Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: That's right, because Joe McCormick is out on parental leave.
Speaker 1: We're happy to inform everyone that he is now the
Speaker 1: proud father of a baby girl and the whole family
Speaker 1: is doing great. But he's going to take a little
Speaker 1: time off from the podcast here and we'll return, uh
Speaker 1: and really basically no time at all before long at all,
Speaker 1: Joe will be back and he'll tell us all about
Speaker 1: his adventures. Yeah, but congratulations to Joe and to his
Speaker 1: wife and I guess to their new child. Congrats, congrats
Speaker 1: on being born young one. Well, today's episode is going
Speaker 1: to be a volume eight in a continuing series. This
Speaker 1: is the Stuff to Blow Your In tradition of Anthology
Speaker 1: of Horror Um this series. In this series, what we
Speaker 1: do every year is we lay out a challenge to ourselves.
Speaker 1: In the past, it's been Joe and I, but this year,
Speaker 1: at kind of the last minute, Seth was able to
Speaker 1: jump in and uh and be a part of it
Speaker 1: as well. But the basic challenge has always go out
Speaker 1: into the world of TV anthology series, especially horror and
Speaker 1: sci fi series, and find something that is not only
Speaker 1: entertaining but also raises a question worthy of discussion on
Speaker 1: the podcast. And sometimes that question might be very ultimately,
Speaker 1: kind of small, maybe not the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: we would normally tackle, certainly as a full blown episode.
Speaker 1: Other times it might tie into stuff we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: but yeah, kind of just a quirky challenge and something
Speaker 1: seasonally appropriate for Hawley. Has it always been television? Have
Speaker 1: you guys ever done movies or radio or any other
Speaker 1: kind of anthology bits. I think we dipped into film
Speaker 1: a little bit because last year or the before I
Speaker 1: picked one off of an anthology film, one that had
Speaker 1: a killer cat in it. Uh So, so we have
Speaker 1: gotten a little bit into into anthology films. Haven't really
Speaker 1: got into radio. Someday, someday, There's plenty of opportunities out
Speaker 1: there and plenty of anthologies. It's a, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful format for storytelling. I think it's a. Isn't
Speaker 1: there a new one on Netflix this year from Gilliermo
Speaker 1: del Toro Capital Curiosities. I want to say, as of
Speaker 1: this recording. It's it's just dropped or some of the
Speaker 1: episodes have just dropped, so I'll be checking it out tonight. Ditto, ditto.
Speaker 1: But oh, but speaking of Netflix, well we'll get to that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the anthology series are an interesting animal because, like
Speaker 1: you said, there have been so many of them, and
Speaker 1: every year when it's time to poke around for something
Speaker 1: to cover and on the anthology of horror series, I'm
Speaker 1: always just astounded by how much there is. How much
Speaker 1: I mean, because there are the big shows that everyone knows.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone's familiar with the Twilight Zone and it's
Speaker 1: Multiple Resurgency. Uh, there's of course the classic Outer Limits
Speaker 1: and then the nineties Outer Limits, tons of episodes there.
Speaker 1: But there's so many additional shows that have in many
Speaker 1: cases have sort of fallen through the cracks of time,
Speaker 1: and you there were one or two even then. I
Speaker 1: looked up for this show where I'm like, oh, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a fascinating topic idea. They really I think
Speaker 1: it was let's see, what was it episodes of a
Speaker 1: show called the dark Room or dark Room, and I
Speaker 1: could not find them streaming anywhere. Looks like NBC was
Speaker 1: streaming them online for a little bit, but are not anymore. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of stuff out there. And of
Speaker 1: course one of the great things and the the just
Speaker 1: quirky things about anthology series is you're always going to
Speaker 1: have ups and downs. We can have those really strong
Speaker 1: episodes with great ideas, uh, and then you're gonna have
Speaker 1: the some some less impressive installments. You're gonna have the
Speaker 1: episodes that clearly got maybe a little more of the
Speaker 1: lion's share of the budget, and others that were more
Speaker 1: you know, bottle episodes and so forth. But but I
Speaker 1: love the idea of failure because often failure goes hand
Speaker 1: in hand with experimentation, and if you never try to
Speaker 1: push boundaries, you'll never fail, but you'll never make anything
Speaker 1: great either. So I I like people swinging for the fences,
Speaker 1: going big and sometimes it doesn't work, but at least
Speaker 1: you tried, you know. And that's that's how you get
Speaker 1: good things. Yeah. And it's the and and it is
Speaker 1: that that that varied topography of quality and going for
Speaker 1: different things, having different creators, different authors involved in a series,
Speaker 1: that the result and you're getting the ones that like
Speaker 1: really match up with your expectations and your and your
Speaker 1: in your taste. You just have to endure the ones
Speaker 1: that don't hit that mark for you personally, m for sure.
Speaker 1: So on that note, UM, you know, we've got a
Speaker 1: couple picked out here today. I picked one out, You've
Speaker 1: picked one out in the past. A lot of the
Speaker 1: episodes of that we've looked at in the Anthology of
Speaker 1: Horror series are kind of like a lot of the
Speaker 1: films featured on Weird How Cinema stem from the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: But the first selection here today, the one I picked out,
Speaker 1: is not only from twenty first century, it's actually from
Speaker 1: earlier this year. It is the episode Bad Traveling off
Speaker 1: of season three of Love, Death, and Robots on Netflix.
Speaker 1: I was actually really excited you picked this because typically
Speaker 1: I'm not a Netflix subscriber. It's just not you know,
Speaker 1: I subscribe to other streaming services, but just Netflix isn't
Speaker 1: one of them. And um, I had heard of this,
Speaker 1: and I had seen stuff, and as a big animation fan,
Speaker 1: I wanted to see it, but it just hadn't come
Speaker 1: up in my life yet. So this was a great
Speaker 1: excuse for me to buckle down, turn it on and
Speaker 1: watch it. And I was I was thrilled that This
Speaker 1: was my first exposure to actually watching an episode of Love,
Speaker 1: Death and Robots. Yeah, this one. I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: This is a series that started in twenty nineteen. Uh.
Speaker 1: The principal show runners or Tim Miller and David Fincher.
Speaker 1: This particular episode directed by David Fincher, but also with
Speaker 1: Frank Balson, Jerome Den Jene and Jennifer you Nelson. You
Speaker 1: know more about the creation of animated material than I do,
Speaker 1: so I don't. I it's easier to have that idea
Speaker 1: in mind, like what is the director of a movie
Speaker 1: look like? You see them setting in the movie director
Speaker 1: chair and shouting cut and so forth. It's harder. I
Speaker 1: don't have an image that I can easily go to
Speaker 1: for what does the director or directors of an animated
Speaker 1: installment or movie look like? I mean, it's it's honestly,
Speaker 1: it's It's extremely complicated and really varied from not only
Speaker 1: from project to project, but even within a project. I'll
Speaker 1: give you an example. There was a show I was
Speaker 1: working on. Oh, if folks don't know, I have a
Speaker 1: background in an animation, mostly for television and film, and
Speaker 1: um one of the jobs I was doing, I was
Speaker 1: working on a show called Cake. Okay. It was an
Speaker 1: actually it was a kind of an anthology. It was
Speaker 1: a bunch of a quick shorts stitched together, um kind
Speaker 1: of liquid television style. This was on f x X
Speaker 1: and that you can find out in Hulu. Now it's
Speaker 1: a great show. I like Cake. Um. But anyway, one
Speaker 1: of the shorts that I was the director on wentz
Speaker 1: and was uh clipped out of the show and then
Speaker 1: submitted to the Sundance Film Festival where it played. And
Speaker 1: I was really happy about that and everything. But because
Speaker 1: I was listed as a director for the television series,
Speaker 1: that was one distinction. But as soon as it played
Speaker 1: in theaters, the guy who had created this show had
Speaker 1: to contact me and be like, hey, Sundance is calling
Speaker 1: me the director. Can I call you the animation director?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't care, go ahead, buddy. And
Speaker 1: it's and that's the thing. It's that like there are
Speaker 1: these like little like distinctions between just just even like
Speaker 1: you know, unions and stuff like if this played on
Speaker 1: a screen, it's different than what if it's played on television.
