speaker 1: Sarto later. Um. Anyway, like I said, a lot of
Speaker 1: these episodes of Tales from the Crypt are ghastly and
Speaker 1: dizzily and there's a lot of blood in them. Um.
Speaker 1: But this one that we're going to discuss here is
Speaker 1: is a bit different. Uh. This one is titled Maniac
Speaker 1: at Large and it's uh, it's really a rather tasteful
Speaker 1: affair as far as Tales from the Crypt goes. And
Speaker 1: it's directed by John Frankenheimer, famous for such films as
Speaker 1: The Manurian Candidate. And it stars Blithe Danner, a veteran
Speaker 1: of stage and screen that you've probably you've almost certainly
Speaker 1: seen her in something before because she's been in everything.
Speaker 1: It also has Salomi Jen's who I found out was
Speaker 1: in a movie called Terror from the year five thousand,
Speaker 1: which was a i think a double feature drive in
Speaker 1: double feature from the late fifties with the Brain Eaters,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite movie posters of all time.
Speaker 1: That is a great movie poster. Yeah, that's I've never
Speaker 1: seen it, but I've seen the movie poster time and
Speaker 1: time again. I think I've had it as a desktop
Speaker 1: wallpaper before. Um. It has a couple of other notable
Speaker 1: character actors in it. Well, one character actor in one
Speaker 1: kind of rock star celebrity Clarence Williams the Third is
Speaker 1: in it. He plays a security guard. He's another actor.
Speaker 1: You look him up. You've definitely seen something with Clarence.
Speaker 1: Clarence Williams the Third in it, and he gets He
Speaker 1: gets a fun role that it is at times kind
Speaker 1: of creepy. But then Adam Aunt himself shows up as
Speaker 1: a mega creepy library patron. Adam Aunt has strong ted
Speaker 1: Ramie vibes in this. Yeah so again this this episode
Speaker 1: is extremely solid, quite reserved for a crip episode, but
Speaker 1: with some satisfying twists and turns. The basic plot here
Speaker 1: is that Danner's character, Margaret has just started a job
Speaker 1: at a library in the big city. She's trying to
Speaker 1: navigate the environment, figure out, you know, who she can trust,
Speaker 1: who she doesn't, What are the clientele like, what's this
Speaker 1: creepy Adam at dude all about um uh and getting
Speaker 1: You're just getting used to the new job, all while
Speaker 1: a serial killer remains at large in the city. I
Speaker 1: would say this is very much part of the early
Speaker 1: nineties urban hell subgenre, which is the I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's a genre, really is just sort of a
Speaker 1: set of assumptions shared by it seems like every movie
Speaker 1: made in like the late eighties early nineties, which is
Speaker 1: just that like cities in general and New York in particular,
Speaker 1: our Hell on Earth and and uh, that you just
Speaker 1: don't want to be in the city, and that it's
Speaker 1: associated with just like littering and crime and traffic and
Speaker 1: and misery. But but anyway, yeah, it's very much the
Speaker 1: idea that this is the city is a bad place,
Speaker 1: and the library is is not a great place within
Speaker 1: the city. But she's doing the best you can. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say there's some there's some twist and turns
Speaker 1: that occur that turn some of these elements on their head.
Speaker 1: But this one's got a good twist. I think this
Speaker 1: is a good twist. We're not gonna ruin it. Go
Speaker 1: check it out again. As of this recording, you can
Speaker 1: probably just find it on YouTube, which is that you
Speaker 1: should be able to watch this in a more pristine quality.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, several elements worth pulling out for
Speaker 1: our discussion here. Adam Ant's character Pipkin, is obsessed with
Speaker 1: serial killers, so he keeps coming up to Margaret and
Speaker 1: just chat in her up about serial killer, saying just
Speaker 1: all sorts of creepy things, just an overload of creepy
Speaker 1: serial killer obsession things. I just remembered something. It was
Speaker 1: at the back of my mind and then I pulled
Speaker 1: it up. There was a movie from nine that I
Speaker 1: watched in a terrible VHS copy many years ago called
Speaker 1: spell Caster that also has Adam Aunt in it. And
Speaker 1: Adam Aunt had a fairly extensive film career. In this movie,
Speaker 1: I think he plays an evil wizard. Well, he's good
Speaker 1: in this. I have to say. His name is Dia Blow.
