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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. I'm recording all of these intros, by

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Speaker 1: the way, in Batch while Joe is on holiday leave.

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Speaker 1: He has of course since back, and I am speaking

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Speaker 1: to you from the past, but that's why you're not

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Speaker 1: hearing Joe on any of these intros for the Horror

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Speaker 1: Vacuui series. This, by the way, is part four of

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Speaker 1: our series from last year, Horror VACUUEI I hope you

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Speaker 1: enjoy it.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four

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Speaker 3: of our series on horror. Vacui or fear of the

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Speaker 3: void or fear of the vacuum, a concept that has

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Speaker 3: relevance in art and design, where it describes an pulse

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Speaker 3: to fill in blank or uniform spaces with detail, as

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Speaker 3: well as relevance in philosophy and in physics, where it's

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Speaker 3: been used to describe the long standing belief, often derived

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Speaker 3: from Aristotle, that a vacuum or a void could not

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Speaker 3: exist in nature, and that empty space was in fact

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Speaker 3: an incoherent concept. So in the previous episode of this

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Speaker 3: one we talked about how this view in physics persisted

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Speaker 3: through the Middle Ages and part of the early Modern

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Speaker 3: period in Europe until important experiments by figures like Evangelista Torricelli,

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Speaker 3: the man with the batman symbol for a mustache, or

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Speaker 3: rob I think, as you pointed out, the sort of

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Speaker 3: the crucifix goatee.

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Speaker 1: M h yeah, sort of a crucifix Van.

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Speaker 3: Dyck, Yeah, yeah, him and in Blaze, Pascal of course

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Speaker 3: established that an approximate vacuum could actually be created inside

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Speaker 3: a glass tube, and that the force truly responsible for

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Speaker 3: preventing a void from forming in most cases, such as

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Speaker 3: in the case of like a pump or a siphon,

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Speaker 3: was not Nature's mysterious hatred for vacuums, but in fact

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Speaker 3: the weight of the air we breathe, known today as

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Speaker 3: atmospheric pressure. But something we alluded to in the previous

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Speaker 3: episode is also the fact that while the laws of

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Speaker 3: nature don't exactly rule out a vacuum in the way

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Speaker 3: that Aristotle and the Scholastics thought, there is also some

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Speaker 3: nuance to the issue, because you can create an approximate vacuum,

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Speaker 3: but it's really hard or perhaps impossible to create a

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Speaker 3: perfect vacuum, depending on how you define your goals. When

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Speaker 3: we talk about a vacuum in like real world examples

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Speaker 3: instead of you know, ideal thought experiments, we are never

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Speaker 3: talking about completely empty spaces with no particles whatsoever. Instead,

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Speaker 3: we're usually talking about an area where the density of

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Speaker 3: gas particles is very or the inside of a container

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Speaker 3: where the density of gas particles is much lower than

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Speaker 3: the density of particles on the outside. And the latter

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Speaker 3: type of vacuum where a container that has a lower

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Speaker 3: density of gas particles than the world outside, is common

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Speaker 3: throughout the world of technology and electrical appliances and scientific equipment,

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Speaker 3: especially of years past, but still somewhat today. A couple

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Speaker 3: of classic examples incandescent light bulbs. They make light by

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Speaker 3: running current through a filament that gets so hot that

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Speaker 3: it starts to emit photons it starts to glow. But

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Speaker 3: these bulbs are not full of air at regular atmospheric pressure,

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Speaker 3: and if they were that would be a problem. The

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Speaker 3: filament would tend to fail very quickly. That's not good

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Speaker 3: for incandescent bulbs, so instead they are typically either filled

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Speaker 3: with an inert gas like argon or nitrogen, or they

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Speaker 3: are pumped out to contain a vacuum. The earliest light

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Speaker 3: bulbs were vacuum based rather than inert gas based. Another

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Speaker 3: component used in electronics, one that will be very familiar

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Speaker 3: to electric guitar players, is vacuum tubes, which were once

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Speaker 3: commonly used to manipulate current to amplify and rectify electrical signals.

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Speaker 3: They've been replaced with silicon transistors in most modern devices,

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Speaker 3: but they still have their uses. And by the way,

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Speaker 3: if you want to see something really weird and awesome,

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Speaker 3: look up pictures of vacuum tube based computers before transistors

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Speaker 3: took over to become the logic circuitry inside computers. I

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Speaker 3: guess that happened roughly around the sixties or so. But

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Speaker 3: before that, the information processing in computers was done on

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Speaker 3: large arrays of vacuum tubes. And I'm very tempted to

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Speaker 3: say like that, I wish to see a certain kind

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Speaker 3: of computer snobbery arise, where there are like gamers who

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Speaker 3: are like, oh, you play on transistors, I've got a

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Speaker 3: vacuum tube rig.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, some of the images that come up from me

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Speaker 1: they look very there's a mad science quality to these.

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Speaker 1: They look like there's some sort of strange experiment containing

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Speaker 1: you know, contained gases or something.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it does look like that because they look like

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Speaker 3: almost like kind of like pills in a blister pack,

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Speaker 3: you know, the little blisters popping out, But they're not

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Speaker 3: containing special gases. They are containing lower density of gases.

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Speaker 3: What those tubes contain is relatively nothing compared to the atmosphere. Now.

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Speaker 3: One place tubes are still popular in electrical devices today

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Speaker 3: is in guitar amplifiers, where a lot of players prefer

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Speaker 3: the feeling of playing with tubes as opposed to solid

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Speaker 3: state amps. Rob, I don't know if you've ever come

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Speaker 3: across this debate, you know, sometimes I think people look

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Speaker 3: on the tube preference as a kind of snobbery. Personally,

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Speaker 3: I can see both sides, Like, I think solid state

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Speaker 3: amps sound great, but tubes are. They're cool? Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Not being a guitar player myself, I rarely get any

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Speaker 1: of these conversations and rarely hear any of this. So

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Speaker 1: is this something where I know a lot of conversations

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Speaker 1: for regarding retro technology and music and recording and production,

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Speaker 1: it actually does come through to the final product. It

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Speaker 1: actually is something that affects the final sound of the music.

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Speaker 1: Is that the case here?

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Speaker 3: People argue about this. The people argue about to what

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Speaker 3: extent you can hear the difference in something that comes

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Speaker 3: out of a tube versus a good modern attempt to

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Speaker 3: approximate that with transistors. I'm not going to try to

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Speaker 3: weigh in on one side of the debate here. Basically,

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Speaker 3: my experience is that solid state amps sound fine. They

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Speaker 3: sound great, but there's also just something kind of cool

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Speaker 3: about tubes. They might kind of feel differently when you're

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Speaker 3: playing a guitar through one, especially if you're in the

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Speaker 3: room with it as opposed to listening to a recording.

