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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and today we wanted to

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Speaker 3: begin a series on the show talking about the telephone game.

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Speaker 3: Many of you probably already know the general contours of

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Speaker 3: a telephone game, but just in case anybody escaped childhood

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Speaker 3: without playing this, describe how it often goes. So you

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Speaker 3: might gather all the players in the room and arrange

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Speaker 3: them in a line or in a big circle. We

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Speaker 3: always played it in a circle at my elementary school.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, you played it in a circle too, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was about to say, very much an

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Speaker 2: elementary school sort of game. This would be where I

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Speaker 2: remember playing it from.

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Speaker 3: So you begin with a secret message. I think maybe

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Speaker 3: often a teacher came up with the message, but I

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Speaker 3: guess a kid could to The main thing is not

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Speaker 3: everybody gets to hear it at the beginning. The message

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Speaker 3: can be a varying lengths or genres. Usually it was

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Speaker 3: like a phrase or a sentence length. And for the

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Speaker 3: purpose of some of the experiments we're going to look

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Speaker 3: at later in this episode, it tends to get longer.

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Speaker 3: It's like a full narrative length, and that's where you

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Speaker 3: can start really seeing interesting things about how messages change

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Speaker 3: across generations of retelling. But for the purpose of the

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Speaker 3: Kid's game, yeah, it's often like a sentence. So let's

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Speaker 3: say the phrase for our example is this sentence he

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Speaker 3: learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature

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Speaker 3: and because of it, the greatest in the universe. So

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Speaker 3: somebody takes that message, they whisper it into the ear

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Speaker 3: of the first player in the line, and then that

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Speaker 3: player turns and whispers it back from memory as best

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Speaker 3: they can to the next player, and then on down

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Speaker 3: the line it goes. So each player is hearing what

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Speaker 3: the other players impression of the message was, and when

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Speaker 3: it gets to the end, you reveal two things to

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Speaker 3: the whole group, what the original message was and what

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Speaker 3: final message emerged from the chain of players. Now, if

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Speaker 3: you played this game with the man's a feeling creature message,

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Speaker 3: and you played it with like a group of I

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Speaker 3: don't know, twenty elementary school kids, I would imagine you'd

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Speaker 3: end up with something radically different at the end than

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Speaker 3: what you started with, maybe something about peeling potatoes. And

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Speaker 3: then probably also, to be honest, if I remember how

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Speaker 3: this went with kids, something about like it might end

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Speaker 3: with the phrase and his head was made of poo

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Speaker 3: poo or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Because an any group of school kids, you're

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Speaker 2: gonna have some conscientious kids in there that are trying

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Speaker 2: to contain and accurately reproduce the message. But you're also

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Speaker 2: gonna have some distracted kids, and you're gonna have some troublemakers.

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Speaker 3: But hey, hats off to the trouble makers because in

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Speaker 3: this case, you know, introducing weirdness to the message on

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Speaker 3: purpose is half of the game. So there are several

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Speaker 3: different ways that I think changes to the message are

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Speaker 3: usually introduced in this form of the game, you know,

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Speaker 3: whispering ear to ear among school kids. Number one is

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Speaker 3: errors of hearing or speaking, So you might mistake a

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Speaker 3: word in the message for a sound like word like

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Speaker 3: a man is a feeling creature might turn into something

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Speaker 3: about peeling, and then that could be confusing, and then

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Speaker 3: something about peeling potatoes. You know. On down the line,

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Speaker 3: you could of course have errors of memory forgetting what

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Speaker 3: the second half of the sentence is, or forgetting particular

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Speaker 3: word choices you know, transforming a phrase into a kind

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Speaker 3: of rough gist of the phrase instead of getting the

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Speaker 3: words right. And then finally you just have deliberate changes.

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Speaker 3: And concerning those deliberate changes, I think it's important to

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Speaker 3: point out that ostensibly the purpose of the game is

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Speaker 3: to see if you can preserve the message intact, but

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Speaker 3: a lot of children playing lose sight of this skull

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Speaker 3: and instead play with the goal of introducing the funniest

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Speaker 3: or most entertaining variations on the original message. Because, after all,

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Speaker 3: if you are playing in order to preserve the message

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Speaker 3: as best you can, the sort of win condition the

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Speaker 3: optimal outcome is also the most boring outcome. It's like, oh, wow,

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Speaker 3: it stayed the same the whole way around, Okay, But

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Speaker 3: the more catastrophic your failure, the more entertaining the game becomes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of this comes back to the

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Speaker 2: fact that children generally have a very unbalanced and honestly

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Speaker 2: developing sense of humor. They don't realize that the true

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Speaker 2: humor of the game comes out of an organic attempt

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Speaker 2: to accurately reproduce the data, and that if you were

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Speaker 2: to intentionally tweak it for entertainment's sake, you would have

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Speaker 2: to do so with care, because if it drifts too far,

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Speaker 2: if at the end it just becomes this spill of

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Speaker 2: of childhood obscenities, then it's it's not funny, it's it's meaningless.

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Speaker 2: But it's still probably going to end in laughter for

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Speaker 2: these children. I mean, they're the audience after all.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think genuine mistaken nonsense is the more deeply

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Speaker 3: satisfying form of comedy than you know, attacking on his

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Speaker 3: head was made of poo poo to the end of

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Speaker 3: the sentence. But you know, when you're a kid, you

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Speaker 3: can't really.

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Speaker 2: Resist, right.

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Speaker 3: So I was thinking about, you know, my memories of

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Speaker 3: playing this game, and we did play this game at

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Speaker 3: my elementary school, and I was kind of wondering why

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Speaker 3: we played it as children. I assume it was to

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Speaker 3: teach us not to believe everything we hear, to give

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Speaker 3: a kind of stern example about the pernicious power of rumors.

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Speaker 3: But in my experience, kids always quickly figure out that

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Speaker 3: the real point of the game is, like we said,

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Speaker 3: to change the message on purpose, to be more entertaining,

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Speaker 3: or usually to be you know, more nonsensical or more scatological.

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Speaker 3: The game works very differently if everyone isn't committed to

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Speaker 3: trying to preserve the message intact. But then again, I

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Speaker 3: guess you could say that even with people throwing scatological

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Speaker 3: nonsense in the Gears just for fun, it still sort

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Speaker 3: of works as a lesson about the real world fallibility

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Speaker 3: of word of mouth transmission chains, because you know, the

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Speaker 3: same thing happens there really in a less obvious and

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Speaker 3: less immediate form. But when people retell a story or

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Speaker 3: a rumor about their classmates, they also will often introduce

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Speaker 3: details in order to make it more entertaining in their

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Speaker 3: view on the retelling.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I have to say that I don't remember

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Speaker 2: any kind of lessons attached to being made to play

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Speaker 2: this game in like elementary school or what have you.

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Speaker 2: It's just kind of like, this is what we're doing.

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Speaker 2: We're about to kill some time with a fun game,

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Speaker 2: and you know, and then the game, of course, just

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Speaker 2: descends into nonsense and childhood laughter. And then at some

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Speaker 2: point the adults that are hearing this out realize that

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Speaker 2: it's gone too far and we need to get these

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Speaker 2: kids involved in something else. But but yeah, as we'll

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Speaker 2: be discussing on the show here, like there are a

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Speaker 2: lot of different ways you can you can crack this nut,

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Speaker 2: a lot of different ways you can think about it.

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Speaker 2: And I'll say, the other thing that comes to mind

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Speaker 2: is that I can't help but make this connection between

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Speaker 2: this game and humor based on intentionally mishearing something. M m.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: This was really big in my family, to the point

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Speaker 2: that I think it was a bit overdone and got

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Speaker 2: a little annoying at times. And I don't know if

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Speaker 2: that was us or if that for all I know,

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Speaker 2: maybe it was fueled by everyone having played the Telephone

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Speaker 2: game in school, Like maybe it teaches you that, hey,

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Speaker 2: if you slightly mishear something, it becomes more fun and

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Speaker 2: you can just sort of revel in that, you know,

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Speaker 2: and why save the world when you can save the squirrel? Ha.

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Speaker 2: It's instantly funny, but it easily gets out of hand

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Speaker 2: if you just keep going back to that. Well.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's a common genre of joke on Mystery Science

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Speaker 3: Theater three thousand to take a kind of mumbled, hard

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Speaker 3: to hear a line and say, wait a minute, what

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Speaker 3: did he say about cheese?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean it's a great way to just tweak

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Speaker 2: something a little bit, create something that's minimally counterintuitive, something

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Speaker 2: that has just the right level of absurd. Again, assuming

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Speaker 2: a child is not doing this just willy nilly, just

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Speaker 2: drive things a little bit off the road into the

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Speaker 2: realm of humor. Yeah, it's an easy way to get there.

