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

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. We're off this week for fall break,

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Speaker 1: but we have some horror related content from last year

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Speaker 1: for you. This is going to be Trains of Terror

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Speaker 1: Part one, originally published October first, twenty twenty four. There's

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Speaker 1: all sorts of scary train related topics discussed within, So

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Speaker 1: let's grab a ticket and all aboard. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio. Hey you welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And today is a thrilling

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Speaker 2: occasion for us here on the podcast because this very

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Speaker 2: episode is publishing on Tuesday, October first, twenty twenty four,

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Speaker 2: which makes it the inaugural entry in our tradition month

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Speaker 2: long celebration of Halloween. So longtime fans, you know what's

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Speaker 2: going on, you know what's in store. But in case

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Speaker 2: you're new to the show, the pitch is that every

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Speaker 2: October on Stuff to Blow your Mind, we devote all

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Speaker 2: of that month's core episodes two topics related to monsters, ghosts, demons, curses,

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Speaker 2: and horror Halloween stuff, and also for our weird House

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Speaker 2: Cinema episodes for the Fridays of this month, we're going

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Speaker 2: to be looking at horror movies.

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Speaker 1: That's right. October is the month when you can turn

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Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind and find that we

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Speaker 1: were doing horror and monster stuff one hundred percent of

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Speaker 1: the time as opposed to our normal like, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: thirty five to forty percent of the time.

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Speaker 2: That's right, people have pointed out before. I mean, we're

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Speaker 2: you know, we got monsters on the brain. That's kind

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Speaker 2: of how we are. So throughout the year you'll get

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Speaker 2: a smattering, but for October it's it's all we do.

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Speaker 1: And I'm excited about the episode we're going to kick

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Speaker 1: off here today. The series rikicking off here today because

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Speaker 1: this is a topic we've been talking about doing for

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Speaker 1: years now. This is well when we get around planning

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Speaker 1: out our October episodes, this one's been on the list

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Speaker 1: for a while and we're finally hopping aboard.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder why it took us this long. I

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Speaker 2: don't think there's a particular reason. Just shook out that way.

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Speaker 2: But today we're beginning a series on locomotive horror, the

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Speaker 2: mini Shades of Menace and supernatural fright that we have

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Speaker 2: projected onto trains. Now, this is a topic that's going

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Speaker 2: to take us into a bunch of different realms of folklore, history, science,

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Speaker 2: and technology. But I think the best place to begin

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Speaker 2: here is to look at some famous examples of trains

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Speaker 2: in horror fiction and rob If you don't mind, I

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Speaker 2: want to kick things off with an example of a

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Speaker 2: story that I just read in full for the first

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Speaker 2: time this weekend.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's have it, okay.

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Speaker 2: So the story in question is a short tale of ghosts,

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Speaker 2: spectral visions, and premonitions by Charles Dickens, and it's called

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Speaker 2: The Signalman. This story was published in eighteen sixty six

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Speaker 2: as part of a set of short stories by Dickens

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Speaker 2: and a handful of other authors, with the collection as

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Speaker 2: a whole called Mugby Junction. So there's sort of a

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Speaker 2: locomotive and railroad theme running throughout. This collection was a

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Speaker 2: special Christmas edition of a magazine that Dickens founded called

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Speaker 2: All the Year Round. And I'm going to briefly summarize

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Speaker 2: the story, including the ending, So as a warning, if

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Speaker 2: you want to read it without having the ending spoiled,

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Speaker 2: you could pause and do that. Now it's fairly short.

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Speaker 2: It only takes like twenty minutes or so to read.

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Speaker 2: The Signalman begins with an unnamed narrator who wanders to

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Speaker 2: the edge of a huge trench in the earth around

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Speaker 2: sunset one day, and at the bottom of this trench

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Speaker 2: there is a railway line leading into a dark tunnel,

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Speaker 2: and at the edge of the tunnel, beside the tracks

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Speaker 2: there is a tiny box like signal house and the

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Speaker 2: signalman who works it. So a bit of historical context

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Speaker 2: that helps you understand the story better. In the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 2: signal operators were a crucial part of railroads. These were

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Speaker 2: workers who had to stay at little houses beside the tracks,

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Speaker 2: and they would be equipped with lights and colored flags

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Speaker 2: and usually a telegraph line to relay information to and

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Speaker 2: about passing trains, which meant that signalers were pivotal to

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Speaker 2: railroad safety. They gave the trains information, they passed the

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Speaker 2: information via flags or sometimes even shouted verbal signals. They

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Speaker 2: passed information to oncoming engine drivers, and this could be

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Speaker 2: information about the conditions of the tracks ahead, like is

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Speaker 2: there an obstruction, a flood, some of their kind of problem,

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Speaker 2: or about the movements of other trains, like was there

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Speaker 2: a train stalled on the tracks ahead or somewhere it

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Speaker 2: shouldn't be. And they also kept information about when trains

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Speaker 2: passed to make sure everything was running on schedule and

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Speaker 2: alert other stations and trains if there was some kind

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Speaker 2: of danger or delay. They were also sometimes responsible for

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Speaker 2: operating track switches to divert the course of a train

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Speaker 2: there's a fork in the line. But because of the

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Speaker 2: nature of their work, signal operators were sometimes characterized as

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Speaker 2: kind of pitiable people. Like it was stressful work because

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Speaker 2: the lives of many people were in their hands. If

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Speaker 2: they made a mistake, it could lead to disaster. But

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Speaker 2: it was also isolated, lonely work because they would be

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Speaker 2: spending long shifts by themselves in remote and sometimes unpleasant

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Speaker 2: locations along the rail lines. So anyway back to the story.

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Speaker 2: The narrator comes to a deep cutting in the earth

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Speaker 2: at the emergence of a rail tunnel, and he looks

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Speaker 2: down into it and sees this tiny signal house and

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Speaker 2: the man who works there standing at the door. Curious.

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Speaker 2: The narrator calls out and says, Helloa, it's that one

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Speaker 2: of those hellos that spelled halloa, or how you say that,

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Speaker 2: do you say the oa? Or is that just oh hello,

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Speaker 2: I die.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure.

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Speaker 2: It's like balbo helloa below there, He's trying to get

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Speaker 2: the man's attention. The man at first seemed confused and

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Speaker 2: even frightened, but then reluctantly invites the narrator down a

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Speaker 2: hidden pathway to meet him. And here I'm going to

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Speaker 2: read a descriptive passage to communicate the atmosphere of the story.

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Speaker 2: The narrator says his post was in as solitary and

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Speaker 2: dismal a place as I ever saw. On either side,

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Speaker 2: a dripping, wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view

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Speaker 2: but a strip of sky. The perspective one way only

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Speaker 2: a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon, the shorter perspective

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Speaker 2: in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light,

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Speaker 2: and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose

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Speaker 2: massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air.

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Speaker 2: So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot

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Speaker 2: that it had an earthy, deadly smell, and so much

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Speaker 2: cold wind rushed through it that it struck chill to

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Speaker 2: me as if I had left the natural world.

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Speaker 1: Ooh, that is nice.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, the narrator notices that the signal man is acting weird.

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Speaker 2: He's preoccupied, even a bit haunted, And they eventually get

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Speaker 2: to know one another and become familiar, and after some

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Speaker 2: time has passed between them, the signalman confesses what it

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Speaker 2: is that's troubling him. At several times past, the signalman

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Speaker 2: has had visions of a man in the night, posed

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Speaker 2: against the red light, the danger light at the mouth

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Speaker 2: of the tunnel. The figure stands with one arm raised up,

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Speaker 2: waving violently, and the other arm thrown over his eyes

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Speaker 2: like a blindfold. And when the signalman sees the figure,

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Speaker 2: he hears a voice calling out, saying Helloa below there,

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Speaker 2: look out, And then as suddenly as it appeared, the

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Speaker 2: figure vanishes into darkness. And twice before at the time

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Speaker 2: of the story, the signalman has seen this shadow man

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Speaker 2: in the red light and heard the voice, and then

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Speaker 2: immediately after those visions, disaster has fallen somewhere nearby on

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Speaker 2: the tracks. One time it was a terrible engine collision

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Speaker 2: in which many people were killed. Another time it was

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Speaker 2: the sudden and mysterious death of a young woman riding

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Speaker 2: on board a passing train. And so now the signalman

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Speaker 2: is not only haunted by this vision, but by what

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Speaker 2: it means. When he sees it and when he hears

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Speaker 2: the voice, he knows there will soon be a disaster,

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Speaker 2: and he wants to telegraph the station so he can

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Speaker 2: perhaps avert it. But he has no idea what the

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Speaker 2: disaster will be, and he can't explain the reason he

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Speaker 2: knows it's coming, so he can't give a warning that

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Speaker 2: anybody will heed. So he's tortured with this terrible knowledge

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Speaker 2: that he can't use to help anyone. Now the narrator

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Speaker 2: is troubled by all this. He seems to believe that

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Speaker 2: the man is suffering from a nervous condition, and the

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Speaker 2: next day he plans to come back and find a

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Speaker 2: way to convince the signalman to go see a doctor.