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Speaker 3: I'm not sure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, listeners, let us know. Do you think tubes are

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Speaker 1: tubular or do you think solid state is solid? I

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Speaker 1: don't know.

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Speaker 3: I will weigh in and say I think it's a

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Speaker 3: stupid thing to like get mad at people or criticize

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Speaker 3: people about one way or another. Calm down, guys, fair enough,

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Speaker 3: But coming back to the bigger point. In cases like

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Speaker 3: the vacuum light bulb or the vacuum tube for current amplification,

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Speaker 3: the area inside the glass in these devices is again

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Speaker 3: not a perfect vacuum. There are particles of atmosphere in there,

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Speaker 3: they're just way fewer of them than in an equivalent

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Speaker 3: area outside. And there are actually designations for the different

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Speaker 3: levels of vacuum that are achieved through technological means. You know,

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Speaker 3: you can have like a medium vacuum, a high vacuum,

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Speaker 3: an ultra high vacuum, and so that's what's possible on Earth.

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Speaker 3: But then you might be wondering in response to that,

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Speaker 3: Wait a minute, though, isn't outer space at least a vacuum.

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Speaker 3: Isn't the space between the planets or the space between

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Speaker 3: the stars at least a vacuum. Again, the answer here

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Speaker 3: is yes and no. It depends on what you mean.

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Speaker 3: Space is a vacuum when compared to earth atmosphere, and

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Speaker 3: it is even lower density than most partial vacuums created

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Speaker 3: by humans. I was trying to find a good estimate

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Speaker 3: for the density of outer space, and I came across

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Speaker 3: a couple things in that book I was talking about

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Speaker 3: In the last episode called the Void by the physicists,

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Speaker 3: Frank Close, he writes about while he's writing about the

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Speaker 3: reasoning that led people to assume that outer space was

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Speaker 3: a vacuum when scientists such as Blaize Pascal started to

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Speaker 3: notice that the atmospheric pressure was different at different altitude.

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Speaker 3: So you go up on a mountain, the atmospheric pressure

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Speaker 3: is lower. That does tend to suggest that if you

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Speaker 3: go higher and higher, the density of particles just keeps

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Speaker 3: getting lower and lower, and you would eventually reach an

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Speaker 3: altitude at which there was effectively nowhere to breathe anymore.

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Speaker 3: There was no atmosphere anymore, which some people found maybe

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Speaker 3: kind of like threatening in principle or maybe threatening to

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Speaker 3: their theological ideas of how the universe was put together. Nevertheless,

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Speaker 3: you could show it was true. As you go higher

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Speaker 3: and higher the density gets lower. So close, writes quote,

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Speaker 3: at a height of one hundred kilometers, the pressure is

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Speaker 3: less than a billionth of that on the ground, at

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Speaker 3: four hundred kilometers a million millionth, and en route to

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Speaker 3: the moon in space it is down by ten to

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Speaker 3: the nineteen, an amount that is less than the size

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Speaker 3: of a proton compared to a kilometer. We can thus

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Speaker 3: say that essentially all of the atmosphere is a thin

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Speaker 3: shell whose thickness is less than one thousandth of the

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Speaker 3: Earth's radius. Wow, I don't doubt that's true. But that's

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Speaker 3: the kind of thing that I don't even I don't

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Speaker 3: usually picture it that way. I you know, I picture

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Speaker 3: the atmosphere is extending much higher up off the surface

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Speaker 3: of the Earth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. For me, this like the reality of

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Speaker 1: the thinning of the air at the higher altitude you

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Speaker 1: get to. This was always kind of spelled out from

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Speaker 1: by looking at something like the Lockheed you to the

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Speaker 1: spy aircraft that had these just a super long, super

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Speaker 1: wide wingspan then enabled it one of several design functions,

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Speaker 1: but the most obvious one that enabled it to fly

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Speaker 1: at such high altitudes where there is just there's less air.

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Speaker 3: Yes, the air is thinner, it's harder and harder to

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Speaker 3: generate lyft. But okay, that's how much thinner the atmosphere

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Speaker 3: gets as you extend up off of the surface of

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Speaker 3: the Earth. What about when you go even beyond that? Well,

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Speaker 3: I came across some sort of quick and dirty estimates

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Speaker 3: by a radio astronomer named Alistair Gunn doing a short

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Speaker 3: Q and A for the BBC, And note that the

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Speaker 3: following are approximate. But what gun says is that roughly

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Speaker 3: within the Solar System space between the planets contains an

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Speaker 3: average of about five atoms per cubic centimeter, so that's

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Speaker 3: very low density, but there's still is gas out there.

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Speaker 3: It's just extremely dispersed. In interstellar space the space between

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Speaker 3: solar systems in our galaxy, so like where you know

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Speaker 3: where the voyager probes are eventually headed to, or where

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Speaker 3: Omuamua came from. That interstellar space has about one atom

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Speaker 3: per cubic centimeter according to gun here. And then in

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Speaker 3: intergalactic space, the space between galaxies, the density is about

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Speaker 3: one hundred times less than that. It gets pretty lonely

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Speaker 3: out there, right, but still there are not no particles.

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Speaker 3: They just get farther and farther apart on average. So

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Speaker 3: the reason space is so empty is of course gravity.

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Speaker 3: Objects with mass attract one another, so mass tends to

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Speaker 3: clump together over time, creating this varied terrain of cosmic density,

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Speaker 3: with very high density say in the middle of a star,

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Speaker 3: and still lower density around that star and around the

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Speaker 3: planets around that star, and then lower density in between

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Speaker 3: the stars, and then lower density in between the galaxies

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Speaker 3: and so forth. But it wasn't always this way. In

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Speaker 3: the early history of the universe, matter was dispersed far

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Speaker 3: more evenly, and you could think of the early universe

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Speaker 3: in a way as a kind of well, in a

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Speaker 3: strange way, almost kind of like an ocean. I guess

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Speaker 3: it wasn't liquid, but like an ocean or a cloud

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Speaker 3: or something where there were more uniform distributions. But then

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Speaker 3: as space expanded that more varied terrain that we know

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Speaker 3: today influenced by gravity emerged.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, the accretion of these various

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Speaker 1: cosmic bodies of different sizes, and then the resulting sort

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Speaker 1: of shrinkage between these accretions.