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Speaker 3: For other variations on the basic idea of the game,

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Speaker 3: I was looking around and I came across one thing

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Speaker 3: I'd never played or even heard of before. But there

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Speaker 3: is apparently a variation called apologies for the name of this,

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Speaker 3: I don't know where this comes from, but it is

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Speaker 3: called Eat Poop You Cat. And it's the same as

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Speaker 3: the telephone game, except you play it on a piece

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Speaker 3: of paper, and at each stage of transmission you alternate

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Speaker 3: back and forth between text and drawing, which I think

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Speaker 3: is a fantastic idea. So you start with a text message,

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Speaker 3: the first person has to represent that as a picture,

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Speaker 3: and then the next person has to translate that picture

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Speaker 3: into text, and then back to a picture, then back

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Speaker 3: to text, and so on and so I think in

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Speaker 3: that format, especially because at the end you have a

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Speaker 3: written document of each stage of transmission that everybody can

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Speaker 3: inspect and enjoy it, that sounds like a much more

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Speaker 3: satisfying version of the game.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, terrible title that makes it a little

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Speaker 2: difficult to research online. But yeah, I'd not heard of

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Speaker 2: this one. Yeah, same concepts of going back and forth

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Speaker 2: between drawings and written sentences rather than depending on a

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Speaker 2: chain of whispers. Not sure about its origins, but I

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Speaker 2: did notice that it's listed on board game Geeks due

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Speaker 2: to its popularity as a party game, but not because

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Speaker 2: it's like a typical board game or card game or

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Speaker 2: something of that nature. It's just like a party game

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Speaker 2: of parlor game, and it seems to be popular, though

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Speaker 2: I'd never heard of it before. Now there are a

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Speaker 2: lot of additional alternate names for the Telephone Game. In fact,

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Speaker 2: some of you might have gone into this episode wondering, well,

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Speaker 2: what is the telephone game? What are they talking about?

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Speaker 2: A lot of the names for what we're talking about

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Speaker 2: here do and seem to involve the technological metaphor of

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Speaker 2: the telephone, though at this point I guess it's increasingly

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Speaker 2: an outdated metaphor an outdated reference. We might need to

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Speaker 2: explain what a telephone is, because we're not talking about

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Speaker 2: a tiny pocket computer. We're talking about ultimately allusions to

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Speaker 2: like mid twentieth century telephones.

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Speaker 3: One of the early sources that I was reading about

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Speaker 3: a version of this game, which I'll get into later

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Speaker 3: in this episode, referred to it as a variation on

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Speaker 3: the quote Russian scandal. I've never heard of that name.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll come back to that in just a minute.

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Speaker 2: There are still other names that invoke snail mail, just

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Speaker 2: traditional mail, gossip, or listening. Though there is one major

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Speaker 2: name for this alternate name for it that's worth mentioning

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Speaker 2: because it actually is the primary name for this game

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Speaker 2: in many areas. In fact, if you look up the

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Speaker 2: Telephone Game, say just a quick Google search or something,

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Speaker 2: you will find that, say that the Wikipedia article, for example,

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Speaker 2: is not about the Telephone game. That is not the

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Speaker 2: title of the entry. The title of the entry is

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Speaker 2: Chinese Whispers. Now I have to admit that, yeah, I'd

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Speaker 2: never heard of Chinese Whispers. I'd only heard of the

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Speaker 2: Telephone Game and a bit. And I was a bit

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Speaker 2: surprised and a bit worried when I saw that in

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Speaker 2: the United Kingdom, in Australia and in New Zealand, this

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Speaker 2: is the primary name for it. And I was afraid

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Speaker 2: that there is going to be something at least xenophobic

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Speaker 2: in the tradition here, and it's interesting that it's not

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Speaker 2: an antiquated name for the game in these regions as well.

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Speaker 2: For instance, there are plenty of academic papers that I

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Speaker 2: ran across from twenty twenty three even that use this terminology,

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Speaker 2: where it's sometimes dealt with directly as a concept, like

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Speaker 2: some of the papers will be referring to in a bit,

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Speaker 2: and other times it's used as a metaphor for something

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Speaker 2: or just a snappy title. Now what does this mean?

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Speaker 2: Where does it come from? Well, the primary explanations I've

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Speaker 2: run across focused on the idea of it being a

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Speaker 2: mashup of whispers themselves being difficult to understand. Again, that's

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Speaker 2: how the game kind of works, and this idea of

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Speaker 2: the Chinese language being from a Western standpoint, arguably difficult

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Speaker 2: a difficult language to learn. However, I've also seen sources

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Speaker 2: acknowledge that this could at least be misinterpreted as referring

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Speaker 2: to Chinese as a language that is pure confusion or

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Speaker 2: something along those lines, and of course this would be

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Speaker 2: very xenophobic way of approaching things. There also seems to

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Speaker 2: be some level of influence from the idea of Cold

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Speaker 2: Wars and espionage here, which again is particularly fair, as

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Speaker 2: Junte Huang points out in Chinese Whispers published in Verge

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Speaker 2: Studies in Global Asians from spring twenty fifteen, the term

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Speaker 2: became popular mid twentieth century, and other Cold War influenced

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Speaker 2: and unnecessarily nationalistic names for the game include Russian scan hand,

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Speaker 2: Russian gossip, and Russian telephone Now. Interestingly, author also points

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Speaker 2: to a pair of thought experiments linked or possibly linked

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Speaker 2: to the telephone game that I think are probably worth

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Speaker 2: mentioning here. One stems from American scientist Warren Weaver, who

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Speaker 2: lived eighteen ninety fourth through nineteen seventy eight, who apparently,

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Speaker 2: in a nineteen forty seven letter to MIT's Norbert Weiner,

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Speaker 2: commented on a translation problem and communication problem, writing quote,

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Speaker 2: it is very tempting to say that a book written

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Speaker 2: in Chinese is simply a book written in English which

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Speaker 2: was coded into the Chinese code. Of course, this is

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Speaker 2: not exactly how it works. You know, we've discussed linguistic

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Speaker 2: differences on the show before in translations, but I think

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Speaker 2: that's part of what Weaver was getting at here.

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Speaker 3: I mean, there's not sort of a universal meaning key

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Speaker 3: where all languages can just be endlessly coded in and

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Speaker 3: out of each other, that a language, a message in

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Speaker 3: a language brings its own peculiarities, and any translation is

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Speaker 3: always an approximation.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think this is perhaps more visible to

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Speaker 2: people today with access to various online translation tools, like

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Speaker 2: you don't have to toy around with those much to

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Speaker 2: realize that you lose something and in fact not unrelated

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Speaker 2: to the telephone game. I remember pretty early on when

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Speaker 2: these translation tools began to become available in for some

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Speaker 2: language translations, one thing you could do is you could

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Speaker 2: take a phrase like say I don't know a line

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Speaker 2: from Shakespeare translated into say Spanish or German, and then

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Speaker 2: translate it back into English. Now do you get your

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Speaker 2: perfect example back again? Does it give you exactly what

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Speaker 2: you put in? No, you end up losing something in

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Speaker 2: the translation and retranslation, and you can have some sort

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Speaker 2: of telephone game esque fun that way.

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Speaker 3: Whenever online translation first became a thing, I don't know

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Speaker 3: if that was Babbelfish or babbel dot com or whatever

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Speaker 3: it was, we thought it was absolutely hilarious to run

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Speaker 3: Metallica lyrics. They're about ten layers of translation and what

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Speaker 3: came out was solid.

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Speaker 2: That does that still hold up you think, or have

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Speaker 2: the translation tools improved or changed over time. I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I was actually just trying to do it now and

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Speaker 3: something wouldn't work, and I mean it was like it

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Speaker 3: was too close in the end. Maybe there's some AI

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Speaker 3: detection of like, oh, it looks like you're trying to

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Speaker 3: translate Metallica lyrics. Let's shape that a little bit closer

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Speaker 3: to the original.

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Speaker 2: All right. Now. Another example that this author brings up

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Speaker 2: is that is this idea that was presented by philosopher

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Speaker 2: John Cyril born in nineteen thirty two, the concept of

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Speaker 2: the Chinese room. Some of you may be familiar with this.

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Speaker 2: The Chinese room, in this thought experiment, is a cell

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Speaker 2: that contains quote baskets of Chinese characters in a rule book,

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Speaker 2: correlating those symbols to symbols on Chinese texts, texts that

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Speaker 2: are going to be passed to a single human occupant

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Speaker 2: of the room, like by you know, sliding them under

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Speaker 2: the door. The single human occupant of this Chinese room

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Speaker 2: does not know Chinese, but again these texts are passed

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Speaker 2: under the door to them. They take these texts, they

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Speaker 2: compare the symbols to the rule book, and then they

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Speaker 2: get the response symbols out to build a response, a

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Speaker 2: string of responses that are then passed back under the door.