Speaker 1: Did you direct the actors, did you direct the animators?
Speaker 1: Did you just direct everything? You know? Did you direct
Speaker 1: a storyboard artists, which is probably the most important actual
Speaker 1: like traditional director's job there is when it comes to animation.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, it's it's very um, it's varied, and
Speaker 1: also there might be four or five different directors based
Speaker 1: upon whether or not one person actually watched all those
Speaker 1: different tasks. Well, I I've I've very much enjoyed Love,
Speaker 1: Death and Robots, Uh, for the most part. With the
Speaker 1: caveat that it is it is an anthology series, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna get those the shifts in in overall quality
Speaker 1: and you know, stuff matching up to my taste or not.
Speaker 1: Like some of the stuff that they have on the
Speaker 1: show is maybe a little bit more mo sho military
Speaker 1: sci fi than anything I'm into these days. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: cases that the animation is is very good. Other times
Speaker 1: the animation is amazing, though amazing animation animation episodes don't
Speaker 1: always match up with like amazing script episodes. But but
Speaker 1: that's all right. It's a it's a showcase. It's a
Speaker 1: spectacle the animation and this one is amazing though really beautiful,
Speaker 1: and um, whenever I see something like this that's really
Speaker 1: advanced computer generated animation, I often think to myself if
Speaker 1: I was somehow able to project this as a film
Speaker 1: for someone in like the nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, what
Speaker 1: would they think it is? Like? What they think that
Speaker 1: these are just like odd oddly shaped actors. Would would
Speaker 1: they realize that, yes, it is animation, but they would
Speaker 1: have no idea how it was made. Would they just
Speaker 1: dismiss it as like, oh, this must be like the
Speaker 1: next new rotoscoping technique, and that's it. They don't think
Speaker 1: that it's actually as advanced as it truly is. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's just an odd experiment. I can never really
Speaker 1: get my head around. Yeah. Yeah, because for most of us,
Speaker 1: we've we've we've grown up watching at least some of
Speaker 1: it play out like we've seen. If you were old
Speaker 1: enough to to see the first toy story, like you've
Speaker 1: you've been around for a certain degree of the evolution
Speaker 1: of computer generated imagery and computer generated animation. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like with um younger viewers, you've just you're just born
Speaker 1: into it and like here it is, and then how
Speaker 1: would how would people in older generations have responded to this?
Speaker 1: So each season has had it's uh, it's it's episodes
Speaker 1: that stand out to me Um. There were a couple
Speaker 1: of Joe Landsdale adaptations in season one. I believe the
Speaker 1: Dump and the Tall Grass that might have been in
Speaker 1: the season one and reason two. There's an episode titled
Speaker 1: The Drowned Giant. There's a funny one title of the
Speaker 1: Automated Customer Service. So yeah, some of the episodes lean
Speaker 1: more funny. Other episodes get really serious, almost too serious,
Speaker 1: and and some are more just like pure artful spectacle. Now.
Speaker 1: Bad Traveling is based on a story by contemporary English
Speaker 1: author Neil Asher, who I've I've never read, but I
Speaker 1: recognized his name from various sci fi titles that I've
Speaker 1: seen online or in bookstores. There's another episode in this
Speaker 1: series based on one of his stories, Mason's Rats. That's
Speaker 1: also quite good. Also a highlight from season three. But
Speaker 1: while that one is funny, Bad Traveling is quite serious,
Speaker 1: quite grim. Um and if you need any further evidence
Speaker 1: of that, uh. Andrew Kevin Walker of seven Fame wrote
Speaker 1: the screenplay for it. That's nice that, Uh we got
Speaker 1: a nice little reunion then since was directing, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's each is the voice talents of Troy Baker, Jason Fleming,
Speaker 1: uh and uh and and numerous others, and I believe
Speaker 1: Blur Studios was the principal animation studio on this one,
Speaker 1: but Tacit Sign Studio is also credited anyway. The setting
Speaker 1: of the story is a fantasy twist on the age
Speaker 1: of sales and the age of big ships, with a
Speaker 1: crew of sailors braving an alien ocean hunting for something
Speaker 1: called a javel shark. I believe there's some some sort
Speaker 1: of a large, fierce sea creature that they're out there hunting,
Speaker 1: and later on it's revealed that they're hunting them for oil.
Speaker 1: Ships are often lost in this UH in this pursuit,
Speaker 1: and they often and then doing so, they experience what's
Speaker 1: called bad traveling. That's the sailors slang for a bad voyage,
Speaker 1: and so of course our story is going to involve
Speaker 1: some bad traveling. The ship in our story encounters a
Speaker 1: terrible storm and is quickly boarded by a monstrous giant
Speaker 1: crab called a fanapod, which take which kills multiple crew members,
Speaker 1: takes up residents low deck and UH lots are then
Speaker 1: drawn drawn among the crew see who's going to go
Speaker 1: down and deal with the monster, and this character Torn
Speaker 1: winds up with the duty. Now this is where the
Speaker 1: plot gets clever. The fanopod, we learn, is not just
Speaker 1: a big monstrous crab. It also can use the bodies
Speaker 1: of human dead to speak. So there's this grotesque scene
Speaker 1: where it picks up I think, just like the like
Speaker 1: the upper half of a dead sailor and begins to
Speaker 1: speak through its mouth in in like a garbled dead
Speaker 1: man's voice and uh. And this is kind of a
Speaker 1: nice twist that also seems to channel attack of the
Speaker 1: crab monsters in a fun way. It also reminded me
Speaker 1: of that scene from the film Independence Day where a
Speaker 1: Brent Spiner playing a scientist gets captured by one of
Speaker 1: the aliens and is also used in a very similar
Speaker 1: way like a little puppet to communicate to the humans
Speaker 1: what they're actually here for, what they want. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's it's it's a beautiful little uh
Speaker 1: little tool. You know, it makes perfect sense, and it
Speaker 1: kind of gives you kind of that logic of the
Speaker 1: babblefish where I guess babel fish depending on how you
Speaker 1: pronounce it from the Hitchhiker series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought of those connections, but yeah, totally so This
Speaker 1: twist also changes things a bit because suddenly the fanopod
Speaker 1: is in a position to lay out what it wants
Speaker 1: to make demands, and Torn is actually in a position
Speaker 1: to make a deal with the monster. So the fanapod says, okay,
Speaker 1: I want you to sail me to Fadeen Island, which
Speaker 1: we're told is a heavily populated island. And if we
Speaker 1: don't have to really guess at what a monster like
Speaker 1: this wants with a heavily populated island, clearly wants to
Speaker 1: eat a bunch of people. Clearly it's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: But the fanopod is making the this offer, and uh,
Speaker 1: Torn is listening to it, and they kind of come
Speaker 1: to terms. Okay, he'll do this in exchange for his
Speaker 1: own life, So you're not allowed to eat me, fanapod.