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Speaker 3: So in a weird way, you could argue that Aristotle

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Speaker 3: is kind of technically vindicated in that there probably are

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Speaker 3: no large scale, long term areas of perfectly empty space

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Speaker 3: in the universe. But I think that in the normal

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Speaker 3: way of understanding Aristotle, he was wrong. You can create

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Speaker 3: a of functional vacuum, but it's not a perfect vacuum.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it sounds like you can also do a

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Speaker 1: fair amount of arguing over the size of said vacuum.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. This was making me wonder, like, what is the

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Speaker 3: average density of the universe overall? And so I was

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Speaker 3: looking around at that I did find a NASA page

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Speaker 3: on this This is according to research I think carried

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Speaker 3: out by w MAP by the Wilkinson Microwave an isotropy

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Speaker 3: probe that was looking at fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background,

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Speaker 3: and in a write up on that research by NASA

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Speaker 3: that they say, quote w MAP determined that the universe

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Speaker 3: is flat, from which it follows that the mean energy

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Speaker 3: density in the universe is equal to the critical density

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Speaker 3: within a zero point five percent margin of error. This

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Speaker 3: is equivalent to a mass density of because as an aside,

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Speaker 3: ultimately mass and energy can be exchanged for one another,

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Speaker 3: they are equivalently. You know, mass is just a huge

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Speaker 3: amount of energy. Coming back to the quote, this is

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Speaker 3: equivalent to a mass density of nine point nine times

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Speaker 3: ten to the negative thirty grams per cubic centimeter. But

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Speaker 3: the density of normal matter is not even that high

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Speaker 3: because most of the energy density in the universe is

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Speaker 3: not normal matter. It's dark matter or dark energy. So

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Speaker 3: maybe normal is not even the right word, because the

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Speaker 3: kind of matter we're talking about that we're familiar with

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Speaker 3: is the minority of stuff. Less than five percent of

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Speaker 3: the stuff in the universe is actually made of atoms.

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Speaker 3: So the quote actual energy density of atoms is equivalent

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Speaker 3: to roughly one proton per four cubic meters. So you

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Speaker 3: can imagine kind of a like a large palette box

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Speaker 3: and that's like one proton in there, and that's the

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Speaker 3: average density of the universe.

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Speaker 1: Yes, so if we were to like redistribute it, that's

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Speaker 1: how it would play out.

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Speaker 3: I think we should redistribute it. Get a fresh start

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Speaker 3: on this thing. Now.

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Speaker 1: These numbers are admittedly maybe a little bit challenging to

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Speaker 1: sort of picture in your head all the time, But

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Speaker 1: I do like that we're dealing with hard numbers here.

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Speaker 1: We're doing with dealing with objective numbers related to the

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Speaker 1: vacuum and the void, something we don't always have in

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Speaker 1: this particular journey. Sometimes we're dealing with very very subjective qualities.

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Speaker 3: Oh, you mean, like Aristotle's argument that you couldn't have

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Speaker 3: empty space because if it not be body, it could

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Speaker 3: not exist.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, or certainly getting into some of the philosophical ends

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Speaker 1: of the spectrum where we're dealing with what's the difference

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Speaker 1: between emptiness and nothingness, what's the difference between eternity and

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Speaker 1: nothing It can get a little loosey goosey.

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Speaker 3: Well, the difference between I'm going to defend exploring the

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Speaker 3: difference between emptiness and nothingness. I think that is an

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Speaker 3: interesting distinction, but one that I'm not sure science has

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Speaker 3: all the answers on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a lot of it does come down

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Speaker 1: to the subjective experience. I was talking with my wife

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Speaker 1: before I came in here, and she brought up the

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Speaker 1: example of isolation tanks. Isolation tanks being a situation where

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Speaker 1: on one level, you have certainly limited your space. You

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Speaker 1: were isolated or within a tank. You're floating within a tank,

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Speaker 1: and therefore you're cutting off how much of the outside

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Speaker 1: world you were in. But then there is also something

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Speaker 1: to the experience that is boundary breaking. You know, floating

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Speaker 1: in this salt bath that is the same temperature as

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Speaker 1: your body serves to sort of break down the division

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Speaker 1: between where you stop and the rest of the world begins. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are plenty of cases like you don't have to

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Speaker 1: have an isolation tank to engage in that kind of

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Speaker 1: boundary dispute, you know.

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Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that people often seek maybe not

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Speaker 3: isolation tanks exactly, but isolation from stimuli specifically in order

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Speaker 3: to be creative, and that kind of strange that almost

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Speaker 3: implies that they think a principle of psychological horror vacay

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Speaker 3: is going to come into effect, right, that if you

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Speaker 3: rob yourself of the normal overwhelming stimuli of everyday existence,

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Speaker 3: you will get your eyes like, you will team with ideas.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but it is one of these things too, where

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Speaker 1: it's like a lot of times you're just you're just

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Speaker 1: changing out one high stimuli environment for another, and maybe

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Speaker 1: it's just a new one, a novel one. Like when

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Speaker 1: you go to the beach and you walk on the beach. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a different experience than being stuck in a city

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Speaker 1: or in a library or in your own house. But

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Speaker 1: I mean that there's a lot going on at the beach.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's crashing waves and expanses of sand and

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Speaker 1: birds and all sorts of little shells to look at. Likewise,

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Speaker 1: of course, a walk through the woods is just I mean,

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Speaker 1: we've talked about this before on the podcast, Like your

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Speaker 1: your senses are able to fully engage age in the

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Speaker 1: environment for which they have evolved, taking in all these

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Speaker 1: details and changing details in the world around you.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that does relate to these theories about how

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Speaker 3: nature tends to engage our attention in a different way

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Speaker 3: than built environments do, and that essentially that I've forgotten

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Speaker 3: all the details of exactly what that theory is, but

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Speaker 3: it that nature can basically be absorbing to the attention

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Speaker 3: but essentially not stress inducing.

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Speaker 1: I think, yeah, And of course it is not even

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Speaker 1: getting into social isolation cutting yourself off from wanted and

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Speaker 1: unwanted social connections. Certainly there's a lot to be said

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Speaker 1: for cutting yourself off from the connection to one's smart

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Speaker 1: device and the Internet and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Finally, before we move on from this, I was wondering,

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Speaker 3: what are the superlatives in terms of vacuums created by

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Speaker 3: humans in the laboratory or with the aid of technology.