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Speaker 3: I would say, with the Chinese room thought experiment, the

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Speaker 3: particular use of Chinese as a language as is not

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Speaker 3: important to the experiment. It could be any language unknown

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Speaker 3: to the person in the room.

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Speaker 2: Right right, And so Huang sums it up by saying quote.

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Speaker 2: Although his Chinese interlocutories outside the room consider these strings

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Speaker 2: to be clever responses to their inquiries, the prisoner actually

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Speaker 2: has no idea of the meaning of the texts he

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Speaker 2: has produced. The scenario proves Cerah argued that a machine

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Speaker 2: cannot think, just as the prisoner does not know the

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Speaker 2: meaning of the Chinese texts. So it's meant as a

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Speaker 2: means of refuting the idea of say strong ai that

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Speaker 2: reproduces human thought.

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Speaker 3: Now, we could spend a whole series of episodes debating

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Speaker 3: the validity of the Chinese room thought experiment, and in

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Speaker 3: fact it has come up on the show before. But yeah, basically,

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Speaker 3: I think Cerle is trying to assert that there's something

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Speaker 3: that goes on when a human is thinking that we

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Speaker 3: call understanding meaning. When a human manipulates symbols, they have

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Speaker 3: some deeper recognition of what those symbols mean that has

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Speaker 3: validity to the whole of existence. Whereas in this experiment,

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Speaker 3: this is what he considered a machine that can you know,

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Speaker 3: like a like a chat GPT type machine, one that

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Speaker 3: can manipulate text and then spit out text that seems

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Speaker 3: to make sense. He says, ultimately it is a machine

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Speaker 3: manipulating symbols without actually understanding them. There's a ton of

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Speaker 3: back and forth between philosophers about like what it actually

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Speaker 3: means to understand, whether a human could truly be said

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Speaker 3: to understand, whether what we're doing is fundamentally different or not.

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Speaker 2: Again, though for our purposes, Chinese language is not really

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Speaker 2: part of the whole scenario and really won't be something

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Speaker 2: we're dwelling on moving forward. But if you are interested

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Speaker 2: in the topic of Chinese language and technology, there's a

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Speaker 2: great book that came out several years ago, The Chinese Typewriter,

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Speaker 2: a History by Thomas S. Mulaney. We had him on

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Speaker 2: the show interviewed him about the book and the topic,

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Speaker 2: So go back and find that in the archives if

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Speaker 2: that's what you're interested in. But coming back to the

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Speaker 2: telephone game, aka Chinese Whispers. Yeah, I'm going to keep

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Speaker 2: calling it the telephone game. I have seen some sources

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Speaker 2: online that steer people away from referring to it as

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Speaker 2: something like Chinese Whispers or Russian gossip, or whatever the

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Speaker 2: case may be.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I've only ever known it as the telephone game.

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Speaker 3: I think that's what basically everybody in the US at

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Speaker 3: least calls it.

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Speaker 2: A more accurate name, though, especially for children, might be

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Speaker 2: Goofy Whispers.

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Speaker 3: I think now, I think you could argue about what

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Speaker 3: is actually learned or revealed from the version of the

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Speaker 3: game we described at the beginning by having kids sit

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Speaker 3: in a circle and whisper a message in each other's

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Speaker 3: ears around the chain. But variations on the telephone game

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Speaker 3: have actually been used in scientific research in psychology studies

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Speaker 3: going back over one hundred years at this point, and

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Speaker 3: have been very influential. So there are variations on telephone

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Speaker 3: game experiments that have sometimes been called serial reproduction experiments

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Speaker 3: or transmission chain experiments. Serial reproduction is very influential in

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Speaker 3: the history of psychology for understanding a number of different

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Speaker 3: phenomena communication, cultural transmission, and memory. Serial reproduction experiments were

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Speaker 3: famously crucial to the work of the British psychologist Frederick

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Speaker 3: Charles Bartlett, often written as FC Bartlett, who was a

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Speaker 3: professor at Cambridge University. Bartlett discussed serial reproduction experiments in

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Speaker 3: his very important nineteen thirty two book Remembering, a Study

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Speaker 3: in Experimental and Social Psychology that was all about phenomena

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Speaker 3: of memory. So serial reproduction was one of two major

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Speaker 3: techniques that Bartlett studied. The other was called repeated reproduction.

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Speaker 3: And the difference was, like this repeated reproduction, you would

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Speaker 3: ask a single person to try to remember an original

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Speaker 3: piece of information and reproduce it over and over at

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Speaker 3: different intervals of time. So rob I might give you

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Speaker 3: a story like a text to read that's a folk

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Speaker 3: tale or a newspaper article, or a description of an event,

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Speaker 3: or a passage from a book, anything. I'd ask you

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Speaker 3: to read it several times, and then I would ask

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Speaker 3: you to write it down from memory five minutes later,

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Speaker 3: or an hour later, a week later, a year later,

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Speaker 3: two years later, and see how well you could remember it.

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Speaker 3: But also, maybe most importantly, what are the patterns of

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Speaker 3: changes that you observe when you do this with lots

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Speaker 3: of people. That to me is a very interesting question,

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Speaker 3: are there consistent differences? What tends to change when a

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Speaker 3: memory fades over time? Serial reproduction is a very similar experiment,

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Speaker 3: except you add in the telephone game element. So one

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Speaker 3: person's attempt to remember the text becomes the next person's

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Speaker 3: study material, their text to memorize, and then their attempt

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Speaker 3: to reproduce it becomes the next person's study material. And

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Speaker 3: you do this on down the chain with lots of

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Speaker 3: different people, with lots of different types of text, to

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Speaker 3: see what sorts of trends emerge. Now, the goal of

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Speaker 3: the repeated reproduction experiments was to sort of study how

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Speaker 3: people remember the same event over time. You know, how

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Speaker 3: well do people remember something that happened to them a

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Speaker 3: year ago or several years ago, or remember something they

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Speaker 3: read from a year ago, and what tends to change.

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Speaker 3: But the goal of the serial reproduction study, the telephone

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Speaker 3: game version, was to study the effects of the social

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Speaker 3: transmission of information through word of mouth in culture or

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Speaker 3: through memory of written sources in culture.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is fascinating. On one hand, I can't help

401
00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:18,920
Speaker 2: but think, like with repeated reproduction, you know, we kind

402
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Speaker 2: of engage in this all the time, different people trying

403
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Speaker 2: to remember what happened in a movie. We can always

404
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Speaker 2: go back and look at the movie, and in many

405
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Speaker 2: cases we will go back and look at the movie

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Speaker 2: and see what actually happened. Or a book trying to

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Speaker 2: remember what happened in the book. There's still that primary source.

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Speaker 2: But it makes me think of Fahrenheit four fifty one

409
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Speaker 2: towards the end of that the Ray Bradbury book, where

410
00:22:40,880 --> 00:22:44,000
Speaker 2: a book about books being banned, books being burnt, and

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Speaker 2: the books then having to be committed to memory and

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Speaker 2: then passed on as an oral tradition again, which means

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Speaker 2: that you open it up to serial reproduction errors, which

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Speaker 2: I always found kind of fascinating, Like on one level,

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Speaker 2: I remember as a young reader of the book, I

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Speaker 2: was like, oh, no, well they can't possibly truly memorize

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Speaker 2: I don't know, Moby Dick, and then pass it on

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Speaker 2: like how like this seems like this is such a

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Speaker 2: feat of memory, and then realizing well, they couldn't possibly

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Speaker 2: keep it all intact. Something would change and this would

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Speaker 2: be a process of these of of literature becoming oral

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Speaker 2: tradition again within these people that are keeping the books

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Speaker 2: alive until some sort of regime change can happen and

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Speaker 2: they can all be put back on paper again.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because I think in that kind of scenario,

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Speaker 3: what these experiments tend to show is that the original

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00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,280
Speaker 3: form of the story would be lost. There would be

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Speaker 3: radical changes introduced through attempts to serially reproduce, especially a

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00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 3: long text over time, but the people reproducing it would

430
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Speaker 3: introduce their own literary flourishes to it, so it would

431
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 3: essentially become no longer the original work of Herman Melville,

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Speaker 3: but sort of a product of a serial reproduction culture.

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Speaker 3: So it would have elements of the original story in it,

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00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 3: but it would have elements added in along the way,

435
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:11,920
Speaker 3: some of which get reproduced pretty faithfully and some of

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00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 3: which fade away.