Speaker 1: All right. So you have Adam as character Pipkin, just
Speaker 1: being obsessed with serial killers and being very creepy and suspect. Also,
Speaker 1: Margaret herself has become increasingly obsessed with the idea that
Speaker 1: she will be the killer's next victim. Creepy things keep happening,
Speaker 1: people keep bacting creepy um, and she keeps and she's
Speaker 1: clearly obsessing over the fact that she could and perhaps
Speaker 1: will be next. And it's this is sort of spurred
Speaker 1: on by Adam as character because he's like, who's the
Speaker 1: next victim going to be? I think it'll be a
Speaker 1: woman this time. Yes, yes, yeah, he said, slimy. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: But then also she keeps she's bringing some of this
Speaker 1: up to the head librarian Mrs Pritchard, and Miss Pritchard
Speaker 1: she tries to like stamp this down a bit. She
Speaker 1: just largely dismisses the serial killer as being this inflated
Speaker 1: news story and a matter of mass hysteria. So I
Speaker 1: thought all of this would be a perfect reason to
Speaker 1: explore the question why are we so obsessed with serial
Speaker 1: killers and true crime? You've you've probably noticed this already,
Speaker 1: but murder podcasts are big business. I feel like barely
Speaker 1: a week goes by without a new announcement about some
Speaker 1: new ghoulish podcast either it's either at least true crime,
Speaker 1: if not a serial killer podcast as well, Robert, I
Speaker 1: hate to break it to you, but the call is
Speaker 1: coming from inside the house because so we we we
Speaker 1: got quite a number of these within our own family here.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, I mean it's a big it's an
Speaker 1: ever growing family, so it encompasses all sorts of types
Speaker 1: of podcast even sports podcasts are around. Uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to be judging on that that fact,
Speaker 1: or just judge you about true crime enthusiasm to begin with,
Speaker 1: because I can I can easily think of some great
Speaker 1: reads I've enjoyed that are about serial killers. I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: some true crime content in the past, and and heck,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a great episode of Tales from the
Speaker 1: Crypt that conciderned serial killers. Um. And as far as
Speaker 1: just more general true crime goes, I like a lot
Speaker 1: of people grew up watching Unsolved mysteries and scaring you know,
Speaker 1: the pants off of myself, not only about ghosts and aliens,
Speaker 1: but also about just random acts of crime and madness.
Speaker 1: I would say one of the most powerful sounds in
Speaker 1: the entire world in terms of unlocking just a host
Speaker 1: of creepy associations in my brain is the Unsolved Mysteries
Speaker 1: theme music. The moment that plays the trapdoor in my
Speaker 1: brain opens and everything comes out. Now. Obviously, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about true time, there's a broad spectrum of good
Speaker 1: and bad uh taste within within the genre, and it
Speaker 1: ranges greatly. I mean, there's the whole domain of police
Speaker 1: procedural true crime, which of course entails say that the
Speaker 1: work of David Simon and others. There's also the grizzlier
Speaker 1: stuff that can border on just sort of creepy serial
Speaker 1: killer obsession. And then there's there's the psychologically minded stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, the mind of a killer type approach, which
Speaker 1: I guess can be a little on the creepy side
Speaker 1: at times, but also can just be very well put
Speaker 1: together and formulated and and and in many cases based
Speaker 1: on actual psychology and the actual um uh you know,
Speaker 1: actual studies into the minds of serial killers. There's also
Speaker 1: highly journalistic stuff as well as the kind of sort
Speaker 1: of citizen journalist and citizen investigator uh fair that has
Speaker 1: also proven highly popular. But it really does seem at
Speaker 1: times like our our appetite is just insatiable and uh,
Speaker 1: and it leads us times to wonder, like, what does
Speaker 1: it all means? Where does this where is this coming from?