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Speaker 3: What's the lowest pressure humans can achieve. I'm not sure

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Speaker 3: what the answer is in terms of the lowest pressure overall,

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Speaker 3: but I definitely came across a contender, and it is

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Speaker 3: certainly one of the most impressive artificial vacuum systems ever

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Speaker 3: created by humans, if not the lowest pressure. And it's

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Speaker 3: actually the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator,

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Speaker 3: which is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research

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Speaker 3: or CERN. I believe it is still the largest vacuum

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Speaker 3: system in operation in the world. It was certainly at

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Speaker 3: the time it was put together, and I can't think

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Speaker 3: of what would be larger than it. But it has

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Speaker 3: more than one hundred kilometers of piping held in a

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Speaker 3: state of vacuum for various purposes. There has to be

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Speaker 3: ultra high vacuum piping for the actual particle beams to

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Speaker 3: travel through so that like the accelerated particles don't collide

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Speaker 3: with gas molecule and ruin the experiments. I'm not sure

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Speaker 3: what would happen if they did collide. Maybe it could

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Speaker 3: be worse than ruining experiments. Certainly wouldn't be good. You

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Speaker 3: don't want it. But there are also advanced vacuum systems

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Speaker 3: used to like insulate other elements of the collider, such

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Speaker 3: as the magnets or the helium distribution line. So a

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Speaker 3: lot of evacuated space going on at the LHC facility,

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Speaker 3: and it's at extremely low density. They compare various vacua

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Speaker 3: that they create to the density of interstellar space, so

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Speaker 3: that is horror vacuity in physics. But one thing I've

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Speaker 3: been wanting to come back to is the fear of

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Speaker 3: emptiness or the fear of empty spaces as an actual

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Speaker 3: literal fear that humans feel the kind of uneasiness that

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Speaker 3: one experiences in a depopulated space.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this topic of chinophobia and some other related terms.

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Speaker 1: I figure a good place to start on all of

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Speaker 1: this might be to return to cinema. We talked a

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Speaker 1: little bit about cinema earlier in this journey, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: we talked about the nineteen seventy seven Dario Argento horror

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Speaker 1: classic Suspiria, and there's a scene in that film that

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Speaker 1: instantly came to mind when I was thinking about this fear,

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Speaker 1: this horror associated with depopulated spaces. Like you're saying, and

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Speaker 1: if you've seen Suspiria the original, though I really like

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Speaker 1: the remake as well, and I don't think they recreated

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Speaker 1: this scene in the remake, but I could be wrong.

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Speaker 1: This scene involves a blind man walking through an open,

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Speaker 1: unoccupied city plaza at night. There are no other human

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Speaker 1: beings in sight, the environment is pretty well illuminated, though

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Speaker 1: there are still some deep pockets of shadow. There's a

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Speaker 1: growing sense of threat and terror and eventually, and I

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Speaker 1: think we get some very wide shots here too to

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Speaker 1: really take in all that space, and then as the

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Speaker 1: tension builds, the dog begins to bark, and in a

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Speaker 1: nasty twist, because again this is a Gilat film and

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Speaker 1: they're often nasty, the dog turns on the blind man

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Speaker 1: and kills him. But the way the scene builds up

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Speaker 1: to that moment takes just full advantage of this very

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Speaker 1: open space, this feeling that there's just something wrong in

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Speaker 1: the openness of all of this, that there's just this

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Speaker 1: one individual and his dog out here and something terrible

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Speaker 1: is about to happen.

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Speaker 3: I think this scene is a fantastic example, especially because

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Speaker 3: of how different it is than than most of most

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Speaker 3: of Suspiria and most of other you know, Italian horror

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Speaker 3: films or Gallo films, which we noted in the first

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Speaker 3: episode in the series are They are often recognized for

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Speaker 3: being especially visually busy, you know, they have that artistic

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Speaker 3: sense of horror vacui, as in, you sense a desire

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Speaker 3: to fill in all empti or uniform spaces with detail

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Speaker 3: and richness and stuff. You know, they're full of patterns,

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Speaker 3: and so I think the scene of you know, the

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Speaker 3: man who is unfortunately cursed by the witches and then

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Speaker 3: this attack happens on him. It gets especially scary because

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Speaker 3: it's so unlike the rest of the movie, having all

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Speaker 3: this emptiness and blank space in the night. But I

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Speaker 3: was thinking about this and about how the horror genre

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Speaker 3: in particular tends to favor blank, vacant, empty locations in

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Speaker 3: multiple ways. So one way is that they tend to

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Speaker 3: favor settings that are like literally emptied in the narrative sense.

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Speaker 3: They are literally emptied of human activity or neglected by

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Speaker 3: humans in some way. So think of how much horror

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Speaker 3: loves like abandoned or empty buildings and settlements. Maybe the

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Speaker 3: first idea that comes to my mind is Dracula's Castle,

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Speaker 3: which is interesting because it is a castle that has

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Speaker 3: no servants bustling about, no courtiers, just empty halls and chambers,

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Speaker 3: and then the solitary figure of Dracula himself as the host.

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Speaker 3: It's kind of like a like a Where's Waldo, except

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Speaker 3: there's just one guy there on the page and he's

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Speaker 3: really staring at your neck.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, that would be a great twist, and a

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Speaker 1: Where's Waldo book? Where's Dracula? And each page is a

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Speaker 1: massive level of Dracula's castle and there's just Dracula.

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Speaker 3: There's nothing there. It's just him. There are no other Waldos.

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Speaker 3: By the way, this reminds me of one of my

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Speaker 3: favorite scenes in the movie Shadow of the Vampire from

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Speaker 3: the year two thousand, which stars It's a sort of

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Speaker 3: a horror comedy about the making of the movie nos Ferratu,

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Speaker 3: but it says that Max Shrek, the actor who plays

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Speaker 3: no s Faratu in the movie played by Willem Dafoe

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Speaker 3: in this movie, was actually a vampire. That is what

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Speaker 3: it assumes, and it's kind of a great premise. And

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Speaker 3: there's a moment where they ask the character, who is

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Speaker 3: in this telling a real vampire, if he read the

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Speaker 3: novel Dracula. He says yes. He says the novel made

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Speaker 3: him sad, and they said why and he says, because

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Speaker 3: Dracula had no servants.

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Speaker 1: I forgot about that part.

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Speaker 3: That's good, but it is kind of sad, isn't it,

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Speaker 3: Like the when when Harker in the novel realizes that

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Speaker 3: like it was the count himself who had to set

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Speaker 3: out the meal for him and so forth. There's something

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Speaker 3: kind of like, not like I want vampires to have servants,

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Speaker 3: but I don't know. There's something kind of lonely and

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Speaker 3: uneasy about it, And I think it has a lot

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Speaker 3: to do with the fact that it's in a castle.

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Speaker 3: It's in this big space meant to be occupied by

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Speaker 3: many people, but he's the only one there. I mean,

436
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 3: I guess later we find out there's some other you know,

437
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,400
Speaker 3: ghoul type creatures, but at first it's just empty except

438
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 3: for him. But think of other movies with just abandoned locations,

439
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:42,480
Speaker 3: ghost towns, abandoned settlements, you know, empty empty streets and

440
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 3: other places at night and so forth. Rob, I'm not

441
00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 3: sure if you've noticed the same thing, but it strikes

442
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 3: me that horror movies especially favor locations that are not

443
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:55,920
Speaker 3: just empty as a matter of course, like you'd expect

444
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 3: them to be empty, but locations that are empty in

445
00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 3: contrast to how we usually see them.