437
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of interesting to think about this in

438
00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 2: terms of remakes of movies, because sometimes it feels more

439
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 2: like a telephone game. What does John Carpenter's The Thing

440
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 2: have to do with the things from another world versus

441
00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 2: the short story was based on. Other times things feel

442
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 2: more like serial reproduction, where someone's like, Okay, this new

443
00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:34,119
Speaker 2: adaptation is going back to the original source material and

444
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:37,480
Speaker 2: not the most recent film or TV adaptation of the material.

445
00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 3: Though interestingly, there are very different mechanisms in play there,

446
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 3: because it is assumed that a big issue with the

447
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 3: loss of fidelity in serial reproduction is memory, right, People

448
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:53,119
Speaker 3: failing to remember certain elements of the story, and that

449
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 3: failure of memory causes them to either just omit something

450
00:24:57,119 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 3: or to substitute something else. In the case of remakes,

451
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's choices made for some reason. Presumably

452
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 3: they can always consult the original source. So there all

453
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:09,200
Speaker 3: the changes are, you know, and his head was made

454
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 3: of doo doo or whatever, deliberate changes because the person

455
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:15,840
Speaker 3: thought it would be more entertaining this way, or more

456
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:16,959
Speaker 3: marketable or whatever.

457
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:17,840
Speaker 2: True.

458
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 3: True, though, it's very interesting how One of the things

459
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 3: we'll get into this in a bit. One of the

460
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,159
Speaker 3: things revealed in Bartlett's research is that some changes that

461
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 3: we would interpret as not just failures of memory but

462
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 3: as real editorial changes to a story do creep in

463
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 3: even when people are just faithfully trying to reproduce it.

464
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 3: We unconsciously make editorial changes to narratives.

465
00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:44,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's fascinating to break into that and see

466
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 2: what changes are more likely to be made, why we

467
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:48,680
Speaker 2: make them, etc.

468
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 3: Now, I thought it might be good to illustrate how

469
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 3: much actually changes in these serial reproduction experiments. By reading

470
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 3: the text of one original text give into the sub

471
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:04,720
Speaker 3: Jackson Bartlett's experiments and one example of what that text

472
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:09,199
Speaker 3: looked like after ten transmission, after ten links in the

473
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 3: transmission chain. So this is probably the most famous example.

474
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 3: It is a folk tale called the War of the Ghosts.

475
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 3: This is something that Bartlett presents as a Native American

476
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:24,880
Speaker 3: folk tale. Now, I was trying to find out more

477
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:28,119
Speaker 3: about the origins of this folk tale, like specifically what

478
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 3: group of people it came from, and when it was

479
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,159
Speaker 3: first putting down in writing and so forth. I was

480
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 3: not able to turn up that information. So I can't

481
00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:39,159
Speaker 3: vouch for how authentic this is to the actual tradition,

482
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 3: the folk tradition that this written version of the story

483
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 3: is based on. But you can say at least that

484
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,719
Speaker 3: this written version is the original version for the purpose

485
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 3: of the experiment. Okay, So I'm going to read this

486
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:56,440
Speaker 3: original written interpretation of the story. It's called the War

487
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,880
Speaker 3: of the Ghosts. One night, two young men from Egula

488
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 3: went down to the river to hunt seals, and while

489
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:06,679
Speaker 3: they were there, it became foggy and calm. Then they

490
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:09,439
Speaker 3: heard war cries and they thought maybe this is a

491
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 3: war party. They escaped to the shore and hid behind

492
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:15,919
Speaker 3: a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the

493
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,200
Speaker 3: noise of paddles and saw one canoe coming up to them.

494
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 3: There were five men in the canoe, and they said,

495
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:24,919
Speaker 3: what do you think we wish to take you along.

496
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 3: We are going up the river to make war on

497
00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:30,360
Speaker 3: the people. One of the young men said, I have

498
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 3: no arrows. Arrows are in the canoe. They said, I

499
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 3: will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives

500
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:41,000
Speaker 3: do not know where I have gone. But you, he said,

501
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:44,360
Speaker 3: turning to the other, may go with them. So one

502
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:46,960
Speaker 3: of the young men went, but the other returned home,

503
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 3: and the warriors went on up the river to a

504
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 3: town on the other side of Kalama. The people came

505
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 3: down to the water and they began to fight, and

506
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 3: many were killed. But presently the young man heard one

507
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:01,919
Speaker 3: of the warriors say, quick, let us go home. That

508
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 3: Indian has been hit. Now he thought, oh, they are ghosts.

509
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:09,679
Speaker 3: He did not feel sick, but they said he had

510
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 3: been shot. So the canoes went back to Eggulock, and

511
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 3: the young man went ashore to his house and made

512
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,800
Speaker 3: a fire, and he told everybody and said, behold, I

513
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 3: accompanied the ghosts and we went to fight. Many of

514
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,640
Speaker 3: our fellows were killed, and many of those who attacked

515
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 3: us were killed. They said, I was hit and I

516
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 3: did not feel sick. He told it all, and then

517
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,640
Speaker 3: he became quiet. When the sun rose, he fell down.

518
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 3: Something black came out of his mouth, his face became contorted.

519
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 3: The people jumped up and cried he was dead. Very

520
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 3: haunting story.

521
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 2: I think a little bit of a ghost arrow elf

522
00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 2: arrow action in there too. Kind of okay.

523
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 3: So Bartlett's method in the serial reproduction experiments was he

524
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 3: would begin with a text like that. He would let

525
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 3: the subject read the text in full twice over at

526
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 3: their own pace, and then fifteen to thirty minutes later,

527
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 3: the subject was asked to reproduce the passage from memory.

528
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 3: Would you like to hear what the War of the

529
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 3: Ghosts looked like? In one of these transmission experiments? Ten

530
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:18,400
Speaker 3: steps down the chain, Oh, let's hear it the War

531
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 3: of the Ghosts. Two Indians were out fishing for seals

532
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 3: in the Bay of man Papan when along came five

533
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:28,280
Speaker 3: other Indians in a war canoe. They were going fighting.

534
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 3: Come with us, said the five to the two and fight.

535
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 3: I cannot come, was the answer of the one, for

536
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 3: I have an old mother at home who is dependent

537
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 3: upon me. The other also said he could not come

538
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:44,240
Speaker 3: because he had no arms. That is no difficulty. The

539
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 3: others replied, for we have plenty in the canoe with us.

540
00:29:47,840 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 3: So he got into the canoe and went with them

541
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 3: in a fight. Soon afterwards, this Indian received a mortal wound.

542
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 3: Finding that his hour was come, he cried out that

543
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 3: he was about to die. Nonsense, said one the others.

544
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 3: You will not die.

545
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 2: But he did absolutely terrible. There totally ruins it. Yes,

546
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 2: like all the great stuff in the original one is gone,

547
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 2: Like obviously the stuff with the contorted face and the

548
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 2: black bile leaking out of the mouth, like that's gone

549
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 2: and that was great. But also the relationship between the

550
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 2: two warriors that was pretty interesting in the original. You

551
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 2: know the idea that did one kind of like passes

552
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 2: the buck to the other and it's like, well I

553
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 2: can't go, but you can. All that is gone.

554
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 3: That's the interesting character drama. The atmosphere at the beginning

555
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 3: is lost, the elements that it became that it was

556
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 3: foggy and calm when the when the boats arrived. Bartlett

557
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:47,040
Speaker 3: himself points out that the story has changed so so much,

558
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 3: and it's it's in fact, it's changed so much it's

559
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 3: easy to miss lots of the ways that it has changed.

560
00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 3: It is drastically shorter. Basically all the supernatural elements have

561
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 3: been removed and it's just left as a material story

562
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 3: of violent conflict with like none of the ghosts. And

563
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 3: it's still called the War of the Ghosts, but there

564
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 3: are no ghosts in it.

565
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

566
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 3: Pretty much all of the cultural conventions in the story

567
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 3: that would have been less familiar to the subjects at

568
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 3: Cambridge trying to reproduce this story, they've been removed or

569
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 3: replaced with more familiar cultural elements, like, for example, just

570
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 3: the use of the word fishing for seals at the beginning.

571
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 2: And instead of referring to one's relatives back at home,

572
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 2: it's just oh me old mom.

573
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And Bartlett points out three major patterns that

574
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 3: have happened to the story. Number one, a series of omissions.

575
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 3: Details are just continually at each stage being left out.

576
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 3: Second is, he says, quote by the provision of links

577
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 3: between one part of the story and another, and of

578
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 3: reasons for some of the occurrences, that is to say,

579
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:01,560
Speaker 3: by continued rationalizations. So there were things in this story

580
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 3: that might not have made sense to the subject might

581
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 3: well have made perfect sense to the intended original audience,

582
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:12,520
Speaker 3: but because of cultural unfamiliarity, the subject didn't really understand

583
00:32:12,520 --> 00:32:16,440
Speaker 3: why somebody was doing something, so they added in a

584
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 3: rationalization for it. And then the third thing is the

585
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 3: transformation of minor detail, which can snowball into major changes

586
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 3: over serial reproductions.