Speaker 1: What is the the itch that it is scratching? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and and is it some sort of modern
Speaker 1: phenomenon or is it just an aspect of of of
Speaker 1: the human experience. I'm interested in what creates the difference
Speaker 1: between the tolerance for uh, fictional violence versus the tolerance
Speaker 1: for true crime. Like just personally, I like a lot
Speaker 1: of like, you know, violent scary fictional horror stuff, but
Speaker 1: I don't have much of an appetite for true crime,
Speaker 1: and there are people who are totally the opposite, you know,
Speaker 1: like a monster movie to them would seem like gross
Speaker 1: and overwhelming and unpleasant, but they will just devour true crime.
Speaker 1: And obviously there's some kind of difference at play there,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure exactly what it is. What would
Speaker 1: Rocky Ericson have said about it? Didn't he have an
Speaker 1: insightful quote about the different types of horror I think
Speaker 1: you might be thinking of where he says that today's
Speaker 1: movies prey on your inner fees and steady your outer fears.
Speaker 1: And that's why I wrote the line don't slip in
Speaker 1: mud or you'll slip in blood. Tonight is the Night
Speaker 1: of the Vampire. Doesn't necessarily clarify a lot, but there
Speaker 1: there's some kind of obscure wisdom. Yeah, yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: it's worth keeping in mind as we move forward. And
Speaker 1: even though again he's referring to just a division within
Speaker 1: horror fiction as opposed to UH fiction versus reality. So
Speaker 1: I think one thing to get out of the way
Speaker 1: is that I think we can we can safely dismiss
Speaker 1: the idea that this is a new phenomenon because we've
Speaker 1: pretty much always had crime stories of one sort or
Speaker 1: the other, and our fascination with it is to a
Speaker 1: large extent fueled by our fear of real crime. But
Speaker 1: if you look back to a lot of of myths, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you find something interesting. You know, these are
Speaker 1: stories of people who commit crimes. Often now they're committing
Speaker 1: crimes against the gods or some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: celestial or infernal order in the world. Um. But then likewise,
Speaker 1: what are modern laws and social norms but modern gods
Speaker 1: of a sort? I think a lot of anthropologists of
Speaker 1: religion would probably argue that what the gods were with
Speaker 1: some kind of embodiment of laws or norms. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I've also seen it. It argued that if you want
Speaker 1: something more in line with a pure crime story, you
Speaker 1: can look to the the the Arabic go one thousand
Speaker 1: and one Night's Tales and that tradition uh to provide
Speaker 1: some great examples of of what is essentially early crime fiction, uh,
Speaker 1: the exploits of criminals, the come upance of criminals, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So on one hand, perhaps we're just exaggerating to try
Speaker 1: and make anything out of modern true crime interest, as
Speaker 1: if it's something new, but there is a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting insight out there into like what it means, where
Speaker 1: where does this interest in crime fiction uh and and
Speaker 1: and and true crime come from? And one particular expert
Speaker 1: that I was I've heard an NPR story UH featuring
Speaker 1: this is from two thousand nine and they were talking
Speaker 1: with clinical and corporate psychologist Michael mantell Um and UH.
Speaker 1: They pointed out that there are several key elements involved
Speaker 1: in our enjoyment of true crime. First of all, there's
Speaker 1: the not me elephant combined with psychological voyeurism. So it's
Speaker 1: if you're not watching a crime or you know, a
Speaker 1: murder or what have you that is affecting you, you're
Speaker 1: watching something that affects somebody else, and we are engaging
Speaker 1: in a certain amount of psychological voyeurism in that case.