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Speaker 2: But when the narrator arrives at the trench in the

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Speaker 2: earth the next day, he instead finds a large gathering

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Speaker 2: of railroad officials on site. Apparently the signalman was cut

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Speaker 2: down by a train the night before. He was standing

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Speaker 2: in the tracks as if in a trance. The engine

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Speaker 2: driver saw him as the train was approaching and tried

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Speaker 2: to call out to him to get him to move

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Speaker 2: out of the way, and he was calling out halloa

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Speaker 2: below there look out and waved one arm violently to

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Speaker 2: get the signalman's attention. But at the last moment, the

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Speaker 2: engine driver was terrified of what he was about to see,

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Speaker 2: and so he threw his other arm over his face

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Speaker 2: to cover his eyes.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, I.

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Speaker 2: Think it's a wonderfully chilling ending. Even now just telling

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Speaker 2: it again, I got at a little bit of a

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Speaker 2: shiver a goosebump there. Now you might think, because a

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Speaker 2: lot of ghost stories, what they're really about is the ghost.

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Speaker 2: And actually you could say that it's arguable whether or

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Speaker 2: not this should be classified as a ghost story or

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Speaker 2: whether it's actually a premonition story that just has a

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Speaker 2: has a similar aesthetic reform to a ghost story. But

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Speaker 2: you could argue that, yeah, maybe the setting is kind

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Speaker 2: of incidental. What it's really about is the ghost and

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Speaker 2: the human interaction. But I don't know. I think the

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Speaker 2: railway setting is not incidental here. I think the setting

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Speaker 2: along the tracks is actually quite thematically central. It matters

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Speaker 2: that the signalman is a signalman, like what his job

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Speaker 2: is is core to the anguish that he's suffering with

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Speaker 2: this terrible knowledge, and the fear and the dread and

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Speaker 2: the gloomy atmosphere and the danger are all centrally based

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Speaker 2: on railroad technology. And you can tell and even that

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Speaker 2: Dickens himself had strange, I would say, at best, ambivalent

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Speaker 2: feelings about rail travel and its effects on the world.

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Speaker 2: There's a different story in this same collection, Mugby Junction,

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Speaker 2: where Dickens is writing about a character looking down at

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Speaker 2: a railroad junction and says, but there were so many

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Speaker 2: lines gazing down upon them from a bridge at the junction.

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Speaker 2: It was as if the concentrating companies formed a great

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Speaker 2: industrial exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground spiders that

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Speaker 2: spun iron.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's nice anyway.

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Speaker 2: All that to make the point that I think a

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Speaker 2: lot of these horror stories that are about trains are

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Speaker 2: not incidentally about trains. They're not just stories that could

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Speaker 2: be set anywhere that just happened to be a setting

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Speaker 2: the author liked. I think a lot of them really

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Speaker 2: are in serious ways about trains and what trains mean.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And this is a really fascinating subject to

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Speaker 1: get into, and I feel like I do have to

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Speaker 1: like mention at the top of all this that I

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Speaker 1: love trains. I enjoy riding on trains, subway or otherwise,

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Speaker 1: bullet trains everywhere, ever, and I've really enjoyed trains. I

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Speaker 1: live next to a train track, I've lived next to

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Speaker 1: it for over a decade, and I still find reasons

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Speaker 1: to enjoy watching the trains go by, or especially the

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Speaker 1: trucks on the tracks and various maintenance equipment or special loads.

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Speaker 1: Occasionally that occurs, and I get a kick out of that.

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Speaker 1: Suffice to say, trains are very every day to me,

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Speaker 1: and I like them. I don't inherently think they are creepy.

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Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, there is something about

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Speaker 1: the train that fits so well, not only fits well

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Speaker 1: within these stories, but serves as a great skeleton for

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Speaker 1: these stories. And a lot of it comes down to

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Speaker 1: ideas that the train itself there's something unnatural about it.

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Speaker 1: There's something really almost a sense of future shock that's

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Speaker 1: never gone away, you know. And also the idea that

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Speaker 1: the train is a location is inherently unnatural, and there's

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Speaker 1: something about it that is sort of inherently haunted. And

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Speaker 1: there are different ways to approach this, and I was

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about this, and I was looking up

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Speaker 1: various short stories and works of horror and thinking about

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Speaker 1: various movies as well that use train settings, and some

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Speaker 1: of them are you know, you can find overt examples

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Speaker 1: of like, Okay, this is a movie about a train

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Speaker 1: with a killer on the train. You know it's you know,

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Speaker 1: it is just a setting for murders. Plenty of examples

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Speaker 1: of that. But one of the examples that I think

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Speaker 1: came to my mind the most, and this is one

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Speaker 1: that I remember watching an adaptation of it when I

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Speaker 1: was younger. This comes from the works of Sarrothur Conan

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Speaker 1: Doyle and a particular short story titled The Adventure of

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Speaker 1: the Copper Beaches. This would have been an eighteen ninety

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Speaker 1: two tale, and I vividly remember watching the Jeremy Brett

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Speaker 1: Granada television adaptation of this when I was a kid.

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Speaker 1: You can find this streaming, and you can get this

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Speaker 1: on disc as well. These were all really accurate adaptations

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Speaker 1: of the shlock Comb stories. But basically this does not

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Speaker 1: involve a haunted train. There's not even a murder on

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Speaker 1: the train or anything of that nature. It's just Holmes

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Speaker 1: and Watson are taking the train into the countryside to

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Speaker 1: look into particular crime. And at first Holmes is consumed

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Speaker 1: by his newspaper much of the way you know, or

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Speaker 1: today he'd be on his iPhone or something. But he

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Speaker 1: finally puts his newspaper way and he begins to survey

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Speaker 1: the scenery outside the window, and he makes a kind

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Speaker 1: of terrifying observation. He goes on a bit of a

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Speaker 1: rant multiple paragraphs that I can't I can't read all

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Speaker 1: of it here, but I'm going to read essentially unabridged version. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So Holmes says the following to Watson, you look at

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Speaker 1: these scattered houses and you are impressed by their beauty.

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Speaker 1: I look at them and the only thought which comes

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Speaker 1: to me is a feeling of their isolation and of

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Speaker 1: the impunity with which crime may be committed there. They

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Speaker 1: always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,

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Speaker 1: founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys

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Speaker 1: in London do not present a more dreadful record of

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Speaker 1: sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. The pressure

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Speaker 1: of public opinion can do in the town what the

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Speaker 1: law cannot accomplish. There is no lane, so vile that

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Speaker 1: the scream of a tortured child or the thud of

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Speaker 1: a drunkard's blow does not beget sympathy and indignation among

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Speaker 1: the neighbors. And then the whole machinery of justice is

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Speaker 1: ever so close that a word of complaint can set

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Speaker 1: it going. And there is but a step between the

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Speaker 1: crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses.

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Speaker 1: Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness

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Speaker 1: which may go on year in year out in such places,

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Speaker 1: and none the wiser. It is the five miles of

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Speaker 1: country which makes the danger.

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Speaker 2: That's a very interesting paragraph because it strikes me as

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Speaker 2: both containing some wisdom and truth but also representing a

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Speaker 2: pathological way of thinking. You know, it's like, yeah, there

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Speaker 2: is some correct observation there, but also it's just it

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Speaker 2: reveals Holmes's way of looking at the world as just

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Speaker 2: like a place of dangers and miseries. And you can

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Speaker 2: sort of do an inventory of the potential for dangers

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Speaker 2: and miseries by looking at any place.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it definitely reveals something of Holmes's nature.

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Speaker 1: And again it's the train itself is not creepy. Here

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Speaker 1: in the adaptation, and in the book you get the

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Speaker 1: very homes the insense of, oh, these are just gentlemen

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Speaker 1: on a train, But then when you get this morbid observation,

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Speaker 1: Ultimately it's about how the countryside is creepy and not

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Speaker 1: even the city is creepy. But there's something about the

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Speaker 1: train technology's role in this.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, I would have no way of proving that

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Speaker 2: that Arthur Conan Doyle was actually trying to make this

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Speaker 2: particular point, but I would not be surprised if this

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Speaker 2: kind of observation was actually a statement about the way

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Speaker 2: a train changes the way you look at the world.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's about the vantage point that it provides,

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Speaker 1: the broadening human travel abilities. It permits Holmes a chance

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Speaker 1: to observe something terrifying about human nature and human civilization.

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Speaker 1: And it's a scene that I think just got stuck

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Speaker 1: in my head at an early age. So I literally

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Speaker 1: think about the scene almost any time I'm on a train,

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Speaker 1: certainly if it's a novel train and I get to

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Speaker 1: look out at the countryside.

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Speaker 2: Which, by the way, I love doing. Robert, I'm like you,

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Speaker 2: I also very much love trains. I mostly have just

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Speaker 2: positive feelings about them, So I did not pick this

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Speaker 2: topic because I think trains are inherently creepy, but maybe

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Speaker 2: because they're sort of cuddly to me. I wonder I'm

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Speaker 2: interested in the way is that they might bring terrors

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Speaker 2: to mind for many people, especially people in say the

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Speaker 2: nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but seriously, I'll be riding a train. Like

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Speaker 1: even more recently, a few months back, I had to

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Speaker 1: ride the Bullet train in Japan. Look out of the

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Speaker 1: beautiful countryside, and yet here's Sherlock Holmes whispering my ear.

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Speaker 1: They might be murdering in there, so thank you, Sherlock, but.

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Speaker 2: They think of the horror is hidden beyond.

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Speaker 3: Yes.