587
00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:32,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fascinating, And again it's interesting to keep in

588
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 2: mind that, of course, the oral transmission of stories was

589
00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 2: of the original way that we passed these things on.

590
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes you might have some sort of a

591
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 2: text refer back to, or some sort of you know,

592
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 2: iconography or even like geographic features or what have you

593
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 2: that help inform the story. But otherwise it's like it's

594
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 2: kind of a miracle that any creative story remained good

595
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:01,960
Speaker 2: over time, right, that it would just I guess that

596
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 2: that speaks to the role of a dedicated like storytelling

597
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 2: class within a given culture.

598
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 3: But even in those cases, I think you could not

599
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 3: assume that the story would remain the same. It would

600
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 3: be a tradition, and you might have a core of

601
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 3: a story that is sort of stable over time. But

602
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 3: like storytellers are in a way also story writers when

603
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 3: they reperform. When we when anybody reperforms a story learned orally,

604
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 3: they you know, lose some original detail and supply new

605
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 3: details of their own. So they become a creative participant

606
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 3: in the story tradition.

607
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if your your culture storyteller happens to be

608
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 2: Michael Bay, then you suddenly there's all these explosions that

609
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 2: weren't there the previous version. It takes on a certain character.

610
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 3: So in the chapter on reproduction in Bartlett's book, he

611
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 3: gives a bunch of different examples and he shows actually

612
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 3: each reproduction along the chain so you can follow it

613
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 3: and see what changes are introduced at each stage. It

614
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:13,320
Speaker 3: does this for a number of different types of texts,

615
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 3: several different folk tales, different experiments with the same folk tale,

616
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:24,399
Speaker 3: different newspaper articles or passages from books like passages from

617
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 3: Ralph Waldo Emerson, or just like stories from the newspaper

618
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 3: about tennis matches all different kinds of texts, and he says,

619
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 3: in every case, for every genre of information he has tried,

620
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 3: with the exception of what he calls cumulative stories, and

621
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 3: I think this might be stories where like each little

622
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 3: element that happens is logically dependent on the thing that

623
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 3: happened before. And he says, quote, the final result after

624
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 3: comparatively few reproductions would hardly ever be connected with the

625
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,920
Speaker 3: But any person who had no access to some intermediate versions,

626
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:08,280
Speaker 3: there is little doubt that with the ordinary free handling

627
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:11,919
Speaker 3: of material, which is characteristic of daily life, much more

628
00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 3: elaboration commonly takes place, though it is perhaps difficult to

629
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 3: imagine that very much more startling changes could occur. So

630
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 3: he's saying that conditions of the experiment are probably producing

631
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:28,280
Speaker 3: higher fidelity transmission than you would expect in everyday life,

632
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:31,480
Speaker 3: and even in this setting, the changes are drastic.

633
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it brings me back to various folk

634
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 2: tale traditions and legends and myths that we've discussed in

635
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:39,920
Speaker 2: the past. You know, where there's sometimes a question of

636
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:42,799
Speaker 2: well does the myth in this culture, does this have

637
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 2: an actual connection to this similar myth in another culture,

638
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 2: or where are they both independent creations? And you know,

639
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 2: given the amount of drift that would that would take

640
00:35:55,520 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 2: place if something were transmitted to this other culture, I

641
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 2: mean you can see where you could go either way,

642
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 2: like it would just be so so much would be

643
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 2: lost in it becoming a part of this other culture.

644
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 3: Yes, and this actually connects to a broader idea that

645
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 3: Bartlett has. Maybe we can get into this later or

646
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 3: in the next episode about the idea of schema. His

647
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:21,720
Speaker 3: proposal was that in order to remember something, you don't

648
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:25,200
Speaker 3: just remember the event itself, you encode it with the

649
00:36:25,239 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 3: help of what he calls a schema or schemata, basically

650
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 3: an existing body of knowledge about the world and about

651
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 3: your culture that can sort of like be a shorthand

652
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,239
Speaker 3: for elements of the thing you're trying to remember, And

653
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:45,840
Speaker 3: thus things that fit with your available schema are easier

654
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 3: to remember, and things that don't just kind of either

655
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:52,480
Speaker 3: get transformed to fit your schema or get forgotten. And

656
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:57,160
Speaker 3: this would account for one thing, people's tendency to make changes,

657
00:36:57,239 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 3: especially to culturally unfamiliar element from a folk tale from

658
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,880
Speaker 3: a different culture. But anyway, at the end of this chapter,

659
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 3: Bartlett was able to document a fairly consistent array of

660
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 3: changes that he thought were most often introduced through serialized retelling.

661
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 3: So I thought it'd be really interesting to look at,

662
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 3: like what are the changes that happen most often with

663
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 3: this form of the telephone game, where you're going you're

664
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 3: reading a text and then you're trying to reproduce it

665
00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 3: from memory, and then you go on down the line.

666
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 3: What kind of changes show up the most? So, first

667
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 3: of all, he says, proper names and titles of pieces.

668
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:37,839
Speaker 3: He says consistent across the different examples. Some of the

669
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 3: most unstable details were proper names and titles. And this

670
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 3: was true for every genre of material, with every group

671
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:50,280
Speaker 3: of subjects tested. Now, when it comes to proper names,

672
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:53,880
Speaker 3: the examples and the reproductions printed in the chapter are numerous.

673
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 3: I just I dug through to try to find some

674
00:37:56,040 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 3: particular examples. One of them comes from a pair that

675
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 3: was used for an experiment about evolutionary theory, and the

676
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:08,399
Speaker 3: name is a name to which an argument about evolutionary

677
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 3: theory is attributed. The name is mister Gulick, and the

678
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 3: name mister Ghulick is transformed into mister Garlic by the

679
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:20,439
Speaker 3: second reproduction, and it stays that way for ten more

680
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 3: steps down the chain. Now, I think it's interesting that

681
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 3: Gulick quickly changes to garlic, but the garlic name doesn't

682
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 3: change nearly so easily it sticks for many more transmissions.

683
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's because Gulick would have been a

684
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 3: relatively unfamiliar name to the subjects, and of course so

685
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,439
Speaker 3: would Garlick as a name. Except Garlic as a name

686
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 3: for a scientist is weirdly evocative of garlic, the food,

687
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 3: so it kind of sticks in the mind.

688
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah. And and just in general, so some

689
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 2: of the weirder names are the ones that stick with you. Uh.

690
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:54,359
Speaker 3: But I would say my intuition would be more likely

691
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 3: if it's a word in your language, especially an unusual

692
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 3: word in your language, as opposed to like just a

693
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 3: name that isn't like a noun in your language, but

694
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 3: is also not one that's very common to you.

695
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:08,920
Speaker 2: Anyway.

696
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 3: There's another example. It's a story about a lawn tennis

697
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:17,239
Speaker 3: match where the name Tilden transforms into Felden and the

698
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 3: name Brooks transforms into Bowden, and then a player named

699
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 3: Captain Wilding becomes Captain wild and then his name just

700
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 3: completely disappears from Retellings. And this last pattern reflects that

701
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 3: sometimes names don't just change, they completely disappear. They go

702
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 3: down the drain into anonymity. So you might start with

703
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 3: a story about a man named John Agar who might

704
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 3: then become a man named Garfield, and then he might

705
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:49,400
Speaker 3: just become a man. And Bartlett thinks that it's understandable

706
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:52,720
Speaker 3: that proper names should change through retelling of a story

707
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:56,239
Speaker 3: from memory, because he says, quote, their significance and application

708
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 3: are local and vary from group to group, And this

709
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 3: sort of makes sense to me, Like it usually makes

710
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 3: very little difference in a story what the person's name is,

711
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 3: unless that name is connected to a known identity. So

712
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 3: it'd be kind of weird if the name of somebody

713
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 3: you knew personally changed, or if the name of a

714
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:20,239
Speaker 3: famous person whose reputation you were familiar with changed. But

715
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 3: since the characters in these stories are usually not known

716
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 3: to the subject, their names are easily changed or forgotten completely.

717
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:30,800
Speaker 2: Right, right, So, if you were given a story about

718
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 2: Yvonne and you didn't know that Yvonne is an important

719
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 2: character in a body of folklore, you know, particularly like

720
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,960
Speaker 2: Russian folklore, you could easily switch it out for Ivan

721
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 2: or anything else and it would lose it. But if

722
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 2: you had, if you felt the weight of that, if

723
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:49,239
Speaker 2: you had a cultural attachment to a particular name, it

724
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:50,240
Speaker 2: would be a different story.

725
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:53,880
Speaker 3: Ah, it's this character, I know him. M hm.