Speaker 1: On top of that, there's a catharsis in identifying with
Speaker 1: the victim uh. And this is UH and we have
Speaker 1: like rehearsed anxiety in these cases over terrible occurrences. So
Speaker 1: it's almost like um uh, via our our our empathy,
Speaker 1: we're able to simulate these horrible things without them actually
Speaker 1: happening to us. Now, the other the flip side, of that,
Speaker 1: of course, is that you can also engage in compassion
Speaker 1: and empathy with the perpetrator, not necessarily to the level
Speaker 1: of saying like, oh, man, I wish I was I
Speaker 1: wish I was like Charlie, but but more like, you know,
Speaker 1: what if I was like trying? You know, I think,
Speaker 1: I think that's all. That's key to a lot of
Speaker 1: our psychological fascination with serial murders, for instance, is that
Speaker 1: we know that, Okay, this individual, their brain is not
Speaker 1: exactly like our brain, but but a lot of things
Speaker 1: are the same, and therefore it's tempting to analyze that
Speaker 1: those comparisons and think, what if I, you know, it
Speaker 1: was just a few degrees to the laft free to
Speaker 1: the right. Could I find myself in this kind of mindset?
Speaker 1: Could I find myself having committed acts like this, not
Speaker 1: only as far as nature goes, but also as far
Speaker 1: as nurture goes as well. You know, if my life
Speaker 1: conditions had been a little different, would I be you know,
Speaker 1: the figure on the television right now? Would I be
Speaker 1: the subject of this podcast episode? Yeah? I'd say. A
Speaker 1: variation on that is that people might sometimes just want
Speaker 1: to feel like they're getting a better idea of what
Speaker 1: to look out for in other people, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a cliche at this point that somebody commits
Speaker 1: a horrible act, doesn't mass murderer turns out to be
Speaker 1: a serial killer or something, and you know, the the
Speaker 1: news camera interviews their their neighbor, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he seemed like a really nice guy. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: known it. And you know, sometimes that is the case.
Speaker 1: People want to be able to think like I could
Speaker 1: figure out I could figure out who was the sick. Oh,
Speaker 1: I could figure out who was the bad guy. And
Speaker 1: maybe there's a sort of feeling, at least a subconscious
Speaker 1: level that by consuming a lot of true crime, you
Speaker 1: could somehow you can discern a pattern, you can figure out. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's how I could sniff out the Jeffrey Dahmer. Yes, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I want to come back to to some of
Speaker 1: that in a minute. But but it's also worth keeping
Speaker 1: in mind all of this in considering the essential Essentially,
Speaker 1: there are two types of crime stories, right, there's the
Speaker 1: case closed crime story, uh, and then there's also, uh,
Speaker 1: the the open case. So on one hand, we love
Speaker 1: a good uh, you know, structurally complete tale. We love
Speaker 1: a story in which the bad guy is apprehended, the
Speaker 1: right bad guy is apprehended, and in the case is closed.
Speaker 1: And you see a lot of that in um in
Speaker 1: true crime, you know, people, especially if it's you know,
Speaker 1: very oh, you know, a lot of the police procedural stuff,
Speaker 1: for example, is about that, like how do they catch
Speaker 1: the batties? What can I remember the series the New Detectives.
Speaker 1: What kind of really cool technology are they using to
Speaker 1: catch the batties? But on the other hand, the open cases,
Speaker 1: the unsolved mysteries, like that sitantalizing as well, because, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, on some level, even if it's it's just
Speaker 1: a slim chance, you could you could watch that and
Speaker 1: think I might be the next victim, or I might
Speaker 1: be the one to solve this, you know, I could,
Speaker 1: I could be the one. I could notice this thing,
Speaker 1: I could learn, I know what to look for, and
Speaker 1: if this fellow comes limping up to me with a
Speaker 1: fake cast, I can call him on it and I'll
Speaker 1: be the hero. I think that's right. But actually another
Speaker 1: thing just occurred to me. And this is based on
Speaker 1: your earlier point about psychological voyeurism, which is the idea
Speaker 1: of in a way, watching like a serial killer story
Speaker 1: where they ultimately get caught is kind of like just
Speaker 1: another form of the watching somebody fail spectacularly thing where
Speaker 1: you like to see somebody who you know, who's in
Speaker 1: control of things like lose control and and spiral out
Speaker 1: and all that. Uh, the just a morbid version of
Speaker 1: it might be Okay, here's the serial killer. They've got