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Speaker 1: Now, Another tale that comes to mind concerning trains is

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Speaker 1: the Ray Bradberry story The Town where No One Got Off,

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Speaker 1: And I'm mostly familiar with this one from a nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty six adaptation on the Ray Bradberry Theater television show

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Speaker 1: starring a young Jeff Goblin. Oh or you know, this

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Speaker 1: was what the same year as The Fly, so you

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Speaker 1: know young Jeff Goblin. I don't remember how old he

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Speaker 1: would have been at this point in his career, but anyway,

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Speaker 1: so this is another story where the train itself is

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Speaker 1: not creepy, but there's something about the way it connects

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Speaker 1: people in places that takes on a very sinister air.

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Speaker 1: So in this story, we follow a man from the city,

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Speaker 1: this is Jeff Goblum's character in the adaptation, who takes

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Speaker 1: a train ride out into the countryside to confirm, according

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Speaker 1: to him, his ideals about country living and his of

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Speaker 1: course curiosity with this particular stop where nobody ever gets off.

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Speaker 1: You know, what is it with this town? And you

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Speaker 1: know this also ties into some general fascination with train travel.

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Speaker 1: You're like, well, what is this stop? Who lives here?

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Speaker 1: Who are these people? And he meets up and tags

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Speaker 1: along with an old countryman during this journey. And there's

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Speaker 1: a twist though, and I'm about to spoil it, so

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Speaker 1: skip ahead, pause, and so forth if you don't want

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Speaker 1: it to be spoiled. But the twist is that the

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Speaker 1: city man has ventured out to the country to commit

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Speaker 1: the perfect murder of a stranger, and the old man

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Speaker 1: has lured him out to do the same, to commit

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Speaker 1: the perfect murder of a city guy who has wandered

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Speaker 1: into the country. And I'm going to read it just

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Speaker 1: a quick quote here from the original rape Bradbury short story. Now,

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Speaker 1: the darkness that had brought us together stood between the

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Speaker 1: old man, the station, the town, the forest were lost

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Speaker 1: in the night. For an hour, I stood in the

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Speaker 1: roaring blast, staring back at all that darkness. Oh so

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Speaker 1: this is a story that works in a number of ways,

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Speaker 1: exploring course, just the darkness of human nature and you know,

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Speaker 1: temptation to do evil and so forth, our attitudes towards others,

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Speaker 1: and perhaps as well a little commentary on the idea

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Speaker 1: that you still see in modern objections to say, the

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Speaker 1: expansion of city rail, that oh well, if you do this,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna allow criminals to just move around super easily.

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Speaker 1: They'll just they'll just go right into the into the

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Speaker 1: really nice parts of town and just start doing crimes.

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Speaker 1: But and then on top of all of this, I

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Speaker 1: feel like this there is also this sense of the

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Speaker 1: train is a technology that shortens the distance between individuals.

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Speaker 1: So it brings us closer together. But does it maybe

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Speaker 1: bring us too close? You know? Is it does it

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Speaker 1: just it just opens up the room for it breaks

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Speaker 1: down barriers that should be in place, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 2: Hmmm, I'm gonna have to think on that. But in

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Speaker 2: a minute, I do want to get into talking about

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Speaker 2: some of the most common themes I feel like I've

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Speaker 2: observed in train related horror stories, and so maybe this

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Speaker 2: will come back up then. But before we do that,

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Speaker 2: I know you wanted to mention a few more examples.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so these are gonna be a little more in passing,

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Speaker 1: but I was just trying to list off a few

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Speaker 1: in my head that stood out. The Midnight Meat Train

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Speaker 1: by Clive Barker. If you're only familiar with the movie,

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Speaker 1: let me just remind you that the original Books of

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Speaker 1: Blood short story is quite good.

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Speaker 2: It's one of those stories where, if this makes any sense,

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Speaker 2: I kept expecting it to turn out to be less

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Speaker 2: literal than it was, and like the literalness of the

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Speaker 2: payoff is actually kind of genius.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think your words better in short story format.

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Speaker 1: Another one is The Tall Grass by Joe R. Lansdale.

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Speaker 1: This one was adapted on the Love and Robots television

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Speaker 1: series the animated anthology series, and it's quite good. Involves

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Speaker 1: a train sort of I forget if it breaks down

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Speaker 1: or slows down, but it kind of gets into that

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Speaker 1: area of like, oh, the train is something that connects

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Speaker 1: point A to point B, but then what goes on

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Speaker 1: in between and the idea that you know, you're you're

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Speaker 1: often going through you know, very isolated countryside or you know,

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Speaker 1: so it seems to the observer. Yeah, let's see getting

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Speaker 1: into the realm of not only train horror fiction, but

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Speaker 1: subway horror fiction, which we already got into a little

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Speaker 1: bit of Midnight Me Train. There's an excellent older weird

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Speaker 1: fiction tale called far Below by Robert Barbara Johnson, and

401
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Speaker 1: this one is adapted into an okay episode of the

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Speaker 1: anthology series Monsters, but the original short story is fabulous.

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Speaker 1: It involves people becoming ghouls in the deep tunnels beneath

404
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Speaker 1: New York City.

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Speaker 2: Nice.

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Speaker 1: Let's see, Oh, we would have to we have to

407
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Speaker 1: mention blame the monorail from King's The Dark Tower series,

408
00:22:29,240 --> 00:22:33,080
Speaker 1: a like a super intelligent computer train that goes crazy.

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Speaker 1: And I'd forgotten about this one, but a problematic horror master.

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Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft, in describing the Shogoth at the end of

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one's At the Mountains of Madness, compares this

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Speaker 1: indescribable monster, you know, it's like this blob monster in

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Speaker 1: part to a subway train. Okay, yeah, like there's not

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Speaker 1: much you could compare it to but to a train,

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Speaker 1: which maybe reveals something about some of the attitudes one

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Speaker 1: might you know, have about trains or observe about them.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quick quote here, but we

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Speaker 1: were not on a station platform. We were on the

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Speaker 1: track ahead as the nightmare plastic column of fetid black

420
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Speaker 1: herodestance ooze tightly onward through its fifteen foot sinus, gathering

421
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Speaker 1: unholy speed, and driving before it a spiral re thickening

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Speaker 1: cloud of the palette of this vapor. It was a terrible,

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Speaker 1: indescribable thing. You just kind of described it, though, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: vaster than any subway train.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, first of all, I do love that comparison. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: I can picture that the monsters moving like a subway train. Also, yeah,

427
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Speaker 2: this doesn't Lovecraft do this all the time. He says

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Speaker 2: it's impossible to describe this, and then he describes it.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, yeah, I can't describe it, but I'm going

430
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Speaker 1: to go on for about a good page telling you

431
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Speaker 1: how impossible this is to describe.

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Speaker 2: It's sort of like a way of saying, let me

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Speaker 2: describe this, but just know that it's worse than whatever

434
00:23:59,119 --> 00:23:59,639
Speaker 2: I'm saying.

435
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, And of course, there are just great train

436
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:05,919
Speaker 1: moments sprinkled throughout horror and even just horror flavored fiction.

437
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: For instance, I mean there's the We've talked about the

438
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:13,679
Speaker 1: vampire action sequence with Subways and Blade on weird El

439
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: Cinema before. Who can forget the arrival of the Dementors

440
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,520
Speaker 1: on Hogwarts Express in Alfonso Quran's Harry Potter and the

441
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:25,160
Speaker 1: Prisoner of Azkaban, which for my money is the best

442
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:28,400
Speaker 1: film in that that whole series, and a very creepy sequences.

443
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:32,120
Speaker 1: These wraiths are, you know, creeping aboard the train and

444
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:34,760
Speaker 1: the ice is forming over the glass and so forth.

445
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 2: I only barely remember the moment you're talking about. Wait,

446
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 2: do the the Dementitors get on the train and arrive

447
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:43,880
Speaker 2: by train or they're like surrounding a train.

448
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:45,679
Speaker 1: They're surrounding the train. Yeah, they didn't get it, they

449
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:49,360
Speaker 1: didn't buy a ticket, things about it. So at any rate,

450
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: suffice to say, there are a lot of great horror

451
00:24:52,359 --> 00:24:56,359
Speaker 1: and horror flavored train scenes in film and television, in

452
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:00,719
Speaker 1: fiction written fiction. So I'm sure there are some excellent

453
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: examples that I haven't even thought to mention here. So

454
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:05,800
Speaker 1: as always, we'd love to hear from folks out there,

455
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:08,960
Speaker 1: if you have any examples that stand out in your

456
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 1: mind and line up with some of the examples we're

457
00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: discussing here.

458
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely right in now, Rob, if you don't mind.

459
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 2: I thought it would be interesting to try to look

460
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:21,480
Speaker 2: at what are some of the most common and distinctive

461
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:26,959
Speaker 2: themes of locomotive horror. What do train horror stories often

462
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 2: get focused on as opposed to just the usual themes

463
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:33,840
Speaker 2: of horror. Here's what I could think of so far.

464
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 2: First of all, I think a big theme of train

465
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 2: horror is fate. These stories very often focus on people

466
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:47,680
Speaker 2: who have some kind of foreknowledge or premonition of horrible

467
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 2: events or outcomes, but have no way to prevent them

468
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 2: from happening. This is a core idea of the Dickens

469
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 2: story The Signalman. But it happens in a lot of

470
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 2: train fiction that you know something is going to happen,

471
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:03,479
Speaker 2: and you usually don't want it to happen, but you

472
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:07,520
Speaker 2: can't stop it. And I think this relates to unique features,

473
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 2: especially in the nineteenth century, of trains as a transportation technology.