726
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 2: Otherwise it's just a name. Now.

727
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,560
Speaker 3: More interesting to Bartlett is the finding that usually the

728
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 3: type of stories are dropped fairly quickly from reproductions, so

729
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 3: like the title just disappears, it is left off. Now,

730
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 3: these titles can be the conventional names of folk tales

731
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 3: or the headlines of newspaper articles. It doesn't really seem

732
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:18,040
Speaker 3: to matter. People very often just simply drop them. And

733
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:21,800
Speaker 3: this might seem kind of strange since titles, including headlines

734
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,160
Speaker 3: often provide the important element of setting for the story,

735
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:28,680
Speaker 3: the context you need in order to understand what the

736
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 3: story is about or what the point of it is.

737
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 2: You know, part of me wants to resist this idea

738
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:36,720
Speaker 2: and be like, well, how could you forget the title?

739
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 2: Because the titles like the thing that you would like?

740
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 2: How do you request it? How do you sort of

741
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 2: catalog it? But then I think too various examples that

742
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 2: it came up in some sources I was looking at,

743
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,839
Speaker 2: you know, looking at like urban legends, you know, where

744
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:54,240
Speaker 2: you're not really perhaps attaching any kind of like cultural

745
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 2: value to it, or really it's not the idea that

746
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:01,320
Speaker 2: this story is like important, you know, culturally or historically,

747
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,359
Speaker 2: but there's some other reason it's being transmitted and in

748
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 2: doing so. Yeah, these are stories that don't necessarily have

749
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:10,720
Speaker 2: a name or any kind of concrete name, like, for example,

750
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 2: like the old story about the you know, oh and

751
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:16,439
Speaker 2: then when he pulled up, the hook was hanging from

752
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:19,279
Speaker 2: the door of the car. You know. Some of those

753
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:21,839
Speaker 2: kind of stories like those don't necessarily have names they

754
00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:24,320
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure you can find a handful of

755
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 2: names for them, but there's going to probably be a

756
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 2: fair amount of drift. I guess the exception to that

757
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 2: would be a case where an urban legend has who

758
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 2: is so centered around a particular character or monster or

759
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 2: something like if it were sad or slender Man. Like that,

760
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 2: the name is evocative, it brings to mind a certain thing,

761
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 2: and no matter what else is changing, you're probably gonna

762
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 2: hold onto that, and it's not going to be like

763
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:48,840
Speaker 2: skinny Dude or something, you know.

764
00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 3: Based on his comments about the role of titles and

765
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:55,040
Speaker 3: how they're easily forgotten even though they are very important

766
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 3: contextual information that colors are understanding of a story or

767
00:42:58,520 --> 00:43:02,919
Speaker 3: an article, Bartlet writes quote with this general consideration in mind,

768
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 3: it would be a matter of some interest to study

769
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 3: experimentally the psychological effects of newspaper headlines. It looks as

770
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,839
Speaker 3: if the merely descriptive headline is the most ineffective, and

771
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:17,080
Speaker 3: as if the biased headline may produce a profound effect

772
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 3: though or perhaps even because it itself is speedily forgotten. So,

773
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 3: if I understand him right here, I think the insight

774
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:28,320
Speaker 3: he's claiming is that the title or headline is able

775
00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:31,759
Speaker 3: to make an impression, a strong impression that colors your

776
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 3: understanding of the story or the article, whatever it is

777
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,759
Speaker 3: you're reading. But because the title or the headline is

778
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:41,959
Speaker 3: by nature forgettable, you may sort of forget the kind

779
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 3: of work that it did on you, that it did

780
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 3: on coloring your understanding of a story. So you could

781
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 3: write a perfectly accurate newspaper story, slap a misleading headline

782
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 3: on it, and the headline would strongly influence what people

783
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:58,799
Speaker 3: remember as the gist of the story, even if they

784
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:02,240
Speaker 3: don't actually remember the headline itself, so they wouldn't remember

785
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:03,839
Speaker 3: that the headline did that to them.

786
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:06,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course this is a great example too, and

787
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 2: that you know, traditionally the headline itself is is a

788
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 2: choice made by the editor as opposed to the writer

789
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 2: of the article. And especially nowadays, you'll sometimes see a

790
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:21,320
Speaker 2: particular article or story that comes out and you'll observe

791
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 2: its title changing online. Either it may change on the

792
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 2: same page that it has been initially published, or it

793
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 2: may change with republication on other websites. So, yeaht great example.

794
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how often I've seen people arguing

795
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:40,640
Speaker 3: about an article on the Internet, and what it turns

796
00:44:40,680 --> 00:44:43,480
Speaker 3: out they're really arguing about is the title of the article,

797
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:45,879
Speaker 3: which is not something the writer even picked.

798
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, very often owns. The cliche is that

799
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,440
Speaker 2: the editor comes along and slaps the title onto the article.

800
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 2: That is just going to be the most it's going to,

801
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 2: you know, lead to the most engagement. It's got to

802
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:00,239
Speaker 2: hook people and potentially make them read at least part

803
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:00,840
Speaker 2: of the article.

804
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:11,839
Speaker 3: Okay, but anyway, we dwelt on that one a bit.

805
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:15,279
Speaker 3: The idea of proper names and titles. There is a

806
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:18,720
Speaker 3: tendency over time in this type of serial reproduction experiment

807
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 3: for those things to go by the wayside, to change

808
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 3: or disappear. Second thing Bartlett says is a general trend

809
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:28,520
Speaker 3: in the sort of experiment the bias toward the concrete.

810
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 3: He says, concrete physical details in drama are more likely

811
00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:36,240
Speaker 3: to be preserved in their original form than abstract content.

812
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 3: And Bartlett writes that with one notable exception, quote, every

813
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:45,280
Speaker 3: general opinion, every argument, every piece of reasoning, and every

814
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:50,799
Speaker 3: deduction is speedily transformed and then omitted. Now that makes sense,

815
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 3: and I think we can see some elements of that

816
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 3: in the examples he gives in his chapter. But he

817
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:58,040
Speaker 3: says there's one exception to the bias for concrete detail

818
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:04,280
Speaker 3: and against the preservation or expansion of abstract or mental detail.

819
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 3: And Bartlett says, the exception here is the tendency of

820
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 3: folk tales to have a moral. Now, a quick caveat

821
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:15,440
Speaker 3: on terminology. I think it can be confusing in this

822
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 3: context sometimes to talk about a moral of the story, because,

823
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 3: of course, the moral of a story is not always

824
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 3: moral in character, meaning it's not always about doing what's

825
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:27,479
Speaker 3: good or right. Sometimes it's just teaching you something about

826
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 3: the way the world allegedly works, or showing a way

827
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:33,279
Speaker 3: to be clever. And sometimes these lessons are not particularly

828
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 3: moral at all. So when we say moral, you can

829
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 3: think of it as the lesson of the story, the

830
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:40,440
Speaker 3: part at the end where you might say the point

831
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 3: of this story is to show you that. So while

832
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 3: a lot of non concrete detail and narratives tends to

833
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 3: change and disappear over time, this was not so much

834
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 3: the case with the moral of the story. In fact,

835
00:46:52,040 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 3: I thought this was very interesting. Bartlett says that when

836
00:46:55,120 --> 00:46:58,439
Speaker 3: you do serial reproduction experiments with a folktale that does

837
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 3: not specify a moral in its original form, people will

838
00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:07,720
Speaker 3: often add one during attempts to retell the story. People

839
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 3: actually subconsciously add on a moral of the story, thinking

840
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 3: it was already part of what they just read.

841
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:16,200
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's fascinating.

842
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 3: Next Trendy says is loss of individual characteristics. So there

843
00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:25,000
Speaker 3: is across the board a loss of what Bartlett calls

844
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:28,400
Speaker 3: the individualizing features of stories.

845
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 2: Quote.

846
00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 3: The descriptive passages lose most of the peculiarities of style

847
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:37,080
Speaker 3: and matter that they may possess, and the arguments tend

848
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:40,560
Speaker 3: to be reduced to a bald expression of conventional opinion.

849
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:44,759
Speaker 3: So in general, it seems to me that even if

850
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 3: a passage manages to maintain the gist of a story,

851
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,680
Speaker 3: a story told or an argument expressed through the chain

852
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,879
Speaker 3: of transmission, these stories tend to lose their soul. They

853
00:47:55,920 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 3: become stripped of nuances and stylistic details, the details that

854
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:04,879
Speaker 3: really make them what they are. And so Bartlett says

855
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:10,319
Speaker 3: that carefully articulated, sophisticated expressions of opinion or argument tend

856
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:15,839
Speaker 3: to get translated into loosely related conventional views expressed in cliches.