Speaker 1: a system, they've got a method for not getting caught,
Speaker 1: but then they get sloppy and it all spirals out
Speaker 1: of control and they fail and they go to jail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is kind of I would say. The lesson is
Speaker 1: sort of committing crime is hard, and it's it can
Speaker 1: be a weird positive experience too to encounter that, because
Speaker 1: it can make you feel comfortable and the fact that like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you commit a crime, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: get caught. It can give you, at times even an
Speaker 1: inflated sense of of of the competency of of police investigations. UM.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it can be kind of like, uh, like, who,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not going to commit crime because it
Speaker 1: looks really hard. You know, if it were easy, I
Speaker 1: guess I'd give it a shot. But I'd probably get caught,
Speaker 1: so I better not. I wasn't gonna do it anyway,
Speaker 1: but now I know that I'm definitely not going to
Speaker 1: do it. Actually, now that I think about it, this
Speaker 1: might be even more the case in I don't know
Speaker 1: less grizzly true crime, not just in serial killers, but
Speaker 1: really in stuff where like there's a con artist or
Speaker 1: somebody executing massive financial crime or something like that, where
Speaker 1: there's an element of the hot mess allure that you
Speaker 1: you know, like it's really exciting to to see somebody
Speaker 1: on social media who's just like a hot mess and
Speaker 1: they're flaming out and really making things bad for themselves.
Speaker 1: I think there's a there's a strong element of that
Speaker 1: in a lot of these things, like you're reading about
Speaker 1: Bernie made Off or something. Yeah, and and again it's
Speaker 1: also yeah, it's it's about bad people getting their come uppings. Right, Alright,
Speaker 1: time for a quick break. We'll be right back with
Speaker 1: more than and we're back now. One thing that when
Speaker 1: and Mentel was asked in this NPR piece about about
Speaker 1: about different gender demographics in the consumption of true crime now,
Speaker 1: Mantell said that that he didn't see any kind of
Speaker 1: you know, notable demographic differences. Uh, and he he suspected
Speaker 1: that there was still likely there's still likely differences in
Speaker 1: the sort of crime stories that interested different demographics. However,
Speaker 1: I think most of me listening out there, you've probably
Speaker 1: heard quite the opposite. And I know that I've heard
Speaker 1: this multiple times in meetings about podcast listener demographics, that
Speaker 1: the true crime audience use female. And I have to
Speaker 1: be honest, I don't think I was really aware of
Speaker 1: this until it started coming up in podcast meetings. I just,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I can look back and find some
Speaker 1: sort of uh, some memories and be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that kind of lines up with this alleged statistic, But
Speaker 1: I don't think I had really thought about it before then.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's any evidence to that gender
Speaker 1: divide or not. I assume you'll tell me in a minute.
Speaker 1: But but one thing I would suspect is, even if
Speaker 1: there is, it probably depends on what you define as crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, And I'm not sure there is a
Speaker 1: true definitive answer on that. Like I said, the podcast
Speaker 1: number of crunchers seemed pretty sure about it. They're certainly
Speaker 1: willing to, you know, to invest money behind the idea.
Speaker 1: But one paper I did look at was one title
Speaker 1: captured by true crime. Why Are Women Drawn to Tales
Speaker 1: of Rape, Murder and Serial Killers? By Amanda M. Vickery
Speaker 1: and are Chris Freeley, published in two thousand ten by
Speaker 1: Social Psychological and Personality Science. So exploring this reported demographic
Speaker 1: divide here, the authors looked at Amazon book reviews and
Speaker 1: found that men seemed more likely to review war books
Speaker 1: and women were more likely to review crime books. Uh,
Speaker 1: they had research subjects than read crime fiction synopsises and
Speaker 1: report and they found that women were more drawn to
Speaker 1: the psychological content of true crime, and they were more
Speaker 1: likely to read true crime books if the victim was female. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not a perfect measure of actual reading habits
Speaker 1: in the wild, but that is. But it's at least
Speaker 1: an interesting datum to begin with, right, Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna start somewhere. Again, it's not the most robust um study.