Speaker 1: And also, I need the key that was in the
Speaker 1: captain's pocket, um, the captain that you just ate. And
Speaker 1: so the fantopod like barfs up some remnants of the
Speaker 1: captain and he gets the key, which he uses to
Speaker 1: unlock the captain's pistol. And he then he uses the pistol,
Speaker 1: which I believe is the only pistol in the ship,
Speaker 1: to claim control over the ship UH to sort of
Speaker 1: put the mutinous other crew members in check, at least
Speaker 1: for the time being. But then he puts the question
Speaker 1: to the crew, puts it to a vote, even what
Speaker 1: are we going to do? There's this monster in the
Speaker 1: hold of the ship that wants to go to a
Speaker 1: heavily populated island and and do you know, god knows what,
Speaker 1: but probably eat people. What should we do? Should we say,
Speaker 1: should we agree to this and yes, deliver the fantopod
Speaker 1: to Phaytan, or should we instead drop it off at
Speaker 1: a nearby deserted island. So there's a great deal of
Speaker 1: turmoil over this. Some crew members, maybe more than a few,
Speaker 1: simply want to give the monster what it wants. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that the monster has even more or
Speaker 1: ravenous ideas in mind. The monster is clearly apparent now
Speaker 1: and the depths of the ship are soon crawling with
Speaker 1: these palid crabblings that look a lot like um like
Speaker 1: the sorts of crabs you'd find living around UH deep
Speaker 1: sea thermal events. And I'm not going to spoil how
Speaker 1: things turn out, but it's a it's a fun action
Speaker 1: horror ride. The central monster the Fantopod is a real
Speaker 1: grotesque treat, And yeah, you're left trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where it's gonna land. Essentially, who's gonna win. Is it
Speaker 1: going to be this this monster or is it going
Speaker 1: to be the humans and is Torn or any of
Speaker 1: the other crew members going to be able to stand
Speaker 1: up and uh and and and prevent some horrible fate
Speaker 1: falling on the unsuspecting people of Fate in Ireland. It's
Speaker 1: also got a lot of really fun kind of like
Speaker 1: logic deductive twists happening from people to people. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of like kind of like those like old um
Speaker 1: riddles where it's like, hey, someone stole these pastries at
Speaker 1: one make sure they handle this coin and put it
Speaker 1: in the bucket of water. We'll figure out who the
Speaker 1: liar is. Like, it's it's got some real like, hey,
Speaker 1: we have to figure out a way not only to
Speaker 1: cope with this monster, but cope with one another. Let's
Speaker 1: use some logic, let's use some planning to kind of
Speaker 1: try and figure that out. And it's yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: it just unfolds beautifully. It looks beautiful. The story is fun.
Speaker 1: This the science fiction speculative fiction elements are a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. It's it's great all around. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: can easily recommend this one as a as a first
Speaker 1: Love Death Robots episode to watch for anyone out there
Speaker 1: who hasn't checked out the show, because, like I said,
Speaker 1: some of the episodes skew a little bit dark for
Speaker 1: my taste, uh and some are more humorous, And I
Speaker 1: feel like this one is is a serious piece but
Speaker 1: also a good balance of of darkness. Yeah. The the
Speaker 1: only kind of like um Copia I'd give anyone is
Speaker 1: that it's it's quite gory, but it is cartoon gore,
Speaker 1: So you know, I guess that that's left up to
Speaker 1: the viewer and their own kind of understanding of themselves.
Speaker 1: But to yeah, the worst thing you Cara have to
Speaker 1: deal with is a lot of blood and guts. Cartoon
Speaker 1: blood guts, but blood and guts. Now, when it comes
Speaker 1: to the science of this episode, I think the interesting
Speaker 1: science angle on Bad Traveling is that what we have
Speaker 1: here as a tale of a devastating invasive shipborn organism,
Speaker 1: and this whole scenario serves as kind of a fantastic
Speaker 1: exaggeration of the very real history and present reality of
Speaker 1: shipborn invasive species. They are multiple avenues by which invasive
Speaker 1: species and then includes plant species and animal species have
Speaker 1: been and are still being spread through human activities. These
Speaker 1: as outlined in twenty eight teens Animals and Human Society
Speaker 1: by Colin G. Skeins and Samia are took SATI include
Speaker 1: species introduced for aesthetics, as game species for biological control,
Speaker 1: and for fur as popular lations of feral domestic animals
Speaker 1: as pets thoughtlessly released into the wild, and of course
Speaker 1: animal and plants stowaways uh and while these also occur
Speaker 1: via airplane uh one of the main examples throughout human history,
Speaker 1: one of the Big Woman's has of course been ships,
Speaker 1: the holds of ships, the insides of ships, but also
Speaker 1: the the outsides of ships. Um. Now with with with
Speaker 1: airplanes though they include a specific example of the brown
Speaker 1: tree snake um and this is essentially the snake on
Speaker 1: a plane par excellence. So this particular snake is native
Speaker 1: to eastern and northern coastal Australia, eastern Indonesia, Papua New
Speaker 1: Guinea and many many islands in northwestern Melanesia. But the
Speaker 1: brown tree snake is only mildly venomous to humans, but
Speaker 1: it's venom is apparently one times more toxic to birds
Speaker 1: than to mammals. According to biologists Brian Fry of the
Speaker 1: University of Queensland, the round snake has been particularly rough
Speaker 1: on the bird population of Guam, which had apparently reached
Speaker 1: aboard Australian troop transports during the Second World War. Fry
Speaker 1: also points out that the United States was and I
Speaker 1: believe still is, flying military planes from Guam to Hawaii,
Speaker 1: and brown snakes have been intercepted at Hawaiian airports in
Speaker 1: the past, So the potential is there for plane based
Speaker 1: introduction of this species to the Hawaiian islands as well,
Speaker 1: if we were to say, let our guard down now.
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find anything offhand that that really explained,
Speaker 1: like how how are they hitching up hitching rides on
Speaker 1: these planes? But one reason might have to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that they use something called lasso loco motion,
Speaker 1: which allows them to easily climb large smooth cylinders. So
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like one possibility here is that
Speaker 1: this is a snake that is just exceptionally good at
Speaker 1: crawling on and perhaps into airplane uh and uh and
Speaker 1: is of course a curious creature on top of that.
Speaker 1: But when we're talking about animal stowaways, especially ships again
Speaker 1: play a huge role, with rats and mice standing out
Speaker 1: is is probably one of the best and most destructive
Speaker 1: examples of creatures that have spread with humans to every
Speaker 1: continent except Antarctica, where I believe the only invasive species
Speaker 1: currently is a variety of muscle, and these likely traveled
Speaker 1: there by ship as well. I'm surprised Antarctica has one too,
Speaker 1: but that makes perfect sense. Yeah, yeah, most things are
Speaker 1: that that we bring with us are not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to get a foothold there, but muscles seem to
Speaker 1: be the current exception. Now, when we're thinking about stowaway species,
Speaker 1: and we're often thinking about creatures that sneak aboard or
Speaker 1: are accidentally included in or on a ship and then
Speaker 1: introduced to a destination or stop upon the way. Uh
Speaker 1: So the mouse rat example isn't the only template though.
Speaker 1: According to Grasping at the Roots of Biological Invasions by
Speaker 1: Whom at All from the Journal of Applied Ecology in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, quote, stowaways include organisms that foul
Speaker 1: the holes of ships, are transported as seeds or resting
Speaker 1: stages in soil attached to vehicles and in the ballast water,
Speaker 1: as well as in shipping containers, cargo and air freight.
Speaker 1: So for instances, the authors point out the brown there's
Speaker 1: a variety of brown seaweed sargasm medicum, and this is
Speaker 1: a great example of the stowaway species thought to have
Speaker 1: spread from its native Japan to northern France, UH, the
Speaker 1: English South Coast, and to the Netherlands via first the
Speaker 1: the contamination of commercial oyster shipments, but then just via
Speaker 1: drifting plants once they were they had made it basically
Speaker 1: to the other side of the world. The authors here
Speaker 1: also share that very that vessels provide numerous interior and
Speaker 1: exterior possibilities for species to spread. You know, oftentimes you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a big ship. You have a lot of
Speaker 1: literally a lot of moving parts, uh, lots of nooks
Speaker 1: and crannies, lots of different say, you know, examples of
Speaker 1: cargo that are being brought aboard, human beings brought aboard.