474
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:15,120
Speaker 2: When you're on a train, you are headed somewhere, and

475
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:18,359
Speaker 2: you've usually usually chosen to get on the train, but

476
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:21,879
Speaker 2: the travel is not occurring by your own physical power,

477
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 2: and the train is not under your control to steer,

478
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 2: and it is not within your practical power to get

479
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:32,160
Speaker 2: off the train. So once you're on a moving train,

480
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:36,679
Speaker 2: you are being taken ineluctably to the train's destination, and

481
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 2: no matter how much you may want to, you cannot

482
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:40,120
Speaker 2: change course.

483
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 3: Yeah.

484
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is indeed a great observation of horror train fiction. Yeah,

485
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: and even science fiction. You know, you get into even

486
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:54,560
Speaker 1: examples Like I keep thinking of snow Piercer, the TV series,

487
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: in the film, and like what are they doing with trains?

488
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: And they're doing a lot with trains thematically and with setting,

489
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:02,439
Speaker 1: but one of them kind of turning this concept on

490
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: its head is that the train has no destination. It's

491
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 1: just going endlessly around the world. There's like no destination

492
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: left to go to because there's nothing left of human

493
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: civilization except the journey of the train.

494
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 2: But that has some metaphorical potency of its own, right,

495
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 2: The idea of just a movement that never ceases with

496
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 2: no endpoint or goal. Yeah, infinite games, right, Yeah. But

497
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 2: also I was thinking about how the physical characteristics of

498
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 2: locomotives and travel by rail feed into this theme of

499
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:40,399
Speaker 2: fate and unavoidable outcomes because trains are enormous and enormously

500
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 2: powerful machines, which it would be you know, not only

501
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:45,679
Speaker 2: while if you're a passenger on a train, can you

502
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 2: not steer the train yourself? You know, it's stuck to

503
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 2: the tracks, It's going wherever the engine driver takes it.

504
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 2: It would also be hopeless to personally resist the movement

505
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 2: of the train. You know, you can't like push it

506
00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:01,399
Speaker 2: or anything. It's overwhelming physical power. Also, travel by train

507
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 2: is fast. You enter the belly of this great beast

508
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:07,120
Speaker 2: in one place, and then before you know it, you're

509
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:09,480
Speaker 2: just in another city, another part of the country, another

510
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 2: part of the world, contributing to this sense of too quickness,

511
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 2: like I have not had time to prepare for what's coming.

512
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, this this theme instantly makes me think of this

513
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 1: particular reggae song I believe Bob Marley and the Whaler's

514
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:30,680
Speaker 1: covered it at one point, called stop that Train, and

515
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 1: it's you know, the chorus is stop stop that train,

516
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: I want to get off, and so forth, And like

517
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 1: we instantly connect with this idea, like something is propelling

518
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 1: me toward a destination and I've changed my mind about it,

519
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 1: or I never wanted to go there to begin with.

520
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 1: I would like to get off the train.

521
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 2: Or maybe you just now understand what it means to

522
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 2: go to this destination. You got on the train thinking

523
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 2: one thing, and then you learn something it changes your mind.

524
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's like the technology becomes the excellent metaphor

525
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:04,640
Speaker 1: for so many different aspects of human life, including life

526
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: itself in our linear experience of it.

527
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, okay. I think fate and fatalism, unavoidable outcomes,

528
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 2: that's a big theme. Second theme I would say is

529
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 2: very common in these stories is isolation and alienation. I

530
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 2: think because you cannot safely exit a train in motion.

531
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 2: Stories set on trains often emphasize themes of being cut

532
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 2: off and isolated from the rest of the world, the

533
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 2: world outside. So you can look out the windows of

534
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 2: the train at the world as it goes by, but

535
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 2: you can't interact with that world. You can only watch

536
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 2: pieces of it quickly merge into and out of your view,

537
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 2: and I think that creates this feeling of unreality and distance.

538
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 2: This is sort of what I was getting at in

539
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 2: response to that rant by Sherlock Holmes looking out at

540
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 2: the world. I wonder if this feeling of unreality and

541
00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 2: alienation contributes to the malice that Home sees when looking

542
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 2: out at houses through a passing train window. If he

543
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 2: would feel any different if he were just standing on

544
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 2: the ground looking at the same scene.

545
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.

546
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 3: Yeah.

547
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 2: Now beyond that more abstract feeling, the kind of uncanny

548
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 2: separation of the train and its passengers from the outside world,

549
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 2: there's a different type of isolation that often comes up

550
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:34,960
Speaker 2: in these stories, and it's much more practical individual isolation

551
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 2: inclosed train compartments. In a lot of the nonfiction writings

552
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 2: about trains from the nineteenth century, and we're going to

553
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 2: get into some of these as the series goes on,

554
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:50,920
Speaker 2: you see a particular concern about people being by themselves

555
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 2: and vulnerable to attacks in the privacy compartments of passenger trains. Now,

556
00:30:56,600 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 2: I think this is interesting because obviously the train was

557
00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 2: not the first time there were ever rooms with walls

558
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 2: and small spaces where people could become isolated and trapped,

559
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 2: say with a dangerous person. But for some reason, compartments

560
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 2: on trains seemed especially frightening to people in this regard.

561
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 2: Like if you read newspaper articles from London in the

562
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties. People are writing about with terror about this

563
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 2: idea of getting stock or cornered in a train car.

564
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 2: But it's interesting to look at like why this environment

565
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 2: in particular struck people as a place that was dangerous.

566
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:37,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting to think about it. I mean,

567
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to think of it as like the world

568
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: has been squished down and elongated, and so all of

569
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 1: those little confined spaces that you might encounter in the

570
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: world are just maybe a little more confined or seem

571
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: a little more confined because the world has been narrowed

572
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: down into these uniform bricks of habitation. Yeah.

573
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 2: Another theme, but I think pops up in these stories

574
00:32:01,880 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 2: is train tunnels as journeys to the underworld, so passing

575
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:09,840
Speaker 2: through into darkness, literally traveling under the earth. This serves

576
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 2: as metaphorical in the same way that journeys to the

577
00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 2: underworld often do in fiction, as a way of speaking

578
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 2: about death often or great transitions and changes, and then

579
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 2: speaking of change. One more theme. I think that is

580
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 2: quite prominent, especially in stories from the nineteenth century. I

581
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:29,479
Speaker 2: think this is less true as time goes on, but

582
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:32,720
Speaker 2: in stories from the nineteenth century, when passenger trains were

583
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 2: a more recent innovation. Trains often are used as the

584
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 2: singular symbol of the technological era. So in the same

585
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 2: way that if you wanted to write a story today

586
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 2: commenting on the digital age, you might have as an

587
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 2: object in that story, like a phone or a computer.

588
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:55,760
Speaker 2: That's like the icon of the technological environment. I think

589
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 2: in the same way, the locomotive was the core physical

590
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,840
Speaker 2: symbol of the steam age and everything that came with it.

591
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 2: So the replacement of human labor with machine power, changes

592
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 2: to the physical landscape of the world, a pollution of

593
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 2: the environment, the accelerating pace of human life, increasing power

594
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 2: to both create and destroy. All these things I think

595
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 2: were symbolized in the physical object of the train. The

596
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 2: train could key out to all of those technological ideas,

597
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 2: and I think for that reason, it's not hyperbole to

598
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 2: say that somebody, especially in the nineteenth century, could easily

599
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:36,400
Speaker 2: look on the steam engine and the steam engine powered

600
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 2: locomotive as something demonic, something unholy. It is humanities packed

601
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,480
Speaker 2: with the devil that has given us great power at

602
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 2: the cost of our souls.

603
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think it's also worth keeping in

604
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: mind that Again, no matter how every day and new

605
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 1: and even old fashioned train transportation may seem to us today,

606
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: we also have to look at the fact that, you know,

607
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: a lot of our fiction that we read today has,

608
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:09,319
Speaker 1: in one way or another, has sort of roots in

609
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 1: the storytelling of this time period. You know, like you

610
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: may not be setting around reading a bunch of Charles Dickens,

611
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:19,279
Speaker 1: but inevitably you're reading people that were inspired by people

612
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,720
Speaker 1: who are inspired by Dickens. Or Yeah, you can add, however,

613
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: many layers of transition or and play there, but you

614
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,760
Speaker 1: can't deny, at least in the English language, the importance

615
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: of these works. Likewise, when you look at film, like,

616
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: trains have always been a part of the moving picture,

617
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: and so you see cinema coming out of the late

618
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: nineteenth century still fascinated with trains and capturing trains, and

619
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:49,719
Speaker 1: we've never stopped being fascinated with trains in our visual

620
00:34:49,920 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 1: cinematic storytelling. Yeah, all right, so we've alluded to some

621
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:55,360
Speaker 1: of the history here. I thought it would be a

622
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:58,880
Speaker 1: good idea just to run through rather quickly some of

623
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:02,440
Speaker 1: the big moments and development of locomotive technology. This is

624
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 1: not going to be a full blown invention episode, so

625
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 1: we're not going to go through everything in detail, and

626
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 1: ultimately it's not just a hey, one day a guy

627
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:14,440
Speaker 1: invented a locomotive and they went with it. You know,

628
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 1: there are a number of different people involved, different technologies

629
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:24,360
Speaker 1: that end up being utilized and built upon. But you know,

630
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: to start with the basic concept of a wheeled vehicle

631
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:31,080
Speaker 1: on a set track sometimes called like a wagonway. This

632
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:35,640
Speaker 1: dates back as far as ancient Babylon wheeled carts affixed

633
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:39,320
Speaker 1: to some sort of rail, you know, to keep the

634
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 1: cart on track, literally on track, like that's how how

635
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:46,320
Speaker 1: do you refer to it? The language has already embedded concept.