Speaker 1: I don't thin they're putting it up is that, but
Speaker 1: it's a good place to start. So um Vicari's take is,
Speaker 1: ultimately is that it all comes down to survival, kind
Speaker 1: of touching on what we were discussing earlier. True crime
Speaker 1: tends to revolve in some way around the challenges of
Speaker 1: surviving a crime. It's either just an obvious survival story,
Speaker 1: or it's a tale from which one might draw survival ideas.
Speaker 1: What did the doomed character do that that doomed them?
Speaker 1: You know, what can I do differently to avoid said doom?
Speaker 1: And so even on a subconscious level, it's about learning
Speaker 1: how to avoid and survive crimes. And this makes sense
Speaker 1: to us, the author's point out, because women tend to
Speaker 1: fear crime more than men, and our statistically more likely
Speaker 1: to be the victim of crime. According to the U
Speaker 1: s Department of Justice, in two thousand eight, females aged
Speaker 1: twelve or older were five times more likely than males
Speaker 1: aged twelve or older to be victims of intimate partner violence.
Speaker 1: And additionally, in two thousand seven, intimate partners committed fourteen
Speaker 1: percent of all homicides in the US. And those are
Speaker 1: some pretty sobering statistics. By the way, October is also
Speaker 1: National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the US. Just a reminder,
Speaker 1: the National Domestic Violence Hotline is one eight hundred seven
Speaker 1: nine nine Safe or one eight hundred seven nine nine
Speaker 1: seven to three three. But let's get back to this
Speaker 1: idea of of survival. Um. Uh. So as engaging with
Speaker 1: these crime stories is kind of like a rehearsal for survival,
Speaker 1: learning experience for the survival of crime. Uh, it seems
Speaker 1: implied that the reverse would be the same for these uh,
Speaker 1: the these male readers who are then reading all of
Speaker 1: this war that it's also about survival, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: processing the riddle of survival in the brain. And I
Speaker 1: feel that makes sense Without getting into the the idea
Speaker 1: of the gender divide, I know that that I've personally
Speaker 1: dealt with the stresses of twenty by in part thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about say, war games, clone wars, the galactic
Speaker 1: civil war, the wars of ants, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And and but then likewise, I can think back to
Speaker 1: times in my life where I found similar solace in
Speaker 1: crime fiction, where um, you know, I distinctly remember a
Speaker 1: time where there's a fair amount of stress in my
Speaker 1: life and I was watching some um these were these
Speaker 1: were fictional accounts, but they're basically like slasher films, And
Speaker 1: I remember even thinking at the time, like this is
Speaker 1: a weird way to feel chilled out by watching a
Speaker 1: film about a slasher, Like this should be this should
Speaker 1: on some level be making me more anxious or making
Speaker 1: me feel you know, you know, more nervous, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's somehow making me feel better. Yeah. My hunch is
Speaker 1: that there are two different ways that can work. One
Speaker 1: is that if it's an effective slasher movie, then there
Speaker 1: is actually sort of an endorphin you know, emotional catharsis
Speaker 1: thing of like being afraid but then not actually being
Speaker 1: and a threat. You know, once the once the fear passes,
Speaker 1: you kind of get an endorphin release and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, and that can be kind of calming. Um.