Speaker 1: But one of the most pervasive avenues by which a
Speaker 1: creature might stow away, particularly applies to aquatic species, is
Speaker 1: that they foul the holes um of boats and ships. Quote.
Speaker 1: A detailed survey of alien species introduced by shipping into
Speaker 1: the North Sea region revealed that stowaways, mainly crustaceans and bivalves,
Speaker 1: were found in nine of whole samples, but in only
Speaker 1: thirty eight percent and fifty seven percent of ballast water
Speaker 1: and sediment, respectively. And then they site a study by
Speaker 1: Goalash from two thousand and two. So species need not
Speaker 1: climb inside the hole to use it as a means
Speaker 1: of traversing from one far flung island to another, from
Speaker 1: one continent to another. They only have to affix to
Speaker 1: the outside of the vessel, which is, you know, ultimately
Speaker 1: this artificial island that's gonna drift rather steadily from one
Speaker 1: place to another. Now another animal that comes up though
Speaker 1: in UH. In these UH discussions of of stowaway creatures
Speaker 1: or boreal monkeys have also been known to spread to
Speaker 1: various places as invasive species, and while there are accounts
Speaker 1: of monkeys taking up residents in ships rigging, it seems
Speaker 1: like most of these introductions were via monkeys kept as pets.
Speaker 1: But still there have been accounts even from this century
Speaker 1: of monkeys stowing away on vessels, such as a two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen report of monkeys who boarded a cargo vessel
Speaker 1: in Malaysia and then arrived in the Netherlands. Now I
Speaker 1: think in this case the monkeys were caught and caged
Speaker 1: in transit and then handed over to in the Netherlands
Speaker 1: to um some zoo officials once they arrived. One of
Speaker 1: the challenges to stowing away is of course being able
Speaker 1: to survive a lengthy sea voyage in often harsh conditions
Speaker 1: without any kind of dependable food sources. And this of
Speaker 1: course brings us back to rats and mice, because rats
Speaker 1: and mice have of course excelled at this because they're
Speaker 1: great at not being seen. They're also great at finding
Speaker 1: food to eat, and so they're they're just highly skilled
Speaker 1: at living in humanity. Shadow be that shadow on land
Speaker 1: or on a ship at sea. And there are plenty
Speaker 1: of other great examples or horrible examples of invasive species
Speaker 1: uh using ships as an avenue to spread to new places,
Speaker 1: and invasive earthworms are a great example spreading via transper
Speaker 1: reported soils and plants. Birds can also stow away. I
Speaker 1: was reading in a book on on house sparrows about
Speaker 1: how the house sparrow is thought to have spread aboard
Speaker 1: Roman ships, and this is how it's supposedly reached Great Britain.
Speaker 1: So in the real world, we don't have anything quite
Speaker 1: like the Fanta pod. That's uh that that's you know, fighting,
Speaker 1: it's a giant creature that fights its way aboard a
Speaker 1: ship and then demands that it be taken somewhere else
Speaker 1: that has like a wilful and tension of of spreading
Speaker 1: to a known distant um destination. But I mean, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, this is these are any of these
Speaker 1: real world examples we're looking at. These are creatures that
Speaker 1: are following their genetic imperatives. They're taking full advantage of
Speaker 1: new environments. Uh they might and that might and they
Speaker 1: might never have reached otherwise. And it's and it's also
Speaker 1: not completely without an analog in like the non human world,
Speaker 1: because of course you have uh natural rafts that occur
Speaker 1: here and there through history that are thought to have
Speaker 1: been the way that that certain animals spread say two distant,
Speaker 1: far flung islands, or or even from from a large
Speaker 1: body to another large body. And so you know, they're
Speaker 1: not it's not like the animals are doing anything sinister
Speaker 1: as our then apod is doing something the sinister. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're just taking advantage all of their environment or there
Speaker 1: to a sense being there in a sense being taken
Speaker 1: advantage of by their environment, accidentally becoming oh ways, accidentally
Speaker 1: being cast on a ship and then cast on a
Speaker 1: farm tour. It is fascinating to think about, uh, this
Speaker 1: natural migration of beings compared with um, you know, human
Speaker 1: influenced migration, like like like even all the way down
Speaker 1: to things like oh berries, you know where like us
Speaker 1: as humans, one of the ways that the berry seeds
Speaker 1: move is we will consume them. They passed through our
Speaker 1: our intestines and boom, you know, these plants and now
Speaker 1: move their seeds from one location to another by our
Speaker 1: aid you know, or other animals of course. But then
Speaker 1: you just add something as simple as, oh, we invented
Speaker 1: the wagon. Oh now we can go further. Oh now
Speaker 1: these berries can go further. Oh now even vent to
Speaker 1: the ship. Now we've invented whatever. You know. Now we've
Speaker 1: mented the airplane, Now we've mented the rocket ship. Now
Speaker 1: we have brought raspberry seeds to Mars. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: You know, like just these like little little things that
Speaker 1: we're doing and not in every case it's not a
Speaker 1: bad thing, I'm sure in many cases. This migration of species,
Speaker 1: whether they be plant or animal, is a good thing,
Speaker 1: but both for our you know, existence as as humans,
Speaker 1: but also uh, for their own ability to thrive. But
Speaker 1: the hard part is, let's let's go back to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this crab, this giant you know, semi sentient. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess it's it's it's fully sentient. It's um monstrous. Let's
Speaker 1: just go with monster crab. Let's go with this monster crab.
Speaker 1: Perhaps wherever its original location is, where its species evolved,
Speaker 1: there was some sort of predator that kept it in check,
Speaker 1: there was some sort of environment that kept it in check.
Speaker 1: Everything was fine. But as soon as we get that
Speaker 1: giant monster crab on a boat, we put it in
Speaker 1: an area where that that other elements isn't there, and
Speaker 1: it can just you know, take our bodies and use
Speaker 1: them as puppets. It's odd. Yeah, these are great points
Speaker 1: because yeah, yeah, clearly, in the case of especially seed spreading,
Speaker 1: but also parasites and other examples like traveling via another organisms,
Speaker 1: movement is just an evolved tactic that you'll find in
Speaker 1: various organisms. It's just that human technology and human activity
Speaker 1: exaggerates everything and it creates radically new avenues that can
Speaker 1: then be exploited by the animal as it would exploit
Speaker 1: any any environment that it could actually gain gain a
Speaker 1: like a claw hold. And yeah, we we just have
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on it, you know. Sometimes it's good,
Speaker 1: usually it's bad. Keep an eye on it. So that's
Speaker 1: that's my selection and science tie in for this Anthology
Speaker 1: of Horror episode. But I'm very excited about about your selection, Seth,
Speaker 1: because yeah, this is uh, this comes from a series
Speaker 1: that we haven't covered on the show before, and I
Speaker 1: had not watched any of these episodes until this year.
Speaker 1: I watched two or three of them. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: from Tales of the Unexpected. I'm guessing most people probably
Speaker 1: haven't heard about this. Maybe maybe if you're British perhaps
Speaker 1: you've heard of it more. But um, first of all,
Speaker 1: let's let's dump things realed down for for Americans here.