636
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: But wheeled carts affixed to rails or of course have

637
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:53,840
Speaker 1: long been used in mining operations pulled by human or

638
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:56,800
Speaker 1: animal labor, well in advance of any kind of steam

639
00:35:56,840 --> 00:36:01,840
Speaker 1: technology or electric like electronic technology, which would and this

640
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: would have all would lay the groundwork for the locomotive

641
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 1: revolution that's to come. And it's honestly kind of interesting

642
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:11,840
Speaker 1: to think about the connection between trains and mine cards

643
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: here because mines, of course, as we've discussed in the

644
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: show before, are also places with their own deep seated

645
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:21,840
Speaker 1: myths and legends. And definitely themes of traveling into the underworld.

646
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:24,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, overlapping themes. Yeah.

647
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: Now. Steam technology also runs pretty deep in its basic conception, theorized,

648
00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: for instance, in the second half of the first century

649
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:37,240
Speaker 1: CE by Greek mathematician Hero sometimes called Heros or Heron.

650
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: For centuries, however, steam technology was mostly the domain of

651
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:46,400
Speaker 1: theories and concepts, followed by experiments and novelties, you know,

652
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:49,759
Speaker 1: essentially little toys, leading up to a let's say, a

653
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: seventeenth century pressure cooker, and then in sixteen ninety eight

654
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:59,880
Speaker 1: Thomas Savory's steam pump, the Miner's Friend. This was in

655
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 1: vented as a way to use steam power to remove

656
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:03,880
Speaker 1: water from mines.

657
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:05,319
Speaker 2: To sort of pump them out.

658
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, it actually wasn't that successful in pumping water

659
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 1: out of mines for a number of technological reasons and

660
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:16,240
Speaker 1: technological limitations at the time, but it pushed the technology forward.

661
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:18,120
Speaker 1: And there are various examples of this sort of thing

662
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:21,080
Speaker 1: in the development of steam technology. Leading up to the

663
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:25,759
Speaker 1: steam train, we get the newcoming engine, the Bolton and

664
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 1: Watt engine, we get the Cornish engine, and each of

665
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:33,319
Speaker 1: these has its own story that we don't have time

666
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,399
Speaker 1: to get into here, and then at the same time

667
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: there were plenty of other schemes to power a land

668
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 1: vehicle with some sort of technology it steam or otherwise.

669
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:44,879
Speaker 1: So concepts and attempts at steam driven cars date back

670
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,960
Speaker 1: to the sixteen hundreds and French inventor Nicholas Joseph Kuno

671
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,160
Speaker 1: made the first steam powered vehicle in seventeen sixty nine.

672
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:56,360
Speaker 1: But then Richard Trevithek, one of the mines behind the

673
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:58,799
Speaker 1: Cornish Engine, took it to the next level with a

674
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 1: steam powered engine design to take advantage of the pre

675
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:06,160
Speaker 1: existing iron enforced wooden rails called tramways, who were already

676
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 1: used in industrial parts of England on which you had

677
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: horses pulling carts full of sa coal. Two decades after this,

678
00:38:13,200 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: British engineer George Stevenson advanced the concept and locomotion number

679
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,279
Speaker 1: one carried cargo and I believe six hundred passengers in

680
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: a test run. And at this point there are various

681
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 1: important figures in the UK, in the US and elsewhere

682
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 1: who end up pushing the technology and the industry of

683
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 1: trains forward, because it's kind of like a push and

684
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:37,759
Speaker 1: pull there, like you need the technology, but you also

685
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 1: need the industry, you need the business savvy, you need

686
00:38:40,520 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 1: applications of the technology, and so it's a it's a

687
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:48,760
Speaker 1: fascinating but also kind of ever expanding history at this point.

688
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: But the way this ends up affecting the world is,

689
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: of course, train tracks steadily began to stitch together major

690
00:38:56,160 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 1: centers of population within a given country than a given nation,

691
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: but then also between cities and neighboring nations, and they

692
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,840
Speaker 1: eventually seem to be encircling the earth kind of like

693
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 1: that iron spider that was reference the Dickens.

694
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,360
Speaker 2: Quote, the great ground spiders that spun only iron.

695
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:19,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And they're also burrowing underneath the earth.

696
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:22,719
Speaker 1: We have to remember that the London underground parts of it,

697
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: at any rate, the earliest parts of it began opening

698
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:26,439
Speaker 1: in like eighteen sixty three.

699
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 3: Wow.

700
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: So basically train technology, you know, spinning off of these

701
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: other technologies. It ends up changing the way humans and

702
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:39,160
Speaker 1: goods traverse the world, just changing so many things about

703
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:40,320
Speaker 1: the shape of human life.

704
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:44,319
Speaker 2: And I think you can argue having ripple effects out

705
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:49,719
Speaker 2: through culture that are much bigger than just making it

706
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 2: faster to get stuff and people from one place to another.

707
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,800
Speaker 2: I mean, one example we've talked about on the show before.

708
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:59,720
Speaker 2: Is the way that train scheduled affected the cultural concept

709
00:39:59,719 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 2: of time time. Yes, like trains, it's very important that

710
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 2: you are operating on schedule. There can be danger if

711
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 2: there are you know, miscommunications of time, even down to

712
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,520
Speaker 2: the to a matter of minutes. So like suddenly there

713
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 2: is a necessity for exact measures of time that are

714
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:19,319
Speaker 2: you know, held throughout a place, and that that sort

715
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 2: of changes everything in a way. Lots of stuff follows

716
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:24,600
Speaker 2: downstream from that, and there are other things like that.

717
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:25,359
Speaker 3: Yeah.

718
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like the continuity of the rail itself

719
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: stretching from from this big city to this small town

720
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,719
Speaker 1: like they are one now in the is as far

721
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:39,480
Speaker 1: as timing is concerned, I mean it always was, but

722
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: you can no longer have just sort of local time,

723
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 1: like yeah, it's you know here, it's like three thirty five. Now,

724
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:46,359
Speaker 1: if you're saying it's three thirty five here, it has

725
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,359
Speaker 1: to be three thirty five back in the city. These

726
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:49,960
Speaker 1: times absolutely have to match.

727
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 2: Okay. So we've talked about the use of trains as

728
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:06,919
Speaker 2: a setting or plot device in weird fiction. We've talked

729
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:11,160
Speaker 2: about common themes attaching to locomotive horror themes like fate

730
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 2: and helplessness, isolation and alienation. We talked a bit about

731
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 2: the early steam locomotive models like George and Robert Stevenson's

732
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 2: Locomotion Number One in the eighteen twenties, and then the

733
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:26,839
Speaker 2: emerging cultural impact of steam powered trains in the mid

734
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:31,320
Speaker 2: nineteenth century as they became more incorporated into everyday life

735
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 2: within industrial societies. But with technological and cultural changes we

736
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:41,000
Speaker 2: know there often come anxieties. New technologies have not only

737
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 2: a way of creating new fears and stresses, but also

738
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 2: of exposing and tenderizing anxieties that existed before. So I

739
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 2: wanted to talk briefly about what I think is a

740
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:58,759
Speaker 2: really interesting phenomenon, which we could call the Victorian railway

741
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 2: madness panic. This was a particular journalistic and cultural obsession

742
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 2: in Great Britain lasting between roughly eighteen sixty and eighteen eighty,

743
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:16,319
Speaker 2: in which it seems people were both fascinated with and

744
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 2: horrified by the idea of being confined with violent, raving

745
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 2: madmen on moving trains. So my main source on this

746
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 2: subject is a historical article published in the Journal of

747
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 2: Victorian Culture in twenty sixteen called Shattered Minds mad Men

748
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 2: on the Railways eighteen sixty to eighteen eighty and this

749
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:41,879
Speaker 2: article is by a scholar named Amy Milne Smith, who

750
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:46,280
Speaker 2: is a professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University. Overall,

751
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:48,919
Speaker 2: it's a fascinating read, and I regret that we don't

752
00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 2: have time to get into all of the interesting details

753
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 2: and arguments that the author brings up here. I'm going

754
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 2: to mention some of the major points that stood out

755
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:58,800
Speaker 2: to me as relevant for our discussion today, but as possible,

756
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 2: we'll come back to this page for a bit more

757
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 2: in the next episode as well. So this article begins

758
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:09,359
Speaker 2: by highlighting another article, an article from eighteen sixty three,

759
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 2: which is great because it's one of those social trend

760
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 2: articles that we still get today, like a you know,

761
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 2: five or ten years ago, it was like all the

762
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 2: teens are reading tide pods. But this one is from

763
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty three and it's called a Madman on the

764
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 2: rail published in the London Review. And so I looked

765
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 2: this article up in full, actually, so I could see

766
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 2: everything it says. I found a full scan of it

767
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:36,320
Speaker 2: on archive dot org and it is packed with interesting claims,

768
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:39,400
Speaker 2: but I have to mention the opening lines because the

769
00:43:39,520 --> 00:43:42,440
Speaker 2: editors of the London Review really know how to grab you.