857
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 3: And I think we've probably all had that experience of

858
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:23,759
Speaker 3: like trying to express something very carefully, in a very

859
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:27,359
Speaker 3: clear and particular way, only to have somebody sort of

860
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:31,160
Speaker 3: translated back to us as a very blunt or conventional

861
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:33,799
Speaker 3: statement that does not capture what we think we were

862
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:34,479
Speaker 3: trying to say.

863
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:38,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeap. Or if someone's summarizing a moment in a work,

864
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 2: in a film or a book, you know, sometimes if

865
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 2: you have to, you find yourself explaining it and then

866
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,040
Speaker 2: you're like, well, you just need to see it. You

867
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:46,919
Speaker 2: did a terrible job.

868
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 3: But this leads to what I thought was actually a

869
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 3: somewhat poignant comment that seems as much about the nature

870
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:55,799
Speaker 3: of stories as it does about the process of transmission

871
00:48:55,840 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 3: between readers and rewriters. In this type of experiment, Bartley says,

872
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 3: quote nobody seeing a single reproduction could predict the remarkable

873
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 3: effect which the cumulative loss of small, outstanding detail may have.

874
00:49:10,640 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 3: Yet the effect is continuous from version to version, following

875
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 3: constant drifts of change from beginning to end. And I

876
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 3: don't know. That kind of broke my heart a little

877
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:26,319
Speaker 3: bit thinking about how it elucidates. The imperceptible but very

878
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 3: real way is that a single word, choice or detail

879
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 3: actually strongly affects how everything from a story to a

880
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 3: newspaper article is perceived. It's kind of one of the

881
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:41,319
Speaker 3: tragic things about writing is that, like, you make a

882
00:49:41,320 --> 00:49:44,359
Speaker 3: little change here and a little change there, and each

883
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 3: of them you could argue is insignificant in itself, but

884
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 3: it actually does change the effect of the piece overall.

885
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 2: True, true, yeah, yeah, And then of course over time

886
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 2: that it's like outside of that, even if you have

887
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:01,760
Speaker 2: this story and nobody's changed it, so it can continue

888
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:05,360
Speaker 2: to live on, like the languages and experiences around that

889
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:09,600
Speaker 2: story are going to change, and ultimately you have this

890
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:12,600
Speaker 2: thing that then nobody can relate to without a dictionary

891
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:15,680
Speaker 2: or a whole bunch of notes. Though I guess if

892
00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 2: it's a really good one, if it's a really good story,

893
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 2: like it's sticking around because something in there is still speaking,

894
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:24,720
Speaker 2: something in there is still alive and hasn't died away

895
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:29,480
Speaker 2: with changes in language and traditions and metaphors and so forth.

896
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:33,120
Speaker 3: Now, one thing Bartlett points out here on this detail

897
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:38,000
Speaker 3: about the stripping of individualizing characteristics. He says this is

898
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 3: likely a limitation of his experiments, because again, this is

899
00:50:41,239 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 3: not a perfect reproduction of the way story is spread

900
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:46,680
Speaker 3: by word of mouth in the real world. This is

901
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,759
Speaker 3: a sort of approximation of it with some differences. And

902
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:54,000
Speaker 3: one different thing he says is that in the experimental setting,

903
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 3: where you're reading a text somebody else wrote and then

904
00:50:56,640 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 3: trying to reproduce it in writing from memory, there's very

905
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 3: little to elaborate, in other words, to breathe new individual

906
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 3: characteristics into the text when you retell it. So Bartlett

907
00:51:08,520 --> 00:51:11,279
Speaker 3: I think implies that in the real world you would

908
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 3: probably still have this shearing off of individual characteristics from

909
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 3: the original story, but people along the chain would also

910
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 3: be more likely to end up adding new individual characteristics

911
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:26,080
Speaker 3: back in. So some of the original soul of the

912
00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:28,279
Speaker 3: piece of writing or the story might be lost, but

913
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:32,800
Speaker 3: also each teller breathes new soul in based on audience

914
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:37,320
Speaker 3: demand and what they think would be interesting, entertaining relevant

915
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:38,560
Speaker 3: to the listener, and so forth.

916
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:42,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and again Yeah. Speaks to the importance of

917
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 2: dedicated and successful storytellers throughout human history. It's not just

918
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:49,880
Speaker 2: that you need people that can can keep this chain

919
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 2: going and can keeps spicing it up as other spies

920
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:53,720
Speaker 2: are lost.

921
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:58,040
Speaker 3: Okay. The fourth trend he notices abbreviations. In short, all

922
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 3: genres of serial reproduction tend to become more and more

923
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 3: abbreviated over time. Some of the serial reproductions he includes

924
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:07,360
Speaker 3: start off taking up more than half the page, and

925
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:10,600
Speaker 3: by the ten threproduction they are just three lines. It

926
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 3: gets massively pared down. In my judgment, just looking at

927
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:17,319
Speaker 3: the examples, this seems to be especially the case with

928
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:21,719
Speaker 3: more abstract writing as opposed to concrete narratives like it

929
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:25,439
Speaker 3: seems like the folk tales get pared down less than say,

930
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:30,400
Speaker 3: the writing about evolutionary theory or thoughts about travel.

931
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I get it down to a tight ten.

932
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:36,320
Speaker 3: Now here's something I found really interesting in this little section.

933
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 3: Many people will probably have noticed how stories can seem

934
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:43,479
Speaker 3: to become more exaggerated when they spread by word of mouth.

935
00:52:43,520 --> 00:52:47,040
Speaker 3: This is the classic, you know, oh, what's in there?

936
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 3: Like a there's like a musical where this happens or something.

937
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:50,319
Speaker 1: You know.

938
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:52,719
Speaker 3: It starts off as one story, and then as it

939
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 3: goes through the rumors, you know, goes each each step

940
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:59,600
Speaker 3: down the rumor chain, the claim gets more and more grandiose.

941
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what wasn't there an old one? Not even

942
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:03,840
Speaker 2: an old Saturday Night Live? But there was a Saturday

943
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:06,160
Speaker 2: Night Live sketch about this with tall tales about some

944
00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 2: coworker or somebody that someone knew, and they just keep

945
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:12,480
Speaker 2: getting more and more outlandish, this kind of escalation.

946
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:15,759
Speaker 3: So this is usually chalked up to a desire to

947
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,200
Speaker 3: make the story more impressive and exciting to the audience

948
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,480
Speaker 3: by each person telling it. That obviously is a very

949
00:53:22,520 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 3: real factor. But contrary to this mechanism, Bartlett notices another

950
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:32,600
Speaker 3: way that exaggeration can creep in over successive retellings. He says, quote,

951
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:36,960
Speaker 3: when a generality is expressed with saving clauses, the saving

952
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 3: clauses tend to disappear even if the generality is retained.

953
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:44,359
Speaker 3: And that really clicked for me. I was like, oh,

954
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 3: I bet that is true. Yeah, So your story might

955
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:51,800
Speaker 3: start by saying the psychic mutant crabs were so powerful

956
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 3: that nothing could stop them except maybe dynamite or Clint

957
00:53:55,520 --> 00:53:59,640
Speaker 3: Eastwood and a jet fighter. Okay, next time, the psychic

958
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:02,879
Speaker 3: mutan crabs were so powerful that nothing could stop them.

959
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 3: So it keeps the generality and it forgets to add

960
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:10,239
Speaker 3: in the exceptions offered, and then the next time it's

961
00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 3: the mutant crabs literally could not be stopped no matter what.

962
00:54:14,320 --> 00:54:17,040
Speaker 3: It's just rephrasing the generality, but in a way that

963
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:18,719
Speaker 3: makes it sound more definitive.

964
00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 2: M Well, I mean that makes it sound like everything

965
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:27,240
Speaker 2: creeps toward cosmic horror, horror and or something to that effect.

966
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 3: So sometimes the generality itself might be lost, but it

967
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:33,719
Speaker 3: might be preserved while the nuance to it or the

968
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:37,359
Speaker 3: exceptions to it that they just fall away. Okay, two

969
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 3: more things the trends and changes from these experiments. One

970
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:44,719
Speaker 3: is what Bartlett called the rationalization process. Something that was

971
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:49,759
Speaker 3: common when people repeated folk tales, especially from cultures that

972
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:54,080
Speaker 3: they weren't as familiar with, was the introduction of explanatory

973
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:58,319
Speaker 3: rationalizations for events described that didn't make sense to them.

974
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 3: And again, that's makes sense to them as a reader

975
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:05,240
Speaker 3: might have made perfect sense to a person who would

976
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:07,480
Speaker 3: have been more familiar with this folk tale and familiar

977
00:55:07,520 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 3: with the cultural context.