446
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is often played a great effect,

447
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:08,919
Speaker 1: and various ghost towns in your westerns and of course

448
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:14,119
Speaker 1: depopulated cities, like it's not enough to just replace the

449
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: you know, you get into like post apocalyptic scenarios where

450
00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 1: there's like destroyed cities and bodies and so forth, and yes, zombies,

451
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean you're necessarily going for this total

452
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:30,240
Speaker 1: feeling of emptiness this sense that all the activity and

453
00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 1: presence of it was there previously is just gone. But

454
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 1: one example that does come to mind, and this is

455
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 1: a zombie film, but twenty eight days Later, of course,

456
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 1: that's all those wonderful shots of what depopulated London and

457
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: our character walking around there and sort of experiencing just

458
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: the overwhelming emptiness of the city.

459
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:51,160
Speaker 3: I think that's a great example. It's incredibly unnerving that opening.

460
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 3: So you could contrast that with like say a movie

461
00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 3: with scenes in a desert or a forest wilderness, which

462
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,440
Speaker 3: might be empty of human activity, but we would expect

463
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 3: them to be empty of human activity. And in cases

464
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 3: where movies focus on that, in the horror genre, at least,

465
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 3: the horror usually comes from when you find something or someone,

466
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,719
Speaker 3: or suspect the presence of something or someone that you

467
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:18,639
Speaker 3: wouldn't usually expect to encounter there. Instead, locations that I

468
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:20,959
Speaker 3: think of as most common to horror movies are like

469
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 3: empty versions of places you would usually expect to be full.

470
00:27:24,600 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 3: So not just cities like at the beginning of twenty

471
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 3: eight Days Later, but think of empty hospitals at the

472
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 3: night shift, empty churches and cathedrals, where's the congregation empty

473
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 3: school buildings after hours, empty empty castles. Like I said

474
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 3: at the beginning, you know what happened to the crew

475
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 3: of the event Horizon? Why is this spaceship empty? So

476
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 3: I think empty locations like this lend themselves well to

477
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 3: horror for multiple reasons. One is a kind of just

478
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 3: like literal understanding of danger in the world. Like, you know,

479
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 3: there's an uneasiness that comes from a location being empty,

480
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 3: because it sort of me like you're on your own

481
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 3: against whatever might threaten you. But if for the locations

482
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 3: full of people, you might be able to get help

483
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 3: from the werewolf if it's going to come at you,

484
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:11,160
Speaker 3: Like people usually feel safer in numbers for totally good

485
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 3: and logical reasons.

486
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 1: You know two examples that come to mind. They're very

487
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: related because they both involve the same sort of location.

488
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 1: I think both of these examples kind of maybe you know,

489
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:25,200
Speaker 1: bend this line a little bit and blurred the distinction

490
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:31,639
Speaker 1: between emptiness being invigorating and empowering and it being terrifying.

491
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: They both take place in shopping malls, and of course

492
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,400
Speaker 1: thinking about Donna the Dead from George Romero and Shopping Mall,

493
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: both films in which our characters find themselves in a

494
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: depopulated mall shopping mall environment, and eventually they're gonna have

495
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: to deal with of course zombies in one film, and

496
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 1: well and also like evil bikers in one film, but

497
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: then in the other film theyre can have to deal

498
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 1: with killer robots. And in both of these there's kind

499
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: of like this I don't know, this kind of I

500
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: guess capitalist rebellion in energy to them, where it's like

501
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 1: this place that contained me through commerce and also just

502
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 1: the social environment of the mall. Now those constraints are

503
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 1: not there, and I can just go into any store

504
00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 1: in the mall and steal things. But then on the

505
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: other hand, yes, it's like all the things that made

506
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 1: this a normal place, that made this a cathedral of

507
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: American culture during the nineteen eighties or what have you,

508
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: that's gone as well. There's something unholy about the environment.

509
00:29:31,760 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 3: That's great observation. Yeah, about the malls in these movies,

510
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 3: it's like the fact that we see them with all

511
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 3: of the people taken out of them, not shopping anymore,

512
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:45,959
Speaker 3: just automatically invites questions, kind of critical questions about what

513
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 3: this place was for in the first place and what

514
00:29:48,320 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 3: it meant. Yeah, and of course. Yeah, it invites that

515
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 3: uneasy feeling, and I think that goes to the next thing.

516
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 3: So there was the thing I already said about empty locations,

517
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 3: or in a very literal sense, they're scarier just because

518
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 3: like there's safety in numbers, but empty locations and abandoned

519
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 3: the locations I think are also good fodder for horror

520
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 3: on a conceptual level because in some cases they invite

521
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 3: you to wonder why the place is empty, like what

522
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 3: happened here? Where did the people go? Or as you

523
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 3: just said, they invite you to sort of look upon

524
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:22,520
Speaker 3: the purpose of the place with a newly critical eye,

525
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 3: like when people are not doing the things they're normally

526
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 3: doing in this place, what is this place actually form?

527
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just got some of that in our and

528
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: you alluded to this a little bit already. But the

529
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: episodes that we did about Christmas ghost stories, yes from

530
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:42,000
Speaker 1: Northern Europe, that deal with this whole question, like what

531
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:44,720
Speaker 1: is a church if it is midnight and no one

532
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:46,719
Speaker 1: is there, Like is it still a church? And if

533
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 1: it is still a church, what does that mean?

534
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 3: Is it still sacred or does the sacredness come from

535
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 3: the you know, the congregation and the acts they do

536
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 3: inside it, and so could the same building the church

537
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:09,920
Speaker 3: be used for unholy rites. But finally, I think there

538
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 3: are also conceptual suggestions, like a place that is empty

539
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:16,960
Speaker 3: in contrast to the expectation that it should be full,

540
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 3: like all of these depopulated places we've been talking about

541
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 3: that has long been associated with death, right like you

542
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 3: would think under normal old ideas like humans have left

543
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:30,240
Speaker 3: this formerly inhabited place, like a soul leaving a body.