Speaker 1: It can give you a sense of control to have
Speaker 1: the ironic distance and like watch something that is actually
Speaker 1: scary but then know that it's not real. And then
Speaker 1: on the other end, if you're watching like a bad
Speaker 1: slasher movie, I think there's a different there's a similar
Speaker 1: and simultaneously different thing at work, which is there's still
Speaker 1: the ironic difference, but the ironic difference element is played
Speaker 1: up to the point where like watching something that is
Speaker 1: supposed to be scary but is in fact funny is
Speaker 1: very reassuring. You know, it makes you feel like there's
Speaker 1: maybe not that much to worry about well, just thinking
Speaker 1: of bad slasher films, Like how many of us have
Speaker 1: watched the slasher films and really harped on on the
Speaker 1: the idea of what to do when you get this
Speaker 1: the killer down right, Like, obviously the thing to do
Speaker 1: within the context of the films is if you knock
Speaker 1: the killer out, you slowly approach them and take their
Speaker 1: mask off. You don't a grab their weapon and stab
Speaker 1: them a million times in the torso to make sure
Speaker 1: they're debt um. But we love so at times even
Speaker 1: just yelling at the screen because they are doing the
Speaker 1: wrong thing. You are not practicing good survival. But I
Speaker 1: at the same time and contemplating survival, and to some
Speaker 1: degree I feel like you feel like you're learning about survival. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a good point. A lot of slasher movies,
Speaker 1: I think could could be effective and could be enjoyable
Speaker 1: to people because there are at least implied rules, like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a system of rules that you can
Speaker 1: suss out, and the fact that they're not announced explicitly
Speaker 1: makes it seem a little bit more interesting and fun
Speaker 1: that you have figured them out. You kind of know
Speaker 1: what a lot of the you know, the mistakes the
Speaker 1: characters are going to make ahead of time, and you
Speaker 1: can think that, uh, you know, uh, Dewey here is
Speaker 1: very stupid for having done that. I would have not
Speaker 1: done that. I know better by the way of that
Speaker 1: vicary and freely paper. Uh. They also point out that
Speaker 1: neither female nor may all subjects in their study were
Speaker 1: drawn to stories with explicitly emotional or sexual content, but
Speaker 1: it was the psychological content that interested female test subjects.
Speaker 1: Um So, I guess I suppose the idea there is
Speaker 1: it's coming down to um uh again survival, but but
Speaker 1: on a psychological level, like how do you tell which
Speaker 1: character is the creepy killer? Kind of coming back to
Speaker 1: our tales from the crypt episode, like is it is
Speaker 1: it adam Ant? Is it his character? He's sure is
Speaker 1: acting creepy? Uh? Am I able to psychologically analyze him
Speaker 1: in a way where I can guess that he's the killer?
Speaker 1: Or is it Clance Williams the third or is it
Speaker 1: Salome Gen's. Yeah, I mean it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: episodes where all possibilities are on the table. Now A
Speaker 1: couple of a couple other just short references to to
Speaker 1: uh some write ups that I found insightful and all
Speaker 1: of this, As Sarah Watts points out in her Forbes
Speaker 1: coverage of the aforementioned study, all of this lines up
Speaker 1: with psycholopsychologist Dr John Mayer's view that perfectly purposely exposing
Speaker 1: oneself to violence in these um uh these forms can
Speaker 1: serve as an inoculation against fear. But we also have
Speaker 1: to consider individual differences in all of this. So some
Speaker 1: of us are drawn uh into into say true crime
Speaker 1: or horror movies because of thrill seeking personalities, but it
Speaker 1: could be more about interest in the taboo or an
Speaker 1: interest in dark subject matter. Uh So it's it's ultimately
Speaker 1: very difficult to create like a one size fits all
Speaker 1: rule for why people like true crime or horror, whatever
Speaker 1: the particular piece of media. Maybe you know it's funny.
Speaker 1: I feel like I still haven't even in this discussion
Speaker 1: figured out the answer to that question. I was asking
Speaker 1: about true crime versus fictional horror, like both both deal
Speaker 1: with violence and fear and threats, but people have extremely
Speaker 1: different reactions to them. I noticed that usually, like horror
Speaker 1: movies are fun they make me feel good, and true
Speaker 1: crime just kind of usually makes me feel bad. But
Speaker 1: there are people for whom it's entirely the reverse, and
Speaker 1: I'm still not sure why. Yeah, um, And and then
Speaker 1: I don't know. Sometimes it's about how it's presented, right,
Speaker 1: Like I instantly think to how both the Texas Chainsaw
Speaker 1: massacre and Fargo both have the introductions at the beginning
Speaker 1: to try and cast them as legitimate occurrences. You know,
Speaker 1: this really happened, even though both are pure fiction. Um uh.
Speaker 1: But but yet I guess a lot of it comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that I often find that the
Speaker 1: true crime, like that's definitely true and not you know,
Speaker 1: fictionalized to a large degree, has a tendency to feel yeah,
Speaker 1: just more just feel sadder, feel like more of a
Speaker 1: tragedy as opposed to a you know, violent romp. But
Speaker 1: one area where we see, um this this is interesting
Speaker 1: and talking about where the fiction meets the reality. UM.