Speaker 1: Rawal Doll of course, a very famous author. We all
Speaker 1: know rawl Doll. He wrote all kinds of super famous books, Matilda,
Speaker 1: the which is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James the
Speaker 1: Giant Peach. I can go on and on and on. Uh,
Speaker 1: super famous for his children's literature. What we in America
Speaker 1: aren't as familiar with He had many adult fiction, uh
Speaker 1: pieces out in the world too, dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: short stories and and one novel as well. And maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it's me, but I just feel like Americans didn't
Speaker 1: really get as much exposure to these these adult pieces
Speaker 1: by Rawal Dall. I think most Americans just view him
Speaker 1: as just a children's author. So well, what happened for
Speaker 1: me in particular was, Um, I was cruising around I
Speaker 1: think this is on Amazon Prime. Originally I came across
Speaker 1: this show and because you know, like all of us
Speaker 1: here on stuff to blow your mind, we appreciate the
Speaker 1: strange and the uncanny and the macabre. So I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: Tales of the Unexpected. That sounds fun. What's that? So
Speaker 1: I turned it on and immediately you're You're greeted with
Speaker 1: rawl doll sit in like a little like leather easy chair,
Speaker 1: you know, like like like with like a writing desk
Speaker 1: on his lap, in front of a roaring fire, explaining
Speaker 1: where this story came from. And so immediately I look
Speaker 1: it up and it turns out, yes, rawaldl has an
Speaker 1: enormous library of adult fiction, and uh, this series is
Speaker 1: primarily based on these short stories that he wrote, and
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. Um. I think they try to convince you
Speaker 1: initially that hey, this isn't for children because these opening credits.
Speaker 1: Who they're they're they're gorgeous and they're strange. How would
Speaker 1: you describe them, Rob, It's kind of like, um, kind
Speaker 1: of a James Bond casino vibe, but a casino where
Speaker 1: the back room is filled with creepy masks and haunted artifacts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they show your skulls, they show your guns, they show
Speaker 1: the silhouette of I assume what they're trying to imply
Speaker 1: as a nude woman dancing. Um, it's it's yeah. They
Speaker 1: they're showing you, like adult material to go, not for children,
Speaker 1: not for children, not children. And now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: the content itself, at least based on the couple episodes
Speaker 1: I watched, uh, is nothing so extreme at least to
Speaker 1: modern viewers. Uh. In fact, that some of the content
Speaker 1: I watched was actually quite tame, like surprisingly tame. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, that that intro seems to be saying, kids,
Speaker 1: you should be in bed, get in bed before create
Speaker 1: creepy uncle Dah comes out and starts talking at you.
Speaker 1: I I can say that UM. When I first discovered
Speaker 1: these books that this show is based on, and I
Speaker 1: read them all, raw Dal does get pretty extreme. He
Speaker 1: has um not only some some real violence, but more
Speaker 1: than that, he just gets very inappropriate in places like UM.
Speaker 1: I think he's perhaps intentionally being offensive for for the
Speaker 1: sake of literature. But but it's in there, especially there
Speaker 1: there there are some elements relating to UM, I don't know,
Speaker 1: dynamics between men and women that are just dreadful. So
Speaker 1: so you know, just just be aware that if you
Speaker 1: do explore the adult writings of rawl Doll, there's some
Speaker 1: inappropriate stuff in there for sure. But anyway, but what
Speaker 1: we're what we're addressing today, it's a very specific episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: This one is called Royal Jelly. It's the first episode
Speaker 1: of the season two of Tales of the Unexpected. This
Speaker 1: originally aired on March first, nine eighty let's see. It
Speaker 1: was directed by Herbert Wise. He's probably best known for
Speaker 1: directing the I Claudius mini series from nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: And of course, this is based on the story Royal
Speaker 1: Jelly by Ral Doll from his nineteen sixty collection of
Speaker 1: adult short stories called Kiss, Kiss and Um. I guess
Speaker 1: we've already briefly discussed who Raal Doll is, y'all get it.
Speaker 1: He's super popular, super famous, best selling, wrote amazing children's
Speaker 1: literature and adult literature too that is less well known,
Speaker 1: at least here in America. Um. Now, this has been
Speaker 1: adapted for television by Robin Chapman. He was an actor
Speaker 1: and a writer who contributed to dozens of projects from
Speaker 1: the sixties and nineties. Ums to them are British, so
Speaker 1: when I look at his imdbeach arts and stuff, I
Speaker 1: don't know most of them, but there's tons of it.
Speaker 1: So clearly he's been very involved and very prolific. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's a very limited cast in this. It feels a
Speaker 1: lot like kind of like a stage play. And so
Speaker 1: we only have three actors in this story, four if
Speaker 1: you count the baby. But we have Timothy West who
Speaker 1: plays Albert Taylor, a beekeeper and our protagonist. We have
Speaker 1: Susan George, his wife, who has recently given birth to
Speaker 1: a child, and she's very fraud very worried for most
Speaker 1: of the story. We then have Andrew Ray, who plays
Speaker 1: someone named Percy Hayward appears very briefly as a television presenter,
Speaker 1: and that then we have a baby who is uncredited,
Speaker 1: and of course we have the raw Doll introduction where
Speaker 1: he of course plays himself and tells us a little
Speaker 1: story about where the story came from. Well that that intro. Really,
Speaker 1: I've been just almost alarmed by the intros that have
Speaker 1: Doll in them, basically serving as like the crypt keeper
Speaker 1: of the shows. But also I guess it's comparable to
Speaker 1: like Ray Bradberry theater that we had in the States,
Speaker 1: And I guess part of this again it's I'm coming
Speaker 1: in from the American standpoint where I just knew him
Speaker 1: as the name that was attached to like Willy Wonka.
Speaker 1: I wasn't exposed to these other stories, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: exposed to him as a as a person, as a
Speaker 1: as like a person on the on the TV screen
Speaker 1: that would be talking to me. And there's something about
Speaker 1: these intros like they're a little bit creepy, And I
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent they're intentionally creepy, because he's
Speaker 1: he's in that little desk by the fire chatting to you,
Speaker 1: but he has this I don't know, I get kind
Speaker 1: of a creepy vibe off of him. And there are
Speaker 1: also a lot of sort of offhand comments about either
Speaker 1: how rich or famous he is. Yeah. Yeah, in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the so in this introduction for this episode,
Speaker 1: he's sitting there and he's talking about how when he
Speaker 1: was in America he was walking around and that this
Speaker 1: is the origin of his story. This is why he
Speaker 1: wrote the story in the first place. He saw a
Speaker 1: jar of royal jelly and like a fancy boutique shop window,
Speaker 1: and it was just ludicrously expensive and he thought, wow, like,
Speaker 1: what is this, why is this? Like what's happening here?
Speaker 1: And so he wrote this story all about like its
Speaker 1: effects when he did like research and stuff. And then
Speaker 1: once it was published, his friend Dick Van Dyke sent
Speaker 1: him a package which was several bottles of this royal jelly. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I believe rawl Dahl wrote the screenplay for Chitty Chitty
Speaker 1: Bang Bang. So I'm guessing that's how they became friends.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so, um, I guess you'll you'll find out
Speaker 1: when when we tell you more about this story. But
Speaker 1: it's it was very strange that the first thing that
Speaker 1: rawl Dal did when he received this these bottles of
Speaker 1: royal jelly, is he drank them. All down. That was
Speaker 1: that was his initial reaction. And U with that, I
Speaker 1: think like you were saying, is this supposed to be creepy?
Speaker 1: Is it supposed to be funny? It kind of reminded
Speaker 1: me of the introductions that Alfred Hitchcock used to do
Speaker 1: on Alfred Hitchcock's Presents, where it is like it's leaning
Speaker 1: into them Cobb a bit, but also trying to be
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, like, oh, I'm your friendly uncle,
Speaker 1: but I'm also gonna make some a Cob jokes in
Speaker 1: here too, Like that's that's that's the vibe I was getting. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's and there's also very much a dry British
Speaker 1: wit to it as well. Yeah, but let's let's begin
Speaker 1: this story. So, like I said, Albert Taylor is our
Speaker 1: primary protagonist here, uh that this episode begins with Albert Taylor.
Speaker 1: He's an apiculturist at k A, a beekeeper, and we
Speaker 1: see him wandering amongst the hives on his on his
Speaker 1: property and love andly examining them and and just be
Speaker 1: being a friend to the bees. You know. It all
Speaker 1: seems very very pleasant and and fun and kind of
Speaker 1: like pastoral. It seems great. Yeah, and and again Timothy
Speaker 1: West in this role. Tremendous actor that's been in tons
Speaker 1: of things, like a lot of theater work as well.