978
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:11,720
Speaker 2: That makes sense. Makes me think back to our example earlier,

979
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:14,359
Speaker 2: the changing of my relatives don't won't know what has

980
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 2: happened to me, which is a statement that feels like

981
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:20,319
Speaker 2: it might connect to a different culture's idea of the

982
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:24,200
Speaker 2: importance of our ancestors or something. And he gets transformed

983
00:55:24,239 --> 00:55:26,279
Speaker 2: into all my mom is old and I have to

984
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 2: look after exactly.

985
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:30,360
Speaker 3: I think that is one case of the change toward

986
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 3: what the reader would view as a rationalization. So just

987
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 3: as one more example in these experiments, one of these

988
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:41,279
Speaker 3: experiments has a folk story that is reportedly from the

989
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 3: Congo about a boy who wants to hide from his father,

990
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 3: so he transforms himself into a kernel of a peanut,

991
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:51,520
Speaker 3: which is subsequently eaten by a fowl, which is eaten

992
00:55:51,560 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 3: by a bush cat, which is eaten by a dog,

993
00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:56,200
Speaker 3: which is eaten by a python. And then at the

994
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:59,239
Speaker 3: end of the story, the father finds the python caught

995
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:01,840
Speaker 3: in his fish tread. He opens it up, finds the dog,

996
00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:04,360
Speaker 3: opens the dog. He goes down the line of animals

997
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 3: until he finds the boy disguised as a peanut, opens

998
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 3: up the nut, and there's the boy. Now. In the

999
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:14,280
Speaker 3: original text used for this experiment, there is no explicitly

1000
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 3: given reason why the boy wanted to hide. It just

1001
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:21,280
Speaker 3: says a son said to his father, I will hide

1002
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:23,560
Speaker 3: and you will not be able to find me. And

1003
00:56:23,680 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 3: so Bartlett reproduces all of the stages of transmission in

1004
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 3: one of these experiments with this folk tale, and by

1005
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:32,719
Speaker 3: the thirteenth transmission, the story begins by saying that the

1006
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 3: boy is trying to hide because he is afraid of

1007
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:39,719
Speaker 3: his father, a rationalization that was not there to begin with,

1008
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:42,600
Speaker 3: and in fact violates what I took to be the

1009
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:46,080
Speaker 3: implied playfulness of the original first line that the boy

1010
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:48,880
Speaker 3: wants to hide from his father because oh, and the

1011
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:51,240
Speaker 3: story is called a boy who tried to outwit his father.

1012
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 2: But we simply didn't think that the boy's hiding was

1013
00:56:56,080 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 2: earned in the text. We needed a stronger rationalization for

1014
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:00,799
Speaker 2: him hiding.

1015
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:05,080
Speaker 3: So by the seventeenth transmission there was a further rationalization.

1016
00:57:05,440 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 3: A boy who had been up to some mischief wanted

1017
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:11,839
Speaker 3: to hide from his father, whose anger he feared, So

1018
00:57:11,880 --> 00:57:14,760
Speaker 3: he wants to hide because he's afraid of his father.

1019
00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:20,200
Speaker 3: Because he had committed some mischief. And it's interesting also

1020
00:57:20,280 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 3: that I think these rationalizing details are also the sorts

1021
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:27,120
Speaker 3: of non concrete mental phenomena that would be liable to

1022
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:29,840
Speaker 3: be stripped out by subsequent retellings. So these things could

1023
00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:32,680
Speaker 3: probably kind of wash in and then wash out again.

1024
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can just imagine the various judgment

1025
00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:37,880
Speaker 2: calls that are being made here subconsciously, you know, like

1026
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 2: I don't like the idea that the father is the

1027
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:44,640
Speaker 2: antagonist here. Let's make the what if the boy were

1028
00:57:44,680 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 2: a little rowdy and he's bringing mischief into the scenario,

1029
00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:51,080
Speaker 2: Let's go in that direction.

1030
00:57:51,560 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 3: Interesting paradox. While many subjects have an urge to add

1031
00:57:55,360 --> 00:57:58,800
Speaker 3: what they obviously believe to be rationalizing details to a

1032
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 3: story when the character's actions don't make sense to them,

1033
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:05,960
Speaker 3: or when the connection between two described events is unclear

1034
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 3: to them, people tend to do exactly the opposite with

1035
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:14,280
Speaker 3: quote descriptive and argumentative passages, which, over subsequent retellings tend to,

1036
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:19,920
Speaker 3: in Bartlett's words, degenerate into a few apparently disconnected sentences.

1037
00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:23,720
Speaker 3: And that is definitely true of like the attempts to

1038
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:28,760
Speaker 3: reproduce like the argument about biology or something. So in

1039
00:58:28,800 --> 00:58:31,320
Speaker 3: the end, Bartlett says, you know, at least in his

1040
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:36,320
Speaker 3: experiments with these types of transmission, it should be emphasized

1041
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:39,920
Speaker 3: that while accurate transmission is not impossible, it is clearly

1042
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:43,080
Speaker 3: not the norm, especially for many kinds of information and

1043
00:58:43,120 --> 00:58:46,520
Speaker 3: for most of the verbal information tested. The degree of

1044
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:50,560
Speaker 3: change across several generations of honest attempts at faithful transmission

1045
00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 3: is radical, even shocking. Bartlett writes, quote, Epithets are changed

1046
00:58:55,680 --> 00:59:00,040
Speaker 3: into their opposites, Incidents and events are transposed, names and

1047
00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:03,600
Speaker 3: numbers rarely survive intact for more than a few reproductions,

1048
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 3: opinions and conclusions are reversed. Nearly every possible variation seems

1049
00:59:09,240 --> 00:59:11,520
Speaker 3: as if it can take place, even in a relatively

1050
00:59:11,560 --> 00:59:15,120
Speaker 3: short series. At the same time, the subjects may be

1051
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 3: very well satisfied with their efforts, believing themselves to have

1052
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:21,520
Speaker 3: passed on all important features with little or no change,

1053
00:59:21,920 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 3: and merely perhaps to have omitted unessential matters. You know.

1054
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 3: He also says that people are probably being more careful

1055
00:59:30,120 --> 00:59:34,920
Speaker 3: to reproduce as accurately as possible in this university experiment

1056
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 3: setting than they would be if they were just you know,

1057
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 3: living their lives. Repeating something they read in the newspaper

1058
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 3: or heard from a friend, where there's less expectation of

1059
00:59:43,720 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 3: scrutiny of their efforts for accuracy, and more incentive to

1060
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 3: alter a story to make it more entertaining, more impressive,

1061
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:54,960
Speaker 3: more illustrative of a point one wants to get across,

1062
00:59:55,080 --> 00:59:55,960
Speaker 3: or whatever else.

1063
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, thinking of your audience, for example, you know, retelling

1064
00:59:59,520 --> 01:00:04,000
Speaker 2: the story to a loved one, you know what kind

1065
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:07,760
Speaker 2: of changes might you be making in order to make

1066
01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:10,200
Speaker 2: sure they enjoy it the most. This is something we'll

1067
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:12,160
Speaker 2: get into more in the next episode as well.

1068
01:00:12,720 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 3: So finally, Bartlett says, quote, it looks as if what

1069
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,520
Speaker 3: is said to be reproduced is far more generally than

1070
01:00:18,600 --> 01:00:22,880
Speaker 3: is commonly admitted, really a construction serving to justify whatever

1071
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:26,800
Speaker 3: impression may have been left by the original. It is

1072
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 3: this impression rarely defined with much exactitude, which most readily persists.

1073
01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:36,480
Speaker 3: So I think that's a very interesting starting point. But

1074
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:39,640
Speaker 3: there's obviously a lot more to say about this subject,

1075
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:45,160
Speaker 3: about serial reproduction of different forms, transmission chains, and the

1076
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 3: telephone game. So we will be continuing to look at

1077
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:50,480
Speaker 3: this at at least one more part in this series.

1078
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll go on beyond that. But yeah, I found

1079
01:00:54,120 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 3: this fascinating.

1080
01:00:55,160 --> 01:00:59,640
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah again. It gets it bleeds into so many

1081
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:02,680
Speaker 2: as effects of our culture, and it's going to be

1082
01:01:02,720 --> 01:01:06,480
Speaker 2: interesting and also take into account technological changes when we

1083
01:01:06,560 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 2: continue to discuss this in the next episode. All Right,

1084
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:11,200
Speaker 2: we'll close it out here, but just a reminder to

1085
01:01:11,200 --> 01:01:13,440
Speaker 2: everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a

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Speaker 2: science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On

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Speaker 2: Mondays we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we do a

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Speaker 2: short form Monster Factor Artifact episode, and then on Fridays

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Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

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Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our audio producer JJ Posway.

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Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

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01:01:32,440 --> 01:01:34,920
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your

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Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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01:01:51,200 --> 01:01:53,959
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.