544
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 3: But in addition to all these more literal concerns, I

545
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 3: think horror films in particular, but other genres as well,

546
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 3: often use blank space also known as negative space, in

547
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:47,960
Speaker 3: the frame of the film as a visual marker to

548
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 3: create uneasiness. So this is less literal about like what

549
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 3: is threatening the characters, and more just kind of the

550
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:56,720
Speaker 3: feelings that we get from how a movie looks. I

551
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,640
Speaker 3: don't know how much of this is a natural secological

552
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 3: expectation that humans have and how much is just sort

553
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 3: of a like a learned convention emergent convention of filmmaking

554
00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 3: that we have all learned implicitly from watching movies. But

555
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 3: I think the baseline fact is that when we see

556
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 3: negative space in a movie, we somewhat expect it to

557
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 3: become filled. There's empty space on the screen. We expect

558
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 3: something to come to occupy that space, and of course,

559
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 3: once you have expectation, you have the ability to create tension,

560
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 3: and by denying the fulfillment of that expectation, like you know,

561
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 3: like a character peers out into the darkness and it's

562
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 3: uniform darkness, not filled in with detail, there's no detail,

563
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 3: or they look into an empty room with nothing in it,

564
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:46,440
Speaker 3: or some other negative space. We expect something to happen,

565
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 3: something to fill that space or to come into view,

566
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 3: and if it doesn't, that is unresolved tension and uneasiness

567
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 3: and the sort of the prime example, like one of

568
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 3: the core feelings that is evoked by weird fiction and cinema.

569
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:01,959
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think a great recent example of

570
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 1: all this would be Jordan Peele's Note that came out

571
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: just last year. I'm not going to do any spoilers

572
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: for it because I don't think you've seen it.

573
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 3: Yet, have you? I still haven't, no, okay, and I.

574
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: Know a lot of listeners haven't, so I'm not going

575
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 1: to spoil it. But I will say that there are

576
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,200
Speaker 1: a lot of shots that established the sky as the

577
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: domain of some manner of inhuman threat. And then below

578
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: beneath the sky you have this wonderful California desert setting

579
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: as well, so it's very geographically open. But then you

580
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: have this open sky, you also have some wonderful clouds

581
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 1: at play, both during the daytime sequences and the nighttime sequences.

582
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 1: But still it does this fabulous job of establishing a

583
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 1: cloudy or even open sky as being possibly a threat.

584
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 1: And I found that when I watched it in the theater.

585
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: When I left the theater, when I left the dark

586
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:53,480
Speaker 1: theater and went out into the day, because it was

587
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:57,479
Speaker 1: a matinee that I attended, instantly I kind of felt

588
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: in danger. I kind of felt some of the danger

589
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: from the film still, like residually coursing through my body

590
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: to where I was like, let's go ahead and get

591
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 1: to the car. I don't want to. I don't feel

592
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 1: great walking across this this wide open parking lot beneath

593
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:13,320
Speaker 1: this the scary sky.

594
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 3: Oh boy. Well, I will admit that when I come

595
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,839
Speaker 3: out of a matinee, I often feel uneasy. Uh, No

596
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,839
Speaker 3: matter what the movie was, there's just something weird about

597
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:25,759
Speaker 3: coming out of a darkened movie. Theater and it's still

598
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 3: light outside.

599
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like all the world is what's going on?

600
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 3: Yeah? True. It kind of reminds me of that feeling

601
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 3: like when you take too long of a nap in

602
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 3: the middle of the day.

603
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it's disorienting you. You've been in a

604
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: cave watching a cinema and then then you go out

605
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 1: into the real world. Now, in thinking about how Note

606
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:50,839
Speaker 1: made me temporarily feel about open skies, I did find

607
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: it interesting to come across various mentions of a supposed

608
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:59,320
Speaker 1: phobia online dubbed cassidastrophobia, which is described as a fear

609
00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:04,840
Speaker 1: of essentially falling up into the sky. Now. I couldn't

610
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:09,160
Speaker 1: find any academic discussion of this alleged phobia, and I'm

611
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 1: not doubting anyone's experiences around it, because for starters, there's

612
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: plenty of room for anxiety and paranoia to creep up

613
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: in one's experience of reality. It may simply just be

614
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 1: newly defined and understudied, but to whatever extent it's an

615
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 1: actual phobia, it would seem to be kind of a

616
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: subset of this idea of chinophobia pronounce fear of the

617
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:34,879
Speaker 1: open you a feeling that this open sky might either

618
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 1: swallow you up or somehow gravity is going to fail

619
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: and you'll float up into it.

620
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 3: That is an interesting fear because it doesn't correspond to

621
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 3: anything that I can think of that ever happens in reality,

622
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 3: and it's very specific.

623
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:53,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting because I can kind of relate

624
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: to these overwhelming feelings of viewing either a clear blue

625
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:59,759
Speaker 1: sky in the day or certainly a sprawling starscape and

626
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,319
Speaker 1: a rural environment where you're free of light pollution and

627
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: cloud cover and everything's really expansive and it But it's

628
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: also it's weird because these are both vistas that can

629
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 1: be very inspiring and beautiful but can maybe reach the

630
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 1: point of being overwhelming, and maybe it ends up having

631
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:22,480
Speaker 1: this effect where you think about what would happen if I, like,

632
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: what if I just fell up into it? And it

633
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. Nobody's like, this is not going

634
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: to happen. You have you have a number of other

635
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:32,480
Speaker 1: concerns if gravity stops working, besides you know where you're

636
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: going to float to. But but yeah, I can I

637
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: can sort of look back on times in my life

638
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 1: where I've been looking up at like a big, clear

639
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 1: blue sky or some sort of a starscape and feeling this,

640
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 1: especially with the Blue Sky. I think there are times

641
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: where I looked up at the starscape and I was

642
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: maybe a little afraid of aliens more than I was

643
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:53,240
Speaker 1: afraid of just falling up into the blue.

644
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 3: Were you afraid of aliens because you watched Unsolved Mysteries

645
00:36:57,120 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 3: and they had the scary sitg Yes.

646
00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:01,239
Speaker 1: As a child, I was. I was afraid of it,

647
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: afraid of aliens because there was no counter narrative. I

648
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 1: think of discusses on the show before you would just

649
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:11,080
Speaker 1: encounter this this episode or episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and

650
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 1: they're like, yep, there might be aliens out there. It

651
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: seems like there's good evidence for it. I don't know.

652
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,839
Speaker 1: And you didn't have Carl Sagan coming on afterwards and

653
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 1: explaining all the reasons why you shouldn't be worried.

654
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 3: That would be hilarious. Each episode ends with like a

655
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 3: formal debate between Robert Stack and Carl c.