770
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:46,760
Speaker 2: They say, we demand that a bishop or Privy councilor

771
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:49,920
Speaker 2: be slaughtered in a railway carriage for the benefit of

772
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 2: his country. Sidney Smith long ago made a similar demand

773
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 2: that a dignitary of the church be burnt alive in

774
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 2: a railway carriage which had spontaneously hot fire, for this

775
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 2: is the only means of impressing railway directors with the

776
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:11,440
Speaker 2: propriety of affording travelers some means of communicating with the guard. Okay,

777
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 2: so if I'm grading this as a first year persuasive essay,

778
00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 2: that might be coming on a little strong, but not bad.

779
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 2: To begin by making it clear how serious you think

780
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 2: an issue is that what's the problem that they say

781
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 2: can only be solved by human sacrifice?

782
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:25,319
Speaker 3: Yeah?

783
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:29,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, threatening the clergy with ritual death seems a little strong.

784
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 2: Yes, So here's the problem quote. Traveling express with madmen

785
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 2: is unfortunately not an improbable circumstance of real life. And

786
00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 2: if there be any tendency to mania, the excitement of

787
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 2: rapid transit through the air is the very thing to

788
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:53,360
Speaker 2: bring it on. So this article is not isolated. I

789
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 2: think we could characterize this as part of a journalistic

790
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 2: phenomenon of the eighteen sixties of newspaper and magazine articles

791
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:08,880
Speaker 2: really focusing on and highlighting the dangers of madmen on trains.

792
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 2: And so this article by Amy Millan Smith explores a

793
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:17,680
Speaker 2: lot of that that cultural obsession, and it concerns two

794
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 2: different nightmare train ride scenarios that sort of gripped the

795
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 2: minds of the British public in these decades. So the

796
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 2: first scenario is I think more plausible from our perspective today,

797
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:34,320
Speaker 2: and that scenario is violent madmen are getting on board

798
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:38,360
Speaker 2: trains and other passengers are trapped in the cars with them.

799
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:41,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, because this is an idea that has never completely

800
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 1: gone away and still makes the headlines, whether you're talking

801
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: about the trains, particularly say New York subway. I mean,

802
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:51,239
Speaker 1: it's become it's a trope. It's a joke about the

803
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:54,359
Speaker 1: individual's misbehaving or posing a danger on an un given

804
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 1: train car. And then likewise we see echoes of this

805
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,319
Speaker 1: with in aviation as well. Well yeah, yeah, so it's

806
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:04,439
Speaker 1: you know, to a certain extent or reality, but also

807
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: something that is easily easily built up in the imagination

808
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 1: as well.

809
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, exactly, so there is no doubt there were

810
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 2: cases in this time period where people were violently attacked

811
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 2: by a stranger on a train. Of course, this can

812
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:20,920
Speaker 2: happen in pretty much any public place, and that the

813
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 2: train is one place it does happen. And while I

814
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:27,720
Speaker 2: think a kind of vividness bias probably made this scenario

815
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:31,560
Speaker 2: seem more common than it actually was, you can't blame

816
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:34,480
Speaker 2: people for being alarmed. I mean, nobody would want to

817
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 2: be trapped in a confined space with a person who's

818
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:40,880
Speaker 2: acting erratically and then becomes violent. That's a bad situation

819
00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 2: to be in. So you can't blame people for seeing

820
00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 2: that as a problem. But the issue seems to be

821
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 2: that people came to believe, because of the reporting environment,

822
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,800
Speaker 2: that this was an extremely common problem, when in fact

823
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:58,320
Speaker 2: it probably was not. The second scenario described in this article, however,

824
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:03,239
Speaker 2: is more strained, intriguing certainly from our modern medical point

825
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 2: of view, and that idea is that the act of

826
00:47:07,080 --> 00:47:12,600
Speaker 2: riding on board a steam train could itself drive someone

827
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:16,839
Speaker 2: mad and send them shrieking and slashing at their fellow passengers.

828
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 2: The author writes about this as a common medical expert

829
00:47:20,600 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 2: sentiment of the eighteen sixties, saying, quote, doctors warned that

830
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:29,560
Speaker 2: intense vibrations of the railway carriage, the speed of travel,

831
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:33,400
Speaker 2: and the danger of traumatic accidents could unsettle both people's

832
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:38,319
Speaker 2: physical and mental health. So this led to not only

833
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 2: the fear that you might be the victim of a

834
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:44,279
Speaker 2: railway madman, but that without any prior warning, you might

835
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 2: become one yourself.

836
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: Yeah again, getting decided there's something about train travel that

837
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:55,359
Speaker 1: is inherently abnormal, and it can make you abnormal as well,

838
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: or or enhance abnormal tendencies.

839
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:03,280
Speaker 2: Now. Milne Smith's charts the historical arc of this panic

840
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:06,799
Speaker 2: about railway madmen, saying that it sort of begins as

841
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 2: a topic in the eighteen sixties, peaks in the eighteen seventies,

842
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 2: and then pretty much completely disappears by later in the

843
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 2: nineteenth century. It's sort of gone by the eighteen eighties,

844
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:22,719
Speaker 2: or the same kind of phenomenon when reported on in

845
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,760
Speaker 2: the later decades of the nineteenth century for some reason,

846
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:28,879
Speaker 2: or treated as kind of quaint instead of as terrifying.

847
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 2: She also says that railway madness in this cultural context

848
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 2: really meets all of the key criteria to be defined

849
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 2: as a moral panic in the way academics would normally

850
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 2: understand the term. So there's sort of a topical consensus

851
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:48,760
Speaker 2: of fear and apprehension about some apparent or alleged trend

852
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:52,839
Speaker 2: in society quote, drawing on latent fears and triggered by

853
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 2: sensational events. And so she says that while the normal

854
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 2: moral panic lasts maybe several months for a number of reasons,

855
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 2: the railway madness panic lasted roughly two decades again, from

856
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 2: about eighteen sixty to about eighteen eighty. And what made

857
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:13,879
Speaker 2: this especially potent was that it triggered at the same

858
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:19,239
Speaker 2: time anxieties about technological change, but also apparently some kind

859
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:25,040
Speaker 2: of gendered anxieties about failed masculinity, because she says, in

860
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 2: the eighteen sixties in Britain there was generally increasing public

861
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 2: consciousness of mental illness. There was a lot of talk

862
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 2: in the press about what was at the time often

863
00:49:34,320 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 2: referred to as lunacy and lunatics, and about perceived failures

864
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 2: of the asylum system. And while this consciousness of mental illness,

865
00:49:43,560 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 2: the author contends, was in general observed in both men

866
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 2: and women with rough parody, for some reason, the railway

867
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:56,359
Speaker 2: travel induced madness was believed to be a distinctly male phenomenon.

868
00:49:56,400 --> 00:50:00,560
Speaker 2: The railway mad men were, for some reason, specifically mad men.

869
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 2: She also gets into some interesting things about the sensationalism

870
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:09,040
Speaker 2: demands of the press at the time. In the eighteen sixties,

871
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 2: there were a lot of newspapers that were at the

872
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,719
Speaker 2: same time that they might look down on and have

873
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 2: scathing editorials about the idea of the so called sensation

874
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 2: novels in fiction, they were very happy to really ramp

875
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 2: up the gory details and exaggerate anything about violent crime

876
00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:31,799
Speaker 2: or mad men in the papers, and so there was

877
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 2: there was a hunger in the British press in the

878
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties for stories about violent madmen, and especially if

879
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 2: the circumstances of the story were strange, and apparently for

880
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:47,080
Speaker 2: some reason, people just really latched onto the setting of

881
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 2: the railway train for this kind of story. So it

882
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:53,759
Speaker 2: was like, this is what the eighteen sixty equivalent of,

883
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 2: this is what people are clicking on.

884
00:50:56,320 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And you could basically take anything and spin

885
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 1: it out, because even if you a week goes by

886
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 1: you don't have an actual madman attack on a train,

887
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:07,440
Speaker 1: perhaps you have something that could be played up as

888
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 1: they brush with a train madman. You know, like some

889
00:51:11,640 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 1: are amount of erratic behavior or reported erratic behavior or

890
00:51:15,880 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 1: reported shiftiness that can then be blown up into a story.

891
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:23,319
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right, very perceptive role because she does

892
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 2: get into exactly that that dynamic.

893
00:51:25,840 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 4: I mean we're still doing it today, yes, yeah, And

894
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:32,359
Speaker 4: so like the way it is is there there are

895
00:51:32,520 --> 00:51:36,800
Speaker 4: some initially very terrible events, like there was one very

896
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 4: famous case of an actual murder on a train in

897
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:41,320
Speaker 4: Great Britain.

898
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:44,720
Speaker 2: It was in July eighteen sixty four. A London banker

899
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:47,920
Speaker 2: named Thomas Briggs was beaten and murdered inside of a

900
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 2: locked train compartment. Eventually, a German tailor named Franz Mueller

901
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:56,960
Speaker 2: was convicted of the murder. I think it involved like

902
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:02,600
Speaker 2: a transatlantic pursuit of of the suspect, but what he

903
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 2: was eventually convicted. So that was an actual, like terrifying

904
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:09,320
Speaker 2: violent crime on a train. But then you could spin

905
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 2: that out into a lot of other scenarios where in

906
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 2: many cases like nobody was actually even hurt, but they

907
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 2: would just the press would put a lot of emphasis

908
00:52:21,120 --> 00:52:24,839
Speaker 2: on something kind of weird and disturbing happened on a

909
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 2: train and think of the danger that could have unfolded.