Speaker 1: He's one of these guys where if you've watched any
Speaker 1: amount of British TV or film, you've likely seen him
Speaker 1: at one point or another. He is still active today
Speaker 1: hundred and forty two IMDb credits and he's been active
Speaker 1: since nineteen fifty nine. And then we soon we are
Speaker 1: second and pretty much only other actor in this uh.
Speaker 1: Albert walks inside and he sees his wife and their
Speaker 1: newborn child, and um, this is Mabel Taylor, the character.
Speaker 1: She is having a terrible time trying to get their
Speaker 1: daughter to just have some milk, but you have some food.
Speaker 1: You know that she's very very worried that the daughter
Speaker 1: is malnourished, that she isn't eating, and that basically she's
Speaker 1: just losing weights, that she's not doing what babies should
Speaker 1: be doing. They've checked with all the doctors. All the
Speaker 1: doctors say no, no, no, she's fine, just give her time,
Speaker 1: she'll come around. But but this mother is just, you know,
Speaker 1: at her wits end. She she's very very worried about
Speaker 1: this baby. And the actor here Susan George also a
Speaker 1: pretty big name for the time period. She was in
Speaker 1: such films as seventy one straw Dog Entered the Ninja.
Speaker 1: She was also in Venom. This was the Killer Snake
Speaker 1: movie with Klaskinski in it that uh we covered on
Speaker 1: Weirdow Cinema. Uh So, Albert is very excited. He sits
Speaker 1: down and he's about to be on television. You know,
Speaker 1: he was interviewed by a local newscaster. They were doing
Speaker 1: a little story on him with his bees. So so
Speaker 1: he's like, you know what, I'm gonna watch me on television.
Speaker 1: He's kind of ignoring his wife, kind of ignoring his child.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, no, I'm on TV. Let's watch. Let's watch.
Speaker 1: The wife's like no, and she gets the baby and
Speaker 1: she leaves. So that sits down. He's watching himself be
Speaker 1: interviewed and to talk about his bees, talk about his hives,
Speaker 1: talk about his honey, and um. He kind of the
Speaker 1: television interviewer kind of asks Hi all of these questions
Speaker 1: that start to give him in real time watching himself
Speaker 1: these ideas, particularly about royal jelly. On the show, he
Speaker 1: describes royal jelly as this substance it's it's like a
Speaker 1: nutrient dense food that you give to be larvae, but
Speaker 1: it's so powerful that it's only given to the worker
Speaker 1: law eva and drone larva for just three days. However,
Speaker 1: the queen larvae they get just an unending supply of
Speaker 1: this throughout their entire develop developmental period and thus their
Speaker 1: increased size and development changes and all that stuff. But
Speaker 1: we'll get more into that, into the science. So so
Speaker 1: this this sparks an idea in his head and he goes,
Speaker 1: why didn't I think of this sooner? You know? And
Speaker 1: that's that's all we see for now. Now, for future
Speaker 1: AMA fans out there, you might remember the episode where
Speaker 1: we find out where slerm comes from, the popular soda slerm.
Speaker 1: We find out that it is essentially the uh that
Speaker 1: it comes it is a product of these alien be
Speaker 1: like creatures. And then there is royal slerm, which is
Speaker 1: essentially the alien equivalent of of royal jelly. Yes, great episode.
Speaker 1: So uh, the baby is suddenly uh eating better, putting
Speaker 1: on weights. Albert has has told his wife Mabel, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna handle all the baby's feedings from now on,
Speaker 1: don't you worry. I got this and she's exhausted, so
Speaker 1: she's she's happy for the health absolutely, and uh, this is,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty obvious. But Albert has been putting royal
Speaker 1: jelly into the baby's milk. I would say, uh, spoilers
Speaker 1: from now on, but there's really no ending to this,
Speaker 1: so there are there's nothing really to spoil. Yes, Albert
Speaker 1: has been putting royal jelly in the baby's milk, and
Speaker 1: he's deliberately hiding it from his wife. So um, Mabel
Speaker 1: puts two and two together. She figures out that something
Speaker 1: is being added to his daughter's milk. She first suspects beer,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty funny, but no, no, Albert
Speaker 1: reveals that he has been feeding royal jelly to their daughter. Um,
Speaker 1: and she's aghast and she's like, no, no, I'm very
Speaker 1: worried about this, you know, should you be doing this?
Speaker 1: This seems bad? And he's like, no, no, it's no
Speaker 1: big deal. I've been consuming gallons of it for years.
Speaker 1: It's specifically, he's been taking it before the baby was
Speaker 1: born to make him more fertile and virile, and he
Speaker 1: gives the royal jelly all the credit for making him
Speaker 1: him fertile enough for them to have their child. So
Speaker 1: he's like, this, this child is thanks to the royal jelly. My,
Speaker 1: my morality, this this is all thanks to the jelly.
Speaker 1: It's all the royal jelly. And so here's my favorite
Speaker 1: part of this, my favorite part of this. When he's
Speaker 1: starting to like go into his like reveal of all
Speaker 1: what he's been doing and sneaking the royal jelly into
Speaker 1: the into the baby's milk, consuming gallons of it himself,
Speaker 1: he starts to ever so slowly, ever so like you know,
Speaker 1: delicately make little buzzing noises, like just a little conversational like, so,
Speaker 1: what does this is. It's just like a little just
Speaker 1: a little little extra buzz now and again, and it
Speaker 1: just kind of builds and builds till by the end
Speaker 1: he is just full blown buzzing, buzzing. And we looked
Speaker 1: down at his collar or yeah, his his cuff of
Speaker 1: his shirt, and he's got a little b hair just
Speaker 1: kind of like tufting out through like the cuff of
Speaker 1: his shirt. And it's so wonderful, and the wife's getting
Speaker 1: very scared. She doesn't know what to do about this.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, no, no, it's wonderful. And then he
Speaker 1: picks up the baby and they turned towards the camera,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those like really corny uh freeze
Speaker 1: frame super effects filled zoom in shots on the baby
Speaker 1: where it's supposed to be like, oh no, the baby
Speaker 1: is a larva or something. It's never it's not my
Speaker 1: clear at all. Yeah, you can't really see the baby
Speaker 1: all that well, but it's like a sudden like kind
Speaker 1: of blurry graphic or PIXELI graphic effect. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The baby maybe looks like the baby on that Black
Speaker 1: Sabbath album cuff or something. It's that more be like
Speaker 1: um but but but it's it's so sudden, and then
Speaker 1: her scream is such like I don't know. The tension
Speaker 1: builds are just right to where even though the actual
Speaker 1: effects are are basically non existent scene, it's still shocking
Speaker 1: and it's still like it's still kind of hits you.
Speaker 1: At the very end, it's like, oh god, this this
Speaker 1: is horrible. No, it's it's it's a perfect little like
Speaker 1: horror anthology punchline, just and that's it. Nothing else to see, folks,
Speaker 1: move on. Yeah, this this was a solid ending. This
Speaker 1: is far more solid than the episode that the other
Speaker 1: episode I watched was one. I think it was called Taste,
Speaker 1: about a wine snob who essentially he ends up getting
Speaker 1: into a competition if he can guess the precise winery
Speaker 1: that a wine came from. He he's going to get
Speaker 1: to marry the other guy's daughter. So it does have
Speaker 1: like creepy misogynistic uh notes to it, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: end in anything horrible. At the end, he's caught cheating
Speaker 1: at the game and gets wine poured on his head.
Speaker 1: So when I saw that, I'm like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if any of these are really going to be
Speaker 1: horror enough, but you assured me. It's like, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: this episode has it, and yeah, implied mutant be baby
Speaker 1: definitely seals the deal. If you read the story, it's
Speaker 1: um even more subtle and implied uh more or less.