656
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:34,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. But with the Blue it's hard to say. It's

657
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: just at times I felt kind of an unnerving sense

658
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:39,360
Speaker 1: when there was like this really big blue sky. I

659
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 1: don't know, I'll get back to this, but it also

660
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:45,280
Speaker 1: I went on a tangent here where I was reminded

661
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:48,320
Speaker 1: of something that Geraldine Pinch discusses in her book Egyptian

662
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:52,879
Speaker 1: Mythology about how the cloudless skies above ancient Egypt would

663
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:56,319
Speaker 1: have provided ready viewing of the stars and planets, thus

664
00:37:56,360 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 1: instilling a great interest in the movement of the heavens

665
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 1: in Egyptian Mythology. And I wasn't able to find a

666
00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 1: satisfying answer on this, but I mean, this definitely seems

667
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: to be the case with the ancient Egyptians. But the

668
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:15,880
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians were not the only people to find the

669
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 1: sky very interesting. They weren't the only ones to have

670
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 1: an advanced astronomy. I mean, you look at various examples

671
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: from the ancient world, the Babylonians, the Greeks, India, China, Persia,

672
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: the Mayans. They all had robust astronomical systems. And there

673
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 1: are disciplines that look into this sort of question, like

674
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 1: how did the perception of the sky and the understanding

675
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:42,440
Speaker 1: of the cosmos and the movements of the stars. More specifically,

676
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,359
Speaker 1: like how did this affect a given civilization and their

677
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 1: beliefs and their views. You have the disciplines of archaeo

678
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: astronomy and ethno astrology. And there's a lot of interesting

679
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:56,840
Speaker 1: work out there concerning, say, for example, certain architectural traditions

680
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: and to what extent they were created with astronomy astronomical

681
00:39:00,719 --> 00:39:01,520
Speaker 1: data in mind.

682
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I see like buildings that may or may

683
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 3: not have been intended to align with the stars in

684
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 3: a certain way.

685
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so what I guess I was curious about was, Okay,

686
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: does this mean that are you going to have certain

687
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: civilizations located in regions or with high population density and

688
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: regions that had maybe more unbstructed views of the night sky,

689
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: would they lean towards a more robust astronomical culture or something.

690
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: I didn't encounter much to really back that up. You know,

691
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 1: there wasn't much that I was encountering that said that

692
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:39,280
Speaker 1: there's any kind of like astrophilic or astrophobic division between

693
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,719
Speaker 1: cultures or anything not that I could tell. If it's

694
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:43,800
Speaker 1: out there and I missed it, and you know about it, listeners,

695
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 1: write in and let me know. But more often you

696
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:50,120
Speaker 1: seem to see this mix related to astronomical traditions that

697
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: where a culture, a civilization realizes that okay, you know,

698
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: the trackable movement of the sun and the stars is

699
00:39:57,600 --> 00:39:59,959
Speaker 1: linked to various cycles of life, the passage of time,

700
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: I am, the seasons, navigation, and then you also have

701
00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: purely supernatural concepts such as omens and portents and looking

702
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,400
Speaker 1: to the stars to try and divine the future, and

703
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 1: looking for yeah, individual data, data about the individual experience

704
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 1: in the heavens, alongside broader information about how life works

705
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 1: in the long term on Earth. So within a given

706
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: astronomical culture, there might be a number of important but

707
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: kind of mundane considerations about the sky, alongside lofty religious,

708
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 1: cosmological ideas and negative superstitions concerning certain anomalies such as say, eclipses,

709
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: which we've discussed in the show before, as well as

710
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: things that these certain lunar phases and other things that

711
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:48,760
Speaker 1: might in some cases might be out of the ordinary

712
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 1: or somehow novel, but.

713
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 3: Being anomalies, these would probably not be things where the

714
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:56,000
Speaker 3: source of the anxiety is anything you could identify as

715
00:40:56,040 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 3: like fear of the openness of the sky.

716
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, it's more you read about, you know,

717
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 1: some of these eclipse myths and all there are fear

718
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: based interpretations of them and myths involving them. Some sort

719
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: of monster threatening reality and so forth. But then on

720
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 1: the other side, you have, even though they may seem

721
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:19,799
Speaker 1: like strange anomalies out of nowhere to some observers, and

722
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: perhaps at sometimes you're still going to have astronomy get

723
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:25,720
Speaker 1: on top of that, as we discussed in those episodes

724
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:30,279
Speaker 1: we did on Eclipse Myths, and people begin to realize, Okay,

725
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,279
Speaker 1: these things are trackable, and we can tell when they

726
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:45,319
Speaker 1: will occur, or we can predict them. Now. Within the

727
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: context of horror, this idea of fearing the sky, fearing

728
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:56,839
Speaker 1: big open places, it does line up not only thematically

729
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: but specifically with the twentieth century writings of HP love Draft.

730
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 1: I was looking around, and you know, I don't think

731
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 1: I don't remember reading this story, but there's a nineteen

732
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 1: twenty one story titled The Other Gods, and there's this

733
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: bit in it where the character who's I'm sure clearly

734
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 1: going mad thinking about, you know, some sort of monstrous

735
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 1: reality all around him, exclaims the other gods, the other gods,

736
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:25,840
Speaker 1: the gods of the auber hells that guard the feeble

737
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:28,399
Speaker 1: gods of Earth. Look away, go back, do not see,

738
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 1: do not see the vengeance of the infinite abysses, that cursed,

739
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:36,320
Speaker 1: that damnable pit, merciful gods of Earth. I am falling

740
00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: into the sky.

741
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 3: Ah yeah, Well, that kind of fear does seem to

742
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:43,319
Speaker 3: fit into the probably not just Lovecraft, but you could

743
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 3: say the broader convention of cosmic horror, which you know,

744
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 3: is horror that has a lot to do not just

745
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:54,960
Speaker 3: with like specific threats to the individual characters, but a

746
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 3: kind of terror at the idea of the insignificance of

747
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,800
Speaker 3: human mind when compared to some kind of greater force

748
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 3: or greater meaninglessness in the cosmos as a whole. And

749
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:10,319
Speaker 3: one way you could really imagine that that sort of

750
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:14,759
Speaker 3: absurdity or meaninglessness being highlighted is just like, I don't know,

751
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:18,280
Speaker 3: capricious violations of the laws of physics. Suddenly you fall

752
00:43:18,400 --> 00:43:19,399
Speaker 3: up instead of down.

753
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:23,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, There's there's a lot of that in

754
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 1: the weird fiction world, and a lot of this is

755
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:31,920
Speaker 1: described as being in line with the literary philosophy of cosmicism,

756
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:34,719
Speaker 1: which is this idea that, yeah, the universe is just

757
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: teeming with alien threats, monster gods from space. But also

758
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: it's related to this fear regarding humanity seemingly inconsequential place

759
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 1: in a vast and alien universe. And I think this

760
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 1: is often you know, you often see this emerging in

761
00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:55,359
Speaker 1: a context of our increasing scientific understanding of who we

762
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: are and what the planet is, and you know, getting

763
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:02,320
Speaker 1: away from these older ideas about and also religious ideas

764
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 1: about the importance of Earth, the importance of humanity, and

765
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: then what are you left with, or at least what

766
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 1: are you left with maybe in your darker moments or

767
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:14,839
Speaker 1: in your moments of doubt.