910
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 2: So there's one example that the author cites in this

911
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 2: paper of a story where there's an express train from

912
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 2: King's Cross to Peterborough and a large sailor gets on board.

913
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 2: The journey begins, and then the sailor begins behaving erradically,

914
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 2: accusing his fellow passengers of stealing from him, and then

915
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:51,000
Speaker 2: at one point he tries to leap out of one

916
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 2: of the windows of the moving train. Several other passengers

917
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:56,879
Speaker 2: prevent him from getting out of the window. They're able

918
00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:59,280
Speaker 2: to restrain him until the train comes to a stop,

919
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:03,600
Speaker 2: and then authorities take over. And note how in the

920
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 2: story there's no indication that anyone was actually badly hurt,

921
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:11,640
Speaker 2: but the press reporting just really emphasized the theme of

922
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:15,080
Speaker 2: madness and the threat that the sailor could have posed

923
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 2: to the other passengers. There's another report she mentions that's

924
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 2: in the Wrexham Advertiser in eighteen sixty Nine's the story

925
00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 2: of an aristocratic man from Falkirk who got onto a

926
00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:29,799
Speaker 2: train and then took off all his clothes, leaned out

927
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:33,880
Speaker 2: the window and started talking nonsense. After the station master

928
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,840
Speaker 2: was alerted, they got him off the train, and then strangely,

929
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 2: after they got him off the train, it reports that

930
00:53:38,719 --> 00:53:41,680
Speaker 2: he seemed to come back to his senses, and this

931
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:45,120
Speaker 2: ties into the idea I mentioned a minute ago, the

932
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 2: strange belief at the time that there was such a

933
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:54,760
Speaker 2: thing as sudden railway madness, so that essentially a man

934
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:59,839
Speaker 2: who was by all outward indications previously healthy could buy

935
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 2: some mechanism of the movements and environment of the train

936
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:10,640
Speaker 2: be rendered instantly violently insane. And this was not considered

937
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:12,880
Speaker 2: a fringe or quack theory at the time. From what

938
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:15,279
Speaker 2: I can tell like, the idea was advanced by many

939
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 2: physicians and in articles in some of the leading medical

940
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:22,240
Speaker 2: journals of the eighteen sixties. One example that Miln Smith

941
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 2: sites is in eighteen sixty two, the medical journal The

942
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 2: Lancet published a series of articles about the threats to

943
00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:33,440
Speaker 2: public health posed by railway travel, and, as she summarizes

944
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:36,960
Speaker 2: as follows quote, the articles listed a number of potentially

945
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:41,120
Speaker 2: dangerous effects of railway travel on the unsuspecting passenger, ranging

946
00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:47,720
Speaker 2: from fatigue to hemorrhoids to paralysis. A man suffering hemorrhoids Okay,

947
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:50,919
Speaker 2: maybe I don't know, but it goes on A man

948
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:55,280
Speaker 2: suffering from underlying mental anxieties or born with a predisposition

949
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 2: to insanity, could have his illness triggered by the railway

950
00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:00,680
Speaker 2: trip itself.

951
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:03,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, this is one of those things

952
00:55:03,680 --> 00:55:06,480
Speaker 1: where on one hand it seems outrageous, but then also,

953
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:08,920
Speaker 1: I mean there is some nugget of truth to the

954
00:55:08,920 --> 00:55:13,160
Speaker 1: fact that travel can be stressful, sure, and can aggravate

955
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:16,440
Speaker 1: other you know, things going on in your your mental

956
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:21,520
Speaker 1: life or you know, your mental health. So yeah, there's

957
00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 1: there's a line though, between you know, actual concern and

958
00:55:27,360 --> 00:55:28,920
Speaker 1: something that just becomes a panic.

959
00:55:29,040 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. And then once again, as we said earlier,

960
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 2: like in the cases where somebody is actually acting violently

961
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:38,800
Speaker 2: on a train, that's obviously a huge problem, but the

962
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 2: the social panic around this seemed to vastly exaggerate the

963
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 2: prevalence of the problem. There was this perception that it's

964
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:50,280
Speaker 2: happening all the time and it's just a persistent danger

965
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:54,319
Speaker 2: of riding the trains and something must be done about it.

966
00:55:54,719 --> 00:55:57,880
Speaker 2: And yet another interesting thing Milan Smith gets into is

967
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 2: the kind of difficulty in enacting any of the proposed

968
00:56:02,239 --> 00:56:06,760
Speaker 2: solutions to this alleged problem. So the solutions included things

969
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:09,799
Speaker 2: like changes in the design of rail cars, because some

970
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:13,279
Speaker 2: passenger cars at the time would have a situation where

971
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 2: like you'd be in a compartment or a carriage and

972
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:19,719
Speaker 2: you'd be essentially locked in from the outside with no

973
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:22,760
Speaker 2: way of traveling to like other parts of the train.

974
00:56:22,920 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 2: If something you know bad was happening in your compartment

975
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:29,400
Speaker 2: or carriage and you wanted to go somewhere else, you

976
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:31,760
Speaker 2: couldn't really leave until the train came to a stop.

977
00:56:32,080 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 2: So that's a possible solution. You could change the design

978
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:37,319
Speaker 2: of the train. You could add interior corridors and ways

979
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 2: of getting back and forth. You could also add in

980
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:43,520
Speaker 2: ways to communicate with the train guard, so people in

981
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:46,920
Speaker 2: compartments could you know, could have like a like a

982
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 2: cord or some kind of thing they could pull, or

983
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:51,759
Speaker 2: way of communicating with some kind of authority figure on

984
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:55,000
Speaker 2: the train. Or Another idea that would come about a

985
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 2: good deal later was you could get emergency brake cords.

986
00:56:58,719 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 2: People talked about adding in windows, interior windows to the

987
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 2: train compartments so that you could signal for help, you

988
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:10,520
Speaker 2: could look at somebody else. But apparently a lot of

989
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:14,359
Speaker 2: these solutions took a long time to implement because they

990
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 2: faced opposition, often on the grounds that they were violations

991
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 2: of the privacy of the individual carriage or compartment. But

992
00:57:23,720 --> 00:57:27,680
Speaker 2: the author argues that the social panic about railway madness

993
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:32,840
Speaker 2: went on because, in her opinion, it wasn't actually about

994
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 2: the true practical question of safety on a train car.

995
00:57:36,320 --> 00:57:38,479
Speaker 2: I mean, that's an element, but that's not the main thing.

996
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 2: It was a way of expressing deeper anxieties that could

997
00:57:42,240 --> 00:57:45,640
Speaker 2: not be fixed by a rail guard or a brake cord.

998
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:49,640
Speaker 2: She writes, quote the railway was a symbol of civilization,

999
00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:54,080
Speaker 2: and yet it demonstrated how quickly civilization could fall away

1000
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:58,280
Speaker 2: from modern man. So the underlying anxiety has to do,

1001
00:57:59,240 --> 00:58:02,840
Speaker 2: in her opinion, with a perceived fragility of the body

1002
00:58:02,920 --> 00:58:05,200
Speaker 2: and the mind, a fear that was sort of in

1003
00:58:05,240 --> 00:58:08,480
Speaker 2: the air in Victorian culture in Great Britain in the

1004
00:58:08,520 --> 00:58:13,240
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties and seventies, related to consciousness of mental illness,

1005
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 2: but then also spurred on by these popular stories about madmen,

1006
00:58:17,680 --> 00:58:20,680
Speaker 2: and the fear was that someone could go mad at

1007
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 2: any moment, even by the jostling of a train car.

1008
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:26,720
Speaker 2: And so this sort of symbol of changes in the

1009
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:31,200
Speaker 2: society around them, the technological environment of things happening faster

1010
00:58:31,320 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 2: than you can understand, and the pace of modern life

1011
00:58:34,200 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 2: changing and all this stuff coming on so fast, and

1012
00:58:37,200 --> 00:58:41,200
Speaker 2: that colliding with this idea of the fragility of our

1013
00:58:41,240 --> 00:58:44,960
Speaker 2: minds and bodies, and that leading to this fear that

1014
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 2: people could be changed in an instant. They're moving too

1015
00:58:47,960 --> 00:58:51,200
Speaker 2: fast through the air. The loud train car, the jostling

1016
00:58:51,240 --> 00:58:53,800
Speaker 2: back and forth of the train car, it sets them off.

1017
00:58:54,200 --> 00:58:57,040
Speaker 2: And now it could be someone in the train car

1018
00:58:57,120 --> 00:58:59,480
Speaker 2: with you, or it could be you yourself that now

1019
00:58:59,560 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 2: you are no longer in control.

1020
00:59:02,560 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1021
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what you mentioned about this increasing awareness of

1022
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 1: or this view of one's mental state as being fragile,

1023
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:15,720
Speaker 1: you do you see this reflected, you know, in the

1024
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:18,720
Speaker 1: fiction of the time period as well. I can't help

1025
00:59:18,760 --> 00:59:20,200
Speaker 1: but think of at least of a couple a couple

1026
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:23,920
Speaker 1: of cases, in the cases of Sherlock Holmes, where we

1027
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:29,760
Speaker 1: see madness play of an important role, often affecting people

1028
00:59:29,800 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 1: of means, people of status.

1029
00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:32,760
Speaker 3: Uh.