Speaker 1: The the written word and this uh you know tell
Speaker 1: television adaptation are very similar. The only differences, of course,
Speaker 1: like the internal monologue that you kind of hear from people.
Speaker 1: In particular, you can hear Mabel thinking to herself, does
Speaker 1: my husband look more like a bee today? You can
Speaker 1: hear her like in the very end, being like, oh no,
Speaker 1: my child is turning into a larva. I can see
Speaker 1: the larva elements of my child. It's all very internal thought.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, monster makeup, which which would
Speaker 1: have been fun too, but definitely a different kind of story.
Speaker 1: Are there lots of zs in in his dialogue at
Speaker 1: the end? I believe so. It's been a while since
Speaker 1: I've read it, but I believe so little subtle buzzes. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: so let's get into some science. The first thing I
Speaker 1: was thinking to myself and I, this is just like,
Speaker 1: you know, one of those things. I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: isn't honey bad for babies? I know honey isn't royal jelly,
Speaker 1: but I have heard very clearly that you should not
Speaker 1: give honey to babies. So I looked that up real quick,
Speaker 1: just to like put my mind at ease. And yes,
Speaker 1: it is widely agreed upon by new tritionalists and pediatricians
Speaker 1: that babies younger than one year old should not be
Speaker 1: given honey. Basically, it's as simple as an infant immune
Speaker 1: system isn't yet strong enough to fight some of the
Speaker 1: bacteria that a non infant anyone above the age of
Speaker 1: one can easily handle. Uh. Specifically, it's Clostridium bacteria which
Speaker 1: can cause infant botulism, so you know, terrible. And this
Speaker 1: bacteria thrives in soil and dust, which means it can
Speaker 1: contaminate certain foods and in particular honey, So uh you
Speaker 1: know that. By the way, this also includes any processed
Speaker 1: foods that use honey like a honey, graham, crackers, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And uh. Once again, there's no risk for an immune
Speaker 1: system over a year old. But I satisfied my curiosity
Speaker 1: by just looking that up real quick, and I was correct.
Speaker 1: Do not give honey to anyone under one year of age.
Speaker 1: But like I said, honey is not royal jelly. What what?
Speaker 1: What's the difference between honey and royal jelly? Yes, you
Speaker 1: find them both in a hive, but there's obviously big differences.
Speaker 1: Let's start with honey. Honey, as we all know, is
Speaker 1: a sweet, viscous liquid made up of nectar from flowers
Speaker 1: by the way of a multi step process involving multiple
Speaker 1: honey bees. It's primarily used to feed the colony. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is their primary source of carbohydrates, and it also
Speaker 1: provides basically just all of the energy that the colony
Speaker 1: needs to go out and find pollen to to breed
Speaker 1: to whatever. All that stuff is fueled by honey and
Speaker 1: in particular their carbohydrates from the honey. As an aside,
Speaker 1: I was also looking up I don't know about you, Rob,
Speaker 1: but I I have the notion in the back of
Speaker 1: my head that I would love to be a beekeeper someday,
Speaker 1: like like like I have ambitions to be um an
Speaker 1: apiculturist at some point in my life. And so I've
Speaker 1: looked this up in the past to be like, wait,
Speaker 1: if we're taking the bees honey, don't they need that honey?
Speaker 1: Like that's theirs, right, And that's part of being a
Speaker 1: beekeeper is knowing where that that level is. If you
Speaker 1: do take too much of the bees honey that they're
Speaker 1: providing for for their their beehive, then yes, you can
Speaker 1: starve a colony, and you shouldn't do that. You have
Speaker 1: to be very careful and and and very mindful of
Speaker 1: how much you're taking from them. So anyway, that's just
Speaker 1: an aside. Yeah, my understanding is that with the source
Speaker 1: of the varieties of bees that one is going to
Speaker 1: be raising, Yeah, there is a certain surplus level that
Speaker 1: you can harvest, but there are other varieties of bees
Speaker 1: that we don't raise for their honey, that don't produce
Speaker 1: that sort of surplus um. But but I agree with you. Like,
Speaker 1: even watching this episode of Tales of the Unexpected, the
Speaker 1: early parts before things get creepy, you see him out there,
Speaker 1: you know, tending to his hives. And there's a great
Speaker 1: scene in it too, where it's the actor himself just
Speaker 1: out in a field among actual bee hives and without
Speaker 1: any protective gear he's opening one up and checking things out.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's scene in particular. It made me feel
Speaker 1: what you were talking about. It's like I could do
Speaker 1: this right, I could. Well, I could retire and and
Speaker 1: just raise bees in a field. This this feel appropriate,
Speaker 1: This feels like like something worth doing. Someday. I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this someday. I've looked into it. I've looked
Speaker 1: into how much it costs for like you know, buying
Speaker 1: a colony, how much of costs like buy a b suits.
Speaker 1: I have a lavender garden here on my property that's
Speaker 1: nothing but a field of lavender, and I I think
Speaker 1: that will be make my honey. It will I will
Speaker 1: have lavender flavored honey. That's gonna be my goal someday.
Speaker 1: But but like we said, royal jelly is not honey
Speaker 1: at all. Royal jelly is a milk like substance which
Speaker 1: is secreted from the glands and the heads of the
Speaker 1: worker bees, and it's made to feed the b larvae.
Speaker 1: So and this includes all the larvae, the drones, the workers,
Speaker 1: the queens, um and just like it was actually mentioned
Speaker 1: in the story, this was a d accurate from the story.
Speaker 1: The drones and workers are only fed for three days
Speaker 1: with royal jelly, but the queen it just is continually fed.
Speaker 1: Uh just all the royal jelly you can have throughout
Speaker 1: their whole development process. So facts all look this up
Speaker 1: and it's absolutely true. So up to that point in
Speaker 1: the story that these are facts that Roll Doll is
Speaker 1: giving us. Royal jelly is composed of about sixty seven
Speaker 1: percent water, twelve point five percent protein, eleven percent simple sugars,
Speaker 1: six percent fatty acids, and a three point five percent
Speaker 1: ten hydroxy two desinoic acid. There are also some trace minerals,
Speaker 1: vitamins and antibiotic components that other people have of course
Speaker 1: claimed also in this short story that are very beneficial
Speaker 1: for you. Uh so you know, I mean the nutritional
Speaker 1: input truly does have an effect from this royal jelly
Speaker 1: onto the larvae. And it's actually really fascinating because this
Speaker 1: isn't super common amongst species. A worker larva and a
Speaker 1: queen larva are identical. From a DNA standpoint, there is
Speaker 1: no difference between a worker and a queen in let
Speaker 1: their larval stage, but because the queen larva is given
Speaker 1: more nutrients by way of royal jelly, the queen has
Speaker 1: a complete different developmental trajectory. Most importantly, the queen develops large,
Speaker 1: active ovaries, while the worker bees they are completely sterile.
Speaker 1: They have no ability to to use their ovaries for anything.
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's it's not common. I was trying
Speaker 1: to find up other species that have this, this this
Speaker 1: process where basically you can almost turn into not a
Speaker 1: different creature, but like a different kind of being. Just
Speaker 1: basically on did you get extra nutrients when you were
Speaker 1: a child. And it's not a common thing, but it's
Speaker 1: it's a percent true with royal jelly and these b larvae. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it reminds it reminds me of various morphs that you find,
Speaker 1: say among some species of salamanders, where they'll be certain
Speaker 1: environmental factors that may include things like like density of
Speaker 1: population or exposure to water that that can result in
Speaker 1: different morphologies, particularly a one ver I want to say,
Speaker 1: I may be misremembering this, but I think the tiger
Speaker 1: salamander that can develop a cannibal morph where basically there's
Speaker 1: there's one salamander with an extra big mouth for eating
Speaker 1: other salamanders because it's responding to the there being too
Speaker 1: high of a population density versus available water or something
Speaker 1: to that effect. But yeah, in terms of this though,
Speaker 1: it's just like you got more of the special food
Speaker 1: than everyone else, and so now you are destined to
Speaker 1: be this uh, this this high producing reproductive morph as
Speaker 1: opposed to a normal worker. Yeah, it's it's absolutely fascinating
Speaker 1: and uh as this story implies, and also from just
Speaker 1: Rall Doll's um you know introduction where he was given
Speaker 1: jars of the stuff by by Dick van Dyke um.