768
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:18,319
Speaker 3: Right, I mean it's sort of the antisocial side of

769
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 3: the Copernican principle. Yeah, so like, yeah, I don't think

770
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 3: the Compernitan principle, like the fact that you should not

771
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 3: assume that you are looking at the universe from a

772
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 3: privileged place or that you are the center of the universe. Instead,

773
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:33,920
Speaker 3: you should assume you are looking at the universe from

774
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 3: an average place within the universe. And of course that

775
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 3: goes along with our discovery of you know, the Earth

776
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 3: and not being the center of the Solar system and

777
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,720
Speaker 3: so forth. I think that's just a fact of life,

778
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 3: and that is a good way to look at the universe.

779
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 3: One need not feel despairing about it, but if one

780
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 3: chooses to feel despairing about that realization, you kind of

781
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:56,360
Speaker 3: end up in the cosmic horror area.

782
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in the case of Lovecraft in particular, perhaps

783
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: related authors as well. You're not just dealing with this

784
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 1: fear of cosmic insignificance either. You know, you also have

785
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:14,080
Speaker 1: to throw in there a healthy dose of misanthropy, of

786
00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:17,799
Speaker 1: xenophobia and so forth. So put that all in the

787
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:21,840
Speaker 1: stew together and you know, a lot of horror can emerge.

788
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:25,280
Speaker 1: But also, yeah, this this feeling that maybe nothing matters.

789
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 1: But a lot of this, I think, this thinking about

790
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: the sky and the feeling about these these perhaps fears

791
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: of falling into the sky. And maybe they're not like,

792
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 1: you know, a literal fear like oh I better hold

793
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 1: onto the grass, but just this sort of overwhelming sense

794
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: of the vast. I think a lot of it does

795
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: come back to what we discussed earlier, this connection between

796
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 1: the infinite and the finite, between how this do is

797
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:53,359
Speaker 1: of great expanse can affect us. So to one line

798
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: of thinking, clear of the blue sky might be relaxing

799
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 1: and a brilliant starscape inspiring, but to others this could

800
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:04,400
Speaker 1: certainly be overpower, perhaps bringing out feelings of vulnerability and insignificance.

801
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,239
Speaker 3: Yes, certainly. And this comes back to something we talked

802
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 3: about a couple of episodes ago about like the difference

803
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:16,880
Speaker 3: in art styles that people use to create sacred or

804
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:22,919
Speaker 3: RESTful or contemplative spaces in different environments, and how it's

805
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 3: not clear that there's always a correlation in this direction,

806
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 3: but it's possible that you could have trends where people

807
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:32,560
Speaker 3: who spend more of their time in a kind of

808
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:36,359
Speaker 3: like a busy environment might be more inclined to have

809
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:40,319
Speaker 3: their sacred or RESTful or contemplative spaces decorated in a

810
00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:43,840
Speaker 3: minimalist way that has more blankness, more uniformity of color,

811
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 3: and things like that, whereas people who live in more

812
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:53,840
Speaker 3: pastoral environments might be more attracted to sacred, RESTful or

813
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 3: contemplative spaces that are full of rich detail. And the

814
00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:58,799
Speaker 3: example was Tibetan art.

815
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I think I think all of that

816
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:06,719
Speaker 1: applies here as well. Again, this becomes so subjective depending

817
00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: on where one's head is, and you know what you're

818
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:13,359
Speaker 1: thinking about, and then suddenly you encounter, say a wide

819
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:16,759
Speaker 1: open space or an enclosed space, and then how does

820
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:18,680
Speaker 1: that affect how you're feeling?

821
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:19,640
Speaker 3: Now?

822
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:23,799
Speaker 1: I was looking around for other other sources commenting on

823
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:27,240
Speaker 1: some of this, and I did find a very interesting

824
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:32,880
Speaker 1: paper by doctor Francisco Matta. The paper's titled A Phenomenological

825
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: Investigation of the presencing of Space, and this was is

826
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: an interesting paper. You can find it online and read

827
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: it for free off it interests you. But I just

828
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:47,360
Speaker 1: want to read one quote from it that kind of

829
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: gets down to what we're talking about here. Quote. However,

830
00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 1: this search for freedom or empowerment can be frightening. Whenever

831
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: one is searching for what we used to call a

832
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:01,520
Speaker 1: horizontality and puts oneself in situations in which one may

833
00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 1: perceive larger volumes of space, one runs the risk of

834
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:08,759
Speaker 1: losing sight of the limits of such a volume, in

835
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: which case one will likely feel chinophobic. One may have

836
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:16,680
Speaker 1: this fearful experience since one has no anchors of reference,

837
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 1: and therefore one is unable to become aware of any

838
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 1: volume of space. For example, when out at sea, departing

839
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:28,200
Speaker 1: from the coastline and heading farther and farther into the ocean,

840
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,160
Speaker 1: one comes to be in the midst of a vast

841
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:36,320
Speaker 1: extension of limitless water. Kinophobia is, in fact the opposite

842
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 1: of being placed the being at home that comes with topophilia.

843
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. I like that explanation a lot, this

844
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:46,799
Speaker 1: feeling of that you could be hit with that. Again,

845
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:50,200
Speaker 1: this is highly subjective, but you encounter this vast expanse

846
00:48:50,200 --> 00:48:55,080
Speaker 1: of ocean or sky or desert, and you lose sight

847
00:48:55,120 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 1: of the limits, and you might think, well, you know,

848
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: I have no place here, I have no belonging here.

849
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:02,279
Speaker 1: This is the overwhelming scope of the world kind of

850
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: unhinges me from that that spatial sense of belonging. All right,

851
00:49:07,719 --> 00:49:10,799
Speaker 1: looks like we've gone the limit here, were late for

852
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:13,319
Speaker 1: the sky, So we're gonna go ahead and close it out.

853
00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 1: But we'd love to hear from everyone out there if

854
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:18,040
Speaker 1: you have thoughts and reflections on all this. I'd especially

855
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 1: love to hear from anyone out there who's had a

856
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: similar or conflicting reaction to say, a very open blue

857
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: sky or a very open starvest at night. Be interesting

858
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: to continue to discuss this on our listener Mail episodes.

859
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: Our listener Mail episodes of course published on Mondays in

860
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:38,799
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. Our Core

861
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:42,400
Speaker 1: Science episodes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Short Form Monster

862
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:45,600
Speaker 1: Fact on Wednesdays, and then on Fridays we set aside

863
00:49:45,600 --> 00:49:47,760
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film

864
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.

865
00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you

866
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

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Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

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Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

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Speaker 3: email ail us at contact at stuff to Blow your

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Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.