1030
00:59:32,960 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 1: There's of course the case of the Creeping Man, and

1031
00:59:36,520 --> 00:59:39,280
Speaker 1: that one, of course involves some gorilla hijinks and his

1032
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:43,480
Speaker 1: you know, borderline science fiction. But then there's the and

1033
00:59:43,600 --> 00:59:48,200
Speaker 1: there's the excellent case of the Devil's foot, which involves

1034
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:52,520
Speaker 1: on the outset some sort of unknown occurrence or substance.

1035
00:59:52,640 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: It's unknown what actually happens that drives an entire room

1036
00:59:56,840 --> 00:59:59,680
Speaker 1: full of people either kills them dead or drives them insane.

1037
01:00:00,120 --> 01:00:01,880
Speaker 1: And at the beginning it seems like it could even

1038
01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:05,560
Speaker 1: have a supernatural cause. We don't know. But you know,

1039
01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:08,200
Speaker 1: both of these stories that there are stories that seemed

1040
01:00:08,240 --> 01:00:10,680
Speaker 1: to drive home this idea that was in the public

1041
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 1: consciousness that yeah, nobody is immune. Anybody can be affected

1042
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:19,320
Speaker 1: by some sort of change in their mental state. Yes.

1043
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:23,200
Speaker 2: And the prominence, the emerging prominence of railway travel in

1044
01:00:23,320 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 2: human life in the eighteen sixties. I mean again, remember

1045
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:31,000
Speaker 2: how quickly railways became central to industrial societies in the

1046
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:34,160
Speaker 2: mid nineteenth century. There was just an explosion in the

1047
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:36,919
Speaker 2: number of railway lines and the number of passengers from

1048
01:00:36,960 --> 01:00:40,400
Speaker 2: like eighteen fifty to eighteen sixty in Great Britain. That

1049
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:43,400
Speaker 2: came on so quick. I think that change in the

1050
01:00:43,440 --> 01:00:46,840
Speaker 2: world around them and in travel and infrastructure in human

1051
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:51,680
Speaker 2: life probably created this feeling that one could change internally

1052
01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:54,640
Speaker 2: very quickly as well. So Rob, I think you said

1053
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 2: this earlier, but I think one could plausibly argue that

1054
01:00:58,040 --> 01:01:00,960
Speaker 2: there is a kind of Victorian era few shot going on,

1055
01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 2: that all of this technological change coming on so fast

1056
01:01:04,720 --> 01:01:09,720
Speaker 2: and changing the character of human life so much, really

1057
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:13,160
Speaker 2: does create in itself a kind of anxiety that people

1058
01:01:13,200 --> 01:01:17,040
Speaker 2: end up working out in these these horror stories and

1059
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 2: and in these sensational journalistic obsessions.

1060
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:24,960
Speaker 1: Again, this is so fascinating, given how you know, every

1061
01:01:25,040 --> 01:01:27,800
Speaker 1: day train travel really is, and how at least from

1062
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 1: my vantage point, how pleasant it can be. Like even

1063
01:01:31,360 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 1: you know, I rode public transportation trains here in Atlanta

1064
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:40,560
Speaker 1: for a long time, and you know, sometimes it's weird,

1065
01:01:40,760 --> 01:01:44,160
Speaker 1: sometimes it's startling, you know, but even in those cases,

1066
01:01:44,160 --> 01:01:48,680
Speaker 1: often found it kind of peaceful, you know, you used to. Nowadays,

1067
01:01:48,680 --> 01:01:50,280
Speaker 1: I guess you can probably get some sort of a

1068
01:01:50,280 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: wireless connection just about anywhere on most major train rides.

1069
01:01:55,840 --> 01:01:58,800
Speaker 1: But there was a while where when you were underground

1070
01:01:58,800 --> 01:02:01,120
Speaker 1: on the train, you were really I was completely cut

1071
01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:02,960
Speaker 1: off and there was nothing I could do on my phone,

1072
01:02:03,680 --> 01:02:06,160
Speaker 1: you know, I would just have to read. I got

1073
01:02:06,160 --> 01:02:08,280
Speaker 1: to read, uh, you know, I got to be sort

1074
01:02:08,280 --> 01:02:11,840
Speaker 1: of cut off from everything in a good way. And

1075
01:02:11,840 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 1: and that could happen no matter what the other conditions were,

1076
01:02:14,440 --> 01:02:16,680
Speaker 1: if there was somebody loud on the train, if the

1077
01:02:16,680 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 1: train was hot, if the train was maybe empty and spooky.

1078
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:23,360
Speaker 1: You know, all that could could could play play into it.

1079
01:02:23,400 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 1: But it's it's fascinating to to look back on this

1080
01:02:26,520 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 1: time period where again there is something there's maybe a

1081
01:02:28,920 --> 01:02:31,720
Speaker 1: little bit of Victorian future shot going on. There is

1082
01:02:31,760 --> 01:02:36,120
Speaker 1: also undeniably so many other things coming into play. We discussed,

1083
01:02:36,360 --> 01:02:40,880
Speaker 1: you know, awareness of sort of a growing but unbalanced

1084
01:02:40,880 --> 01:02:43,120
Speaker 1: awareness of mental health. I can't help but think about

1085
01:02:43,120 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 1: how how syphilis might have played into all this as well, Uh,

1086
01:02:46,520 --> 01:02:49,560
Speaker 1: you know, awareness of how that can affect one's mental state.

1087
01:02:51,040 --> 01:02:51,240
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1088
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:54,439
Speaker 1: There there is a fascinating topic. And then of course

1089
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:57,040
Speaker 1: we see how it plays out, how it influences all

1090
01:02:57,120 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 1: of these various fictions h and a part of say

1091
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:03,600
Speaker 1: railway fiction in general.

1092
01:03:04,000 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot more to talk about,

1093
01:03:06,360 --> 01:03:08,320
Speaker 2: and that's why we are not done with this topic.

1094
01:03:08,400 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 2: This was part one. We will be back with part

1095
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:14,000
Speaker 2: two of our discussion of the locomotive Horror and Trains

1096
01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:16,479
Speaker 2: of Terror on Thursday of this week.

1097
01:03:16,560 --> 01:03:19,880
Speaker 1: Right, that's right, that's right. In the meantime, also recommend

1098
01:03:20,280 --> 01:03:22,760
Speaker 1: do yourself a favorite do a Google image search for

1099
01:03:22,880 --> 01:03:27,800
Speaker 1: some punch cartoons and throw train in there you'll see

1100
01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:32,840
Speaker 1: various examples of alleged Victorian train madness. I really wanted

1101
01:03:32,840 --> 01:03:35,840
Speaker 1: to see the one with the lady thinking she's looking

1102
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:39,040
Speaker 1: at her own reflection, but it's actually somebody's face. Oh,

1103
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:40,080
Speaker 1: I couldn't find out.

1104
01:03:40,480 --> 01:03:43,520
Speaker 2: I think this was a cartoon actually arguing against one

1105
01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:46,400
Speaker 2: of the safety innovations that was proposed on trains. So

1106
01:03:46,440 --> 01:03:49,000
Speaker 2: the idea was that you would put these windows in

1107
01:03:49,040 --> 01:03:51,800
Speaker 2: the compartments so that it would be easier to communicate

1108
01:03:51,840 --> 01:03:53,960
Speaker 2: back and forth or see what's going on. But then

1109
01:03:54,000 --> 01:03:56,200
Speaker 2: the idea is, oh, a lady's like, you know, dressing

1110
01:03:56,200 --> 01:03:58,120
Speaker 2: in front of the mirror and on the other side

1111
01:03:58,120 --> 01:04:00,440
Speaker 2: there's some kind of creep looking at.

1112
01:04:02,040 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 3: All.

1113
01:04:02,280 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 1: Right, well, we'll be back on Thursday. Then we'll get

1114
01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:06,040
Speaker 1: into ghost trains a bit in that one, so it

1115
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:08,320
Speaker 1: should be a good time. But in the meantime we'll

1116
01:04:08,360 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 1: remind you that stuff to blow your mind. It is

1117
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:13,080
Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on

1118
01:04:13,120 --> 01:04:16,240
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays. We're of course very much in the

1119
01:04:16,240 --> 01:04:19,640
Speaker 1: Halloween spirit of things this month, so most of our

1120
01:04:19,640 --> 01:04:23,360
Speaker 1: topics are going to be a little bit creepy as intended.

1121
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:25,680
Speaker 1: And then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns

1122
01:04:25,720 --> 01:04:27,720
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1123
01:04:27,800 --> 01:04:30,440
Speaker 1: And this week it is going to be train oriented,

1124
01:04:30,520 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 1: so we're excited for the tie in here we have trains.

1125
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:37,800
Speaker 2: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Teleisivalis ooh boy, It's going to

1126
01:04:37,840 --> 01:04:38,320
Speaker 2: be a good time.

1127
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:39,080
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1128
01:04:39,360 --> 01:04:43,200
Speaker 2: Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1129
01:04:43,440 --> 01:04:45,040
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

1130
01:04:45,040 --> 01:04:47,480
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1131
01:04:47,600 --> 01:04:49,640
Speaker 2: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

1132
01:04:49,680 --> 01:04:52,400
Speaker 2: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

1133
01:04:52,400 --> 01:05:02,720
Speaker 2: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

1134
01:05:02,840 --> 01:05:03,680
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio.

1135
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:08,000
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1136
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:21,280
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.