Speaker 1: Humans do consume royal jelly for a wide variety of
Speaker 1: purposes and claims. Primarily when I was looking this up,
Speaker 1: I found claims that it can help with hay fever, diabetes,
Speaker 1: menopausal administruation symptoms, obesity, and dry eyes. And I'm not
Speaker 1: going to leave you on the edge of your seats.
Speaker 1: There is no evidence that royal jelly will help you
Speaker 1: with any of these issues or any others. People do
Speaker 1: take it there, you can buy it very easily, but
Speaker 1: from every scientific study I could find there there is no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no evidence that they actually can help you in a
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way. So, um, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: Albert was right. There's no adverse effects to consuming royal
Speaker 1: jelly and giving it to your baby, but it's also
Speaker 1: not gonna do anything for you, so you probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: take it, you know, But that's just me. I'm not
Speaker 1: a doctor. Talk to your doctor about your taking royal jelly.
Speaker 1: Uh talk Talk to your doctor about taking royal jelly.
Speaker 1: Talk to you, to your doctor, your child's doctor before
Speaker 1: you even think about giving it to an infant, and
Speaker 1: in general, don't get your parenting advice from from a
Speaker 1: horror or sci fi anthology series. Yeah, I can say
Speaker 1: very clearly that you shouldn't give most things to an
Speaker 1: infant child, which I could just say that very very
Speaker 1: very simply. Um. So, there are a couple of you know,
Speaker 1: adverse uh um issues that can arise by taking royal jelly,
Speaker 1: but it's it's just this typical allergic stuff. You can
Speaker 1: get hive sasthma or or even anaflexus, which you know
Speaker 1: could be life threatening and are very bad things. But
Speaker 1: it's just standard allergy stuff. So yeah, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: hurt you, probably, but you probably shouldn't take it because
Speaker 1: it's not gonna help you either, so so don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. You know this This episode is curious though,
Speaker 1: because it it does seem to be looking at there
Speaker 1: at least a couple of themes that I see in it.
Speaker 1: I mean one, like you mentioned, a lot of these
Speaker 1: stories have something about um like strange relationships between men
Speaker 1: and women, and on this one, this one in particular,
Speaker 1: it's like the man is taking over part of the
Speaker 1: mother's role and he messes it up so badly that
Speaker 1: he's turning the child into another species or some sort
Speaker 1: of a hybrid. There's that, and then there's also the
Speaker 1: fact that it is it deals with the consumption of
Speaker 1: an animal product and sort of paranoia over that, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting to think about because we as
Speaker 1: humans consume a lot of animal products. You think of
Speaker 1: the baby's bottle of milk example, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're if a baby is consuming well
Speaker 1: then we've been talking about formula in these cases. But
Speaker 1: just the basic human consumption of cow milk, the human
Speaker 1: consumption of various other animal products. Um, we just take
Speaker 1: most of that for granted in our in our culture,
Speaker 1: most people don't really give this a second thought. Uh
Speaker 1: where in the many of us don't for large portions
Speaker 1: of our lives lives. But but in this case, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're focusing on on the b products here, and the
Speaker 1: idea that this thing that plays a specific role in
Speaker 1: the life cycle of the b what if what if
Speaker 1: in consuming it it also changed our life cycle? Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's speculative fixture. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: it's very successful because it's based partially in reality, but
Speaker 1: then partially of course not on reality at all. So no,
Speaker 1: I think it was very successful, fun little story and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, yeah, no, I'm glad we actually explored both
Speaker 1: of these. Uh they kind of paired well together with
Speaker 1: these uh you know, uh, humans interacting with with with
Speaker 1: uh what what could be seen as an alien species
Speaker 1: to them, whether it be a bee or a giant
Speaker 1: therapy crab was that what it was called. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that they complimented each other. Well, this was
Speaker 1: a good, good little pairing of anthology episodes. I liked it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other one about the Royal Jelly episode here is
Speaker 1: that it seems like this is a template that could
Speaker 1: easily be used and reused in other anthologies, like they
Speaker 1: like basically the the misapplication of some sort of a
Speaker 1: folk remedy, uh, using an animal product with monstrous results,
Speaker 1: Like you can imagine a scenario that involves the local
Speaker 1: smoothie shop and I don't know, turning someone into an
Speaker 1: avocad of person. I don't know, something more monstrous than that.
Speaker 1: But it seems like a good template. Well, especially because
Speaker 1: I think there's the smallest, smallest element of reality to this. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, I've heard stories of people when they were
Speaker 1: on primarily carrot based diets that their skin turns starts
Speaker 1: to turn a little orange because of that element that
Speaker 1: is that is found in the carrot. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have too much of that. It can affect
Speaker 1: your appearance. So yeah, there there's like a tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: element of reality that. Yeah, speculative fiction really, you know,
Speaker 1: thrives on you can really blow that out of proportion.
Speaker 1: Oh and then of course the human um impulse at
Speaker 1: times to take something that that is said to have
Speaker 1: health some sort of health benefit, and may well have
Speaker 1: some health benefit, but then go so all in on
Speaker 1: it that you have harmful results. Like I remember researching
Speaker 1: an episode on pickling at one point and running across
Speaker 1: people that On one hand, you have plenty of people
Speaker 1: who are like, hey, pickled products are great. There, you
Speaker 1: know this is these are great traditions from culinary history,
Speaker 1: but also they have health benefits, And then inevitably you
Speaker 1: find like one person, at least one person out there
Speaker 1: that's like, I only eat pickled things, and even some
Speaker 1: pickling enthusiasts you're like, I don't know about that. That's
Speaker 1: maybe a bit too far. Coincidentally, when I was watching
Speaker 1: uh this this episode, it was airing on free v,
Speaker 1: which is a free streaming service with commercial breaks, and
Speaker 1: UH I coincidentally saw multiple ads for protein powders and
Speaker 1: supplements while watching this episode. All right, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go and close out this episode here, but we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts
Speaker 1: about these two particular anthology series or the specific episodes
Speaker 1: that we discussed. We'd love to hear from you if
Speaker 1: you have other favorites from the vast catalog of horror anthologies,
Speaker 1: either series or particular episodes that you think should be
Speaker 1: taken into account next year when the Anthology of Horror
Speaker 1: rolls back around, let us know. Um, just a reminder that,
Speaker 1: uh well, first of all, yes, Joe, Joe is gonna
Speaker 1: be out for a little bit here and uh and
Speaker 1: that he will return and in the meantime, we're still
Speaker 1: gonna bust out some new episodes. Our core episodes come
Speaker 1: out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Monday, Listener Mail, Wednesday, a
Speaker 1: short form artifact or monster fact. On a Friday Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns and just talk about a weird film. And yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks to Seth Nicholas Johnson for not only producing the
Speaker 1: show as he normally does, but also jumping in and
Speaker 1: uh serving as guest co host. Happy to be here,
Speaker 1: happy to fill in for Joe while he's gone for
Speaker 1: the next little bits. And uh yeah, if if you
Speaker 1: for some reason like listening to me talk, you could
Speaker 1: find me on Rusty Needles Record Club. It's my weekly
Speaker 1: podcast about music that I do. Go check that out
Speaker 1: if you want it. I'm sure I'll mention it more
Speaker 1: while I'm around. But if you want to talk to
Speaker 1: this podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind, please reach out
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