Speaker 1: I was reading from a book titled Blood Obsession, Vampire,
Speaker 1: Serial Murder, and the Popular Imagination by Yourgo Walch, a
Speaker 1: Sistant Professor of Modern Languages and director of the Language
Speaker 1: Resource Center and at Ohio University and Athens UM. In
Speaker 1: this book, one of the many points that they're making
Speaker 1: is that they draw this connection between serial murderers, uh,
Speaker 1: certainly in the modern sense, and the vampire myths of
Speaker 1: old uh, seeing the modern serial murder as the vampire
Speaker 1: myth uh in real life. So you could you could
Speaker 1: argue that the modern serial murder um either in their
Speaker 1: their stark reality or they're sort of presumed reality. You know,
Speaker 1: they're slightly fictionalized. Uh, you know, the view of their
Speaker 1: being one around every corner, that we're still dealing with
Speaker 1: a solitary humanoid hunter of other human beings that we
Speaker 1: can obsess over, and the vampire is kind of the
Speaker 1: the purely supernatural reflection of that same idea. And I
Speaker 1: think part of this comes back to what you said
Speaker 1: earlier about rules. We like that there are rules, and
Speaker 1: in both vampire fiction and it's certainly serial killer fiction,
Speaker 1: and to a certain extent, true crime is often about
Speaker 1: the rules that they will by by. Anyway, I think
Speaker 1: I think the distinction is not not only you know, fascinating,
Speaker 1: but also it's worth keeping in mind, especially during Halloween.
Speaker 1: So you can't you can't really go all in on
Speaker 1: Halloween and vampires and all and say that you don't
Speaker 1: get true crime fascination, because I think ultimately there's a
Speaker 1: lot of crossover between the two. Uh, it's just yeah. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: do you want your you know, the bad guy turning
Speaker 1: into a bat or do you want the bad guy,
Speaker 1: you know, limping around with a fake cast or what
Speaker 1: have you? Do you want to set to Swan Lake
Speaker 1: or do you want to set to the Unsolved Mysteries theme?
Speaker 1: I I would take Swan Lake Uh anytime. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm with you. That that Unsolved Mystery theme song kind
Speaker 1: of stirs, uh, just an innate feeling of fear in me,
Speaker 1: much like the Tales from the dark Side theme song.
Speaker 1: But the man that Unsolved Mystery song, it's that, it's
Speaker 1: that one like expansive bending note, you know, the Brady
Speaker 1: before the before the beat kicks in. It's so powerful.
Speaker 1: And then here comes Robert Stack walking out of the
Speaker 1: missed the light behind him. Ghosts Do they exist? Or
Speaker 1: is this another hoax? Let's watch a recreation starring Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 1: You know, Unsolved Mysteries gets a lot funnier after you've
Speaker 1: recently rewatched Bavis and butt Head do America. Because Robert
Speaker 1: Staff agent on that. Yes, yes, that was that was good.
Speaker 1: I remember that now, all right, well, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and close it up for now, but I think
Speaker 1: we're coming back for a third episode this year. What
Speaker 1: it will be volume six seven six, I think so
Speaker 1: maybe volume six six six be on the lookout. Basically,
Speaker 1: the situation is going to be, uh, we will We're
Speaker 1: gonna be recording episodes during the week of Halloween for
Speaker 1: the week after Halloween, and we don't really want to
Speaker 1: record non Halloween episodes during the week of Halloween, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a little extra Halloween this year. Um,
Speaker 1: so hopefully you're okay with that, But then then we'll
Speaker 1: move on to some other topics if we feel like it. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, if you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where to
Speaker 1: find us, and that's everywhere anywhere you get a podcast,
Speaker 1: you can find us. And if they let you leave
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Speaker 1: there's a little store um listing there. You can click
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Speaker 1: store for our show. You can get something with our
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Speaker 1: out over the years. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
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